Failure to launch
ALTHOUGH THEY BEAR a
striking resemblance to the
Space Shuttle, the two craft
gathering dust inside this
gigantic hangar have nothing to
do with NASA. This is a pair of
Buran-class orbiters developed
by the USSR during the late
1970s and 80s.
The Buran (Russian for
blizzard) programme was
initiated in response to NASA’s
success with the Space
Shuttle. The Soviet Union was
concerned that NASA’s newest
vehicle might be used for
military purposes, which drove
it to build an equivalent of its
own. The Russians didn’t want a
vehicle that mirrored the Shuttle
so closely, but aerodynamic
analysis showed that the US
design was almost ideal.
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The one and only time a
Buran orbiter took o� was
during an unmanned test flight
on 15 November 1988. The
remote-controlled vehicle
made two orbits of Earth
before landing at Kazakhstan’s
Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Four more Buran orbiters and
a host of full-scale test models
were under construction
during that maiden flight, two
of which can be seen here – the
Ptichka (Little Bird) shuttle in
the foreground with one of
the test models behind. They
were never completed because
the fall of the Soviet Union in
1991 led to the cancellation of
the Buran programme and the
orbiters were left to ruin.
PHOTO: S DMITRII ANATOLEVICH