![]() So, after all that effort, why did neither the Buran nor the Energia rocket ever fly in space again? The November flight would be the Buran program’s only flight into space, and even the Energia rocket would never fly again. Indeed, Mir had been set up with two docking ports capable of handling Buran (technically one port for Buran, one for the telescope). There were plans for the second Buran shuttle, “Ptichka” (name meaning “little bird”) to do a manned flight to the Mir space station to deliver an X-ray telescope payload. There was big talk of what the Buran program would do next and about a year later, another Soviet shuttle and Energia rocket was seen stacked on the pad at Baikonur for testing. They had done it!Īfter the mission and a post-flight inspection, Buran made an appearance at the Paris Airshow in 1989 on the back of the An-225 transport jet, to date still the largest heavy transport aircraft in the world. Joy appeared on the faces of the many program managers and engineers who had spent years working on the Soviet shuttle. Two orbits later it fired its deorbit engines and returned to Baikonur for a picture perfect automated landing, a feat which not even the American shuttle had done. But even though nobody saw the vehicle as it went upwards, everything seemed to be working perfectly. The stack disappeared into the clouds shortly after liftoff. When Buran did fly on November 15 th, 1988, it lived up to its namesake as the launch area was in the middle of a snowstorm. One attempt was made in October to fly Buran, but the launch called off at the last minute due to a technical fault. Even though they missed out on that opportunity, chances were good that Buran could fly before Atlantis did on STS-27, and give the West the perception that the Soviets had a new capability which was “equal” to the Americans. For those two-and-a-half years, the Soviets had commanded the space headlines with their successful launching and occupation of the Mir space station, and Buran would have added to the prestige if they had gotten it to fly before the Americans did. The program went through a two-and-a half-year delay before shuttle Discovery rose into orbit on STS-26 in September 1988. In 1986, NASA’s program was grounded after the loss of space shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51L. But it likely would have taken an additional two years to finish those systems for either a manned or unmanned two-day flight.Īs to why the decision was made to fly the unfinished Buran in 1988, it probably had a lot to do with NASA’s shuttle plans. Several cosmonauts in the program tried to lobby for the shuttle to be flown manned on an all-up test, just like Columbia (STS-1, flown on Apby the United States). The second would be a test of the other systems to show that Buran could stay in orbit once there. One would be a two orbit test to verify getting up and getting back. ![]() Two plans were apparently on the table to fly the ship unmanned. Work on the orbiter’s exterior, guidance and propulsion system was complete, but lots of work was still needed on its life support, heat exchangers (in the payload bay doors), and orbital power systems. ![]() A few short weeks before the first flight of the booster with the “Polyus” payload, Glushko made the decision to call it “Energia” and the name was painted on the booster in big red letters.Įven with all the work that had been accomplished, Buran was still not a 100% finished system when the decision was made to fly it in late 1988. The rocket booster gained the “Energia” name in similar fashion. But when it was mated with its booster, it had “Buran” painted on the side in an italics-style font, and that became the name when it was revealed publicly to the world press. The Proton rocket was named in a similar way because its first payload was a science satellite called “Proton.” When the first Soviet orbiter was rolled out, it did not have a name painted on the side. In the case of Salyut, it was known by the acronym DOS until just before launch when somebody suggested calling it “Salyut” (Russian for “salute”) since it would be flying on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s flight. Soviet spacecraft and rocket programs tend to be known by three word acronyms when they are in development. So why is the program called Buran, which means “Snowstorm” in Russian? That has to do with Soviet naming traditions in regards to space programs. Here is part two of space historian Jay Chladek’s series about the real history of the Buran orbiter and its launch system, Energia. Photo by author Kobel, from Wikimedia Commons.
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