30 years of the Burán
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30 years of the Burán
On November 15, 1988, the Soviet ferry Burán made his first and only unmanned flight, which, at the same time, was the second and last flight of the giant energy rocket. The people in charge of the program decided to launch the Burán, in spite of the fact that the ship was not completely ready -it did not have life support systems or controls for the crew, but neither other important systems of the vehicle-, to make the project known to the world before it was canceled by Mikhail Gorbachev. The Energy-Burán program was born at the beginning of the 70s as a result of a misunderstanding and the paranoid mentality of the Cold War. In the United States, NASA was developing the space shuttle with financial assistance from the Pentagon and the military had played a key role in deciding the size of the cargo bay of the Pentagon. shuttle, which was to accommodate large spy satellites such as the KH-9 Hexagon. Pentagon participation sparked panic in Moscow and the Soviet military came to the conclusion that the shuttle it could be used as a weapon in a preventive nuclear attack against the Soviet Union. The shuttle would take off from the Vandenberg base in California and, following a polar orbit, use its hypersonic glide ability to change the orbital plane, partially bypassing the Soviet early warning radars and then fly over Moscow, where it would release a "gift" in form of nuclear warheads.
The Burán shuttle with the 1L Energy rocket on the launching pad of Area 110 of Baikonur (Roscosmos).
Experts who advised the Soviet military insisted that this scenario, although possible, did not make strategic sense. But in the Kremlin they did not want to take risks. If NASA and the Pentagon were spending billions of dollars to develop a manned spacecraft with military applications, the Soviet Union would not be left behind. And, in this way, the MTKS program ('reusable space transport system') was born in the mid 70s. The Soviet aerospace industry proposed other designs more adapted to the needs and idiosyncrasy of the country's technology, but the Kremlin imposed that the replication of the shuttle It had to be as similar as possible. In fact, it was considered to build an identical copy - the OS-120- with main engines located in the orbiter and solid fuel accelerators. Finally, a compromise was reached. The orbiter would be an almost identical copy of the shuttle, although with very significant design differences. For example, for the first time in a spacecraft a position control and orbital propulsion system based on kerosene and liquid oxygen was used; and the structure of the ship would be titanium and not aluminum. In addition it would take jet engines to facilitate the landing maneuver and would be able to fly automatically without crew.
The Burán when it was still called Baikal (Roscosmos).
On the other hand, the Burán would be launched by a giant rocket in charge of the design office TsKBEM of Valentín Glushkó, heiress of the OKB-1 of Sergei Koroliov. Glushko, who was vehemently opposed to the construction of a copy of the shuttle American, adapted the RLA launcher family project to the requirements of the Soviet military and, in this way, the launcher could be used for other purposes other than launching the Burán, such as traveling to the Moon and Mars or launching giant space stations . Needless to say, the military was in favor of using it for other tasks, such as putting in orbit Skif combat laser stations. The development of Energy was a huge effort in terms of propulsion for the Soviet Union. It was necessary to create the cryogenic engine RD-0120 of great power for the central stage and the RD-170 engine for the lateral blocks (the RD-170 and its derivatives are still today the most powerful liquid fuel engines ever built). The creation of the thermal shield of the Burán and other related systems were not simpler. The Burán would use in Baikonur the installations of the ill-fated lunar program N1-L3, the largest in the history of cosmonautics.
The Burán after his only mission (www.buran.ru).
In the 80s it was already evident that the fears of the Soviet leadership on the US shuttle were unfounded. As a result, the Energy-Burán program was delayed more and more, although the managers decided to transform it into a response to the Reagan SDI ("Star Wars") initiative. But then Gorbachev came and his policy of thawing. The project then became an annoying stumbling block between the relations between the two superpowers. In addition Gorbachev was determined to reduce the size of the Soviet military complex and the Burán was an expensive program, although not too much compared to other military projects. But it was very striking and, therefore, an easy target. The office TsKBEM of Glushkó, now known as NPO Energía, in charge of the program in general and of the energy rocket, as well as Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky, of the NPO Mólniya office, in charge of the design of the orbiters themselves, were not agreement on the strategy to follow to defend the program. For Glushkó the priority was the energy launcher, which was the key to conquer the solar system. Obviously, Lozino-Lozinsky defended the shuttles and wanted to launch a mission as soon as possible to demonstrate that the project was viable.
Interior of the OK-GLI booth, identical to the standard Burán (www.buran.ru).
In 1988 the program had suffered countless delays and rumors that came from the Kremlin pointed to an imminent cancellation. The Burán program - "snow storm" in Russian - included the construction of up to five shuttles, but only one had been officially baptized - the first one, the 1K -, which received the name of Baikal. The people in charge of the project decided to accelerate the calendar and play it. They would launch the 1K in November 1988, if the Kremlin did not cancel the program earlier. The 1K Baikal shuttle was renamed the program, Burán, to give it more visibility. The weather conditions in Baikonur on November 15 were clearly adverse, but the mission had already been delayed several times and the managers decided to double their bet. The takeoff was a success and the Burán made a single orbit before automatically landing at the airport north of Baikonur, built expressly for the project. The Burán flew with the doors of the loading bay closed because the radiators of the cooling system were not ready for this mission. At the last moment the flight almost ended in disaster when the control of the mission thought to destroy the vehicle to detect that it deviated from the intended course, but the decision of the computers of the orbiter turned out to be correct and the Burán landed without problems. Everything had gone according to plan. Better even.
The Burán with the Energy way of the ramp (Roscosmos).
The 2K shuttle on the Baikonur launch ramp in May 1991 for integration tests with a model of the Energy rocket.
The Energy-Burán program was the zenith of Soviet cosmonautics technology. Many Western analysts did not believe what they saw. After years of crushing propaganda insisting that Soviet space technology was in the Paleolithic with respect to Europe and the United States, the automatic flight of the Burán was an incredible incident. Literally: something like that could not be possible. But the Burán's only mission was at the same time the swan song of the most expensive, most complex and most ambitious program in the history of Soviet cosmonautics. Only three years after its only flight the country that had created it disappeared. The Energy-Burán program had outweighed the enormous and ill-fated lunar project N1-L3. And yet, a differential of the N1-L3, its legacy practically disappeared completely years after the fall of the Soviet Union, with honorable exceptions, such as the APAS coupling system of the ISS or the Zenit rocket -developed as a lateral block. of Energy- and its powerful RD-171 engine. The huge effort invested in the program quickly unraveled as if it were a dream. Ígor Volk and Alexánder Ivanchénkov never piloted a shuttle of the Burán program on their way home and the Burán or the 2K shuttle never connected with the Mir station. And, of course, we never saw a manned mission to Mars launched by Energy.
This is how the hangar of MIK-112 where the original Burán (www.buran.ru) was kept.
The shuttle 2K (1.02) stored in the MKK building in Baikonur.
In an ironic play of fate, the original Burán shuttle was destroyed on May 12, 2002, when the hangar roof of the MIK-112 building collapsed where the dream of the righteous slept. The only almost complete shuttle that has survived, the 2K, slowly rot in the neighboring MKK building in Baikonur. Every so often you receive a visit from youtubers and vandals - or both - that sneak into the building to record the umpteenth video about "an abandoned Soviet space shuttle" that will be forgotten within a few months. Thirty years later, the legacy of the Burán is scattered in museums of Kazjistán, Russia and Germany in the form of sad remains of a future that never came true. If it had been a better future, that is another story.
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