Buran-Energia

Today we are celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Buran’s flight.

The start was given at 6 o’clock AM (Moscow time) under a thick cloud cover. The flight went through without specifics troubles and the shuttle landed smoothly on the runway of the Yubileyniy’s airport, specially designed for this purpose.

This flight is a first in the history of space exploration because it’s the first automatic flight of a space shuttle. Only the de-orbit command was transmitted from the ground.

Unfortunately, the financial and political situation of the USSR at that time was disastrous, the program was expensive and priorities has changed. The Energia-Buran program is slowly paused. There will be no further launches, despite the many opportunities that allowed the shuttle. Even the launcher Energia is abandoned.

Since then, no manned shuttle has reiterated the achievement of being driven solely by the on-board computer.

This program has been the swansong of the Soviet Cosmonautics.

TV Roscosmos published a reporting about Buran-Energia with an complete interview of Oleg Baklanov, member of the CPSU Central Committee (1988-1991) responsible for issues of state defense. He was a strong supporter of this project and ask for the developing of such powerful launcher to continue the space exploration and increase the transportations conditions of cosmonauts.

Other reporting here.

Here is a reporting presented by Nicolas Hulot and filmed at the end of the 80′s or at the beginning of the 90′s where two Mig 25 are used to simulated the descent phase of the Buran shuttle.

This strange tower, belonging to the institute цнии ртк (Central Institute of Search and Experiments for Robotics and Cybernetics), always raised questions about its purpose. Some days ago a group of young people, living in the neighborhood, managed to get inside and see what it holds.

This is what they discovered, the Buran‘s remote manipulator system.

Source: tankist.

Today we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Energia‘s flight on May 15, 1987.

It is at 21h30 (Moscow time) that the rocket was launched for the first time with the Polious space combat station as a payload. The launch went fine, despite a trouble during take off, but a malfunction in the orientation system didn’t allowed it to reach it’s orbit.

The second and last launch of Energia took place one year later with Buran on November 15, 1988.

Even if Energia was a versatile, adjustable, very powerful (100t in low earth orbit) and reliable (2 launch and 2 success) rocket, the lack of large scale projects and the collapse of the USSR buried it. Only its boosters made from Zenit launcher are still used today.

Last week in Moscow, at the Gorky park, was a snowboard contest the Adrenalin Games 2012.

Some installations (stairs and quarters) were made for the competitor in front of the Buran OK-TVA whereas a giant screen was settled behind her. During the show animations were displayed on the shuttle and the screen giving a striking effect.

Pictures of the show:

And the video of the animations:

The Siberian scientific aviation institute named after S.A. Chaplygin is located at Novosibirsk and is the biggest aviation research center of the East Russia.

This institute is equipped with apparels to heat up and cool down materials, this is why it seems that they worked on the Buran’s heat shield.

Here is two pictures of the vertical stabilizer located in the hangar.

Source: Gelio.

Few weeks ago some people got inside the Buran’s assembly building at Baikonur, the MZK. They found two shuttles, the test shuttle OK-MT and the second shuttle of first generation OK-1.02 named Ptichka (little bird).

This shuttle was finished at 95% when the program was stopped and had some modifications in comparison of the model which flew.

On those pictures we can see that the cabin lost a lot of its on-board apparels during the last years. It is difficult to imagine what was really the completion level at that time. We can also see the details of the air-lock module for docking with the MIR space station (APAS system).

Pictures of the inside and the outside of the shuttle.