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Do any other countries have anything like American shuttle-craft?

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    Well, the USSR had a nearly finished Shuttle-Clone, the Buran, which also flew into space once.

    Before the Shuttle, both USSR and USA developed many lifting bodies, which are a compromise between a spaceplane and a capsule. The USSR launched one of their unmanned prototypes into space once, with the Australian coast guard making a photo of the recovery.

    Before Germany joined the Shuttle project (they build the Spacelab, in exchange for for some astronaut positions), they had been developing their own spaceplane Saenger 2, much more futuristic as the shuttle. It was already on a good track, before it got politically decided that the Shuttle is less risky. The hydrogen powered jet engines of the Saenger 2 are still very advanced - and their prototypes still exist. But instead of solving the remaining problems, the money went to the USA.

    Europe developed Hermes for some years, before canceling it because of run-away costs. Because of Hermes, there is today the Ariane V, with all it's strangeness in it's first years.

    Germany developed a small prototype of a space plane recently, the Phoenix. It already did a very successful automated landing test campaign in Sweden, and now hopes for supersonic testing.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Several other countries have rockets, but those rockets are designed to be functional instead of looking like an airplane.

  • Not any more. The old Soviet Union had a shuttle called Buran, but it never went into space, and was mothballed when the Soviet Union dissolved.

  • 1 decade ago

    the ussr did at one time

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  • Quasar
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    The USSR did but not anymore!

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    no they like things that work

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