"do you think the Buran Space Shuttle, which could fly fully autonomously, could be sent to rescue the astronauts"
No, not enough fuel. Unless you ship that dude out of the USSR it doesn't have enough fuel, when launched from the USSR, to get to orbit with an inclination below maybe 45 or so degrees (nobody is absolutely sure and you can play a lot of geography games etc). It would have been super borderline at absolute best. Also "orbit" is fuzzy, so "could launch as low as 45 degrees" is technically true if you're cool with only achieving a temporary very low orbit, maybe 40-50 miles lower than columbia was. Of course you could try an insane rescue attempt like re-entering columbia while buran is re-entering and then you got 5 minutes to transfer... Umm this is sounding too hollywood movie to be considered.
Given an infinite tank of fuel or an infinitely low payload you can launch from any latitude into any inclination, but you always get best payload for least fuel if your orbit is over your latitude aka your inclination equals your latitude. This is why the ISS is in such a weird super-high inclination orbit, to make the Russians happy during the cold war.
No, not enough fuel. Unless you ship that dude out of the USSR it doesn't have enough fuel, when launched from the USSR, to get to orbit with an inclination below maybe 45 or so degrees (nobody is absolutely sure and you can play a lot of geography games etc). It would have been super borderline at absolute best. Also "orbit" is fuzzy, so "could launch as low as 45 degrees" is technically true if you're cool with only achieving a temporary very low orbit, maybe 40-50 miles lower than columbia was. Of course you could try an insane rescue attempt like re-entering columbia while buran is re-entering and then you got 5 minutes to transfer... Umm this is sounding too hollywood movie to be considered.
Given an infinite tank of fuel or an infinitely low payload you can launch from any latitude into any inclination, but you always get best payload for least fuel if your orbit is over your latitude aka your inclination equals your latitude. This is why the ISS is in such a weird super-high inclination orbit, to make the Russians happy during the cold war.