Energia - Buran Space Transportation System

[Willythekid]

Nice picture: The Energia-Buran complex at the Baikonur's MZK building, days before its November 1988 launch.

 

[Archibald]

Nice to see this smiley.. smiling at last. What a beautiful picture.

 

[galopujacy_jez]

«ENERGIA-BURAN» - FLIGHT OF DREAMS:
DECLASSIFIED HISTORY IN THE DOCUMENTS OF RGANTD (*)

Today in Tver at the All-Russian festival of historical films “KinoVECHE” opened an exhibition of documents from the RGANTD funds, telling about the most complex russian technical invention of the 20th century - the Buran space shuttle.

(*) Russian State Archive of Scientific and Engenering Documentation


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rgantd undefeated at publishing mirrored photos in false color

 

[Willythekid]

Amazing!
Source: buran.ru

 

[NMaude]

I just stumbled across this Buran video from Retro Space:

Restored field sequential color TV footage of the Shuttle Buran cockpit camera during reentry. Some maneuvering is shown, performed by the autopilot system, as the shuttle glides towards the landing field. Probably in real speed, but the actual video framerate is unknown.

The original black and white raw footage is from buran.ru Similar to Apollo (and early US Shuttle) TV cameras the system was field sequential - each image was taken through a different color filter, in sequence. Reconstructing this sequence it's possible to recover color, at the expense of motion artifacts.

 

[Willythekid]

Buran #2 (1.02) at launch pad.

 

[AGS-1787]

How could these people let this stuff go to waste!

 

[NMaude]

How could these people let this stuff go to waste!

Lack of funds due to the collapse of the Soviet Union however the Buran could've made money and been preserved if Kazakstan had made it and the centre it was stored at a tourist-attraction.

 

[quellish]

Buran #2 (1.02) at launch pad.

Different RCS in the nose?

 

[Willythekid]

Different RCS in the nose?

From https://medium.com/@energiaburan/je...m-how-npo-molniya-improved-buran-4d2f7f9d3eaa

"The “standard” Buran nose RCS cluster has 6 maneuvering thruster nozzles on the top surface and four each on the left and right sides for a total of 14 nozzles (unlike the Shuttle, Buran did not have any vernier thrusters in the nose cluster, only in the two aft clusters). But from the second flight orbiter onward, the vehicles have two extra nozzles either side of the cluster for a total of 18 nozzles."

Buran 1.01 (top) - Buran 1.02 (below)

 

[Archibald]

Lack of funds due to the collapse of the Soviet Union however the Buran could've made money and been preserved if Kazakstan had made it and the centre it was stored at a tourist-attraction.

The whole Space Shuttle saga (Shuttle / Buran / Hermes) was an evolutionary deadend similar to dinosaurs. They weren't RLV or TSTO or SSTO but big reusable payload fairings, manned. Not worth the hundred billions sunk.

 

[NMaude]

The whole Space Shuttle saga (Shuttle / Buran / Hermes) was an evolutionary deadend similar to dinosaurs.

The point I'm making is that if Kazakstan had taken the pains to properly maintain and preserve the site along with the Shuttles and the Energia rocket-launchers with proper marketing they could've made money by using them as a tourist attraction.

 

[publiusr]

Those who like to believe it was Buran that bled the USSR dry forget expenses—the Soviet-Afghan war and this railway project:

Baikal–Amur Mainline - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Without those two excesses, Buran may have flown a few more times and/or had been retired with a bit more grace.

The Tran-Siberian itself took 71 years to electrify:

From Russia With Electric Rail

I was reading an article in the New Yorker by Ian Frazier about the Trans-Siberian railroad, the world's longest, when I ran across his statement that the rail line ran under electric power for both passengers and freight. This was...

www.nrdc.org

Maybe the BAM will cross the Bering Strait…one day…

 

[Willythekid]

Miscellaneous.

 

[Willythekid]

Interesting article on NPO Energia's shuttle (and giant rocket) projects, prior to the Energia-Buran program. The article is in Spanish, but can be translated into English almost perfectly.

"On November 23, 1972, now half a century ago, the huge Soviet N1 moon rocket lifted off for the fourth and last time from Area 110 of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The three previous launches had ended in failure, but this time all the engineers and technicians at TsKBEM, the former OKB-1 design bureau of Sergey Korolyov and now headed by Vasili Mishin, hoped that the big rocket would succeed in reaching orbit."

Los olvidados cohetes soviéticos gigantes RLA, antecesores del sistema Energía-Burán - Eureka

El 23 de noviembre de 1972, ahora hace medio siglo, el enorme cohete lunar soviético N1 despegaba por cuarta y última vez desde el Área 110 del cosmódromo de Baikonur. […]

danielmarin.naukas.com