What the blizzard spaceship consists of. The history of the shuttle Buran

The 205 minutes of the "Buran" spacecraft's flight became a deafening sensation. And the main thing is the landing. For the first time in the world, a Soviet shuttle landed in automatic mode. The American shuttles never learned this: they landed only by hand.

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, the RG correspondent talks to one of its creators, formerly the head of the NPO Energia department, and nowadays professor of MAI, 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, capture it with a manipulator and send it to its "womb"?

Valery Burdakov: Yes, just like the American Space Shuttle. But the Buran's capabilities 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 centering. We could de-orbit the Mir station and turn it into a museum piece!

Are the Americans scared?

Valery Burdakov: Vakhtang Vachnadze, who once headed the NPO Energia, said: under the SDI program, the US 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 could not create anything like a shuttle?

Valery Burdakov: Yes, the Americans made such statements in earnest. The fact is that in the mid-1970s, our lag behind the United States was estimated at 15 years. We didn’t have enough experience with large masses of liquid hydrogen, we didn’t have reusable liquid propellant 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 the Boeing-747 class aircraft.

And nevertheless, "Buran" turned out to be literally stuffed with, as they say today, innovations?

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

Valery Burdakov: Quite right. Unmanned landing, absence of toxic fuel, horizontal flight tests, air transportation of rocket tanks on the back of a specially created aircraft ... Everything was superb.

Many people remember the stunning photo: the spaceship "saddled" the Mriya plane. Was the winged giant born under the Buran?

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

Our department has prepared a report: transportation must be by air, i.e. by airplanes. What started here! .. I was accused of fantasizing. But Myasishchev's 3M-T plane (later named after him VM-T), the Ruslan plane, and the Mriya plane, on which we together with an Air Force representative made up the terms of reference, took off.

And why, even among the designers, there were so many opponents of the Buran? Feoktistov said bluntly: reusability is just another bluff, and Academician Mishin even called "Buran" only "Burian".

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

Who was the first to think about the project of an orbital ship of the aircraft scheme and aircraft landing capabilities on the runway?

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

Tsiolkovsky signed?

Valery Burdakov: No. He criticized the idea. He said that without a liquid-propellant rocket engine, the glider at high altitude would be uncontrollable and, having accelerated during a fall, would break. He presented me with a booklet "Space rocket trains" and advised me to think about using liquid-propellant rocket engines for flights not into the stratosphere, but even higher, into "etheric space".

I wonder how Korolev reacted?

Valery Burdakov: He did not hide his annoyance. And even refused an autograph! Although I read the booklet. Korolev's friend, aircraft designer Oleg Antonov, told me how at the glider rallies in Koktebel after 1929, many whispered: was their Seryoga not shaking in his mind? Like, he flies on a tailless glider and says that it is best suited for installing liquid-propellant rocket engines on it. I knocked down the pilot Anokhin to deliberately break the glider in the air during the "flutter test" ...

Korolev himself designed some kind of heavy-duty glider?

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

And what kind of incident happened to German Titov then?

Valery Burdakov: He naively thought that he really understood everything, and asked the Queen to accept him. “We,” he says, “fly on bad ships. Large overloads, when descending like on a cobblestone pavement, it shakes. Korolyov smiled: "Have you already received your engineering degree?" "Not yet," Herman replied. "When you get it, then come and 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 copyright certificate for a reusable space carrier. When the fuss around the American shuttle arose, the question of whether or not it was necessary to do the same in our country had not yet been resolved. However, the so-called "Service No. 16" in 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 were engaged in translations, scientific analysis, editing and publishing of "primers" on the shuttle. And they themselves, quietly, developed their own version of the ship and the carrier for it.

But after all, Glushko, who after Mishin's dismissal became the head of Energia, also did not support the reusable theme?

Valery Burdakov: He insisted everywhere that he would not be engaged in the shuttle. Therefore, when Glushko was once summoned to the Central Committee to see Ustinov, he did not go himself. He sent me. A flurry of questions fell down there: why do we need a reusable space system, what it could be, and so on. After this visit, I signed a Technical Note with Glushko - the main provisions on the "Buran" topic. Ustinov as soon as possible prepared a decision, which was approved by Brezhnev. But it took dozens of meetings with abuse and accusations of incompetence until they reached a common opinion.

And what was the position of your main aviation subcontractor - chief designer of NPO Molniya Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky?

Valery Burdakov: Unlike the aviation minister Dementyev, Lozino-Lozinsky has always been on our side, even though at first he offered his options. He was a wise man. For example, here's how he put an end to talk about the impossibility of an unmanned landing. He told the managers that he would not turn to them anymore, but would ask them to make an automatic landing system ... for the pioneers from the Tushino airfield, since he had repeatedly observed the accuracy with which their radio-controlled models were landing. And the incident was settled to the displeasure of his superiors.

The astronauts were also unhappy. We thought that Dementiev’s position would prevail. They wrote a letter to the Central Committee: they do not need an automatic landing, they want to operate the Buran themselves.

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

Valery Burdakov: Yes. Glushko proposed to call the ship "Energy", Lozino-Lozinsky - "Lightning". There was a consensus - "Baikal". And "Buran" was proposed by General Kerimov. The inscription was barely scraped off before the start and a new one was applied.

The accuracy of the landing of "Buran" struck everyone on the spot ...

Valery Burdakov: When the ship had already appeared from behind the clouds, one of the chiefs, as if in delirium, repeated: "Right now it will crash, right now it will crash!" True, he used a different word. Everyone gasped when "Buran" began to turn across the runway. In fact, this maneuver was included in the program. But the boss, apparently, did not know or forgot this nuance. The ship went straight to the lane. Lateral deviation from the center line - only 3 meters! This is the highest precision. 205 minutes of "Buran" 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: Words cannot convey this. But there was another "sensation" ahead of us: a successful innovative project was closed. 15 billion rubles were wasted.

Will Buran's scientific and technical groundwork ever be used?

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

Progress on "Buran" has not disappeared. Automatic aircraft landing gave 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 determines the prospects for the development of cosmonautics. What are the prospects for the current cosmonautics?

Valery Burdakov: The hydrocarbon era will be replaced by the era of atomic and solar energy, inconceivable without the widespread use of a wide variety of space assets. To create space solar power plants that supply energy to terrestrial consumers, carriers for a payload of 250 tons will be required. They will be created on the basis of MOVEN. And if we talk about cosmonautics in general, then it will provide all the needs of mankind, and not just information, as it is now.

by the way

A total of five flight copies of the Buran spacecraft were built.

The ship 1.01 "Buran" made a single flight. It was kept in the assembly and testing building at Baikonur. In May 2002, destroyed by a roof collapse.

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. I was at the Tushinsky machine-building plant, then at the dock of the Khimki reservoir. In 2011, it was transported for restoration to the LII in Zhukovsky.

Ship 2.02 was 10 - 20% ready. Disassembled on the stocks of the plant.

Ship 2.03 - the reserve was destroyed and taken to the landfill.

A video published on the YouTube channel Exploring the Unbeaten Path is gaining popularity on the Internet. Its authors, residents of the Netherlands, managed to get into the hangar on the territory of the Baikonur cosmodrome, which houses the Soviet space shuttle Buran.

The fifteen-minute video shows adventurers secretly sneaking into an abandoned hangar and examining a spacecraft that is slowly collapsing. “Our craziest and most dangerous adventure,” the creators themselves described the video.

"These hangars don't belong to anyone."

The penetration of the Dutch to "Buran" is by no means the first such case. In 2015, pictures of this hangar and the apparatus located in it were posted on the Web by a user Ralph Mirebs... And in May 2017, a whole group from Russia, Ukraine and Great Britain entered the hangar, which was detained by the security personnel of the cosmodrome.

“It turns out these hangars don't belong to anyone. They are, as it were, on the territory of the cosmodrome, but there is nothing secret or important, the FSB has no interest in these hangars, "one of the participants in the May infiltration wrote on his social network page, roofer Vitaly Raskalov... At the same time, according to him, the operating launch sites of the cosmodrome are carefully guarded.

Abandoned hangars at Baikonur are a memory of one of the most ambitious space programs in the USSR.

"Energy - Buran"

Construction of the Soviet reusable spacecraft began back in the seventies, in response to a similar American Space Shuttle program. The ship was supposed to carry out tasks both for the peaceful exploration of outer space and within the framework of military programs.

Within the framework of the project, the most powerful Soviet launch vehicle, called Energia, was created. The carrier, capable of putting up to 100, and in the future, 200 tons of payload into orbit, could lift into space not only a reusable spacecraft, but also heavy space stations. In the future, it was planned to use "Energy" to prepare an expedition to the moon.

The first launch of the Energia launch vehicle took place in 1987. On November 15, 1988, Energia lifted the Buran reusable spacecraft into orbit.

Buran was superior to its American counterparts in many respects. Its maiden flight was fully automatic, including landing.

2 trillion down the drain?

The Energia-Buran program was the most ambitious and expensive in the history of Russian cosmonautics. At the rate of 2016, its cost is approximately 2 trillion rubles. A reinforced runway at the Yubileiny airfield in Baikonur was specially equipped for the Buran landings. In addition, two more main reserve landing sites for the Buran were seriously reconstructed and fully equipped with the necessary infrastructure - the Bagerovo military airfields in Crimea and Vostochny in Primorye - and runways were built or reinforced in 14 additional landing sites, including outside the territory THE USSR. An-225 "Mriya" was created especially for transportation from alternate airfields. A special squad of cosmonauts was prepared to pilot the Buran.

According to the developers' plan, "Buran" was to conduct another 1-2 flights in automatic mode, after which its operation would begin in a manned version.

but Mikhail Gorbachev considered that the project was too expensive, and in 1990 ordered the suspension of work on the program. In 1993, after the collapse of the USSR, the Energy - Buran program was completely closed.

"Buran" was killed, "Tempest" and "Baikal" remained

It should be clarified: the ship that adventure lovers penetrate is not "Buran".

The real "Buran", which flew into space, was completely destroyed on May 12, 2002 when the roof of the assembly and test building of the cosmodrome collapsed. Under the rubble, 8 workers were killed while repairing the roof. The remains of the "Buran" were cut into pieces by the cosmodrome workers and subsequently sold as scrap metal.

The ship, standing in the assembly and refueling building (or at the site 112 A), which was removed by bloggers, is the so-called "product 1.02", that is, the second flight copy Soviet ship reusable. The "product" also had a proper name: "The Tempest".

The fate of The Tempest is no less sad. The ship was about 95 percent ready and was due to fly in 1992. But the closure of the program put an end to these plans.

The ship changed ownership several times, and currently the owner of the Buri is unknown. The hangar, where it is located, is periodically exposed to raids by hunters for non-ferrous metal.

"Product 2.01" (the "Baikal" ship) by the time the program was closed was about 50 percent ready. Until 2004, the ship was in the workshops of Tushinsky machine-building plant, then changed its "registration" several times, in 2011 he reached Zhukovsky near Moscow, where he was supposed to become an exhibit of the air show after reconstruction.

Two more copies, laid down at the plant in Tushino, were disassembled there after the closure of the program.

What is worth at VDNKh?

In addition, within the framework of the Buran program, several prototypes were created for dynamic, electrical, airfield and other tests. Many people still take these models for real ships.

BTS-002 OK-GLI or "product 0.02", on which atmospheric tests and real-life testing of the most critical flight areas were carried out, after long wanderings around the world in 2008 for 10 million euros was acquired by the owner of a private Technical Museum By Herman Lyre and is on display in the German city of Speyer.

BTS-001 OK-ML-1 or "product 0.01" after the closure of the program for many years was an attraction in Moscow's Gorky Park. In 2014, he changed his registration and was transported to VDNKh, where he is now.

One of the mock-ups, OK-MT, is the “neighbor” of the “Buri” in the hangar, into which bloggers are so fond of penetrating.

Model of the spaceship "Buran" on the territory of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements. Photo: RIA Novosti / Alexey Kudenko

Does the great past have a future

In 2016, it became known that Roskosmos decided to create a department for reusable launch vehicles at one of the enterprises. Veterans of the Energia-Buran project were brought into the department's team. This time the tasks for the developers are not so ambitious: we are talking about the creation of a flight model of the recoverable first stage of the launch vehicle, which should provide a significant reduction in the cost of domestic space programs.

As for large-scale projects like the Energy-Buran program, they are a matter of the future.

To create the airframe of the Buran orbital spacecraft, a specialized enterprise, the Molniya research and production association, was formed on the basis of three design bureaus (KB Molniya, KB Burevestnik and the Experimental Machine-Building Plant, headed by General Designer Vladimir Myasishchev). The Tushino machine-building plant was chosen as the main production base. The new association was headed by Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky, who back in the 1960s worked on the project of the Spiral reusable aerospace system.

Currently, several models and flight copies have survived.

The flying spacecraft "Buran" was mothballed and left in the assembly and test building at the Baikonur cosmodrome (Kazakhstan). In 2002, the ship was completely destroyed by the collapsed roof of the hull.

The second ship, which was supposed to fly in automatic mode with docking with the manned Mir station, remained at Baikonur. In April 2007, it was installed in the exposition of the museum of the Baikonur cosmodrome. Is the property of Kazakhstan.

The third ship (the degree of readiness of the ship at the time of the termination of work was 30-50%) until 2004 was in the shops of the Tushinsky machine-building plant, in October 2004 it was transported to the berth of the Khimki reservoir for temporary storage. In June 2011, it was transported by river transport to the airfield in the city of Zhukovsky for restoration and subsequent display at the International Aviation and Space Salon (MAKS-2011).

After the air show, a model of a spaceship in one of the pavilions of the Ramenskoye (Zhukovsky) airfield.

One of the models of "Buran" - "Buran BTS-002" after the closure of the program in 1993, NPO "Molniya" demonstrated at the air show of the International Aviation and Space Salon. In 1999, the layout was leased to an Australian firm for display at the Sydney Olympics, and then to a Singaporean firm that took it to Bahrain. In 2003 NPO Molniya sold Buran BTS-002 to a private Technical Museum in Speyer (Germany), where it arrived on April 12, 2008. It is currently on display at the Speyer Technical Museum.

Another full-size model of "Buran" ("BTS-001"), which was used to test the air transportation of the orbital complex, in 1993 was leased to the "Cosmos-Earth" company. "Buran" was installed in Moscow on the Pushkinskaya embankment of the Moskva River in the Gorky Central Park of Culture and Leisure, and a scientific and educational attraction was organized there. Now it is one of the attractions of the park.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

... Baikonur Cosmodrome November 15, 1988 At the start universal transport rocket-space system Energia-Buran.

To that the day has been preparing for more than 12 years. And 17 more days due to cancellation starting October 29, 1988 when, 51 seconds before it, the normal retraction of the site with the aiming devices did not pass and a command was issued to cancel the start. And then the draining of fuel components, prevention, identification of the causes of failure and their elimination. "Do not rush! - warned the chairman of the State Commission V.Kh.Doguzhiev. - First of all, safety!"

Everything happened in front of millions of viewers ... The tension of expectation is very high ...

At 05:50, after a ten-minute warm-up of the engines, an optical-television observation aircraft (SOTN) MiG-25 - board 22 takes off from the Yubileiny airfield runway into the air. The plane is piloted by Magomed Tolboyev, in the second cockpit is a cameraman Sergei Zhadovsky. The task of the COTN crew is to provide television coverage with a portable TV camera and observe the launch of the Buran above the cloud layers. By this time, several aircraft are already in the air at different high-altitude echelons - at an altitude of about 5000 meters and a distance of 4-6 km from the launch complex, the An-26 patrols and slightly above it, following pre-planned routes (zones) at a distance of 60 km from start, a meteorological reconnaissance plane is on duty.

At a distance of 200-300 km from the start, a Tu-134BV laboratory aircraft patrols, monitoring radio equipment of the automatic landing system from the air. In the morning, before the launch, the Tu-134BV has already performed two test flights at a distance of 150-200 km from the launch, for which a conclusion was issued on the readiness of the landing complex.

Exactly ten minutes before the start, pressing a button, Vladimir Artemyev, a tester of the laboratory of the autonomous control complex, issues the command "Start" - then everything is controlled only by automatic equipment.

One minute 16 seconds before the start, the entire Energia-Buran complex switches to autonomous power supply. Now everything is ready to start ...

Note: in

if the message "File ... not found" appears, start playing the video file by clicking on the corresponding icon

"Buran" took off on its only triumphant flight exactly according to the cyclogram - the "Lift Contact" command, which fixes the break of the last communications between the rocket and the launch complex (by this moment the rocket manages to rise to a height of 20 cm), passed at 6: 00: 1.25 Moscow time. time.

(Sound recording of the start wav / MP3)

The start picture was bright and fleeting. The light of the searchlights on the launch site disappeared into the clouds of exhaust gases, from which, illuminating this huge seething man-made cloud with a fiery red light, a rocket slowly rose up, like a comet with a sparkling core and a tail directed towards the earth! This sight was insultingly short! A few seconds later, only a fading spot of light in a cover of low clouds testified to the fierce force that was carrying the Buran through the clouds. To the howling of the wind was added a powerful low rumbling sound and it seemed as if it was coming from everywhere, that it was coming from low leaden clouds.

After 5 seconds, the Energia-Buran complex began to turn in pitch, a second later - a turn at 28.7º on the roll.

Then, only a few people directly watched the flight of the Buran - it was the crew of the An-26 transport aircraft that took off from the Krainy airfield (commander Alexander Borunov), from the side of which through the side windows by three (!) C central television filming was carried out, and the crew of the SOTN MiG-25, which reported from the stratosphere, filming the moment of separation of the first stage parablocks.

The hall in the control bunker froze, it seemed that the thickening tension could be touched ...

At the 30th second of the flight, the throttling of the RD-0120 engines began to 70% of the thrust, at the 38th second, when passing the section of the maximum velocity head - the RD-170 engines.

The control system guided the missile exactly inside the calculated tube (corridor) of permissible trajectories, without any deviations.

Everyone in the control room is watching the flight with bated breath. The excitement grows ...

77th second - the throttling of the thrust of the engines of the C block is over and they smoothly switch to the main mode.

At 109 second, the thrust of the engines decreases to limit the overload to 2.95g, and after 21 seconds the transfer of the engines of the A blocks of the first stage to the mode at the final stage (49.5%) of thrust begins.

About walks for another 13 seconds, and the speakerphone sounds: "There is a shutdown of the first stage engines!" In fact, the command to turn off the engines of blocks 10A and 30A passed at the 144th second of the flight, and to turn off the engines of blocks 20A and 40A after another 0.15 seconds. The simultaneous shutdown of the opposite side blocks prevented the occurrence of disturbing moments during the movement of the rocket and ensured the absence of sharp longitudinal overloads due to a smoother drop in the total thrust.

After 8 seconds, at an altitude of 53.7 km at a speed of 1.8 km / s, the parablocks separated, which after 4 and a half minutes fell 426 km from the start.

At the fourth minute of the flight, the picture depicting the main stages of the return maneuver disappeared from the right screen in the Main Hall of the Moscow Region MCC, which was simply observing what was happening at the launch site - after the 190th second of flight, in the event of an emergency situation, the return maneuver with the ship landing on the runway disappeared Baikonur became impossible.

Immediately after leaving the complex from low clouds, the Burana TV camera, located on the upper porthole of the docking control and observing the upper hemisphere of the ship, began to transmit to C flight control center a picture that has bypassed all the world news agencies. Due to the steadily increasing pitch angle during the launch, the Buran seemed to "lie on its back" over time, so the camera installed "on the back of the head" confidently showed a black-and-white image of the earth's surface floating under it. At 320 seconds, the camera recorded a small centimeter-sized fragment flying past the ship's cockpit, which, most likely, was a splintered fragment of the second-stage heat-shielding coating.

At 413 second stage throttling began; after another 28 seconds, they are transferred to the final stage of thrust. Agonizing 26 seconds and ... at the 467th second of the flight, the operator reports: "There is a shutdown of the second stage engines!"

Within 15 seconds, "Buran" with its engines "calmed down" the entire bundle and at the 482nd second of flight (with an impulse of the control motors of 2 m / s) it separated from the C block, entering orbit with a conditional perigee altitude of -11.2 km and an apogee of 154.2 km ... From that moment on, control of the ship was transferred from the command center at Baikonur to the MCC near Moscow.

In the hall, according to established tradition, there is no noise, no exclamations. In accordance with the strict instructions of the technical director of the launch, B.I. Gubanov, all those present at the command post remain at their workplaces - only the rocketmen's eyes are shining. Under the table, they shake hands - the wearer's task is completed. Now it's all up to the ship.

Across Three and a half minutes Buran, at the apogee of its trajectory, while in the supine position, issued the first 67-second corrective impulse, having received an increase in orbital velocity of 66.7 m / s and found itself in an intermediate orbit with a perigee altitude of 114 km and apogee 256 km. Managers on Earth breathed a sigh of relief: "There will be a first round!"

On the second orbit, at the 67th minute of the flight, outside the radio zone, the Buran began to prepare for landing - at 7:31:50 am, the RAM of the onboard computer complex was reloaded from the magnetic tape of the onboard tape recorder to work on the bow tanks to stern tanks to ensure the required landing alignment.

At 07:57 the newly fueled SOTN MiG-25 (LL-22) was rolled out onto the runway, and at 08:17 M. Tolboyev and S. Zhadovsky again took their places in separate cockpits of the aircraft. After the MiG-25 was towed on the runway, the equipment of the ground handling equipment complex (KSNO) began to line up on the taxiways.

At this time in space, the orbital ship built an orientation for issuing a braking impulse, again turning to the position "with its back" to the Earth, but this time with its tail "forward-up". At 8:20, being over the Pacific Ocean at point 45º south latitude and 135 º west, in the visibility zone of the tracking ships "Cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky" and "Marshal Nedelin", "Buran" switched on one of the orbital maneuvering engines for 158 seconds to issue a braking impulse of 162.4 m / s. After that, the ship built a landing ("aircraft") orientation, turning "in flight" and raising the "nose" to 37.39º to the horizon to ensure entry into the atmosphere with an angle of attack of 38.3º ... Descending, the ship passed an altitude of 120 km at 08:48:11.

Entering the atmosphere ( with a conditional border at a height H = 100 km) occurred at 08:51 at an angle of -0.91º at a speed of 27330 km / h over the Atlantic at coordinates 14.9º south latitude and 340.5 º h.d. at a distance of 8270 km from the Baikonur landing complex.

The weather in the area of ​​the landing airfield did not significantly improve. A strong, gusty wind was still blowing. Saved by the fact that the wind blew almost along the runway - wind direction 210º , speed 15 m / s, gusts up to 18-20 m / s. Wind (its updated speed and direction were transmitted to the ship before the braking impulse) unambiguously determined the direction of the approach from the north-east direction, on the runway of the landing complex (Yubileiny airfield) No. 26 (true landing course No. 2 with azimuth 246º 36 "22" "). Thus, the wind for the gliding ship became a headwind (under 36º left). The same lane, when approaching it from the southwestern direction, had a different number - No. 06.

At 08:47, the MiG-25 engines are launched, and at 08:52 Tolboyev receives permission to take off. A few minutes later (at 08:57) the plane quickly takes off into the gloomy sky for the second time this morning, and, after a sharp left turn, disappears into the clouds, leaving for a meeting with the "Buran".

The navigator-operator Valery Korsak began to take him into the waiting area to meet the orbital ship. It was necessary to carry out an unusual aiming of the "interceptor" at an air target. In practice air defense it is assumed that the interceptor is catching up with the target. Here, the target itself had to catch up with the "interceptor", and its speed was constantly decreasing, varying within wide limits. To this should be added a constant decrease in altitude with a high vertical speed, and a changeable course of the target, but the most important thing is a large degree of uncertainty in the trajectory after the ship leaves the plasma section and on descent. With all these difficulties, the aircraft should have been brought to the visual visibility range of the ship - 5 km, because there was no onboard radar, since it was still a flying laboratory based on the MiG-25, and not a full-fledged combat interceptor ...

At this moment, "Buran" pierces the upper atmosphere like a fiery comet. At 8:53 at an altitude of 90 kilometers due to the formation of a plasma cloud for 18 minutes, radio communication with it was interrupted (the motion of the Buran in plasma is more than three times longer than during the descent of disposable spaceships of the "Soyuz" type).

Flight

"Burana" in the area of ​​hypersonic gliding, in a cloud of high-temperature plasma (for other illustrations of the flight, see our photo archive).

During the absence of radio communications, control over the flight of "Buran" was carried out by the national means of the missile attack warning system. For this, radar controls were used. outer space with "over-the-horizon" radars, which through the command post P strategic auxiliaries Golitsino-2 (in the city of Krasnoznamensk near Moscow) constantly transmitted information about the parameters of the Buran's descent trajectory in the upper layers of the atmosphere with the passage of predetermined boundaries. At 08:55 an altitude of 80 km was passed, at 09:06 - 65 km.

In the process of descent to dissipate the kinetic energy, Buran, due to the programmed roll change, performed an extended S-shaped "snake", while simultaneously realizing a lateral maneuver 570 km to the right of the orbital plane. When shifting, the maximum roll value reached 104º left and 102 º to the right. It was at the moment of intensive maneuvering from wing to wing (the roll speed reached 5.7 deg / s) in the field of view of the onboard TV camera, a fragment fell from top to bottom in the inter-cabin space, which made some specialists on Earth get nervous: "That's it, the ship began to fall apart! " After a few more seconds, the camera even captured the partial destruction of tiles next to the upper outline of the window ...

In the aerodynamic braking section, sensors in the forward fuselage recorded a temperature of 907º C, on the toes of the wing 924º C. The maximum calculated heating temperatures were not achieved due to a smaller stock of stored kinetic energy (the launch mass of the spacecraft in the first flight was 79.4 tons with a calculated 105 tons) and a lower deceleration rate (the value of the realized lateral maneuver in the first flight was three times less than the maximum possible 1700 km). Nevertheless, the on-board television camera recorded the hit on the windshield glazing pieces of thermal protection in the form of blots, which then completely burned out within a few tens of seconds and were carried away by the oncoming air flow. These were "splashes" from the burned-out paint-and-lacquer coating of the heat-shielding coating (TSP), falling on the windshields due to the decrease in the angle of attack as it descended into the atmosphere: after the speed dropped to M = 12, the angle of attack began to smoothly decrease to α = 20º at М = 4.1 and up to α = 10 º at M = 2.

Post-flight analysis showed that in the altitude range of 65 ... 20 km (M = 17.6 ... 2), the actual values ​​of the lift coefficient С у constantly exceeded the calculated ones by 3 ... 6%, remaining, nevertheless, in acceptable limits. This led to the fact that when the real drag coefficient coincided with the calculated one, the actual value of the balancing quality of the "Buran" at speeds M = 13 ... 2 turned out to be 5 ... 7% higher than the calculated one, being at the upper limit of permissible values. To put it simply, Buran flew better than expected, and this was after many years of blowing through scale models in wind tunnels and suborbital flights of BORov-5!

After passing through the plasma formation section at 09:11, at an altitude of 50 km and a distance of 550 km from the landing strip, "Buran" got in touch with tracking stations in the landing area. Its speed at this moment was 10 times the speed of sound. The following reports were held in the MCC over the loudspeaker:"There is a telemetry reception!", "There is a detection of the ship by means of landing locators!"

In the range of speeds M = 10 ... 6, the maximum deflection of the balancing flap was noted - the control system tried to unload the ailerons for intensive maneuvering. A little more than 10 minutes remained before landing ...

The ship passed the 40 km altitude boundary at 09:15. Descending, at an altitude of 35 km, in the eastern coastline Aral Sea (at a distance of 189 km to the landing point), "Buran" passed over the air corridor of the Moscow-Tashkent international air route, from the south-west of the envelope of the border of the Leninsky airport area, which includes air traffic control and airspace use zones in the vicinity launch complexes of Baikonur, landing complex "Burana" (airfield "Yubileiny"), airfield in Leninsk ("Extreme") and airport in Dzhusaly.

At this moment, the ship was in the area of ​​responsibility of the Kyzyl-Orda regional center unified system air traffic control of the USSR, which controlled the flights of all aircraft outside the Leninsky airport at altitudes of more than 4500 meters, except, of course, the Buran, which was flying in the stratosphere at hypersonic speed.

The orbital vehicle crossed the border of the Leninsky air hub at a distance of 108 km from the landing point, being at an altitude of 30 km. At that moment, it passed over the section of the air corridor No. 3 Aralsk-Novokazalinsk, and flew, surprising its creators - in the speed range M = 3.5 ... 2, the balancing quality was 10% higher than the expected calculated values!

The wind direction in the area of ​​the Yubileiny airfield, transmitted to the ship, caused the ship to be brought to the eastern energy dissipation cylinder and the landing approach with the azimuth of the true landing course No. 2.

At 09:19, "Buran" entered the target area at an altitude of 20 km with minimal deviations , which was very helpful in bad weather conditions... The reactive control system and its executive bodies were disabled and only the aerodynamic rudders, which were still involved at an altitude of 90 km, continued to drive the orbital ship to the next landmark - key point.

Until now, the flight took place strictly along the calculated descent trajectory - on the control displays of the MCC, its mark shifted to Landing complex runway practically in the middle of the admissible return corridor. "Buran" approached the airfield slightly to the right of the axis of the landing strip, and everything went to the fact that it would "dissipate" the rest of the energy on near "cylinder"... So thought the experts and test pilots who were on duty at joint control tower... In accordance with the landing sequence, the airborne and ground means of the radio beacon system are switched on. However, upon exiting to key point from a height of 20 km "Buran" "laid" a maneuver that shocked everyone in the OKDP. Instead of the expected approach from the southeast with a left bank, the ship turned vigorously to the left, onto the northern heading cylinder, and began to approach the runway from the northeast direction with a roll of 45º on the right wing.

Pre-landing maneuvering of "Buran" in the atmosphere (for other illustrations of the flight, see our photo archive).

At an altitude of 15300 m, the Buran's speed became subsonic, then, while performing its "own" maneuver, the Buran passed at an altitude of 11 km above the strip at the zenith of radio-technical landing facilities, which was the worst case in terms of the directional patterns of ground antennas. In fact, at that moment, the ship completely "dropped out" of the field of view of the antennas, the scanning sector of which in the vertical plane was in the range of only 0.55º -30 º over the horizon. The confusion of the ground operators was so great that they stopped directing the escort aircraft to the Buran!

Post-flight analysis showed that the probability of choosing such a trajectory was less than 3%, but under the current conditions it was the most the right decision onboard computers of the ship! Moreover, the telemetry data indicated that the movement on the surface of the conditional cylinder of the course alignment in projection onto the earth's surface was not an arc of a circle, but part of an ellipse, but the winners are not judged!

Height - twenty five,
another quarter of an hour to Earth -
Coming home
from the depths of his stellar abode.
And ready for a long time
for landing him a strip,
The path to which lies
guarded by a fighter wing.

Here I went through the layer
so at the wrong time of the clouds,
There is silence on Earth
everyone froze in anxious silence.
His whole flight was
like a bright cosmic ray
Illuminated for all
fantastic distances.

That's all. On the ground.
You can hear the joy in everyone's voices,
And all the creators
congratulations on the undeniable victory.
It made its way to the Boeing X-37B on December 3, 2010. But taking into account the fact that the launch mass of the Kh-37V is about 5 tons, the flight of the 80-ton "Buran" can be considered unsurpassed so far.

Buran - snow storm, blizzard in the steppe. (Explanatory dictionary of the Russian language. S. I. Ozhegov, M.: Russian language, 1975).

Many years later, Sergei Grachev, assistant to the senior flight director, recalled: "I am in the control room and choose where to observe the launch? I ran out to the balcony of the 5th floor of the OKDP - and there the wind rumbles in the metal deck - you can hardly hear how it takes off" Energy. "I decided to go back to the control room and watch out the window. Before launch - a few minutes. I mentally calculate: so, - the distance is 12 km, the speed of sound, the movement of the shock wave, - if it explodes at the start, - and I tell the dispatchers: see if you will see a flash at the start - immediately fall to the floor under the windows to the wall and do not move! After the Energia-Buran leaves for the cloudy sky, I can imagine - will the "comet's tail" suddenly appear again from under the clouds? , were..."

The launch and acceleration of the orbital vehicle by the carrier rocket occurs against the background of changing external parameters of the atmosphere. These perturbations are random, so the parameters of the trajectory have tolerances, changing not only from flight to flight, but also during one flight. Under such conditions, it is impossible to determine a fixed calculated flight path and one has to consider only calculated trajectory tube, in which the actual trajectory should be located with a certain probability. The calculated trajectory tubes for the Buran launch site were determined for a probability of 0.99, for the Buran descent trajectory, due to the increased requirements for a non-motorized landing, they were even more accurate: 0.997!

The post-flight telemetry analysis showed that there was an illumination at the start. fire sensors by radiation from engine flares, due to which in the tail compartment of the C block there was an opening of the emergency drainage covers, designed to discharge excess pressure in emergency situations in the event of a fire and / or the operation of the fire and explosion prevention system (FPVP). Due to the erroneous actuation of the sensors, at the start of the FPVS, the emergency flushing of the engine compartment of the C block with an inert gas with a flow rate of up to 15 kg / sec. WVTR.

Carefully examining the video, you can discover another surprising phenomenon: when flying over mountainous terrain, a dark object, moving faster than Buran, and due to this, crossing the frame in a straight line towards the bottom (in the center of the lower frame border) -up-right, falls into the field of view , i.e.as if in a lower orbit with a lower inclination. The video recording at the disposal of the webmaster does not allow reliably linking this event to the flight time.
Several questions arise: if this is a space object, then why does it look too dark in the illuminated part of the orbit? If it is an insect that has fallen into the Buran's cabin and crawls along inner surface porthole, then why does it creep in a straight line at a constant speed and what does it breathe in the completely nitrogen (oxygen-free) atmosphere of the cockpit? Most likely, this is some fragment (garbage?) Flying in zero gravity inside the cockpit and accidentally falling into the field of view of the camera
You can see it all for yourself, by downloading a video clip ... control motors of the reactive control system (DCS) are as follows:
First, in the initial phase of the descent , elevons are connected to the control loop for balancing the ship and removing static components in commands for triggering the control motors of the DCS. Then, as the velocity head grows, the transition to aerodynamic controls is carried out and the transverse (q = 50 kgf / m 2) and longitudinal (q = 100 kgf / m 2) channels of the DCS are sequentially disabled. "scheme (creation of slip followed by roll rotation) until transonic speeds are reached.

Anton Stepanov, a participant in the events described in the OKDP, recalls: "At the moment of a sharp change in the course of Buran, one of the female operators of our EC series computers shouted" Come back! " hope, and feelings for the ship as for a child. " The surprise of the dispatchers is easy to understand, since in the central air traffic control room of the OKDP, to facilitate readable information on circular monitors, operators drew in advance the expected trajectories of the Buran's approach with black felt-tip pens on the glass screens. Naturally, the real, but the least probable and therefore completely unexpected trajectory was not drawn, and the deviation immediately became noticeable. Newsreel footage testifies that in the MCC, on all screens, an approach scheme was displayed through the southern cylinder of the course alignment (see the photo from the MCC screen on the right).

Years later, Vladimir Ermolaev, who at the time of landing was tens of meters from the runway, and thus, being one of the closest people to the returning Buran, recalled: “... We stared at the Buran that had suddenly fallen out of low clouds He walked with the landing gear down. He walked somehow hard, stone, as if glued to a transparent glass glide path. Very smooth. In a straight line. So it seemed. With open mouths, we all looked at the oncoming Buran and flying straight into our mouths of the "MiG" escort ... Touching ... the parachute ... stood up ... Everything ... EVERYTHING !!!
We were still standing in a daze, with open mouths, stunned by the MiG engines and fanned by some warm breeze brought by the Buran from somewhere from there ... From the plasma section of the descent, probably ... God knows ... "

For comparison, in August 2007 the flight of the American shuttle Endeavor was cut by a day due to the tropical hurricane Dean approaching the Kennedy Space Center. When deciding on an early landing, the decisive factor was the limitation on the maximum value of the crosswind during landing for shuttles - 8 m / s.

The poem "Flight of the Buran" by Vitaly Chubatykh, Ternopil, March 1, 2006

This website is based on the article web-master "Buran: facts and myths", written for the 20th anniversary of the "Buran" flight and published in the "Novosti kosmonavtiki" magazine No. 11/2008 (pp. 66-71). The article was recognized as "The Best Article of 2008" and took second place in the competition of authors of the Novosti Cosmonautics magazine in the nomination "The most popular author of 2008 among non-professional journalists", see certificates on the right. In addition, the text of the article without changes was posted on the website of the Federal Space Agency as a story about the flight of "Buran".

Buran progenitor

Buran was developed under the influence of the experience of overseas colleagues who created the legendary "space shuttles". The reusable Space Shuttle ships were designed as part of the NASA Space Transportation System program, and the first shuttle made its first launch on April 12, 1981 - to the anniversary of Gagarin's flight. This date can be considered the starting point in the history of reusable spacecraft.

The shuttle's main drawback was its price. The cost of one launch cost US taxpayers $ 450 million. For comparison, the launch price of a one-off Soyuz is $ 35-40 million. So why did the Americans take the path of creating just such spaceships? And why was the Soviet leadership so interested in the American experience? It's all about the arms race.

Space Shuttle - brainchild Cold war or rather, the ambitious Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program, whose task was to create a system for countering Soviet intercontinental missiles. The colossal scale of the SDI project led to the fact that it was dubbed "Star Wars".

The development of the shuttle did not go unnoticed in the USSR. In the minds of the Soviet military, the ship appeared as a kind of superweapon capable of delivering a nuclear strike from the depths of space. In fact, the reusable spacecraft was created only to deliver elements of the missile defense system into orbit. The idea of ​​using the shuttle as an orbital missile carrier really sounded, but the Americans abandoned it even before the first flight of the spacecraft.

Many in the USSR also feared that the shuttles could be used to steal Soviet spacecraft. The fears were not unfounded: the shuttle had an impressive manipulator on board, and the cargo compartment could easily accommodate even large space satellites. However, it seems that the kidnapping of Soviet ships was not part of the plans of the Americans. And how could such a demarche be explained in the international arena?

However, in the Land of the Soviets, they began to think about an alternative to an overseas invention. The domestic ship was supposed to serve both military and peaceful purposes. It could be used for scientific work, delivering cargo to orbit and returning them to Earth. But the main purpose of "Buran" was to carry out military tasks. It was seen as the main element of the space combat system, designed both to counter possible aggression from the United States and to deliver counterstrikes.

In the 1980s, the Skif and Kaskad combat orbiters were developed. They were largely unified. Their launch into orbit was considered one of the main tasks of the Energia-Buran program. The combat systems were supposed to destroy US ballistic missiles and military spacecraft with laser or missile weapons. For the destruction of targets on Earth, it was proposed to use the orbital warheads of the R-36orb rocket, which would be placed on board the Buran. The warhead had a 5Mt thermonuclear charge. In total, "Buran" could take on board up to fifteen such units. But there were even more ambitious projects... For example, the option of building a space station was considered, the warheads of which would be the modules of the "Buran" spacecraft. Each such module carried striking elements in the cargo compartment, and in the event of a war, they had to fall on the enemy's head. The elements were gliding carriers of nuclear weapons, housed in so-called revolver mounts inside the cargo hold. The "Burana" module could accommodate up to four revolving installations, each of which carried up to five striking elements. At the time of the first launch of the ship, all these combat elements were under development.

With all these plans, by the time of the ship's first flight, there was no clear understanding of its combat missions. There was no unity among the specialists involved in the project. Among the leaders of the country were both supporters and ardent opponents of the creation of "Buran". But the leading developer of Buran, Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky, has always supported the concept of reusable devices. The position of Defense Minister Dmitry Ustinov, who saw the shuttles as a threat to the USSR and demanded a worthy response to the American program, played a role in the appearance of the Buran.

It was the fear of "new space weapons" that forced the Soviet leadership to follow the path of overseas competitors. At first, the ship was even thought not so much as an alternative, but as an exact copy of the shuttle. The USSR intelligence mined the blueprints of the American ship back in the mid-1970s, and now the designers had to build their own. But the difficulties that arose forced the developers to look for unique solutions.

So, engines became one of the main problems. The USSR did not have a power plant equal in its characteristics to the American SSME. Soviet engines turned out to be larger, heavier and had less thrust. But the geographic conditions of the Baikonur cosmodrome, on the contrary, required more thrust in comparison with the conditions of Cape Canaveral. The fact is that the closer the launch pad is to the equator, the more useful mass the same type of launch vehicle can put into orbit. The advantage of the American cosmodrome over Baikonur was estimated at about 15%. All this led to the fact that the design of the Soviet ship had to be changed in the direction of reducing the mass.

In total, 1200 enterprises of the country worked on the creation of "Buran", and during its development, 230 unique
technologies.

The first flight

The ship received its name "Buran" just before the first - and, as it turned out, the last - launch, which took place on November 15, 1988. "Buran" was launched from the "Baikonur" cosmodrome "and 205 minutes later, having circled the planet twice, landed there. Only two people in the world could see the takeoff of a Soviet ship with their own eyes - a pilot of a MiG-25 fighter and a flight operator of a cosmodrome: "Buran" flew without a crew, and from the moment of takeoff to touching the ground, it was controlled by an onboard computer.

The flight of the ship became a unique event. For the first time in all the time of space flights, a reusable device was able to independently return to Earth. In this case, the deviation of the ship from the center line was only three meters. According to eyewitnesses, some dignitaries did not believe in the success of the mission, believing that the ship would crash on landing. Indeed, when the device entered the atmosphere, its speed was 30 thousand km / h, so the "Buran" had to maneuver to slow down - but in the end the flight went off with a bang.

The Soviet specialists had something to be proud of. And although the Americans had much more experience in this area, their shuttles could not land on their own. However, pilots and cosmonauts are far from always ready to entrust their lives to the autopilot, and subsequently, the possibility of manual landing was added to the Buran software.

Peculiarities

Buran was built according to the tailless aerodynamic design and had a delta wing. Like its overseas gathering, it was quite large: 36.4 m in length, wingspan - 24 m, launch weight - 105 tons. The spacious all-welded cabin could accommodate up to ten people.

Thermal protection was one of the most important elements of the Buran's design. In some places of the vehicle during takeoff and landing, the temperature could reach 1430 ° C. To protect the ship and crew, carbon-carbon composites, quartz fiber and felt materials were used. The total weight of the heat-shielding materials exceeded 7 tons.

The large cargo hold made it possible to take on board large cargo, for example, space satellites. To launch such vehicles into space, "Buran" could use a huge manipulator, similar to the one on board the shuttle. The total carrying capacity of the Buran was 30 tons.

Two stages were involved in launching the ship. On the initial stage During the flight, four missiles with liquid-propellant engines RD-170, the most powerful of all liquid-propellant engines ever created, undocked from the Buran. The thrust of the RD-170 was 806.2 tf, and its operating time was 150 s. Each such engine had four nozzles. The second stage of the spacecraft consists of four RD-0120 liquid oxygen-hydrogen engines installed on the central fuel tank. The operating time of these engines was up to 500 s. After the fuel was used up, the ship undocked from the huge tank and continued its flight on its own. The shuttle itself can be considered the third stage of the space complex. In general, the Energia launch vehicle was one of the most powerful in the world, and had a very great potential.

Probably the main requirement for the Energia-Buran program was maximum reusability. Indeed, the only disposable part of this complex was to be a giant fuel tank. However, unlike the engines of American shuttles, which gently splashed down in the ocean, Soviet boosters landed in the steppe near Baikonur, so it was rather problematic to reuse them.

Another feature of the "Buran" was that its main engines were not part of the apparatus itself, but were on the launch vehicle - or rather, on the fuel tank. In other words, all four RD-0120 engines burned out in the atmosphere, while the shuttle engines returned with it. In the future, Soviet designers wanted to make the RD-0120 reusable, and this would significantly reduce the cost of the Energia-Buran program. " In addition, the ship was supposed to receive two built-in jet engines for maneuvers and landing, but by its first flight the device was not equipped with them and was actually a "bare" glider. Like its American counterpart, the Buran could land only once - in case of an error, there was no second chance.

A big plus was that the Soviet concept made it possible to put into orbit not only a ship, but also additional cargo weighing up to 100 tons. The domestic shuttle had some advantages over shuttles. For example, it could take on board up to ten people (versus seven crew members at the shuttle) and was able to spend more time in orbit - about 30 days, while the longest shuttle flight was only 17.

Unlike the shuttle, it had Buran and a crew rescue system. At low altitude, the pilots could eject, and if the unforeseen situation above had happened, the ship would separate from the launch vehicle and land in the manner of an airplane.

What's the bottom line?

The fate of "Buran" from its very birth was not easy, and the collapse of the USSR only exacerbated the difficulties. By the early 1990s, 16.4 billion Soviet rubles (about $ 24 billion) had been spent on the Energia-Buran program, while its further prospects were very vague. Therefore, in 1993, the Russian leadership decided to abandon the project. By that time, two spaceships had been built, one more was in production, and the fourth and fifth were just being laid.

In 2002, the first and only space flight Buran died when the roof of one of the buildings of the Baikonur cosmodrome collapsed. The second ship remained in the museum of the cosmodrome and is the property of Kazakhstan. The half-painted third sample could be seen at the MAKS-2011 air show. The fourth and fifth apparatus were no longer completed.

“Speaking about the American shuttle and our Buran, one must first of all understand that these programs were military, both the one and the other,” says Pavel Bulat, an aerospace specialist, Ph.D. - The Buran's scheme was more progressive. Separately, the rocket, separately - the payload. There was no need to talk about any economic efficiency, but in technical terms, the Buran-Energia complex was much better. There is nothing forced in the fact that Soviet engineers refused to place engines on the ship. We designed a separate rocket with a side-hung payload. The rocket had specific characteristics unsurpassed neither before nor after. She could be rescued. Why put an engine on a ship in such conditions? ... It's just a rise in price and a decrease in weight efficiency. And organizationally: the rocket was made by RSC Energia, the glider - by NPO Molniya. On the contrary, for the United States it was a forced decision, not only a technical one, but a political one. The boosters were made with a solid rocket engine to load the manufacturers. "Buran", although it was made on the direct orders of Ustinov, "like a shuttle", but was verified from a technical point of view. It really turned out to be much more perfect. The program was closed - it's a pity, but, objectively, there was no payload for either the rocket or the plane. It took a year to prepare for the first launch. Therefore, they would go broke on such launches. To make it clear, the cost of one launch was approximately equal to the cost of a Slava-class missile cruiser.

Of course, "Buran" took over many features of its American progenitor. But the shuttle and Buran were structurally very different. Both ships had both indisputable advantages and objective disadvantages. Despite the progressive concept of Buran, disposable ships were, are, and will remain much cheaper ships for the foreseeable future. Therefore, the closure of the Buran project, as well as the rejection of shuttles, seems to be the right decision.

The history of the creation of the shuttle and "Buran" makes us think once again about how deceiving, at first glance, promising technologies are deceptive. Of course, new reusable devices will sooner or later see the light of day, but what kind of ships they will be is a different question.

There is another side to the issue. During the creation of Buran, the space industry received invaluable experience that could be used in the future to create other reusable ships... The very fact of the successful development of "Buran" speaks of the highest technological level of the USSR.

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