Technological theft, the sincerest form of flattery

In 1985 the U.S. Department of Defense produced a glossy report on the capabilities of the United States’ primary rival. Titled Soviet Military Power, 1985, the heavily illustrated monograph was intended to make the case that the Soviet Union was substantially increasing its military capabilities. In the chapter on space forces, the book featured an artist’s illustration of a Soviet space shuttle atop its carrier aircraft. Anybody who looked at it would have noticed its similarity to NASA’s own space shuttle. A few years later, after the Soviet Union publicly unveiled the craft, named Buran, many people concluded that the spacecraft was a direct copy of the American space shuttle, some even speculating that the KGB had stolen the shuttle blueprints.