Buran-Energia

The experimental space shuttle Buran OK-GLI should go to Germany in the next days. On February, 27 2008 the direction of the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum went to Bahrain (where it was stocked) to receive the authorization to move the shuttle.

The shuttle will be carried by boat in the next weeks. 23 days later it will arrive at Rotterdam, then it will be carried by barge to the Technik Museum Speyer (town of Speyer).

The shuttle will take place in the biggest hangar of the museum (still in construction).

It’s the end of 3 years of proceedings and the beginning of a new life for the shuttle.

Update of March 6:

Buran left Bahrain during the night of Tuesday 4 to Wednesday 5, she is on the way to Rotterdam where she will arrive at the end of march. The hangar which shelter her is 22m heigh, it should be finished when she will arrive. It cost 10 million euros.

There are 2 new videos about the OK-GLI shuttle, one on its assembling once arriving at the Sydney’s harbor, and another one on the reception of the exhibition.
Indeed, in february 2000 the test space shuttle OK-GLI is send at Sydney (Darling Harbour) for an exhibition about the Buran project. But due to financial troubles the exhibition is closed few months later.

Another video is about the transportation of Buran models to Baikonur with the VM-T Atlant and AN-225 planes.

The last video is a little presentation of the MIG-25, plane which was used to chase Buran during its descent to the Baikonur airport in November 15, 1988.

Videos:

A reader of Airliners.net went to Bahrein 2 days ago and had an interesting meeting:

Out of a pure coincidence I had the opportunity to see, touch and photograph the Russian orbiter Buran two days ago. As you might know, the static test model (not intended for space travel) BTS-02 is in storage in Bahrain since 2006, It is hard to find out the full story but apparently the Auto und Technik Museum Sinsheim (Germany) bought this frame for static display but there is some sort of issue going on about who owns it, so in the meanwhile it sits there in the desert sun in the middle of a huge pile of junk and containers.

I flew from Dubai to Frankfurt two days ago and stopped for a half day in Bahrain to explore the country. I had previously looked up the orbiter’s approximate location in Google Earth, so I drove to the area with my rental car. It is a slightly dirty, run-down dock yard / industrial area. I parked my car as close as possible to where I thought I’d find the Buran, and started walking around. It was really hot and humid, you step out of the air condition and you sweat right away. I reached a huge wall and from my memory it was right behind it, so I walked along the wall past various large buildings until I came to a gate with a guard. I asked him if he could help me, and he said yes the « Space Shuttle » is inside this particular container yard (more like a junk yard) but unfortunately I could not go there. I kind of started a conversation with him and we sat down in his air conditioned office, we talked about his native country Pakistan, and finally I asked him why I couldn’t see the Buran and he told me his boss wouldn’t let him take anyone near it, so I asked him where his boss was and he said he’s off duty due to Ramadan.

Problem solved! I convinced him that when his boss isn’t here he can’t see me (which is true) so we wandered through piles of scrap metal and what not. And then the Buran was right before me. What an incredible feeling! This beat-up wingless shoe box was once the pride of the Soviet space program! The heat tiles in the bottom were all burnt up, so there must have been some sort of fire testing. The whole frame looked very low-tech, hoses and tubes hung out from where the wings were once attached. Even though the frame was completely surrounded by containers and a building wall, there were two particular angles from where I could take photos that showed at least a part of the fuselage. The guard told me not to take any more pictures than these, and he wanted us to leave as soon as possible (not sure if it was for fear of his boss or piles of scrap metal collapsing above us). I would have loved to stay a while to enjoy the special situation, but after only about 3 minutes we left again.

I’m uploading two shots into the A.net database right now, they’re not perfect, but I’d say they’re pretty rare, so I hope they accept them. There’s no photo of Buran at Bahrain in the database, you don’t even find many photos elsewhere on the internet, also there is no photo of this particular frame and there are only a handful of Buran photos altogether. So I’ll see if they take it!

The world’s largest nonpermanent aerospace exhibition will lift off at Tsim Sha Tsui in December.

« Space Shuttle 2007, » as the exhibition is called, will feature retired space shuttle Buran and other items on loan from the Russian space program and the United States’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

« The goals of the exhibition are twofold: to provide an educational experience for visitors, and to give local tourism a boost, » Hong Kong Space Shuttle 2007 project director Karen Loh Yuk-ying said yesterday.

The highlight is the space shuttle Buran, which has been exhibited in Sydney, Australia, and in Bahrain. It is the only space shuttle ever to have been publicly displayed.

Space Shuttle 2007 opens at the West Kowloon (Hong Kong) Reclamation Area on December 12.

Official website

Here is some pictures of the carry over of the OK-GLI shuttle from the Bahraini port to the German museum (Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum) taken in April 2007.

A BAHRAINI court yesterday ordered that a space shuttle (OK-GLI), which has been stranded in Bahrain for over four years, be returned to its Russian owners. The Buran has been stranded in Bahrain since mid-2002 due to a court dispute over who it belongs to.

Russian company NPO Molniya originally sold it to Singapore-based Space Shuttle World Tour, but later filed a case in the Bahrain courts claiming the latter failed to make all the payments.

The High Criminal Court ruled in NPO Molniya’s favour on October 31 last year and ordered for the sale contract to be terminated.

However, the Singaporean company appealed against the verdict in the Supreme Civil Appeal Court, which upheld the original verdict yesterday.

Under the terms of sale, the Singaporean company agreed to buy the Buran for $320,000 (BD120,960).

It was supposed to pay the amount in two equal instalments and coughed up $160,000 (BD60,480) in April 2002.

However, it failed to meet a condition that said it should pay the second instalment within a month.

The shuttle was brought to Bahrain by Pico in July 2002 and was a feature of the Bahrain Summer festival.

Pico had negotiated with Space Shuttle World Tour to bring it here, but a case was filed in Bahrain by NPO in 2002 to prevent the shuttle from being sent to Thailand as a tourist attraction – claiming the sale was null and void because Space Shuttle World Tour had breached the contract.

Bahrain’s Supreme Civil Appeal Court also ruled yesterday that Pico, or any other party, had any right to the spacecraft.

Bahrain’s Cassation Court has previously overruled a High Civil Court decision that the dispute fell outside Bahraini jurisdiction.

Before coming to Bahrain, Buran was shipped to Australia in 2000 to become a tourist attraction, but failed to earn enough money to stay open.

The GDN reported last September that labourers had been sleeping inside the shuttle after getting through a hole in its structure.

This is 2 videos on Buran, the first speaks about the Buran-Energia project, the second is about the OK-GLI disembarking in february 2000 at Sydney.