The Buran spacecraft, GRAU index 11F35 K1 was a Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in
function and design to the US Space Shuttle, developed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy
of RKK Energia. Buran completed one unmanned spaceflight in 1988 and remains the only Soviet
reusable spacecraft to be launched into space; the Buran programme was cancelled in 1993
following the dissolution of the USSR. It was treated as a Soviet space shuttle but
only the plane itself was theoretically reusable, and while it was recovered successfully after
its first orbital flight it was never reused. The expendable Energia rocket served as its
launch vehicle. The flown Buran spacecraft was destroyed in
2002 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, when the hangar it was stored in collapsed.
Overview
The Buran orbital vehicle program was developed in response to the U.S. Space Shuttle program,
which in the 1980s raised considerable concerns among the Soviet military and especially Defense
Minister Dmitriy Ustinov. An authoritative chronicler of the Soviet and later Russian
space programs, the academic Boris Chertok, recounts how the program came into being.
According to Chertok, after the U.S. developed its Space Shuttle program, the Soviet military
became suspicious that it could be used for military purposes, due to its enormous payload,
several times that of previous U.S. launch vehicles. The Soviet government asked the
TsNIIMash for an expert opinion. Institute director, Yuri Mozzhorin, recalls that for
a long time the institute could not envisage a civilian payload large enough to require
a vehicle of that capacity.
Officially, the Buran spacecraft was designed for the delivery to orbit and return to Earth
of spacecraft, cosmonauts, and supplies. Both Chertok and Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy suggest
that from the beginning, the program was military in nature; however, the exact military capabilities,
or intended capabilities, of the Buran program remain classified. Commenting on the discontinuation
of the program in his interview to New Scientist, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov confirms their
accounts:
Like its American counterpart, the Buran, when in transit from its landing sites back
to the launch complex, was transported on the back of a large jet aeroplane — the
Antonov An-225 Mriya transport aircraft, which was designed in part for this task and remains
the largest aircraft in the world to fly multiple times.
According to a May 1990 declassified CIA report citing open-source intelligence material,
the software for the Buran spacecraft was written in the Prolog programming language.
Flight into space The only orbital launch of Buran occurred
at 3:00 UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110/37. It was lifted into
orbit, on an unmanned mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket. Unlike the NASA Shuttle,
which was propelled by a combination of solid boosters and the Shuttle's own liquid-fuel
engines fueled from a large fuel tank, the Energia-Buran system used thrust from the
rocket's four RD-170 liquid oxygen/kerosene engines developed by Valentin Glushko and
another four RD-0120 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines.
Even though the program was delayed by several years, Buran was the first space shuttle to
perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. The Buran automated
launch sequence performed as specified, and the Energia rocket lifted the vehicle into
a temporary orbit before the orbiter separated as programmed. After boosting itself to a
higher orbit and completing two revolutions around the Earth, ODU engines fired automatically
to begin the descent into the atmosphere. Exactly 206 minutes into the mission, the
Buran orbiter landed, having lost only eight of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course
of the flight. The automated landing took place on a runway at Baikonur Cosmodrome where,
despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour, it landed only 3 metres laterally
and 10 metres longitudinally from the target mark. Specifically, as Buran approached Baikonur
Cosmodrome and started landing, spacecraft sensors detected the strong crosswind and
"the robotic system sent the huge machine for another rectangular traffic pattern approach,
successfully landing the spacecraft on a second try."
Projected flights and related development In 1989, it was projected that Buran would
have an unmanned second flight by 1993, with a duration of 15–20 days. Because the project
was cancelled after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this never took place. Several
scientists looked into trying to revive the Buran program, especially after the Space
Shuttle Columbia disaster. Discussions of a Russian successor
In 2010 the director of Moscow's Central Machine Building Institute said the Buran project
would be reviewed in the hope of restarting a similar manned spacecraft design, with rocket
test launches as soon as 2015. Russia also continues work on the PPTS but has abandoned
the Kliper program, due to differences in vision with its European partners.
In late 2013, on the 25th anniversary of Buran, a new super heavy lift launch vehicle was
announced for development by Roscosmos. Destruction
On 12 May 2002, a hangar housing Buran collapsed during a massive storm in Kazakhstan, as a
result of poor maintenance. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the craft as well
as a mock-up of an Energia carrier rocket. Commemoration activities
On the 25th anniversary of the Buran flight in November 2013, Oleg Ostapenko, the new
head of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, proposed that a new heavy lift launch
vehicle be built for the Russian space program. The rocket would be intended to place a payload
of 100 tonnes in a baseline low Earth orbit and is projected to be based on the Angara
launch vehicle technology. Preserved shuttles
A Buran space shuttle prototype, which never flew to space, can be seen at Gorky Park,
Moscow, Russia. A Buran space shuttle prototype, which never flew to space can be seen at Technik
Museum Speyer, in Speyer Germany. This version has four turbojet engines which provided enough
thrust for the shuttle to make atmospheric test flights.
See also
Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 — Soviet orbital spaceplane
N1 Spaceplane
Spacecraft Reverse engineering
References
Further reading Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle,
Bart Hendrick and Bert Vis, Springer-Praxis, 2007, pp. 526, ISBN 978-0-387-69848-9.
Heinz Elser, Margrit Elser-Haft, Vladim Lukashevich: Buran — History and Transportation of the
Russian Space shuttle OK-GLI to the Technik Museum Speyer, two Languages: German and English,
2008, ISBN 3-9809437-7-1 External links