Buran-Energia

Here is an interview I had with Igor Volk test pilot of the Buran space shuttle.
He was selected in 1978 to become the chief of the test pilot crew of Buran and flew on the space station Salyut 7 in 1984 to test the aptitude of a cosmonaut to pilot the Buran on the way back.

The journey go on with the visit today of the Tsiolkovsky’s house. This house is located in the Kaluga town in the Tsiolkovsky’s street, not far from the Oka river.

It’s here.

During my recent trip in Moscow I had the occasion to visit the MAI museum, here are the pictures I took.

The test shuttle OK-TVA stands in the Gorky park, along the Moskva river. This shuttle has been laid out into an attraction for many years but is exhibited without protection and is thrown to the bad weathers, especially hards in Moscow, which ended to destroy the false thermal shield.

Works began during summer 2009 to restore it. We can see on the next picture that the heat shield is being torn off.

Here are some pictures taken this summer. The heat shield is almost completely removed from the shuttle (workers are busy on the wing) and the tiles pattern is painted directly on the fuselage. I understand this only in a manner to simplify the maintenance of the shuttle. Indeed, it’s easier to look after painting that tens of thousands of false wooden tiles which ended to decay.

Other pictures here.

The Mriya landed yesterday at the Hahn airport (Germany) to carry an Alstom generator of 190t.

This generator is the heaviest indivisible piece of hardware ever transported by air and shows again the superiority of the AN-225 in heavy loads transports. This piece will be use in an Armenian gas factory. In total six travels will be necessary, the first four was accomplished by AN-124 (lighter version) and the last two will be by the Mriya.

I created a new part on the website that I nammed « Others« , this area will group differents chapters about Soviet spacecrafts, more or less linked to the Buran-Energia program. Indeed, even if the projects seems differents numerous elements and technics are reused which gave some continuity in the timeline.

I added today a chapter on the Kliper shuttle, which is the evolution between Buran space shuttle and BOR models. This shuttle should have been the replacement for the Soyuz spacecraft but unfortunatly the project is stopped.

Antonov Airline gave a youth bath of the Mriya. Indeed, during the last weeks the company renewed the pattern on the fuselage, the previous, inherited from the soviet time and a little bit austere, was replaced by a new one more in the spirit of the time.

The colors used are the ones of the Ukrainian flag. This last, located on the tail, was replaced by the company logo.

Former pattern:

New pattern:

Other pictures of the Mriya in the gallery.

Here are some pictures of the renovation of the OK-M shuttle at the Baikonur’s museum. Those pictures were taken during the begining of 2007.