Why was the Soviet space shuttle left to rot?
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After NASA announced its space shuttle program, the Soviet Union responded with its own, nearly identical version. The Soviet Buran space shuttle and NASA's own shuttle look pretty similar, in large part because the Soviet version copied the American one. But why? And why didn't the Soviet shuttle program take off like the American one did? For more on Buran and the shuttle program that barely got off the ground, check out the latest post on VintageSpace: http://www.popsci.com/why-soviet-space-shuttle-was-left-rot Photographer Ralph Mirebs has some stunning images of two unflown orbiters languishing in a hangar on his livejournal page: http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html Aviation Week has a gallery of the destroyed Buran after the hangar it was in collapsed: http://aviationweek.com/blog/photos-soviet-shuttle-dreams-dust Thumbnail image via oscial.co
Comments
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I'll make sure that I never miss an episode because you hot and me horny.
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Because the Sovjets discovered that the whole American spaceprogram was fucking bullshit.
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Also if I remember correctly, I read that when the Russian shuttle landed, it skidded off the runway
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English is not my native language so I haven't understood a half of words. Too fast, too fluent. It was interesting for me to hear what american people think about that fairytale from my childhood.
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very cute. the chick not the shuttle.
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I never heard the name of Buran, but I saw these pictures about a year ago. I thought it was sad that anyone left something so cool to rot like that.
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Actually, the crossrange requirement wasn't about just landing in CA -- it was about taking off from CA and doing a polar orbit. If you want to do a one-orbit mission and fly over the USSR, the way to go is launch southward, go over the south pole, fly over USSR, then over the north pole and down again. The only way to do such a launch without launching over lots of inhabited area (dangerous) is to launch from Vandenburg AFB. (Plus you could do it at night and people wouldn't know much about it happening.) So that's a once-around mission. The problem with doing that is that if you do a one-orbit mission, the launch site will have moved ~1500 miles eastward during your 90-minute flight. (or more if you've done an almost-but-not-completely-polar orbit, depending on what part of the USSR you want to fly over) So you'll have to change your flight path, while moving. That's not practical in space; the amount of fuel involved is very very high. So instead, you want to make the turn while you're dealing with some kind of atmosphere. That means you're making the turn while re-entering (and going mach 20) and that requires really big wings. So all of that is why the shuttle has such big wings. If it were only going to fly missions where it could stay in orbit until a suitable landing site were more or less under its path, it could have had wings that were about 1/4 the size of the ones they had. Of course, the USAF never followed through on this, and the shuttle never launched from Vandenburg, and those wings were an unnecessary element of the shuttle for 30+ years, adding weight and hunk-of-icy-foam targets to the shuttle for its entire program, raising the cost of operations dramatically.
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Nice video, but if you could just speak somewhat slower, that would be nice, especially for these of us of non-English/US origin :)
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Russian word Buran "буран" Translates to snowstorm or blizzard
Also it similar dimensions but a VEEEEEERY different design! it also had the capability to launch off the back of the Antonov An-225 (which was designed just to carry the Buran). on top of that the engine design was completley different, the Buran used its engines only to manuver unlike the Shuttle which used its engines during lauch
use google foo do not confuse people -
One of the Buran shuttles (OK-GLI) used for atmospheric testing is located at Technik Museum Speyer in Germany..
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One of the surviving Burans is in Speyer, Germany. Pretty impressive.
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There was one of these in a museum in Sydney in 2001. I'm not sure whether or not its still there.
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The Buran's automatic landing was just that: automatic. This is a very simplistic overview, and largely worthless. There are a number of factual errors (the cross-range capability of the Shuttle was to pass over the pole & drop nukes on the USSR - hence the big wings, a requirement dropped, the motivation behind the building of the Buran, etc, etc). This was not lost on the Soviets: they couldn't work out what the Shuttle was for, if not for that. And ICBMs are cheaper & better. Hence they "copied" the specs of the Shuttle, but improved it (fully automatic, separate launcher (Energia & payload (Buran)) but basically it was a white elephant, a huge waste of money. To some extent Glushko, having been part of losing the Moon race & Mars race wanted an epitaph for his undoubted genius. So he also pushed it through. The loss of the Energia platform is a huge shame.
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No doubt russians were (are) monsters. But the ship wasnt a simple copypaste. The technology was quite different. No own engines, could be taken up with any rocket of respective power, for example. Fully autonomous as well. A bit sad piece of history. So much money (stolen from the eastern european countries) and engineering effort wasted for nothing. Btw one of these can be seen in Speyr musem in Germany. Cheers!
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I saw a real buran in the German space museum in speyer
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We have one in a museum I went multiple times. They have a concorde too, it's pretty cool.
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these videos weren't brought to you by these advertisements. these ads jumped on these videos. these videos are being ruined. boycott all that force us to watch
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screw Toyota
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I heard of the Soviet Shuttle, but never knew the name
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being a russian, its very depressive to realise that hopes and dreams of entire generation are lost forever
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