The Buran Thread

[Chris Bergin]

Our article again too:

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2013/11/remembering-buran-shuttles-estranged-soviet-cousin/

[woods170]

I love how much Roscosmos is tweeting for Buran today

https://twitter.com/roscosmos/status/1063012540307914752

That is mainly because Roscosmos doesn't have all that much left to tweet about.

Personally I wouldn't tweet for a project that was the single biggest boondoggle the Soviet space program ever saw. Not to mention one of the least successful results that ever came out of the Soviet space program.
It was a massive waste of money, manpower and resources and only served to hasten the collapse of the Russian space program when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

[Cremalera]

Buran is great machine.With it, I quit smoking at school.Half a year after Buran flight, the state introduced coupons for tobacco, sugar, vodka,etc.

[catdlr]

"Buran" will return

TV studio Roscosmos
Published on Nov 15, 2018

“Buran” is the first reusable rocket plane in the world that made a space flight in automatic mode on November 15, 1988. He was called a digital ship ahead of time. Many Burana instruments and systems were installed on the next-generation spacecraft.
https://buran.tass.ru/ Buran. Debriefing (joint project of TASS and TV studio Roscosmos)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-_cFpsRY_c?t=001

[Lars-J]

My apologies if this has been posted earlier, but this is a great short video about the Buran project, contrasted and compared with the Shuttle:

[Blackstar]

That video is a death by a million cuts. There are all kinds of little statements that are not really true, like "quietly building a second launch site for the shuttle, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California." Quietly? It was in the newspapers.

And there's the claim that the shuttle could recover a Soviet satellite--well, maybe the Soviets thought that, but it was totally impractical.

I know that these videos are made for a general audience, but they end up spreading falsehoods, and then lots of people believe the wrong stuff rather than the real facts.

[Jorge]

That video is a death by a million cuts. There are all kinds of little statements that are not really true, like "quietly building a second launch site for the shuttle, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California." Quietly? It was in the newspapers.

And there's the claim that the shuttle could recover a Soviet satellite--well, maybe the Soviets thought that, but it was totally impractical.

This one at least had a kernel of truth. Baseline Reference Mission 3B was a single-orbit satellite retrieval mission launching and landing from VAFB to an orbital inclination of 104 degrees. But it wasn't really intended to retrieve Soviet birds... rather, it would have retrieved US spacecraft launched by the corresponding BRM-3A mission. The Soviets had little use for a 104-degree orbit. And more to the point, the actual as-built shuttle system was incapable of executing BRM-3B (totally impractical, as you say), and it was quietly deleted from the program's Baseline Reference Missions... ironically, around the time the Buran program started.

[thammond]

So What exactly is the BRM-3A Mission?  I get the cross range requirement for an abort once around on a polar mission.  Not sure what the urgency would be to land right away after satellite deployment though.  The only thing that comes to mind would be a concern that it might have been attacked if on a military mission in a time of conflict, thus minimize exposure by landing quickly.

[TCizadlo]

So What exactly is the BRM-3A Mission?  I get the cross range requirement for an abort once around on a polar mission.  Not sure what the urgency would be to land right away after satellite deployment though.  The only thing that comes to mind would be a concern that it might have been attacked if on a military mission in a time of conflict, thus minimize exposure by landing quickly.

BRM-3A was the once-around payload deployment mission.

Mission 1 was at one point the tug launch and retrieval mission (the 65klbs to LEO requirement) while Mission 2 was the space station resupply profile. Mission 4 was the 30 day Earth observation flight. From what I remember, Mission 4 didn't last all that long into the design process.

[B. Hendrickx]

https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/antonov-an-225-kiev-ukraine/index.html

CNN article on the unfinished second An-225/Mriya aircraft, which was supposed to transport Buran and elements of the Energiya rocket. It is now sitting in a hangar on the outskirts of Kiev.