<story><title>The life and death of Buran, the USSR shuttle built on faulty assumptions</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/the-life-and-death-of-buran-the-ussr-shuttle-built-on-faulty-assumptions/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>molecule</author><text>The USSR should be commended on not throwing as much good money after bad as the US did w&amp;#x2F; the Space-Shuttle Program, which was built on even worse faulty assumptions re: cost, reuse, safety, launch frequency, etc.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When all design and maintenance costs are taken into account, the final cost of the Space Shuttle program, averaged over all missions and adjusted for inflation, was estimated to come out to $1.5 billion per launch, or $60,000&amp;#x2F;kg (approximately $27,000 per pound) to LEO. This should be contrasted with the originally envisioned costs of $118 per kilogram (approximately $53 per pound) of payload in 1972 dollars ($1,400&amp;#x2F;kg, [approximately $630 per pound] adjusting for inflation to 2011)&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The launch rate was significantly lower than initially expected. While not reducing absolute operating costs, more launches per year gives a lower cost per launch. Some early hypothetical studies examined 55 launches per year (see above), but the maximum possible launch rate was limited to 24 per year based on manufacturing capacity of the Michoud facility that constructs the external tank. Early in shuttle development, the expected launch rate was about 12 per year. Launch rates reached a peak of 9 per year in 1985 but averaged fewer thereafter.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The life and death of Buran, the USSR shuttle built on faulty assumptions</title><url>http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/09/the-life-and-death-of-buran-the-ussr-shuttle-built-on-faulty-assumptions/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rdtsc</author><text>One of the remnants of the Buran to this day is an ancestor of  its programming environment -- DRAKON. It is a visual programming language. Unlike others, it seems this one has had quite a bit of thought put into it.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;DRAKON&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think it is enough to make it popular, but it is nevertheless an interesting niche. There is a small community still building and exploring it.&lt;p&gt;There is a DRAKON editor, with target languages like Javascript, Erlang, C++ and others. Here is the DRAKON editor program:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drakon-editor.sourceforge.net/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drakon-editor.sourceforge.net&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;EDIT: (adding some interesting translated tid bits from Parondjanov&amp;#x27;s writings)&lt;p&gt;If you happen to speak Russian it is also quite an interesting read to go over author&amp;#x27;s (Parondjanov) writing on programming in general:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://drakon.pbworks.com/w/page/18205516/FrontPage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;drakon.pbworks.com&amp;#x2F;w&amp;#x2F;page&amp;#x2F;18205516&amp;#x2F;FrontPage&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;He talks about visual programming languages. He defines provocative terms like &amp;quot;intellectual terrorism&amp;quot; and how information overload (he calls it &amp;quot;information stress&amp;quot;) is akin to terrorism for the minds of workers tasked to tease out the solution to the problem. It often stems from an impedance mismatched between old methods of solving problems and processing information and the new type and amount of information available. Mind you this was written in the 80&amp;#x27;s before big data. His environment was building tools to write the avionics system for Buran. Many of the engineers involved were not computer scientists, there were mechanical, chemical, airspace engineers. He was probably wondering how to get them to program better and how to make the whole process more efficient and less stressful for them.</text></comment>