Buran was a better STS than the STS.
probably. there are always a lot of quirks that you can only find through continued use of the system, and sts's quirks just happened to kill a bunch of people so the bar isn't very high considering what I know about buran. and for whatever it's worth, nasa is usually totally anal about the trls of things they send into space. i just don't know much about how the soviets did things or how the russians do things.
in any case, i'd rather steal the endeavor because it was actually used. i'd just as soon steal the buran as i would the enterprise.
