When a snowstorm flew into space. Buran spaceship

Buran (spaceship)

"Buran"- an orbital spacecraft of the Soviet reusable transport space system (MTSC), created as part of the Energia-Buran program. One of the two MTKK orbital vehicles implemented in the world, Buran was a response to a similar American project"Space Shuttle". Buran made its first and only space flight in unmanned mode on November 15, 1988.

Story

"Buran" was conceived as a military system. The tactical and technical assignment for the development of a reusable space system was issued by the Main Directorate of Space Facilities of the USSR Ministry of Defense and approved by D. F. Ustinov on November 8, 1976. "Buran" was intended for:

The program has its own background:

In 1972, Nixon announced that the Space Shuttle program was beginning to be developed in the United States. It was declared as national, designed for 60 shuttle launches per year, it was planned to create 4 such ships; costs for the program were planned at 5 billion 150 million dollars in 1971 prices. The shuttle launched 29.5 tons into low-Earth orbit and could release up to 14.5 tons of cargo from orbit. This is very serious, and we began to study for what purposes it was being created? After all, everything was very unusual: the weight put into orbit using disposable carriers in America did not even reach 150 tons/year, but here it was planned to be 12 times more; nothing was descended from orbit, and here it was supposed to return 820 tons/year... This was not just a program to create some kind of space system under the motto of reducing transportation costs (our studies at our institute showed that no reduction would actually be observed), it had a clear military purpose. Director of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering Yu. A. Mozzhorin

Drawings and photographs of the shuttle were first received in the USSR through the GRU in early 1975. Two examinations on the military component were immediately carried out: at military research institutes and at the Institute of Mechanical Problems under the leadership of Mstislav Keldysh. Conclusions: “the future ship reusable will be able to carry nuclear weapons and attack the territory of the USSR with them from almost any point in near-Earth space" and "The American shuttle with a carrying capacity of 30 tons, if loaded with nuclear warheads, is capable of flying outside the radio visibility zone of the domestic missile attack warning system. Having performed an aerodynamic maneuver, for example, over the Gulf of Guinea, he can release them across the territory of the USSR,” the USSR leadership was prompted to create an answer - “Buran”.

And they say that we will fly there once a week, you know... But there are no targets or cargo, and the fear immediately arises that they are creating a ship for some future tasks that we do not know about. Possible military use? Undoubtedly.

Vadim Lukashevich - cosmonautics historian, candidate technical sciences

And so they demonstrated this when they flew over the Kremlin on the Shuttle, this was a surge of our military, politicians, and so a decision was made at one time: to develop a technique for intercepting space targets, high ones, with the help of airplanes.

By December 1, 1988, there had been at least one secret military shuttle launch (NASA flight number STS-27).

In America they stated that the Space Shuttle system was created as part of a program of a civilian organization - NASA. The Space Task Force, led by Vice President S. Agnew in 1969-1970, developed several options for promising programs for the peaceful exploration of outer space after the end of the lunar program. In 1972, Congress, based on economic analysis? supported the project to create reusable shuttles to replace disposable rockets. In order for the Space Shuttle system to be profitable, according to calculations, it should have removed the load at least once a week, but this never happened. Currently [ When?] the program is closed, including due to unprofitability.

In the USSR, many space programs had either a military purpose or were based on military technologies. Thus, the Soyuz launch vehicle is the famous royal “seven” - the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and the Proton launch vehicle is the UR-500 ICBM.

According to the procedures established in the USSR for making decisions on rocket and space technology and on the space programs themselves, the initiators of development could be either the top party leadership (“Lunar Program”) or the Ministry of Defense. There was no civil administration for space exploration similar to NASA in the USA in the USSR.

In April 1973, the military-industrial complex, with the involvement of the leading institutes (TsNIIMASH, NIITP, TsAGI, 50 TsNII, 30 TsNII), draft decisions of the military-industrial complex on problems related to with the creation of a reusable space system. Government Decree No. P137/VII of May 17, 1973, in addition to organizational issues, contained a clause obliging “Minister S.A. Afanasyev and V.P. Glushko to prepare proposals on a plan for further work within four months.”

Reusable space systems had both strong supporters and authoritative opponents in the USSR. Wanting to finally decide on the ISS, GUKOS decided to choose an authoritative arbiter in the dispute between the military and industry, instructing the head institute of the Ministry of Defense for military space (TsNII 50) to carry out research work (R&D) to justify the need for the ISS to solve problems regarding the country's defense capability. But this did not bring clarity, since General Melnikov, who led this institute, decided to play it safe, and issued two “reports”: one in favor of the creation of the ISS, the other against it. In the end, both of these reports, overgrown with numerous authoritative “Agreed” and “I approve,” met in the most inappropriate place - on D. F. Ustinov’s desk. Irritated by the results of the “arbitration,” Ustinov called Glushko and asked to bring him up to date by presenting detailed information on the options for the ISS, but Glushko unexpectedly sent to a meeting with the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, a candidate member of the Politburo, instead of the General Designer - his employee, and. O. Head of Department 162 Valery Burdakov.

Arriving at Ustinov’s office on Staraya Square, Burdakov began answering questions from the Secretary of the Central Committee. Ustinov was interested in all the details: why the ISS is needed, what it could be like, what we need for this, why the United States is creating its own shuttle, what it threatens us with. As Valery Pavlovich later recalled, Ustinov was primarily interested in the military capabilities of the ISS, and he presented to D. F. Ustinov his vision of using orbital shuttles as possible carriers of thermonuclear weapons, which could be based on permanent military orbital stations in immediate readiness to deliver a crushing blow to anywhere on the planet.

The prospects for the ISS presented by Burdakov so deeply excited and interested D. F. Ustinov that he quickly prepared a decision that was discussed in the Politburo, approved and signed by L. I. Brezhnev, and the topic of a reusable space system received maximum priority among all space programs in the party and state leadership and the military-industrial complex.

In 1976, the specially created NPO Molniya became the main developer of the ship. The new association was headed by, already in the 1960s, he was working on the project of the reusable aerospace system “Spiral”.

The production of orbital vehicles has been carried out at the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant since 1980; by 1984 the first full-scale copy was ready. The ships were delivered from the factory by water transport(on a barge under a tent) to the city of Zhukovsky, and from there (from the Zhukovsky airfield) - by air (on a special VM-T transport aircraft) - to the Yubileiny airfield of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

For landings of the Buran spaceplane, a reinforced runway (runway) was specially equipped at the Yubileiny airfield in Baikonur. In addition, two more main reserve Buran landing sites were seriously reconstructed and fully equipped with the necessary infrastructure - the military airfields Bagerovo in Crimea and Vostochny (Khorol) in Primorye, and runways were built or strengthened at fourteen more reserve landing sites, including outside the territory of the USSR (in Cuba, Libya).

A full-size analogue of the Buran, designated BTS-002 (GLI), was manufactured for flight tests in the Earth's atmosphere. In its tail section there were four turbojet engines, which allowed it to take off from a conventional airfield. In -1988 it was used at the Leningrad Institute named after. M. M. Gromova (city of Zhukovsky, Moscow region) to test the control system and automatic landing system, as well as to train test pilots before space flights.

On November 10, 1985, at the Gromov Flight Research Institute of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry, the first atmospheric flight was made by a full-size analogue of the Buran (machine 002 GLI - horizontal flight tests). The car was piloted by LII test pilots Igor Petrovich Volk and R. A. A. Stankevichus.

Previously, by order of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry dated June 23, 1981 No. 263, the Industry Test Cosmonaut Squad of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry was created, consisting of: I. P. Volk, A. S. Levchenko, R. A. Stankevichus and A. V. Shchukin (the first kit).

First and only flight

Buran made its first and only space flight on November 15, 1988. Spaceship was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome using the Energia launch vehicle. The flight duration was 205 minutes, the ship made two orbits around the Earth, after which it landed at the Yubileiny airfield in Baikonur. The flight took place without a crew in automatic mode using an on-board computer and an on-board software, unlike the shuttle, which traditionally makes last stage manual landings (entry into the atmosphere and braking to the speed of sound in both cases are fully computerized). This fact - the flight of a spacecraft into space and its descent to Earth automatically under the control of an on-board computer - was included in the Guinness Book of Records. Above the water area Pacific Ocean“Buran” was accompanied by the ship of the measuring complex of the USSR Navy “Marshal Nedelin” and the research vessel of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky”.

...the control system of the Buran ship was supposed to automatically perform all actions until the ship stopped after landing. The pilot's participation in control was not provided for. (Later, at our insistence, a backup manual control mode was provided for during the atmospheric flight during the return of the ship.)

A number of technical solutions obtained during the creation of Buran are still used in Russian and foreign rocket and space technology.

A significant part of the technical information about the flight is inaccessible to today's researchers, since it was recorded on magnetic tapes for BESM-6 computers, no working copies of which have survived. It is possible to partially recreate the course of the historical flight using the surviving paper rolls of printouts on the ATsPU-128 with samples from on-board and ground telemetry data.

Specifications

• Length - 36.4 m,
• Wing span - about 24 m,
• The height of the ship when it is on the chassis is more than 16 m,
• Launch weight - 105 tons.
• The cargo compartment can accommodate a payload weighing up to 30 tons during takeoff and up to 20 tons during landing.

A sealed all-welded cabin for the crew and people for carrying out work in orbit (up to 10 people) and most of the equipment to support flight as part of the rocket and space complex, autonomous flight in orbit, descent and landing is inserted into the bow compartment. The cabin volume is over 70 m³.

Differences from the Space Shuttle

Despite the general external similarity of the projects, there are also significant differences.

General designer Glushko considered that by that time there was little material that would confirm and guarantee success, at a time when the Shuttle flights had proven that a Shuttle-like configuration worked successfully, and here there was less risk when choosing a configuration. Therefore, despite the larger useful volume of the “Spiral” configuration, it was decided to carry out the “Buran” in a configuration similar to that of the Shuttle.

...Copying, as indicated in the previous answer, was, of course, completely conscious and justified in the process of those design developments, which were carried out, and during which, as mentioned above, many changes were made to both the configuration and the design. The main political requirement was to ensure that the payload bay dimensions were the same as the Shuttle's payload bay.

...the absence of propulsion engines on the Buran noticeably changed the alignment, the position of the wings, the influx configuration, and a number of other differences.

After the disaster of the space shuttle Columbia, and especially with the closure of the Space Shuttle program, the Western media repeatedly expressed the opinion that the American space agency NASA is interested in reviving the Energia-Buran complex and intends to make a corresponding order to Russia in the near future. time. Meanwhile, according to the Interfax agency, the director of TsNIIMash G. G. Raikunov said that after 2018 Russia may return to this program and the creation of launch vehicles capable of launching cargo up to 24 tons into orbit; its testing will begin in 2015. In the future, it is planned to create rockets that will deliver cargo weighing more than 100 tons into orbit. For the distant future, there are plans to develop a new manned spacecraft and reusable launch vehicles.

Causes and consequences of differences between the Energia-Buran and Space Shuttle systems

The initial version of the OS-120, which appeared in 1975 in Volume 1B “Technical Proposals” of the “Integrated Rocket and Space Program”, was an almost complete copy of the American space shuttle - three oxygen-hydrogen propulsion engines were located in the tail section of the ship (11D122 developed by KBEM with a thrust of 250 t.s. and a specific impulse of 353 sec on the ground and 455 sec in vacuum) with two protruding engine nacelles for orbital maneuvering engines.

The key issue was the engines, which had to be in all major parameters equal to or superior to the characteristics of the onboard engines of the American SSME orbiter and the side solid rocket boosters.

The engines created at the Voronezh Chemical Automatics Design Bureau were compared to their American counterpart:

• heavier (3450 versus 3117 kg),
• larger in size (diameter and height: 2420 and 4550 versus 1630 and 4240 mm),
• with less thrust (at sea level: 155 versus 190 t.c.).

It is known that to launch the same payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, according to geographical reasons, you need to have more thrust than from the Cape Canaveral spaceport.

To launch the Space Shuttle system, two solid fuel boosters with a thrust of 1280 t.s. are used. each (the most powerful rocket engines in history), with a total thrust at sea level of 2560 t.s., plus the total thrust of the three SSME engines of 570 t.s., which together creates a thrust at liftoff from the launch pad of 3130 t.s. This is enough to launch a payload of up to 110 tons into orbit from the Canaveral Cosmodrome, including the shuttle itself (78 tons), up to 8 astronauts (up to 2 tons) and up to 29.5 tons of cargo in the cargo compartment. Accordingly, to launch 110 tons of payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, all other things being equal, it is necessary to create approximately 15% more thrust when lifting off from the launch pad, that is, about 3600 t.s.

The Soviet orbital ship OS-120 (OS means “orbital aircraft”) was supposed to weigh 120 tons (add to the weight of the American shuttle two turbojet engines for flights in the atmosphere and an ejection system for two pilots in emergency situation). A simple calculation shows that to put a payload of 120 tons into orbit, a thrust on the launch pad of more than 4000 t.s. is required.

At the same time, it turned out that the thrust of the propulsion engines of the orbital ship, if we use a similar configuration of the shuttle with 3 engines, is inferior to the American one (465 hp versus 570 hp), which is completely insufficient for the second stage and the final launch of the shuttle into orbit. Instead of three engines, it was necessary to install 4 RD-0120 engines, but in the design of the orbital ship’s airframe there was no space and weight reserve. The designers had to dramatically reduce the weight of the shuttle.

Thus was born the project of the OK-92 orbital vehicle, the weight of which was reduced to 92 tons due to the refusal to place the main engines together with a system of cryogenic pipelines, locking them when separating the external tank, etc.

As a result of the development of the project, four (instead of three) RD-0120 engines were moved from the rear fuselage of the orbital ship to bottom part fuel tank.

On January 9, 1976, the general designer of NPO Energia, Valentin Glushko, approved the “Technical Certificate” containing comparative analysis a new version of the OK-92 ship.

After the release of Resolution No. 132-51, the development of the orbiter airframe, means of air transportation of ISS elements and the automatic landing system was entrusted to the specially organized NPO Molniya, headed by Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky.

The changes also affected the side accelerators. There was no design experience in the USSR, necessary technology and equipment for the production of such large and powerful solid rocket boosters, which are used in the Space Shuttle system and provide 83% of the thrust at launch. The designers of NPO Energia decided to use the most powerful liquid rocket engine available - an engine created under the leadership of Glushko, a four-chamber RD-170, which could develop a thrust (after modification and modernization) of 740 t.s. However, instead of two side accelerators of 1280 t.s. use four 740 each. The total thrust of the side accelerators together with the second stage engines RD-0120 upon lifting off from the launch pad reached 3425 t.s., which is approximately equal to the starting thrust of the Saturn 5 system with the Apollo spacecraft.

Opportunity reuse side accelerators was an ultimatum requirement of the customer - the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Ministry of Defense represented by D. F. Ustinov. It was officially believed that the side accelerators were reusable, but in those two Energia flights that took place, the task of preserving the side accelerators was not even raised. American boosters are lowered by parachute into the ocean, which ensures a fairly “soft” landing, sparing the engines and booster housings. Unfortunately, under the conditions of launch from the Kazakh steppe, there is no chance of “splashdown” of the boosters, and a parachute landing in the steppe is not soft enough to preserve the engines and rocket bodies. Gliding or parachute landing with powder engines, although they were designed, were never implemented in practice. Zenit rockets, which are the same side boosters of Energia and are actively used to this day, have not become reusable carriers and are lost in flight.

The head of the 6th Test Directorate of the Baikonur Cosmodrome (1982-1989), (the directorate of the military space forces for the Buran system), Major General V. E. Gudilin noted:

One of the problems that had to be taken into account when developing the design and layout of the launch vehicle was the possibility of a production and technological base. Thus, the diameter of the 2nd stage rocket block was equal to 7.7 m, since a larger diameter (8.4 m like the shuttle, appropriate under optimal conditions) could not be realized due to the lack of appropriate equipment for mechanical processing, and the diameter of the rocket block was 1 the 3.9 m steps were dictated by the capabilities of railway transport, the launch-docking block was welded rather than cast (which would have been cheaper) due to the lack of development of steel casting of such sizes, etc.

Much attention was paid to the choice of fuel components: the possibility of using solid fuel at 1 stage, oxygen-kerosene fuel at both stages, etc. was considered, but the lack of the necessary production base for the manufacture of large-sized solid propellant engines and equipment for transporting loaded engines excluded the possibility of their use

Despite all efforts to copy the American system as accurately as possible, right down to chemical composition aluminum alloy, as a result of the changes made, with a payload weight of 5 tons less, the starting weight of the Energia-Buran system (2400 tons) turned out to be 370 tons more than the starting weight of the space shuttle system (2030 tons).

The changes that distinguished the Energia-Buran system from the Space Shuttle system had the following consequences:

According to Lieutenant General of Aviation, test pilot Stepan Anastasovich Mikoyan, who supervised the Buran test flights, these differences, as well as the fact that the American space shuttle system had already flown successfully, served in the conditions of the financial crisis as the reason for the mothballing and then the closure of the program “ Energy - Buran":

No matter how offensive it may be to the creators of this exceptionally complex, unusual system, who put their souls into their work and solved a lot of complex scientific and technical problems, but, in my opinion, the decision to stop working on the “Buran” theme was correct. Successful work over the Energia-Buran system is a great achievement of our scientists and engineers, but it was very expensive and took a lot of time. It was assumed that two more unmanned launches would be carried out and only then (when?) the spacecraft would be launched into orbit with a crew. And what would we achieve? We couldn’t do anything better than the Americans, and it didn’t make sense to do it much later and perhaps worse. The system is very expensive and could never pay for itself, mainly due to the cost of the disposable Energia rocket. And in our present time, the work would be completely unaffordable for the country in terms of monetary costs.

Layouts

• BTS-001 OK-ML-1 (product 0.01) was used to test the air transportation of the orbital complex. In 1993, the full-size model was leased to the Space-Earth Society (president - cosmonaut German Titov). It is installed on the Pushkinskaya embankment of the Moscow River in the Central Park of Culture and Leisure of Moscow and, as of December 2008, a scientific and educational attraction has been organized in it.
• OK-KS (product 0.03) is a full-size complex stand. Used for testing air transportation, complex testing of software, electrical and radio testing of systems and equipment. Located at the control and testing station of RSC Energia, the city of Korolev.
• OK-ML-2 (product 0.04) was used for dimensional and weight fitting tests.
• OK-TVA (product 0.05) was used for heat-vibration-strength tests. Located at TsAGI.
• OK-TVI (product 0.06) was a model for heat-vacuum tests. Located in NIIKhimMash, Peresvet, Moscow region.

Model of the Buran cabin (product 0.08) on the territory of Clinical Hospital No. 83 of the FMBA on Orekhovoy Boulevard in Moscow

• OK-MT (product 0.15) was used to practice pre-launch operations (refueling the ship, fitting and docking work, etc.). Currently located at the Baikonur site 112A, ( 45.919444 , 63.31 45°55′10″ N. w. /  63°18′36″ E. d. 45.919444° s. w. 63.31° E. d.
• (G) (O) ) in building 80. Is the property of Kazakhstan. and medical technologies FMBA).

List of products

By the time the program was closed (early 1990s), five flight prototypes of the Buran spacecraft had been built or were under construction:

In philately

see also

Notes

1. Paul Marks Cosmonaut: Soviet space shuttle was safer than NASA's (English) (July 7, 2011). Archived from the original on August 22, 2011.
2. Application of Buran
3. Path to Buran
4. "Buran". Kommersant No. 213 (1616) (November 14, 1998). Archived from the original on August 22, 2011. Retrieved September 21, 2010.
5. The mysterious flight of Atlantis
6. Agnew, Spiro, chairman. September 1969. The Post-Apollo Space Program: Directions for the Future. Space Task Group. Reprinted in NASA SP-4407, Vol. I, pp. 522-543
7. 71-806. July 1971. Robert N. Lindley, The Economics of a New Space Transportation System
8. Application of "Buran" - Combat space systems
9. The history of the creation of the reusable orbital ship "Buran"
10. Reusable orbital vehicle OK-92, which became Buran
11. Mikoyan S. A. Chapter 28. At a new job // We are children of war. Memoirs of a military test pilot. - M.: Yauza, Eksmo, 2006. - P. 549-566.
12. Speech by Gen. const. NPO "Molniya" G. E. Lozino-Lozinsky at the scientific and practical exhibition and conference "Buran - a breakthrough to super technologies", 1998
13. A. Rudoy. Cleaning mold from numbers // Computerra, 2007
14. The contact of any cosmic body with the atmosphere during acceleration is accompanied by a shock wave, the impact of which on gas flows is expressed by an increase in their temperature, density and pressure - pulsed compacting plasma layers are formed with a temperature that increases exponentially and reaches values ​​that can only be withstood without significant changes special heat-resistant silicate materials.
15. Bulletin of St. Petersburg University; Series 4. Issue 1. March 2010. Physics, chemistry (the chemical section of the issue is dedicated to the 90th anniversary of M. M. Schultz)
16. Mikhail Mikhailovich Shultz. Materials for the bibliography of scientists. RAS. Chemical Sciences. Vol. 108. Second edition, supplemented. - M.: Nauka, 2004. - ISBN 5-02-033186-4
17. General designer of Buran Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky answers
18. Russia To Review Its Space Shuttle Project / Propulsiontech’s Blog
19. Douglas Birch. Russian space program is handed new responsibility. Sun Foreign (2003). Archived from the original on August 22, 2011. Retrieved October 17, 2008.
20. Russia To Review Its Space Shuttle Project. Space Daily (???). Archived from the original on October 15, 2012. Retrieved July 28, 2010.
21. OS-120
22. Launch vehicle Energia
23. Fridlyander N. I. How the Energia launch vehicle began
24. B. Gubanov. Reusable block A // Triumph and Tragedy of Energy
25. B. Gubanov. Central block C // Triumph and Tragedy of Energy
26. Russian space shuttle in Port of Rotterdam (English)
27. The end of Buran's odyssey (14 photos)
28. D. Melnikov. The end of the Buran odyssey Vesti.ru, April 5, 2008
29. The Soviet shuttle "Buran" sailed to the German museum Lenta.ru, April 12, 2008
30. D. Melnikov. "Buran" was left without wings and tail Vesti.ru, September 2, 82010
31. TRC St. Petersburg - Channel Five, September 30, 2010
32. The remains of Buran are being sold piece by piece REN-TV, September 30, 2010
33. Buran will be given a chance
34. The Buran, rotting in Tushino, will be cleaned up and shown at the air show

Literature

• B. E. Chertok. Rockets and people. Lunar Race M.: Mechanical Engineering, 1999. Ch. 20
• First flight. - M.: Aviation and Cosmonautics, 1990. - 100,000 copies.
• Kurochkin A. M., Shardin V. E. Area closed to swimming. - M.: Military Book LLC, 2008. - 72 p. - (Ships of the Soviet fleet). - ISBN 978-5-902863-17-5
• Danilov E. P. First. And the only one... // Obninsk. - No. 160-161 (3062-3063), December 2008

Links

• About the creation of "Buran" Website of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry (history, photographs, memories and documents)
• "Buran" and other reusable space transport systems (history, documents, technical characteristics, interviews, rare photographs, books)
• English site about the ship "Buran" (English)

• Basic concepts and history of the development of the Buran orbital complex Baltic State Technical University "Voenmech" named after D. F. Ustinov, report on the first work of UNIRS
• Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky - headed the development
• Visiting “Buran” Technik Museum Speyr, Germany
• Buran pilots Website of veterans of the 12th Main Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry - Buran pilots

• "Buran". Constellation Wolf d/f about the team of Buran pilots (Channel One, see Official website. TV projects)
• Takeoff of "Buran" (video)
• The last “Buran” of the empire - a TV story from the Roscosmos studio (video)

• “Buran 1.02” at the storage site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome (since the spring of 2007 it has been located 2 km southeast of this place, in the Baikonur History Museum)
• The Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant, where the Buran space shuttle was built, disowned its brainchild //5-tv.ru

• Pharmacists dragged Buran along the Moscow River (video)
• The Buran spacecraft was transported along the Moscow River (video)
• Fairway for Buran (video)
• “Buran” will return (video). Russian Space program, interview with O. D. Baklanov, December 2012.

Space program "Energia-Buran"
Components	Buran · Energy · World · Kvant-1 · Kvant-2 · Crystal · Androgynous-peripheral docking unit
Orbital instances	Buran 1.01 · Buran 1.02 · Buran 2.01 · Buran 2.02 · Buran 2.03
Test specimens and devices	BOR-4 BOR-5
Launch location	Baikonur
Landing locations	main: Yubileiny reserve: Bagerovo Vostochny (Khorol) reserve: other
Related Topics	Collapse of the roof of the installation and testing building of the Baikonur cosmodrome

Reusable transport spacecraft
USA: “X-20 Dyna Soar”, launch on the launch vehicle (project not implemented) USSR: “Spiral”, air launch scheme (project stopped) LKS, launch on launch vehicle (project not implemented)
USA: Space Shuttle Program Completed USSR: Buran program Stopped Enterprise(OV-101, atmospheric tests, decommissioned) Pathfinder (English) Russian(OV-098, ground tests) Colombia(OV-102, burned during landing in 2003) Challenger(OV-099, exploded on launch in 1986) Discovery(OV-103, completed flights 03/09/2011) Atlantis(OV-104, completed flights 07/21/2011) Endeavor(OV-105, completed flights 06/01/2011) OK-ML-1(BTS 001, aerodynamic model, park attraction) OK-GLI(BTS 002, atmospheric analogue aircraft, transferred to the museum) Buran (1.01, decommissioned, destroyed in 2002) 1.02 (95-97% completed, transferred to the museum) 2.01 (30-50% built, undergoing restoration) 2.02 (10-20% built, partially dismantled) 2.03 (disassembled)
Europe: “Hermes” (project stopped), HOTOL (project stopped), Skylon (project)

reusable transport space system (MTSC), created within the framework of the Energy - Buran program. One of the two MTKK orbital vehicles implemented in the world, Buran was a response to a similar American Space Shuttle project. Buran made its first and only space flight on November 15, 1988.

Encyclopedic YouTube

1 / 5

✪ Mysterious death of test pilots | Reusable spacecraft "Buran"

✪ "Oblivion of Buran. Secrets of forgotten victories" (2009)

✪ First and only flight of "Buran"

✪ NPO Molniya. Spaceship Buran. part two - space test.

✪ Orbital Ship “BURAN” 1988

Subtitles

Story

The shuttle launched 29.5 tons into low-Earth orbit and could release up to 14.5 tons of cargo from orbit. This is very serious, and we began to study for what purposes it was being created? After all, everything was very unusual: the weight put into orbit using disposable carriers in America did not even reach 150 tons/year, but here it was planned to be 12 times more; nothing was descended from orbit, and here it was supposed to return 820 tons/year... This was not just a program to create some kind of space system under the motto of reducing transportation costs (our studies at our institute showed that no reduction would actually be observed), it had a clear military purpose. Director of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering Yu. A. Mozzhorin

Drawings and photographs of the shuttle were first received in the USSR through the GRU in early 1975. Two examinations on the military component were immediately carried out: at military research institutes and at the Institute of Applied Mathematics under the leadership of Mstislav Keldysh. Conclusions: “the future reusable ship will be able to carry nuclear weapons and attack the territory of the USSR with them from almost any point in near-Earth space” and “The American shuttle with a carrying capacity of 30 tons, if loaded with nuclear warheads, is capable of flying outside the radio visibility zone of the domestic missile attack warning system. Having performed an aerodynamic maneuver, for example, over the Gulf of Guinea, he can release them across the territory of the USSR,” the USSR leadership pushed to create an answer - “Buran”.

And they say that we will fly there once a week, you know... But there are no targets or cargo, and the fear immediately arises that they are creating a ship for some future tasks that we do not know about. Possible military use? Undoubtedly.

And so they demonstrated this when they flew over the Kremlin on the Shuttle, this was a surge of our military, politicians, and so a decision was made at one time: to develop a technique for intercepting space targets, high ones, with the help of airplanes.

By December 1, 1988, there had been at least one classified Shuttle launch with military missions (NASA flight number STS-27). In 2008, it became known that during a flight on behalf of the NRO and the CIA, the Lacrosse 1 all-weather reconnaissance satellite was launched into orbit. (English) Russian, who took photographs in the radio range using radar.

In America they stated that the Space Shuttle system was created as part of a program of a civilian organization - NASA. The Space Task Force, led by Vice President S. Agnew in 1969-1970, developed several options for promising programs for the peaceful exploration of outer space after the end of the lunar program. In 1972, Congress, based on economic analysis, supported the project to create reusable shuttles to replace disposable rockets. The Space Shuttle program was closed on July 21, 2011, also due to unprofitability, since the cost of each Space Shuttle flight ranged from 450 to 600 million dollars. Moreover, it sounds paradoxical, but the Space Shuttle program, which was developed as self-sustaining, in the end not only did not pay for itself, but in general in the history of astronautics turned out to be almost a record unprofitable (in fact, the most unprofitable of all) space program.

In the USSR, as in the USA, many space programs had either a military purpose or were based on military technologies. Thus, the Soyuz launch vehicle is the famous royal “seven” - the R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and the Proton launch vehicle is the UR-500 ICBM.

According to the procedures established in the USSR for making decisions on rocket and space technology and on the space programs themselves, the initiators of development could be either the top party leadership (“Lunar Program”) or the Ministry of Defense.

In April 1973, the military-industrial complex, with the involvement of the leading institutes (TsNIIMash, NIITP, TsAGI, VIAM, 50 TsNII, 30 TsNII), draft decisions of the military-industrial complex on problems related to the creation of a reusable space system. Government Decree No. P137/VII of May 17, 1973, in addition to organizational issues, contained a clause obliging “Minister S. A. Afanasyev and V. P. Glushko to prepare proposals on a plan for further work within four months.”

Reusable space systems had both strong supporters and authoritative opponents in the USSR. Wanting to finally decide on the ISS, GUKOS decided to choose an authoritative arbiter in the dispute between the military and industry, instructing the head institute of the Ministry of Defense for military space (TsNII 50) to carry out research work (R&D) to justify the need for the ISS to solve problems regarding the country's defense capability. But this did not bring clarity, since General Melnikov, who led this institute, decided to play it safe, and issued two “reports”: one in favor of the creation of the ISS, the other against it. In the end, both of these reports, overgrown with numerous authoritative “Agreed” and “I approve,” met in the most inappropriate place - on D. F. Ustinov’s desk. Irritated by the results of the “arbitration,” Ustinov called Glushko and asked to bring him up to date by presenting detailed information on the options for the ISS, but Glushko unexpectedly sent his employee to a meeting with the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, a candidate member of the Politburo, instead of himself, the General Designer, and . O. Head of Department 162 Valery Burdakov.

Arriving at Ustinov’s office on Staraya Square, Burdakov began answering questions from the Secretary of the Central Committee. Ustinov was interested in all the details: why the ISS is needed, what it could be like, what we need for this, why the United States is creating its own shuttle, what it threatens us with. As Valery Pavlovich later recalled, Ustinov was primarily interested in the military capabilities of the ISS, and he presented to D. F. Ustinov his vision of using orbital shuttles as possible carriers of thermonuclear weapons, which could be based on permanent military orbital stations in immediate readiness to deliver a crushing blow to anywhere on the planet.

The prospects for the ISS presented by Burdakov so deeply excited and interested D. F. Ustinov that he quickly prepared a decision that was discussed in the Politburo, approved and signed by L. I. Brezhnev, and the topic of a reusable space system received maximum priority among all space programs in the party and state leadership and the military-industrial complex.

In 1976, the specially created NPO Molniya became the main developer of the ship. The new association was headed by , who already in the 1960s was working on the project of the reusable aerospace system “Spiral”.

The production of orbital vehicles has been carried out at the Tushino Machine-Building Plant since 1980; by 1984, the first full-scale copy was ready. From the plant, the ships were delivered by water transport (on a barge under a tent) to the city of Zhukovsky, and from there (from the Ramenskoye airfield) by air (on a special VM-T transport aircraft) - to the Yubileiny airfield of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Aerodromes and flight tests

For landings of the Buran spaceplane, the Yubileiny airfield was specially built at Baikonur with a reinforced runway measuring 4500x84 m (the main landing airfield is the “Orbital Ship Landing Complex”). In addition, two reserve airfields for Buran were prepared:

• “Western alternate airfield” - Simferopol airport in Crimea with a reconstructed runway measuring 3701x60 m ( 45°02′42″ n. w.  33°58′37″ E. d.HGI) ;
• O “Eastern alternate airfield” is a Khorol military airfield in the Primorsky Territory with a runway measuring 3700x70 m ( 33°58′37″ E. d.HGI).

44°27′04″ n. w.  132°07′28″ E. d. Complexes were deployed at these three airfields (and in their areas)

radio systems

A full-size analogue of the Buran, designated BTS-002(GLI), was manufactured for flight tests in the Earth’s atmosphere. In its tail section there were four turbojet engines, which allowed it to take off from a conventional airfield. In 1988, it was used in (the city of Zhukovsky, Moscow region) to test the control system and automatic landing system, as well as to train test pilots before space flights.

On November 10, 1985, at the Gromov Flight Research Institute of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry, the first atmospheric flight was made by a full-size analogue of the Buran (machine 002 GLI - horizontal flight tests). The car was piloted by LII test pilots Igor Petrovich Volk and R. A. Stankevichus.

Previously, by order of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry dated June 23, 1981 No. 263, the Industry Test Cosmonaut Squad of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry was created, consisting of: I. P. Volk, A. S. Levchenko, R. A. Stankevichus and A. V. Shchukin (first set) .

First and only flight

Buran made its first and only space flight on November 15, 1988. The spacecraft was launched into low-Earth orbit by the Energia launch vehicle, launched from pad 110 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The flight duration was 205 minutes, the ship made two orbits around the Earth, after which it landed at the Yubileiny airfield in Baikonur. The flight took place without a crew in automatic mode using an on-board computer and on-board software, unlike the American Shuttle, which traditionally performs pre-landing maneuvers and landing using manual control (entry into the atmosphere and braking to the speed of sound in both cases are fully computerized). This fact - the flight of a spacecraft into space and its descent to Earth in automatic mode under the control of an on-board computer - was included in the Guinness Book of Records. Over the Pacific Ocean, “Buran” was accompanied by the ship of the measuring complex of the USSR Navy “Marshal Nedelin” and the research vessel of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky”.

At the landing stage, there was an emergency incident, which, however, only emphasized the success of the creators of the program. At an altitude of about 11 km, Buran, having received information from the ground station about the weather conditions at the landing site, unexpectedly made a sharp maneuver. The ship described a smooth loop with a 180º turn (initially entering the landing strip from the north-west direction, the ship landed, entering from its southern end). As it turned out later, due to the stormy wind on the ground, the ship’s automation decided to further reduce speed and enter the landing trajectory that was most advantageous under the new conditions.

At the moment of the turn, the ship disappeared from the field of view of ground-based surveillance equipment, and communication was interrupted for some time. Panic began in the control center, responsible persons they immediately proposed to use the emergency system for detonating the ship (it was equipped with TNT charges, designed to prevent the crash of a top-secret ship on the territory of another state in case of loss of course). However, Deputy Chief Designer of NPO Molniya for flight testing Stepan Mikoyan, who was responsible for controlling the ship during the descent and landing phase, decided to wait, and the situation was resolved successfully.

During the work on the Buran project, several prototypes were made for dynamic, electrical, airfield and other tests. After the program was closed, these products remained on the balance sheet of various research institutes and production associations. It is known, for example, that the rocket and space corporation Energia and NPO Molniya have prototypes.

Although externally similar to the American Shuttle, the Buran orbital ship had fundamental difference- it could land fully automatically using the on-board computer and the Vympel ground-based complex of radio engineering systems for navigation, landing, trajectory control and air traffic control.

Initially, the automatic landing system did not provide for a transition to manual control mode. However, test pilots and cosmonauts demanded that the designers include a manual mode in the landing control system:

...the control system of the Buran ship was supposed to automatically perform all actions until the ship stopped after landing. The pilot's participation in control was not provided for. (Later, at our insistence, a backup manual control mode was provided for during the atmospheric flight during the return of the ship.)

A number of technical solutions obtained during the creation of Buran are still used in Russian and foreign rocket and space technology.

Much of the technical information about the flight is not available modern researcher, since it was recorded on magnetic tapes for BESM-6 computers, no working copies of which have survived. It is possible to partially recreate the course of the historical flight using the preserved paper rolls of printouts on the ATsPU-128 with samples from on-board and ground telemetry data.

Subsequent events

In 2002, the only Buran that flew into space (product 1.01) was destroyed when the roof of the installation and testing building at Baikonur, in which it was stored along with finished copies of the Energia launch vehicle, collapsed.

Specifications

One of the many specialists in thermal protective coating was musician Sergei Letov.

Differences from the Space Shuttle

Despite the general external similarity of the projects, there are also significant differences.

General designer Glushko considered that by that time there was little material that would confirm and guarantee success, at a time when the Shuttle flights had proven that a Shuttle-like configuration worked successfully, and here there was less risk when choosing a configuration. Therefore, despite the larger useful volume of the “Spiral” configuration, it was decided to carry out the “Buran” in a configuration similar to that of the Shuttle.

...Copying, as indicated in the previous answer, was, of course, completely conscious and justified in the process of those design developments that were carried out, and during which, as already indicated above, many changes were made to both the configuration and the design. The main political requirement was to ensure that the payload bay dimensions were the same as the Shuttle's payload bay.

...the absence of propulsion engines on the Buran noticeably changed the alignment, the position of the wings, the influx configuration, and a number of other differences.

Causes and consequences of differences between the Energia-Buran and Space Shuttle systems

The initial version of the OS-120, which appeared in 1975 in Volume 1B “Technical Proposals” of the “Integrated Rocket and Space Program”, was an almost complete copy of the American space shuttle - three oxygen-hydrogen propulsion engines were located in the tail section of the ship (11D122 developed by KBEM with a thrust of 250 t.s. and a specific impulse of 353 sec on the ground and 455 sec in vacuum) with two protruding engine nacelles for orbital maneuvering engines.

The key issue was the engines, which had to be equal or superior in all major parameters to the characteristics of the onboard engines of the American SSME orbital vehicle and the side solid-fuel boosters.

The engines created at the Voronezh Chemical Automation Design Bureau were compared to their American counterpart:

• heavier (3450 versus 3117 kg),
• slightly larger in size (diameter and height: 2420 and 4550 versus 1630 and 4240 mm),
• with slightly less thrust (at sea level: 156 versus 181 t.s.), although in terms of specific impulse, which characterizes the efficiency of the engine, they were somewhat superior to it.

At the same time, a very significant problem was ensuring the reusability of these engines. For example, the Space Shuttle engines, which were originally created as reusable engines, ultimately required such a large volume of very expensive inter-launch routine maintenance, that economically the Shuttle did not completely live up to the expectations of reducing the cost of putting a kilogram of cargo into orbit.

It is known that to launch the same payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, for geographical reasons, it is necessary to have greater thrust than from the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome. To launch the Space Shuttle system, two solid fuel boosters with a thrust of 1280 t.s. are used. each (the most powerful rocket engines in history), with a total thrust at sea level of 2560 t.s., plus the total thrust of the three SSME engines of 570 t.s., which together creates a thrust at liftoff from the launch pad of 3130 t.s. This is enough to launch a payload of up to 110 tons into orbit from the Canaveral Cosmodrome, including the shuttle itself (78 tons), up to 8 astronauts (up to 2 tons) and up to 29.5 tons of cargo in the cargo compartment. Accordingly, to launch 110 tons of payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, all other things being equal, it is necessary to create approximately 15% more thrust when lifting off from the launch pad, that is, about 3600 t.s.

The Soviet orbital ship OS-120 (OS means “orbital aircraft”) was supposed to weigh 120 tons (add to the weight of the American shuttle two turbojet engines for flight in the atmosphere and an ejection system for two pilots in an emergency). A simple calculation shows that to put a payload of 120 tons into orbit, a thrust on the launch pad of more than 4000 t.s. is required.

At the same time, it turned out that the thrust of the propulsion engines of the orbital ship, if we use a similar configuration of the shuttle with 3 engines, is inferior to the American one (465 hp versus 570 hp), which is completely insufficient for the second stage and the final launch of the shuttle into orbit. Instead of three engines, it was necessary to install 4 RD-0120 engines, but in the design of the orbital ship’s airframe there was no space and weight reserve. The designers had to dramatically reduce the weight of the shuttle.

This is how the OK-92 orbital ship project was born, the weight of which was reduced to 92 tons due to the refusal to place the main engines together with a system of cryogenic pipelines, locking them when separating the external tank, etc. As a result of the development of the project, four (instead of three) RD-0120 engines were moved from the rear fuselage of the orbiter to the lower part of the fuel tank. However, unlike the Shuttle, which was unable to perform such active orbital maneuvers, Buran was equipped with 16-ton thrust maneuvering engines, which allowed it to change its orbit within a wide range if necessary.

On January 9, 1976, the general designer of NPO Energia, Valentin Glushko, approved a “Technical Certificate” containing a comparative analysis of the new version of the OK-92 ship.

After the release of Resolution No. 132-51, the development of the orbiter airframe, means of air transportation of ISS elements and the automatic landing system was entrusted to the specially organized NPO Molniya, headed by Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky.

The changes also affected the side accelerators. The USSR did not have the design experience, necessary technology and equipment to produce such large and powerful solid fuel boosters, which are used in the Space Shuttle system and provide 83% of the thrust at launch. A harsher climate required more complex chemical substances to work in a broader temperature range, solid fuel boosters created dangerous vibrations, did not allow thrust control and destroyed the ozone layer of the atmosphere with their exhaust. In addition, engines solid fuel inferior in specific efficiency to liquid ones - and the USSR was required in connection with geographical location Baikonur Cosmodrome for launching a payload equal in terms of technical requirements to the Shuttle, greater efficiency. The designers of NPO Energia decided to use the most powerful liquid rocket engine available - an engine created under the leadership of Glushko, a four-chamber RD-170, which could develop a thrust (after modification and modernization) of 740 t.s. However, instead of two side accelerators of 1280 t.s. use four of 740 each. The total thrust of the side accelerators together with the second stage engines RD-0120 upon lifting off from the launch pad reached 3425 t.s., which is approximately equal to the starting thrust of the Saturn-5 system with the Apollo spacecraft (3500 t.s. .).

The possibility of reusing side accelerators was the ultimate requirement of the customer - the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Ministry of Defense represented by D. F. Ustinov. It was officially believed that the side accelerators were reusable, but in those two Energia flights that took place, the task of preserving the side accelerators was not even raised. American boosters are lowered by parachute into the ocean, which ensures a fairly “soft” landing, sparing the engines and booster housings. Unfortunately, under the conditions of launch from the Kazakh steppe, there is no chance of “splashdown” of the boosters, and a parachute landing in the steppe is not soft enough to preserve the engines and rocket bodies. Gliding or parachute landing with powder engines, although designed, was not implemented in the first two test flights, and further developments in this direction, including the rescue of both the first and second stage blocks using wings, were not carried out due to the closure of the program.

The changes that distinguished the Energia-Buran system from the Space Shuttle system had the following results:

List of products

By the time the program was closed (early 1990s), five flight prototypes of the Buran spacecraft had been built or were under construction:

• Product 1.01 “Buran”- the ship made a space flight in automatic mode. It was located in the collapsed assembly and testing building at the 112th site of the cosmodrome, completely destroyed along with the Energia launch vehicle mock-up during the collapse of assembly and testing building No. 112 on May 12, 2002. Was the property of Kazakhstan.
• Product 1.02 “Storm” - was supposed to make a second flight in automatic mode with docking with the manned station “Mir”. It is located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome and is the property of Kazakhstan. In April 2007, a mass-sized model of the product, previously lying abandoned in the open air, was installed in the exhibition of the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum (site 2). The 1.02 product itself, together with the OK-MT prototype, is located in the installation and filling case, and there is no free access to it. However, in May-June 2015, blogger Ralph Mirebs managed to take a number of photographs of the collapsing shuttle and mock-up.
• Product 2.01 “Baikal” - the degree of readiness of the ship at the time of termination of work was 30-50%. Until 2004, it was in the workshops; in October 2004, it was transported to the pier of the Khimki Reservoir for temporary storage. On June 22-23, 2011, it was transported by river transport to the airfield in Zhukovsky for restoration and subsequent display at the MAKS air show.
• Product 2.02 - was 10-20% ready. Dismantled (partially) on the stocks of the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant.
• Product 2.03 - the backlog was destroyed in the workshops of the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant.

List of layouts

• BTS-001 OK-ML-1 (product 0.01) was used to test the air transportation of the orbital complex. In 1993, the full-size model was leased to the Space-Earth society (president - cosmonaut German Titov). Until June 2014, it was installed on the Pushkinskaya Embankment of the Moscow River in the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after. 
• OK-KS (product 0.03) is a full-size complex stand. Used for testing air transportation, complex testing of software, electrical and radio testing of systems and equipment. Until 2012, it was located in the building of the control and testing station of RSC Energia, the city of Korolev. It was moved to the territory adjacent to the center building, where conservation is now taking place. After conservation, it will be installed on a specially prepared site on the territory of RSC Energia.
• OK-ML1 (product 0.04) was used for dimensional and weight fitting tests. Located in the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum.
• OK-TVA (product 0.05) was used for heat-vibration-strength tests. Located at TsAGI. As of 2011, all mock-up compartments were destroyed, with the exception of the left wing with the landing gear and standard thermal protection, which were included in the orbital ship mock-up.
• OK-TVI (product 0.06) was a model for heat-vacuum tests. Located in NIIKhimMash, Peresvet, Moscow region.
• OK-MT (product 0.15) was used to practice pre-launch operations (refueling the ship, fitting and docking work, etc.). Currently located at the Baikonur site 112A, ( 45°55′10″ N. w.  33°58′37″ E. d.HGI 63°18′36″ E. d.
• ) in building 80, together with product 1.02 “Storm”. It is the property of Kazakhstan.

8M (product 0.08) - the model is only a model of the cabin with hardware filling. Used to test the reliability of ejection seats. After completing the work, he was located on the territory of the 29th Clinical Hospital in Moscow, then was transported to the Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow. Currently located on the territory of the 83rd clinical hospital of the FMBA (since 2011 - Federal Scientific and Clinical Center for Specialized Types of Medical Care and Medical Technologies of the FMBA).

Crew
In 1984, at the Leningrad Institute named after. M. M. Gromov crews were formed to test the Buran analogue - BTS-02, which were carried out until 1988. The same crews were planned for the 1st manned flight of the Buran.

• Main crew:
• Volk, Igor Petrovich - commander.

Stankevičius, Rimantas Antanas - 2nd pilot.

• Backup crew:
• Levchenko, Anatoly Semenovich - commander.

In philately

• 

  Shchukin, Alexander Vladimirovich - 2nd pilot.

  • In culture
  • In 1991, the Soviet fantasy comedy “Abdullajan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg,” directed by Zulfikar Musakov, was released, about the adventure of an alien in an Uzbek village. At the beginning of the film, the launch and joint flight of the American shuttle and the Soviet Buran are shown.
  • Buran - MSX game, 1990

  see also

  • Collect Buran - PC game Byte, 1989

  Notes

  1. BOR-5 - overall weight model of the Buran orbital ship Paul Marks. Cosmonaut: Soviet space shuttle was safer than NASA's

The 205-minute flight of the Buran spacecraft became a deafening sensation. And most importantly - landing. For the first time in the world, a Soviet shuttle landed in automatic mode. The American shuttles never learned to do this: they landed only manually.

Why was the triumphant start the only one? What has the country lost? And is there any hope that the Russian shuttle will still fly to the stars? On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Buran flight, an RG correspondent talks with one of its creators, formerly the head of the NPO Energia department, and now a professor at the Moscow Aviation Institute, Doctor of Technical Sciences Valery Burdakov.

Valery Pavlovich, they say that the Buran spacecraft has become the most complex machine ever created by mankind.

Valery Burdakov: Undoubtedly. Before him, the leader was the American Space Shuttle.

Is it true that Buran could fly up to a satellite in space, grab it with a manipulator and send it to its “womb”?

Valery Burdakov: Yes, like the American Space Shuttle. But the capabilities of the Buran were much wider: both in terms of the mass of cargo delivered to Earth (20-30 tons instead of 14.5), and in the range of their alignments. We could lower the Mir station from orbit and turn it into a museum exhibit!

Are the Americans scared?

Valery Burdakov: Vakhtang Vachnadze, who at one time headed the NPO Energia, said: under the SDI program, the United States wanted to send 460 military vehicles into space, at the first stage - about 30. Having learned about the successful flight of Buran, they abandoned this idea.

"Buran" became our answer to the Americans. Why were they convinced that we couldn't build anything like the shuttle?

Valery Burdakov: Yes, the Americans seriously made such statements. The fact is that in the mid-1970s our lag behind the United States was estimated at 15 years. We did not have enough experience in working with large masses of liquid hydrogen; we did not have reusable liquid rocket engines or winged spacecraft. Not to mention the absence of such an analogue as the X-15 in the United States, as well as Boeing-747 class aircraft.

And yet, “Buran” turned out to be literally crammed with, as they say today, innovations?

The flight of the Buran spacecraft became a world sensation in 1988. Photo: Igor Kurashov/RG.

Valery Burdakov: Absolutely right. Unmanned landing, no toxic fuel, horizontal flight tests, air transportation of rocket tanks on the back of a specially created aircraft... Everything was super.

Many people remember the stunning photo: the spacecraft “ridden” the Mriya aircraft. Was the winged giant born just under Buran?

Valery Burdakov: And not only "Mriya". After all, the huge 8-meter diameter tanks of the Energia rocket had to be delivered to Baikonur. How? We considered several options, and even this one: dig a canal from the Volga to Baikonur! But they all cost 10 billion rubles, or 17 billion dollars. What to do? There is no such money. There is no time for such construction - more than 10 years.

Our department has prepared a report: transportation should be by air, i.e. by plane. What started here!.. I was accused of being a fantasist. But the Myasishchev 3M-T plane (later named after him VM-T), the Ruslan plane, and the Mriya plane, for which we, together with a representative of the Air Force, drew up technical specifications, took off.

Why were there so many opponents of Buran even among the designers? Feoktistov said directly: reusability is another bluff, and Academician Mishin even called “Buran” nothing more than “Buryan”.

Valery Burdakov: They were unfairly offended by being removed from the reusable topic.

Who was the first to think about the design of an orbital ship with an airplane design and the ability of an airplane to land on a runway?

Valery Burdakov: Queens! This is what I heard from Sergei Pavlovich himself. In 1929, he was 23 years old and already a famous soaring glider pilot. Korolev hatched an idea: to lift the glider 6 km, and then, with a pressurized cabin, into the stratosphere. He decided to go to Kaluga to see Tsiolkovsky to sign a letter on the feasibility of such a high-altitude flight.

Tsiolkovsky signed?

Valery Burdakov: No. He criticized the idea. He said that without a liquid rocket engine, the glider would be uncontrollable at high altitude and, accelerating during the fall, would break. He gave me the book “Space Rocket Trains” and advised me to think about using liquid rocket engines for flights not into the stratosphere, but even higher, into “ethereal space.”

I wonder how Korolev reacted?

Valery Burdakov: He did not hide his annoyance. And he even refused an autograph! Although I read the book. Korolev’s friend, aircraft designer Oleg Antonov, told me how at glider meetings in Koktebel after 1929, many whispered: had Seryoga lost his mind? Like, he flies a tailless glider and says that it is best suited for installing a rocket engine on it. He got pilot Anokhin to deliberately break the glider in the air during a “flutter test”...

Did Korolev himself design some kind of heavy-duty glider?

Valery Burdakov: Yes, "Red Star". Pilot Stepanchenok was the first in the world to make several “dead loops” on this glider. And the glider didn't break! Interesting fact. When the first five cosmonauts entered the Zhukovsky Academy, it was decided to offer them diploma topics on the Vostok spacecraft. But Korolev categorically objected: “Only an orbital ship of an airplane design! This is our future! Let them understand what’s what using the example of a small spaceship with wings.”

And what kind of incident happened with German Titov then?

Valery Burdakov: He naively thought that he really understood everything and asked Korolev to accept him. “We,” he says, “fly on bad ships. There are large overloads, when descending, it shakes as if on a cobblestone street. We need a ship with an airplane design, and we have already designed it!” Korolev smiled: “Have you already received an engineering diploma?” “Not yet,” Herman answered. “When you get it, then come and we’ll talk as equals.”

When did you start working on Buran?

Valery Burdakov: Back in 1962, with the support of Sergei Pavlovich, I received my first author's certificate for a reusable space launch vehicle. When the hype arose around the American shuttle, the question of whether or not we should make the same one here had not yet been resolved. However, the so-called “service No. 16” at NPO Energia under the leadership of Igor Sadovsky was formed in 1974. There were two design departments in it - mine for aircraft affairs and Efrem Dubinsky for the carrier.

Assembling a model of the Buran spacecraft for the MAKS-2011 air show in Zhukovsky. Photo: RIA Novosti www.ria.ru

We did translations scientific analysis, editing and publishing "primers" on the shuttle. And they themselves, without unnecessary noise, developed their own version of the ship and the carrier for it.

But after all, Glushko, who headed Energia after Mishin’s dismissal, also did not support reusable themes?

Valery Burdakov: He insisted everywhere that he would not engage in the shuttle. Therefore, when Glushko was once summoned to the Central Committee to see Ustinov, he did not go himself. Sent me. There was a barrage of questions: why a reusable space system is needed, what it could be, etc. After this visit, I signed a Technical Certificate with Glushko - the main provisions on the topic "Buran". Ustinov quickly prepared a decision, which was approved by Brezhnev. But it took dozens more meetings with cursing and accusations of incompetence until a common opinion was reached.

And what position did your main aviation subcontractor, chief designer of NPO Molniya, Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky, occupy?

Valery Burdakov: Unlike Aviation Minister Dementyev, Lozino-Lozinsky was always on our side, although at first he offered his own options. He was a wise man. Here, for example, is how he put an end to talk about the impossibility of unmanned landing. He told the managers that he would not contact them again, but would ask them to make an automatic landing system... for the pioneers from the Tushinsky airfield, since he had repeatedly observed how accurately their radio-controlled models landed. And the incident was settled to the displeasure of his superiors.

The astronauts were also unhappy. They thought that Dementiev’s position would prevail. They wrote a letter to the Central Committee: they don’t need automatic landing, they want to control the Buran themselves.

They say that “Buran” got its name just before the start?

Valery Burdakov: Yes. Glushko suggested calling the ship "Energy", Lozino-Lozinsky - "Molniya". A consensus has emerged - "Baikal". And "Buran" was proposed by General Kerimov. The inscription was barely scraped off before the start and a new one was applied.

The precision of the Buran's landing amazed everyone...

Valery Burdakov: When the ship had already appeared from behind the clouds, one of the commanders, as if in delirium, repeated: “It’s going to crash right now, it’s going to crash right now!” True, he used a different word. Everyone gasped when the Buran began to turn across the runway. But in fact, this maneuver was built into the program. But that boss, apparently, did not know or forgot this nuance. The ship came straight onto the runway. Lateral deviation from the center line is only 3 meters! This highest precision. The 205 minutes of Buran's flight, like all flights of aircraft with oversized cargo, passed without a single comment to the designers.

How did you feel after such a triumph?

Valery Burdakov: This cannot be expressed in words. But another “sensation” awaited us: a successful innovative project was closed. 15 billion rubles were wasted.

Will the scientific and technical reserves of Buran ever be used?

Valery Burdakov: The Buran, like the shuttle, was unprofitable to use due to its expensive and clumsy launch system. But unique technical solutions can be developed in Buran-M. A new ship, modified taking into account the latest advances, can become a very fast, reliable and convenient means for intercontinental aerospace transportation of goods, passengers and tourists. But for this it is necessary to create a reusable single-stage all-azimuth environmentally friendly MOVEN carrier. It will replace the Soyuz rocket. Moreover, it will not require such a cumbersome launch, so it can be launched from the Vostochny cosmodrome.

The groundwork for Buran was not lost. Automatic aircraft landing has given birth to fifth-generation fighters and numerous drones. It’s just that we, as was the case with the artificial Earth satellite, were the first.

You worked for Korolev in the 3rd department, which determined the prospects for the development of astronautics. What is the future for today's astronautics?

Valery Burdakov: The era of nuclear and solar energy is coming to replace hydrocarbon energy, which is unthinkable without the widespread use of a variety of space means. To create space solar power plants that supply energy to earthly consumers, carriers with a payload of 250 tons will be required. They will be created on the basis of MOVEN. And if we talk about astronautics in general, then it will provide all the needs of humanity, and not just information, as it is now.

By the way

A total of five flying prototypes of the Buran ship were built.

Ship 1.01 "Buran" - made its only flight. Stored in the installation and testing building at Baikonur. In May 2002, it was destroyed when the roof collapsed.

Ship 1.02 was supposed to make a second flight and dock with the Mir orbital station. Now an exhibit of the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum.

Ship 2.01 - was 30 - 50% ready. It was located at the Tushinsky Machine Plant, then at the pier of the Khimki Reservoir. In 2011, it was transported for restoration to the LII in Zhukovsky.

Ship 2.02 - was 10 - 20% ready. Dismantled on the factory stocks.

Ship 2.03 - the backlog was destroyed and taken to a landfill.

Reusable orbital ship (in the terminology of the Ministry of Aviation Industry - orbital aircraft) "Buran"

(product 11F35)

"B Uranus"is a Soviet reusable winged orbital ship. Designed to solve a number of defense tasks, launching various space objects into orbit around the Earth and servicing them; delivering modules and personnel for assembling large-sized structures and interplanetary complexes in orbit; returning faulty or exhausted ones to Earth satellites; development of equipment and technologies for space production and delivery of products to Earth; implementation of other cargo and passenger transportation along the Earth-space-Earth route.

Internal layout, design. In the bow of the Buran there is a pressurized insert cabin with a volume of 73 cubic meters for crew (2 - 4 people) and passengers (up to 6 people), compartmentson-board equipment and the nose block of control engines.

The middle part is occupied by the cargo compartmentwith doors opening upwards, which houses manipulators for loading and unloading, installation and assembly work and variousoperations for servicing space objects. Under the cargo compartment there are units of power supply and support systems temperature regime. The tail compartment (see figure) contains propulsion units, fuel tanks, and hydraulic system units. The design of "Buran" used aluminum alloys, titanium, steel and other materials. To resist aerodynamic heating during descent from orbit, the outer surface of the spacecraft has a heat-protective coating designed for reusable use.

A flexible thermal protection is installed on the upper surface, which is less susceptible to heating, and other surfaces are covered with heat-protective tiles made on the basis of quartz fibers and withstanding temperatures up to 1300ºС. In particularly heat-stressed areas (in the fuselage and wing toes, where the temperature reaches 1500º - 1600ºС), a carbon-carbon composite material is used. The stage of the most intense heating of the vehicle is accompanied by the formation of a layer of air plasma around it, but the design of the vehicle does not warm up to more than 160ºC by the end of the flight. Each of the 38,600 tiles has a specific installation location, determined by the theoretical contours of the OK body. To reduce thermal loads, large values ​​of the blunting radii of the wing and fuselage tips were also chosen. The design life of the structure is 100 orbital flights.

The internal layout of the Buran on a poster of NPO Energia (now Rocket and Space Corporation Energia). Explanation of the designation of the ship: all orbital ships had the code 11F35.

The final plans were to build five flying ships, in two series. Being the first, "Buran" had the aviation designation (at NPO Molniya and the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant) 1.01 (first series - first ship). NPO Energia had a different designation system, according to which Buran was identified as 1K - the first ship. Since in each flight the ship had to perform different tasks, the flight number was added to the ship’s index - 1K1 - first ship, first flight. The integrated propulsion system (UPS) ensures additional insertion of the orbital vehicle into the reference orbit, performance of inter-orbital transitions (corrections), precise maneuvering near the serviced orbital complexes, orientation and stabilization of the orbital vehicle, and its braking for deorbiting. The ODU consists of two orbital maneuvering engines (on the right), running on hydrocarbon fuel and liquid oxygen, and 46 gas-dynamic control engines, grouped into three blocks (one nose block and two tail ones).

More than 50 onboard systems, including radio engineering, TV and telemetry systems, life support systems, thermal control, navigation, power supply and others, are combined on a computer basis into a single onboard complex, which ensures the Buran's stay in orbit for up to 30 days. The heat generated by the on-board equipment is supplied with the help of a coolant to radiation heat exchangers installed on inside

doors of the cargo compartment, and radiates into the surrounding space (during flight in orbit, the doors are open). Geometric and weight characteristics. The length of the Buran is 35.4 m, height 16.5 m (with the landing gear extended), wingspan about 24 m, wing area 250 square meters

, fuselage width 5.6 m, height 6.2 m; The diameter of the cargo compartment is 4.6 m, its length is 18 m. The launch mass is OK up to 105 tons, the mass of cargo delivered into orbit is up to 30 tons, returned from orbit is up to 15 tons. The maximum fuel reserve is up to 14 tons. Large dimensions

"Buran" makes it difficult to use ground means of transportation, so it (as well as the launch vehicle blocks) is delivered to the cosmodrome by air by a VM-T aircraft modified for these purposes from the Experimental Machine-Building Plant named after. V.M. Myasishchev (in this case, the keel is removed from the Buran and the weight is increased to 50 tons) or by the An-225 multi-purpose transport aircraft in fully assembled form.You can learn much more about winged spaceships from our book (see cover on the left) “Space Wings”, (M.: LLC “LenTa Strastviy”, 2009. - 496 pages: ill.) To date, this is the most complete Russian-language an encyclopedic narrative about dozens of domestic and foreign projects. Here's how the book's blurb says it:
" The book is dedicated to the stage of the emergence and development of cruise missile and space systems, which were born at the “junction of three elements” - aviation, rocketry and astronautics, and absorbed not only the design features of these types of equipment, but also the entire heap of technical and military equipment accompanying them. political problems.
The history of the creation of aerospace vehicles in the world is described in detail - from the first aircraft with rocket engines during World War II to the beginning of the implementation of the Space Shuttle (USA) and Energia-Buran (USSR) programs.
The book, designed for a wide range of readers interested in the history of aviation and astronautics, design features and unexpected turns of fate of the first projects of aerospace systems, contains about 700 illustrations on 496 pages, a significant part of which are published for the first time."
Assistance in the preparation of the publication was provided by such enterprises of the Russian aerospace complex as NPO Molniya, NPO Mashinostroeniya, Federal State Unitary Enterprise RSK MiG, Flight Research Institute named after M.M. Gromov, TsAGI, as well as the Museum of the Maritime Space Fleet. The introductory article was written by General V.E. Gudilin, a legendary figure in our cosmonautics.
You can get a more complete picture of the book, its price and purchasing options on a separate page. There you can also get acquainted with its content, design, introductory article by Vladimir Gudilin, foreword by the authors and imprint publications

Launch pad site 110, Baikonur; landing: Yubileiny airfield, Baikonur Typical Configuration Launch weight 105 t (without launch vehicle) Dimensions Length 36.4 m (without launch vehicle) Width 24 m (wingspan) Height 16.5 m (with chassis) Diameter 5.6 m (fuselage) Useful volume 350 m 3 Buran on Wikimedia Commons

"Buran" was intended for:

One of the purposes of the Buran spacecraft was designated “precise adjustment of the orbital parameters of artificial Earth satellites.” First of all, the satellites of the orbital constellation, which ensures the transmission of GPS coordinates, had to undergo “fine adjustment”.

The first and only space flight of Buran took place on November 15, 1988, in automatic mode and without a crew on board. Despite the fact that Buran was designed for 100 flights into space:2, it was not launched again. The ship was controlled using the Biser-4 on-board computer. A number of technical solutions obtained during the creation of Buran were used in Russian and foreign rocket and space technology.

Story

The production of orbital vehicles has been carried out at the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant since 1980; by 1984 the first full-scale copy was ready. From the plant, the ships were delivered by water transport (on a barge under a tent) to the city of Zhukovsky, and from there (from the Ramenskoye airfield) by air (on a special VM-T transport aircraft) - to the Yubileiny airfield of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

• “Western alternate airfield” - Simferopol airport in Crimea with a reconstructed runway measuring 3701x60 m ( 45°02′42″ n. w. 33°58′37″ E. d. 33°58′37″ E. d.HGIL) ;
• “Eastern alternate airfield” - Khorol military airfield in the Primorsky Territory with a runway measuring 3700x70 m ( 44°27′04″ n. w. 132°07′28″ E. d. 33°58′37″ E. d.HGIL).

At these three airfields (and in their areas), complexes of Vympel radio engineering systems for navigation, landing, trajectory control and air traffic control were deployed to ensure the normal landing of the Buran (in automatic and manual mode).

In order to ensure readiness for an emergency landing of the Buran (in manual mode), runways were built or strengthened at fourteen more airfields, including outside the territory of the USSR (in Cuba, in Libya).

A full-size analogue of the Buran, designated BTS-002(GLI), was manufactured for flight tests in the Earth's atmosphere. In its tail section there were four turbojet engines, which allowed it to take off from a conventional airfield. In 1988, it was used (later named after Hero of the Soviet Union M. M. Gromov) to test the control system and automatic landing system, as well as to train test pilots before space flights.

On November 10, 1985, the first atmospheric flight of a full-size analogue of the Buran (machine 002 GLI - horizontal flight tests) was made at the LII MAP of the USSR. The car was piloted by LII test pilots Igor Petrovich Volk and R. A. Stankevichyus.

Previously, by order of the Ministry of Aviation Industry of the USSR dated June 23, 1981 No. 263, the Industry Test Cosmonaut Squad of the USSR Ministry of Aviation Industry was created, consisting of: I. P. Volk, A. S. Levchenko, R. A. Stankevichyus and A. V. Shchukin (first set) .

External video files
	Flight tests of BTS-002.

Flight

External images
	Detailed flight plan of Buran on November 15, 1988

The Buran space flight took place on November 15, 1988. The Energia launch vehicle launched from pad 110 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome launched the ship into low-Earth orbit. The flight lasted 205 minutes, during which time the ship made two orbits around the Earth, after which it landed at the Yubileiny airfield of the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The flight took place automatically using an on-board computer and on-board software. Over the Pacific Ocean, “Buran” was accompanied by the ship of the measuring complex of the USSR Navy “Marshal Nedelin” and the research vessel of the USSR Academy of Sciences “Cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky”.

During takeoff and landing, the Buran was accompanied by a MiG-25 fighter piloted by pilot Magomed Tolboev, with videographer Sergei Zhadovsky on board.

At the landing stage, there was an emergency incident, which, however, only emphasized the success of the creators of the program. At an altitude of about 11 km, Buran, having received information from the ground station about the weather conditions at the landing site, unexpectedly made a sharp maneuver. The ship described a smooth loop with a 180º turn (initially entering the landing strip from the north-west direction, the ship landed, entering from its southern end). As it turned out later, due to the stormy wind on the ground, the ship’s automation decided to further reduce speed and enter the landing trajectory that was most advantageous under the new conditions.

At the moment of the turn, the ship disappeared from the field of view of ground-based surveillance equipment, and communication was interrupted for some time. Panic began at the control center; the responsible persons immediately proposed to use the emergency system for detonating the ship (it was equipped with TNT charges, designed to prevent the crash of a top-secret ship on the territory of another state in case of loss of course). However, Deputy Chief Designer of NPO Molniya for flight testing Stepan Mikoyan, who was responsible for controlling the ship during the descent and landing phase, decided to wait, and the situation was resolved successfully.

Initially, the automatic landing system did not provide for a transition to manual control mode. However, test pilots and cosmonauts demanded that the designers include a manual mode in the landing control system:

...the control system of the Buran ship was supposed to automatically perform all actions until the ship stopped after landing. The pilot's participation in control was not provided for. (Later, at our insistence, a backup manual control mode was provided for during the atmospheric flight during the return of the ship.)

A significant part of the technical information about the flight is inaccessible to modern researchers, since it was recorded on magnetic tapes for BESM-6 computers, no working copies of which have survived. It is possible to partially recreate the course of the historical flight using the preserved paper rolls of printouts on the ATsPU-128 with samples from on-board and ground telemetry data.

Subsequent events

In 2002, the only Buran that flew into space (product 1.01) was destroyed when the roof of the assembly and testing building at Baikonur, in which it was stored along with finished copies of the Energia launch vehicle, collapsed.

After the disaster of the space shuttle Columbia, and especially with the closure of the Space Shuttle program, the Western media repeatedly expressed the opinion that the American space agency NASA is interested in reviving the Energia-Buran complex and intends to make a corresponding order to Russia in the near future. time. Meanwhile, according to the Interfax agency, director G. G. Raikunov said that Russia could return after 2018 to this program and the creation of launch vehicles capable of launching cargo up to 24 tons into orbit; its testing will begin in 2015. In the future, it is planned to create rockets that will deliver cargo weighing more than 100 tons into orbit. For the distant future, there are plans to develop a new manned spacecraft and reusable launch vehicles. Also, at school 830 at the Tushino Machine-Building Plant, the Burana Museum is open, where they conduct excursions with veterans. http://sch830sz.mskobr.ru/muzey-burana.

Specifications

The technical characteristics of the Buran ship have the following meanings:

A sealed all-welded cabin for the crew, for carrying out work in orbit (up to 10 people) and most of the equipment, to ensure flight as part of the rocket and space complex, autonomous flight in orbit, descent and landing is inserted into the nose compartment of the Buran. The cabin volume is over 70 m 3 .

External images
	Drawing of the Space Shuttle (52 MB)

One of the many specialists in thermal protective coating was musician Sergei Letov.

Comparative analysis of the Buran and Space Shuttle systems

While outwardly similar to the American Shuttle, the Buran orbital ship had a fundamental difference - it could land fully automatically using the on-board computer and the Vympel ground-based complex of radio engineering systems for navigation, landing, trajectory control and air traffic control.

The Shuttle lands with its engines inoperative. It does not have the ability to make multiple landing approaches, so there are several landing sites throughout the United States.

The Energia-Buran complex consisted of a first stage, which consisted of four side blocks with RD-170 oxygen-kerosene engines (in the future, their return and reusable use was envisaged), a second stage with four RD-0120 oxygen-hydrogen engines, which was the basis of the complex, and the return spacecraft "Buran" docked to it. At launch, both stages were fired. After the release of the first stage (4 side blocks), the second continued to operate until it reached a speed slightly less than orbital. The final launch was carried out by the engines of the Buran itself, this eliminated the contamination of orbits with debris from spent rocket stages.

This scheme is universal, since it made it possible to launch into orbit not only the Buran spacecraft, but also other payloads weighing up to 100 tons. "Buran" entered the atmosphere and began to reduce speed (the entry angle was approximately 30°, the entry angle gradually decreased). Initially, for controlled flight in the atmosphere, the Buran was supposed to be equipped with two turbojet engines installed in the aerodynamic shadow zone at the base of the keel. However, by the time of the first (and only) launch, this system was not ready for flight, so after entering the atmosphere the ship was controlled only by the control surfaces without using engine thrust. Before landing, the Buran carried out a speed-damping corrective maneuver (flying in a descending figure eight), after which it landed. In this single flight, the Buran had only one attempt to land. During landing, the speed was 300 km/h, during entry into the atmosphere it reached 25 speeds of sound (almost 30 thousand km/h).

Unlike the Shuttle, the Buran was equipped with an emergency crew rescue system. At low altitudes, a catapult operated for the first two pilots; at a sufficient altitude, in the event of an emergency, the Buran could be separated from the launch vehicle and make an emergency landing.

The chief designers of Buran never denied that Buran was partially copied from the American Space Shuttle. In particular, General Designer Lozino-Lozinsky spoke on the question of copying as follows:

General designer Glushko considered that by that time there was little material that would confirm and guarantee success, at a time when the Shuttle flights had proven that a Shuttle-like configuration worked successfully, and here there was less risk when choosing a configuration. Therefore, despite the larger useful volume of the “Spiral” configuration, it was decided to carry out the “Buran” in a configuration similar to that of the Shuttle.

...Copying, as indicated in the previous answer, was, of course, completely conscious and justified in the process of those design developments that were carried out, and during which, as already indicated above, many changes were made to both the configuration and the design. The main political requirement was to ensure that the payload bay dimensions were the same as the Shuttle's payload bay.

...the absence of propulsion engines on the Buran noticeably changed the alignment, the position of the wings, the influx configuration, and a number of other differences.

Causes and consequences of system differences

The initial version of the OS-120, which appeared in 1975 in Volume 1B “Technical Proposals” of the “Integrated Rocket and Space Program”, was an almost complete copy of the American space shuttle - three oxygen-hydrogen propulsion engines were located in the tail section of the ship (11D122 developed by KBEM with a thrust of 250 t.s. and a specific impulse of 353 sec on the ground and 455 sec in vacuum) with two protruding engine nacelles for orbital maneuvering engines.

The key issue was the engines, which had to be in all major parameters equal to or superior to the characteristics of the onboard engines of the American SSME orbiter and the side solid rocket boosters.

The engines created at the Voronezh Chemical Automatics Design Bureau were compared to their American counterpart:

• heavier (3450 versus 3117 kg),
• slightly larger in size (diameter and height: 2420 and 4550 versus 1630 and 4240 mm),
• with slightly less thrust (at sea level: 156 versus 181 t.s.), although in terms of specific impulse, which characterizes the efficiency of the engine, they were somewhat superior to it.

At the same time, a very significant problem was ensuring the reusability of these engines. For example, the Space Shuttle engines, which were originally created as reusable engines, ultimately required such a large amount of very expensive inter-launch maintenance work that economically the Shuttle did not completely live up to the expectations of reducing the cost of putting a kilogram of cargo into orbit.

It is known that to launch the same payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, for geographical reasons, it is necessary to have greater thrust than from the Cape Canaveral Cosmodrome. To launch the Space Shuttle system, two solid fuel boosters with a thrust of 1280 t.s. are used. each (the most powerful rocket engines in history), with a total thrust at sea level of 2560 t.s., plus the total thrust of the three SSME engines of 570 t.s., which together creates a thrust at liftoff from the launch pad of 3130 t.s. This is enough to launch a payload of up to 110 tons into orbit from the Canaveral Cosmodrome, including the shuttle itself (78 tons), up to 8 astronauts (up to 2 tons) and up to 29.5 tons of cargo in the cargo compartment. Accordingly, to launch 110 tons of payload into orbit from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, all other things being equal, it is necessary to create approximately 15% more thrust when lifting off from the launch pad, that is, about 3600 t.s.

The Soviet orbital ship OS-120 (OS means “orbital aircraft”) was supposed to weigh 120 tons (add to the weight of the American shuttle two turbojet engines for flight in the atmosphere and an ejection system for two pilots in an emergency). A simple calculation shows that to put a payload of 120 tons into orbit, a thrust on the launch pad of more than 4000 t.s. is required.

At the same time, it turned out that the thrust of the propulsion engines of the orbital ship, if we use a similar configuration of the shuttle with 3 engines, is inferior to the American one (465 hp versus 570 hp), which is completely insufficient for the second stage and the final launch of the shuttle into orbit. Instead of three engines, it was necessary to install 4 RD-0120 engines, but in the design of the orbital ship’s airframe there was no space and weight reserve. The designers had to dramatically reduce the weight of the shuttle.

This is how the OK-92 orbital ship project was born, the weight of which was reduced to 92 tons due to the refusal to place the main engines together with a system of cryogenic pipelines, locking them when separating the external tank, etc. As a result of the development of the project, four (instead of three) RD-0120 engines were moved from the rear fuselage of the orbiter to the lower part of the fuel tank. However, unlike the Shuttle, which was unable to perform such active orbital maneuvers, Buran was equipped with 16-ton thrust maneuvering engines, which allowed it to change its orbit within a wide range if necessary.

On January 9, 1976, the general designer of NPO Energia, Valentin Glushko, approved a “Technical Certificate” containing a comparative analysis of the new version of the OK-92 ship.

After the release of Resolution No. 132-51, the development of the orbiter airframe, means of air transportation of ISS elements and the automatic landing system was entrusted to the specially organized NPO Molniya, headed by Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky.

The changes also affected the side accelerators. The USSR did not have the design experience, necessary technology and equipment to produce such large and powerful solid fuel boosters, which are used in the Space Shuttle system and provide 83% of the thrust at launch. Harsh climates required more complex chemicals to operate over a wider temperature range, and solid rocket boosters created dangerous vibrations, lacked thrust control, and depleted the ozone layer with their exhaust. In addition, solid fuel engines are inferior in specific efficiency to liquid ones - and the USSR required, due to the geographical location of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, greater efficiency to launch a payload equal to the Shuttle's specifications. The designers of NPO Energia decided to use the most powerful liquid rocket engine available - an engine created under the leadership of Glushko, a four-chamber RD-170, which could develop a thrust (after modification and modernization) of 740 t.s. However, instead of two side accelerators of 1280 t.s. use four of 740 each. The total thrust of the side accelerators together with the second stage engines RD-0120 upon lifting off from the launch pad reached 3425 t.s., which is approximately equal to the starting thrust of the Saturn-5 system with the Apollo spacecraft (3500 t.s. .).

The possibility of reusing side accelerators was the ultimate requirement of the customer - the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Ministry of Defense represented by D. F. Ustinov. It was officially believed that the side accelerators were reusable, but in those two Energia flights that took place, the task of preserving the side accelerators was not even raised. American boosters are lowered by parachute into the ocean, which ensures a fairly “soft” landing, sparing the engines and booster housings. Unfortunately, under the conditions of launch from the Kazakh steppe, there is no chance of “splashdown” of the boosters, and a parachute landing in the steppe is not soft enough to preserve the engines and rocket bodies. Gliding or parachute landing with powder engines, although designed, was not implemented in the first two test flights, and further developments in this direction, including the rescue of both the first and second stage blocks using wings, were not carried out due to the closure of the program.

The changes that distinguished the Energia-Buran system from the Space Shuttle system had the following results:

Military-political system

According to foreign experts, “Buran” was a response to a similar American project “Space Shuttle” and was conceived as a military system, which, however, was a response to what was then believed to be the planned use of American shuttles for military purposes.

The program has its own background:

The shuttle launched 29.5 tons into low-Earth orbit and could release up to 14.5 tons of cargo from orbit. The weight launched into orbit using disposable carriers in America did not even reach 150 tons/year, but here it was planned to be 12 times more; nothing was descended from orbit, and here it was supposed to return 820 tons/year... This was not just a program to create some kind of space system under the motto of reducing transportation costs (our studies at our institute showed that no reduction would actually be observed), it had a clear military purpose.

Director of the Central Research Institute of Mechanical Engineering Yu. A. Mozzhorin

Reusable space systems had both strong supporters and authoritative opponents in the USSR. Wanting to finally decide on the ISS, GUKOS decided to choose an authoritative arbiter in the dispute between the military and industry, instructing the head institute of the Ministry of Defense for military space (TsNII 50) to carry out research work (R&D) to justify the need for the ISS to solve problems regarding the country's defense capability. But this did not bring clarity, since General Melnikov, who led this institute, decided to play it safe, and issued two “reports”: one in favor of the creation of the ISS, the other against it. In the end, both of these reports, overgrown with numerous authoritative “Agreed” and “I approve,” met in the most inappropriate place - on D. F. Ustinov’s desk. Irritated by the results of the “arbitration,” Ustinov called Glushko and asked to bring him up to date by providing detailed information on the options for the ISS, but Glushko unexpectedly sent his employee to a meeting with the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, a candidate member of the Politburo, instead of himself, the General Designer, and . O. Head of Department 162 Valery Burdakov.

Arriving at Ustinov’s office on Staraya Square, Burdakov began answering questions from the Secretary of the Central Committee. Ustinov was interested in all the details: why the ISS is needed, what it could be like, what we need for this, why the United States is creating its own shuttle, what it threatens us with. As Valery Pavlovich later recalled, Ustinov was primarily interested in the military capabilities of the ISS, and he presented to D. F. Ustinov his vision of using orbital shuttles as possible carriers of thermonuclear weapons, which could be based on permanent military orbital stations in immediate readiness to deliver a crushing blow to anywhere on the planet.

The prospects for the ISS presented by Burdakov so deeply excited and interested D. F. Ustinov that he quickly prepared a decision that was discussed in the Politburo, approved and signed by L. I. Brezhnev, and the topic of a reusable space system received maximum priority among all space programs in the party and state leadership and the military-industrial complex.

Drawings and photographs of the shuttle were first received in the USSR through the GRU in early 1975. Two examinations on the military component were immediately carried out: at military research institutes and at the Institute of Applied Mathematics under the leadership of Mstislav Keldysh. Conclusions: “the future reusable ship will be able to carry nuclear weapons and attack the territory of the USSR with them from almost any point in near-Earth space” and “The American shuttle with a carrying capacity of 30 tons, if loaded with nuclear warheads, is capable of flying outside the radio visibility zone of the domestic missile attack warning system. Having performed an aerodynamic maneuver, for example, over the Gulf of Guinea, he can release them across the territory of the USSR,” the USSR leadership pushed to create an answer - “Buran”.

And they say that we will fly there once a week, you know... But there are no targets or cargo, and the fear immediately arises that they are creating a ship for some future tasks that we do not know about. Possible military use? Undoubtedly.

And so they demonstrated this when they flew over the Kremlin on the Shuttle, this was a surge of our military, politicians, and so a decision was made at one time: to develop a technique for intercepting space targets, high ones, with the help of airplanes.

By December 1, 1988, there had been at least one classified Shuttle launch with military missions (NASA flight number STS-27). In 2008, it became known that during a flight on behalf of the NRO and the CIA, the Lacrosse 1 all-weather reconnaissance satellite was launched into orbit. (English) Russian, who took photographs in the radio range using radar.

The United States stated that the Space Shuttle system was created as part of a program of a civilian organization - NASA. The Space Task Force, led by Vice President S. Agnew in 1969-1970, developed several options for promising programs for the peaceful exploration of outer space after the end of the lunar program. In 1972, Congress, based on economic analysis, supported the project to create reusable shuttles to replace disposable rockets.

List of products

By the time the program was closed (early 1990s), five flight prototypes of the Buran spacecraft had been built or were under construction:

• Product 1.01 “Buran”- the ship made a space flight in automatic mode. It was located in the collapsed assembly and testing building at the 112th site of the cosmodrome, and was completely destroyed along with the Energia launch vehicle mock-up during the collapse of assembly and testing building No. 112 on May 12, 2002.
• Product 1.02 “Storm” - was supposed to make a second flight in automatic mode with docking with the manned station “Mir”. Located at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In April 2007, a large-scale model of the product, previously lying abandoned in the open air, was installed in the exhibition of the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum (site 2). The 1.02 product itself, together with the OK-MT prototype, is located in the installation and filling case, and there is no free access to it. However, in May-June 2015, blogger Ralph Mirebs managed to take a number of photographs of the collapsing shuttle and mock-up.
• Product 2.01 “Baikal” - the degree of readiness of the ship at the time of termination of work was 30-50%. Until 2004 it was in the workshops, in October 2004 it was transported to the pier of the Khimki reservoir for temporary storage. On June 22-23, 2011, it was transported by river transport to the airfield in Zhukovsky for restoration and subsequent display at the MAKS air show.
• Product 2.02 - was 10-20% ready. Dismantled (partially) on the stocks of the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant.
• Product 2.03 - the backlog was destroyed in the workshops of the Tushinsky Machine-Building Plant.

List of layouts

During the work on the Buran project, several prototypes were made for dynamic, electrical, airfield and other tests. After the program was closed, these products remained on the balance sheet of various research institutes and production associations. It is known, for example, that the rocket and space corporation Energia and NPO Molniya have prototypes.

• BTS-001 OK-ML-1 (product 0.01) was used to test the air transportation of the orbital complex. In 1993, the full-size model was leased to the Space-Earth Society (president - cosmonaut German Titov). Until June 2014, it was installed on the Pushkinskaya embankment of the Moscow River in the Central Park of Culture and Leisure named after. Gorky. As of December 2008, a scientific and educational attraction was organized there. On the night of July 5-6, 2014, the model was moved to the territory of VDNKh to celebrate the 75th anniversary of VDNKh.
• OK-KS (product 0.03) is a full-size complex stand. Used for testing air transportation, complex testing of software, electrical and radio testing of systems and equipment. Until 2012, it was located in the building of the control and testing station of RSC Energia, the city of Korolev. It was moved to the territory adjacent to the center building, where conservation took place. Currently located in educational center"Sirius" Sochi.
• OK-ML1 (product 0.04) was used for dimensional and weight fitting tests. Located in the Baikonur Cosmodrome Museum.
• OK-TVA (product 0.05) was used for heat-vibration-strength tests. Located at TsAGI. As of 2011, all mock-up compartments were destroyed, with the exception of the left wing with the landing gear and standard thermal protection, which were included in the orbital ship mock-up.
• OK-TVI (product 0.06) was a model for heat-vacuum tests. Located in NIIKhimMash, Peresvet, Moscow region.
• OK-MT (product 0.15) was used to practice pre-launch operations (refueling the ship, fitting and docking work, etc.). Currently located at the Baikonur site 112A, ( 45°55′10″ N. w. 63°18′36″ E. d. 33°58′37″ E. d.HGIL) in building 80, together with product 1.02 “Storm”. It is the property of Kazakhstan.
• ) in building 80, together with product 1.02 “Storm”. It is the property of Kazakhstan.
• BOR-4 is a prototype tested as part of the Buran program, which was a miniature version of the device developed under the Spiral program, which was closed at that time. He flew into space six times from Kapustiny Yar. The thermal protection needed by Buran and maneuvers after deorbiting were practiced:23.
• BOR-5 is a prototype tested as part of the Buran program, which was an eight-fold smaller copy of the future Buran spacecraft. The thermal protection needed by Buran and maneuvers after deorbiting were practiced:23.