The ONLY flight of the system was unmanned.
With all their experience in long-term space habitation, they couldn't copy the US life support system as well. Sad.
==With all their experience in long-term space habitation, they couldn't copy the US life support system as well.==
Russian engineers didn't need to copy US life support system.
Lack of money is the answer. Collapsing USSR is background.
No, unmanned flight is a plus, not a minus.
If some awful thing happened abord a shuttle that disabled the crew, nobody could bring it down.
And, if all you are doing is a restocking mission, most of the 30 tons could be supplies, without wasting weight on food, water, oxy, people, and the fuel to boost all that.
There is no evidence that the Buran enviro stuff was lacking.
No, they never intended to fly the first few flighs with any life support on it. The Soviets were notorious for building several versions of craft, and extensively testing it. They realized that the Buran was a money pit, they did a flight of it to save face, and very wisely scrapped the program. They are geniuses for doing that. We are stuck with a costly crappy unnecessary shuttle flying up to an under built, costly, unnecessary space station. Cheap simple liquid fueled rockets to put men in space, big assed solid rockets to put cargo up, its the only way to do it.