Who wants a small history lesson?
Ok really quick before I get going I’d like you to try something. Below are 6 different Space Shuttles. 1 of them are not like the rest.
Which one is not like the rest? Select in the poll beneath the photos. The number beneath each photo corresponds to the number on the poll.
(Photo credits afterwards, to prevent them from being spoilers
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
Photo source sites, but don’t look until after you guess as it could spoil the guessing
Photo 1 is from OV-102’s Wikipedia page, 2 is from the National Interest, 3 is from Air-and-space.com, 4 is from The Space Review, 5 is from NASA, 6 is from the European Space Agency
———————
———————
———————
———————
For all of you who guessed photo 4, i award you bragging rights because that isn’t a US Space Shuttle. That is the USSR’s Buran Shuttle.
For the rest of you, you wouldn’t be 100% wrong. All US Shuttles aren’t built exactly the same.
Development for definitely peaceful means.
Well did you know that in the 1970s the USSR was concerned enough about the US Space Shuttle program, which was being advertised as being able to deploy 30 ton payloads into orbit but mainly the ability to return 15 ton payloads from space (they also thought the US Shuttle would be used to deploy weapons or even be a nuclear bomber in space), that they wanted their own space shuttle
1974 comes and goes with the selection of a vehicle and booster called Buran and Energia, over that of a more realistic, smaller, and more affordable design.
Buran Shuttle OK-1.01 “Buran” on launch
(Photo from the Buran’s Wikipedia page)
It’ll be a good few years of development, but come 1980 the construction of the orbiters would begin. That development led to a very capable and proposed series of launchers derived from Energia (the core stage/boosters) that can go from putting some simple satellites in orbit, to putting the Buran Shuttle in orbit all the way to a proposed crewed moon rocket. The Buran Shuttle was not required to fly the Energia core stage/boosters, as unlike the US Shuttle, the Buran Shuttle didn’t have any of the main engines onboard. It was all the core stage/boosters.
Who loves prototypes?
OK-GLI was a Buran for atmospheric testing, making sure it handled well in the atmosphere. The US had a similar one called Enterprise but OK-GLI was different. Instead of dropping the vehicle from another aircraft, OK-GLI had 4 jet engines
Here’s OK-GLI in the Technik Museum. (Photo from OK-GLI’s Wikipedia page)
It’d takeoff like any conventional jet and then carry out whatever testing they had in store for it. Buran was supposed to have these engines for operational flights to space, that way unlike the US Shuttle it could go around in the event they had to. However due to it being hard to protect the engines and the extra weight of the engines and the associated equipment to run them they were ditched.
So how about going to space?
The boosters didn’t require the Buran to be attached to fly, unlike the US Shuttle, so Energia on its own made its first flight to put a test bed satellite, called Polyus in space. Future versions of this satellite were to have lasers to take out satellites but Polyus didn’t have the laser, it was going up for navigational testing. Energia worked but Polyus had a software error that sent it on a first class trip to the Pacific Ocean instead of its intended orbit.
Photo from Buran-Energia.com depicting Polyus on its Energia rocket before being rotated vertically.
The first orbital flight for the Buran Shuttle lasted 3 hours and 25 minutes. Buran Shuttle OK-1.01 “Buran” went to space, did a couple laps around the earth before returning and landing. All without a crew onboard. That was unheard of at the time, as every last US Shuttle flight had crews onboard even the very first orbital one and every capsule space craft didn’t have to worry about precisely getting to a runway. Things were looking up.
(From Gunter’s Space Page)
Then things weren’t looking up.
Many of you have probably never heard of this shuttle before, and for good reason. The flight i mentioned just above was its last. The second flight was scheduled for 1993, but leading up to this date Buran had the following characteristics:
(Buran photo itself from Pinterest, labels by me)
You’ve probably seen that forces of flight meme by now, and it’s not too much different for Buran.
The USSR’s government will kept it going up (show technological strength and compete with the US Shuttle), money kept it moving forward, but the drag of reality seeing the money they didn’t have be put elsewhere and the USSR dissolving pulling it down saw the program stop. Not canceled just stopped, suspended, ceased. It’s been over 3 decades since it was stopped so it’s safe to say it’s more or less cancelled. Especially after OK-1.01 was destroyed in a hangar collapse, and the other mostly finished orbiters being left to collect dust and graffiti.
OK-1.02 (photo from Buran-Energia.com)
They weren’t fully abandoned however.
OK-1.01’s hangar collapsed when workers were trying to prevent it from collapsing (rest in peace those who died in the collapse) in 2002 almost a decade after it was suspended. In more recent years graffiti left of the mostly finished orbiters (one of which pictured above) was removed. None of this is to say it’ll ever fly again.
Some of it lives on.
The side boosters on Energia did fly a multitude of times afterwards as the Zenit rocket. The RD-170 rocket engines used on those Zenit boosters of Energia were derived into the RD-180 which flew US made Atlas III rocket boosters, and currently flies the Atlas V.
Atlas V with the RD-180 very prominently shown - From Wikipedia
Zenit rocket - From spaceflight101
I believe this qualifies for the “historical knowledge” mentioned in the about the RWA category.