Buran (spacecraft)

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Buran
Буран

Buran on launch pad 110/37 in 1988
Country Soviet Union
Named after "Snowstorm"[1]
Status Decommissioned; one destroyed in a 2002 hangar collapse, two put into storage [2]
First flight 1K1
15 November 1988[1]
Last flight 1K1
15 November 1988[1]
Number of missions 1[1]
Crew members 0[1]
Time spent in space 3 hours
Number of orbits 2[1]

The Buran spacecraft (Russian: Бура́н, IPA: [bʊˈran], Snowstorm or Blizzard), GRAU index 11F35 K1 was a Soviet orbital vehicle analogous in function and design to the US Space Shuttle and developed by Chief Designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy of RKK Energia. Buran completed one unmanned spaceflight in 1988 and remains the only Soviet space shuttle that was launched into space, as the Buran programme was cancelled in 1993 following the dissolution of the USSR. It was treated as a Soviet space shuttle but only the plane itself was theoretically reusable (and in fact, was never reused). The main part of the system was an expendable powerful rocket - Energia.

The flown Buran spacecraft was destroyed in 2002 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, when the hangar in which it was stored collapsed.[3]

Overview

The Buran orbital vehicle program was developed in response to the U.S. Space Shuttle program, which in the 1980s raised considerable concerns among the Soviet military and especially Defense Minister Dmitriy Ustinov. An authoritative biographer of the Russian space program, academic Boris Chertok, recounts how the program came into being.[4] According to Chertok, after the U.S. developed its Space Shuttle program, the Soviet military became suspicious that it could be used for military purposes, due to its enormous payload, several times that of previous U.S. spaceships. The Soviet government asked the TsNIIMash (ЦНИИМАШ, Central Institute of Machine-building, a major player in defense analysis) for an expert opinion. Institute director, Yuri Mozzhorin, recalls that for a long time the institute could not envisage a civilian payload large enough to require a vehicle of that capacity.[citation needed]

Buran at Le Bourget airshow. (1989)

Officially, the Buran spacecraft was designed for the delivery to orbit and return to Earth of spacecraft, cosmonauts, and supplies. Both Chertok and Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy suggest that from the beginning, the program was military in nature; however, the exact military capabilities, or intended capabilities, of the Buran program remain classified. Commenting on the discontinuation of the program in his interview to New Scientist, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov confirms their accounts:

We had no civilian tasks for Buran and the military ones were no longer needed. It was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery, maybe even nuclear weapons. The American shuttle also has military uses.[5]
Buran being carried by the Antonov An-225 in 1989.

Like its American counterpart, the Buran, when in transit from its landing sites back to the launch complex, was transported on the back of a large jet aeroplane — the Antonov An-225 Mriya transport aircraft, which was designed in part for this task and remains the largest aircraft in the world to fly multiple times.[6]

According to a May 1990 declassified CIA report citing open-source intelligence material, the software for the Buran spacecraft was written in the Prolog programming language.[7][8][9]

Flight into space

The only orbital launch of Buran occurred at 3:00 UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome Site 110/37. It was lifted into orbit, on an unmanned mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket. Unlike the NASA Shuttle, which was propelled by a combination of solid boosters and the Shuttle's own liquid-fuel engines fueled from a large fuel tank, the Energia-Buran system used thrust from the rocket's four RD-170 liquid oxygen/kerosene engines developed by Valentin Glushko and another four RD-0120 liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen engines.[citation needed]

Rear view of the orbiter. (1989)

Even though the program was delayed by several years, Buran was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode. The Buran automated launch sequence performed as specified, and the Energia rocket lifted the vehicle into a temporary orbit before the orbiter separated as programmed. After boosting itself to a higher orbit and completing two revolutions around the Earth, ODU (engine control system) engines fired automatically to begin the descent into the atmosphere. Exactly 206 minutes into the mission, the Buran orbiter landed, having lost only five of its 38,000 thermal tiles over the course of the flight.[10] The automated landing took place on a runway at Baikonur Cosmodrome where, despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), it landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark.[10] Specifically, as Buran approached Baikonur Cosmodrome and started landing, spacecraft sensors detected the strong crosswind and "the robotic system sent the huge machine for another rectangular traffic pattern approach, successfully landing the spacecraft on a second try."[11]

Projected flights and related development

In 1989, it was projected that Buran would have an unmanned second flight by 1993, with a duration of 15–20 days.[12] Because the project was cancelled after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this never took place. Several scientists looked into trying to revive the Buran program, especially after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.[13]

Related Soviet shuttle development

In addition to the shuttle Buran, four other space shuttles were being built in the Buran programme before its cancellation, with the following states of completion:[citation needed]

Discussions of a Russian successor

In 2010 the director of Moscow's Central Machine Building Institute said the Buran project would be reviewed in the hope of restarting a similar manned spacecraft design, with rocket test launches as soon as 2015.[14] Russia also continues work on the PPTS but has abandoned the Kliper program, due to differences in vision with its European partners.[15][16][17]

In late 2013, on the 25th anniversary of Buran, a new super heavy lift launch vehicle was announced for development by Roscosmos.[18]

Destruction

On 12 May 2002,[3] a hangar housing Buran collapsed during a massive storm in Kazakhstan, as a result of poor maintenance. The collapse killed eight workers and destroyed the craft as well as a mock-up of an Energia carrier rocket. [19][20][21]

Commemoration activities

On the 25th anniversary of the Buran flight in November 2013, Oleg Ostapenko, the new head of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency, proposed that a new heavy lift launch vehicle be built for the Russian space program. The rocket would be intended to place a payload of 100 tonnes (220,000 lb) in a baseline low Earth orbit and is projected to be based on the Angara launch vehicle technology. [18]

Tourism

A Buran space shuttle prototype, which never flew to space, can be seen at Gorky Park, Moscow, Russia.[22] (55°43′43.65″N 37°35′48.56″E / 55.7287917°N 37.5968222°E / 55.7287917; 37.5968222) A Buran space shuttle prototype (number OK-GLI), which never flew to space can be seen at Technik Museum Speyer, in Speyer Germany. This version has four turbo jet engines which provided enough thrust for the shuttle to make atmospheric test [23]flights.

See also

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 "Buran". NASA. 12 November 1997. Archived from the original on 4 August 2006. Retrieved 2006-08-15. ; Buran at the Wayback Machine (archived 28 January 2008)
  2. Eight feared dead in Baikonur hangar collapse, RSpaceflkight Now .
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Buran". Russian Space Web. 2012-10-15. Retrieved 2013-09-28. "2002 May 12: The flight version of the Buran orbiter is destroyed in the roof collapse at Site 112 in Baikonur." 
  4. Chertok, Boris (2005); Rockets and People
  5. Paul Marks (2011-07-07). "Cosmonaut: Soviet space shuttle was safer than NASA's". 
  6. "Antonov An-225 Mryia (Cossack)". The Aviation Zone. 
  7. http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000498691/DOC_0000498691.pdf
  8. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/145669/what-software-programming-languages-were-used-by-the-soviet-unions-space-progra
  9. http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/529693/Soviet%20Software%20Productivity%20Isolated%20Gains%20in%20an%20Uphill%20Battle.pdf
  10. 10.0 10.1 Chertok, Boris (2005). Asif A. Siddiqi, ed. Raketi i lyudi (trans. "Rockets and People") (PDF). NASA History Series. p. 179. Retrieved 2006-07-03. 
  11. "Russia starts ambitious super-heavy space rocket project". Space Daily. 2013-11-19. Retrieved 2013-12-13. "Buran could stay in orbit for 30 days, while the American shuttle had a 15-day time limit. It could deliver into orbit 30 tonnes of cargo, compared to the US shuttle's 24 tonnes of cargo. It could carry a crew of 10 cosmonauts, while the American shuttle could carry seven astronauts. Preparation for the Energia/Buran launch at Baikonur Cosmodrome only took 15 days. However, it took one month of preparations before the US shuttle was launched from Cape Canaveral. The Energia rocket booster could be used to launch various payloads into orbit, whereas the American shuttle's booster was one-task. A year and a half before the Buran launch, Energia was launched with a full-scale mock-up of the Skif-DM orbital combat laser platform weighing 77 tonnes, measuring 37 meters long, and over four meters in diameter. Though the mock-up failed to reach the desired orbit and fell into the Pacific, the Energia booster did its job fine, delivering the huge space platform into intermediate orbit, 110 kilometers above the earth's surface. But the most important difference from the American model was that the Soviet spaceship could perform the flight and landing in totally automatic mode, which it brilliantly demonstrated on November 15, 1988. Buran's American counterpart used to land with switched-off engines, meaning it could make only one landing attempt. The Soviet spacecraft could take several tries if needed. When Buran approached Baikonur Cosmodrome and started landing in 1988, its sensors registered too strong side winds and the robotic system sent the huge machine for another rectangular traffic pattern approach, successfully landing the spacecraft on a second try. The Buran shuttle was designed to perform 100 flights to space, while its engines were ready to do 66 flights without replacement. During its flight, it lost just eight of its unique thermal-insulation tiles out of 38,800." 
  12. "Экипажи "Бурана" Несбывшиеся планы" (in Russian). RU: Buran. Retrieved 2006-08-05. 
  13. Birch, Douglas (2003). "Russian space program is handed new responsibility" (url). Sun Foreign Staff. Retrieved 2008-10-17. 
  14. "Russia To Review Its Space Shuttle Project". Space Daily. Xinhua. Retrieved 2010-07-28. 
  15. "Soviet space shuttle could bail out NASA". Current.com. 2008-12-31. Retrieved 2009-07-15. 
  16. "Soviet space shuttle could bail out NASA". Russia Today. Retrieved 2009-07-15. 
  17. "Russia, Europe abandon joint space project — Roscosmos". RIA Novosti. Retrieved 2009-01-29. 
  18. 18.0 18.1 "Russia starts ambitious super-heavy space rocket project". Space Daily. 2013-12-12. Retrieved 2013-11-19. 
  19. Whitehouse, David (2002-05-13). "Russia's space dreams abandoned". bbc.co.uk (BBC). Retrieved 2007-11-14. 
  20. Buran.ru: Photo of collapsed hangar
  21. Buran.ru: Remains of Buran photo with right front windscreen still visible under the debris
  22. "Buran: The Abandoned Russian Space Shuttle" Urban Ghost Media, 30 September 2010. Retrieved: 21 August 2012.
  23. labeling on the display in the museum and http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/en/spaceshuttle-buran

Further reading

  • Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle, Bart Hendrick and Bert Vis, Springer-Praxis, 2007, pp. 526, ISBN 978-0-387-69848-9.
  • Heinz Elser, Margrit Elser-Haft, Vladim Lukashevich: Buran — History and Transportation of the Russian Space shuttle OK-GLI to the Technik Museum Speyer, two Languages: German and English, 2008, ISBN 3-9809437-7-1

External links


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