Saturday, July 14, 2012

The Buran, the sad fate of the Soviet Space Program


For many years the U.S. and the Soviet Union maintained a frantic race in terms of military technology and space conquest, this competition led to the creation amazing machines equipped with the most advanced technology on the planet, much of this technology came to civilian use and much of it as in the case of the Soviet space program was relegated to the hangars, this is the story of BUR? N (Буран).

The project began in 1976 as a response to the new U.S. space program that launched the "space shuttle" Buran's program in many ways was a version sometimes of better quality than its U.S. counterpart, there was much spying on both sides so in more than one case will never know who copied whom, what is safe to assume after seeing the following image is definitely someone that was copied from someone.

They were made in total 14 Buran, this number includes the prototypes, median 36.4 m long by 24 m wide and is manufactured in the same Moscow in an urban area, so for the road transport from the hangars to the launch area was expanded from 4 to 8 lanes, it was curious to see in a typical day a Buran or any of its parts giant traveling the streets of Moscow.

Despite all the time, money and technology invested in the Buran, it was a single flight and was not manned flight, which took 2 turns to the land and making a reentry reentry and landing Automatic unlike its U.S. counterpart that needed to be landed by pilots for their return. This landing system was the greatest achievement of the Buran program.

After this first successful flight, the project was suspended due to lack of funds and the political situation in the Soviet Union. On June 30, 1993, the project was officially canceled by Russian President Boris Yeltsin. At that time the government had spent on the project about 20,000 rubles equivalent to about 800 million dollars.

One goal was to become after the Buran vehicle that would supply the materials and supplies to the space station MIR, the American space shuttle finally was elected to the task, for this purpose had to be modified docking module called "Buran SO" which was originally designed to work with Buran.

The ultimate fate of the Buran

After the cancellation of the program, the ships were abandoned, most of them in Kazakhstan, were forgotten in hangars and several of them ended up destroyed by environmental deterioration and lack of mantenimiento.En the next picture we see an abandoned Buran also abandoned the Baikonur aerodrome, this is the saddest case as this Buran was taken by local youths who used it as their favorite place to drink, so that its interior was completely destroyed.

This is the current status of all Buran:

OK-M (0.01) - Baikonur BaikonurOK-GLI (0.02) - German Museum "Technik Museum Speyer" OK-KS (0.03) - Energy Factory KorolevOK-MT (0.04) - DestruidoOK-TVA (0.15) - Gorky Park, MoscúOK-??? (0.5) - DesconocidoOK-??? (0.6) - DesconocidoOK-TVI (0.8) - DesconocidoBurán (1.01) - DestruidoPtichka (1.02) - (97% complete) - Baikonur BaikonurBaikal (2.01) - (40% complete) - Tushino, MoscúBurán (2.02) - Partially dismantled, Tushino, MoscúBurán (2.03) - Destroyed

Extra data

- Buran OK-GLI EL, was like his brothers abandoned for many years until the company "Buran Space Corporation" bought it for it to be converted into a tourist attraction in Sydney where he arrived in February 2000, currently the Buran is in a German museum.

- The Buran Baikal (2.01) and the Buran (2.02) are the first models that incorporate shuttle ejection seats in case of accidents for human spaceflight.

- The Buran was capable of performing missions without need for a human crew.

- Although there were five Buran in production, came to be up to eight test vehicles. These vehicles were used in the static strength tests or atmospheric testing. Some of them were but mere models for testing of electrical equipment, procedures for the crew, and so on.

- The Buran were abandoned so long that when a team of curators wanted to rescue one, had many problems, it had damage to private property and beautification throughout the path that, because the city grew without considering the existence of these ships .

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