In 1981, America made history when NASA launched its first Space Transportation
system, carrying two astronauts into orbit. But unbeknownst to many, Russia was in the middle of
building its own spacecraft with stolen parts and specifications acquired through espionage.
As the most ambitious project in the history of the Soviet space conquest,
over one million people from 1,286 companies and
86 ministries and departments participated directly in the project’s development.
Then, on November 15, 1988, Soviet cameras recorded the Buran space
shuttle successfully taking off into orbit.
While Buran may have looked like any other Soviet vehicle from the Cold War,
the now-forgotten space shuttle had one unique characteristic: it could fly itself.
One Of Their Own
For decades, Soviet scientists toyed with many ideas to develop reusable spacecraft,
but the rapid development of the American space shuttle in
the early 1970s further motivated them to build one of their own.
Even if the United States always claimed that its space efforts came
merely from national pride and the pursuit of science,
the military applications of such a massive vehicle were clear, at least to the Russians.
Amongst the Soviets, there was fear that the new American spacecraft could
be used as some sort of orbital bomber for global domination.
With that in mind, the Soviet Council of Ministers and the Communist Party's Central
Committee approved plans to develop a new space shuttle in early 1976.
The effort would be led by Colonel General Alexander Maksimov,
a military official already managing Russia's existing military space programs.
Initially, the Soviets considered restarting Spiral, a previous space-plane program.
However, when that design proved insufficient compared to America's upcoming shuttle,
they recognized just how far behind they were.
If the Soviets wanted to keep pace with NASA,
they would need to expedite the design process via old-school espionage.
Digital Espionage
While no strangers to reverse-engineer Allied technology, the design plans
for the space shuttle would undoubtedly be hard to steal.
Luckily for the Russians, America's National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA,
was a civilian agency delineated from the military
and did not treat its shuttle program like it was developing a weapon system.
As such, the documentation and plans for the space shuttle were available to the public.
In fact, most of the material the Soviet Union needed was hosted on commercial databases,
making this one of the first-ever cases of digital espionage.
According to a CIA analysis of the Soviet Acquisition of Militarily Significant Western
Technology, the documents the competing nation acquired described in detail airframe designs,
materials, flight computer systems, propulsion systems, and more.
Such documents allowed the Soviet industries to save
years of scientific research, as well as millions of rubles.
Finally, in 1980, Soviet Russia began building the Buran, or snowstorm, spaceplane.
At its peak development and construction phase,
the project integrated over 150,000 engineers, scientists, technicians, and other employees,
with most of the factory workers not knowing precisely what they were building for a while.
The Soviets always tried to keep the program a secret, but word soon leaked out.
In 1982, Australian reconnaissance aircraft took photos of Russian ships pulling a
small model spacecraft out of the ocean that looked strikingly familiar to American eyes…
Doppelganger
Despite an unmistakable aesthetic resemblance,
the Buran spacecraft's design departed from the American space shuttle in several ways.
While some of the most celebrated Soviet test pilots flew the Buran
on training flights in the Earth's atmosphere,
the Soviet shuttle was designed to travel without needing a human operator.
Another significant difference between the two models was the engine design. While the
American spacecraft system's three main engines were meant to return with the orbiter back to
Earth after each flight, Buran's four engines were located in a separate, disposable rocket stage.
Moreover, the Buran spacecraft was designed to be
launched on the Soviet Union's massive lift vehicle, Energia.
The immense power of the Energia provided the mighty Soviet rocket
with the capability to place payloads of over 100 tonnes in low Earth orbit,
while the American shuttle could only carry what fit inside its cargo bay into space.
Such flexibility was one of the design's focal points,
particularly during the Cold War, in which space stations were a likely possibility,
partly because of President Ronald Reagan's famed ‘Star Wars’ missile defense program.
First Flight
After several years of delays, preparations for the launch of the first Buran began in the fall
of 1988. However, the first launch attempt was canceled less than one minute prior to lift-off
because of a computer error, and a second try was again scrubbed due to poor weather.
Finally, on November 15, more than seven and a half years after the American
space shuttle Columbia lifted off for the first time from the Kennedy Space Center,
the Russians were ready to give it a go.
At 6:00am local time, Buran was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan,
with the stack disappearing into low clouds only seconds later. The event
was recorded and published not long after, with hundreds of thousands of people as witnesses.
Despite carrying Polyus, an experimental military space platform, as its payload,
the Soviet shuttle departed without a crew on board as planned.
The Buran spacecraft first reached low Earth orbit on the back of its giant
Energia super-heavy lift launch vehicle. From there, the Soviet wonder boosted itself into
a slightly higher orbit to circle the Earth twice before beginning reentry.
Without jet engines, the Soviet space shuttle would have to glide
back to its runway at the Baikonur Cosmodrome,
just like its American counterpart, but without a pilot to manage the descent.
As expected, the Buran spacecraft touched down on Earth shortly after reentry,
making what top Soviet engineers called a flawless runway landing.
The orbiting flight was notable around the world for being the first to return from
space with an airplane-style landing controlled entirely by a computer.
And upon closer inspection, the spacecraft's heat shielding fared better than America's
first shuttle launch years before, proving to be a resounding success.
Untimely Collapse
With lots of new data to work with, the Soviet scientists began preparing for a
second launch. However, it would sadly never come.
After only a single but successful flight in 1988, the Buran program quickly ran out of funds, as the
now crumbling Soviet Union realized the lack of purpose for the system compared to its high cost.
The price tag for launching 20 tons of payload
on the system was around 270 million rubles at the time.
Only three years after the Soviet space shuttle's first and only successful flight,
the Russian government collapsed, and with it, any hope of ever putting it back into orbit.
In 1993, Yuri Semenov, the director of NPO Energia, finally admitted that the project
was finished. While NPO Molniya, the developers of the Buran's body, tried to move forward with
a smaller version of the reusable orbiter, the company never found investors for the project.
The system was ultimately destroyed years later when
its hangar at Baikonur Cosmodrome collapsed in a massive accident.
While the Buran orbiter had a very brief operational life,
most of the research and technology that went into it would later prove helpful in the
Russian-designed elements of the International Space Station, which was inaugurated in 1998.
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