Rare photos of survived Burans.

[Kryten]

As I've already noted, one of the Burans, 2.01 ('Burya' according to most sources) is already preserved and is regularly on public display.

[Mighty1]

I definitely stared at those photos awhile. Then I went and read the entire wiki page for the plane. Imagine if the Soviets Union survived, and they had 6 of these things doin space stuff. Imagine what that would have done to the space race.

Beautiful pictures.

I know I read somewhere that the Soviets built the Burans because the Americans did it, and your arch enemy can't have something that you don't have. But after the first flight there was some head scraching in the soviet ranks because they couln't see the efficiency in space planes. Rockets were better.

Now, this could be just soviet propaganda as to why they didn't do more flights but maybe there is some truth in this. The Americans pushed on with the shuttle because it supported a lot of the jobs assotiated with it even if it cost 500000 mil. $ to launch one (or was it 1 billion)

[Rickenbacker]

Makes sense. Space planes are a bad idea, at least with today's technology, and the Shuttle ended up costing way too much for what it did - imagine what NASA could have done with all that money if spent on other stuff! Then again, maybe they wouldn't have gotten all that money if they hadn't had a prestige project like the shuttle...

Shame about the Buran, though. Seems like it was, if not better than the American shuttle, it was at least as good. And it doesn't hurt to have more than one way to get into space...

[tjsnh]

For all the Buran enthusiasts out there, and amazing picture album of Pitchka and Baikal rotting away in the hanger before Baikal was moved to Moscow.

http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html

[Kagame]

Um, are those two engines I spy on the semi-complete one? 'Cos engines are worth a lot of money. As are space-rated things like, oh, I don't know, a spare Buran. Maybe if one were to half the payload capacity, fill the resulting space with fuel, install a couple of Merlin 1d engines (or whatever is commerically available, Blue Origin actually has some really good designs...) If the whole mission is flown autonomously, then there's no need for the life support system to be restored- the most difficult and expensive part. We could just take the crew cabin out wholesale and fill the resulting space and mass fraction with a top-of-the-line S-band communications and control system, and more importantly, MORE FUEL! (I don't know about you, but I am not going to re-enter in anything that had its origins buried under a pile of bird dookie.)

Excuse me while I go all Wikipedia Space Program on this idea. This is actually viable. I'm not saying the Buran would fly as-is, but sink maybe five hundred million into it, and you'd practically be able to set your own price for gross tonnage to LEO.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Kagame
This is not KSP. LEO, not LKO. BAKA!

[Dizzle]

Saw this on an urbex forum and had to make sure it was here. This is seriously cool stuff.

[Nibb31]

Um, are those two engines I spy on the semi-complete one? 'Cos engines are worth a lot of money. As are space-rated things like, oh, I don't know, a spare Buran. Maybe if one were to half the payload capacity, fill the resulting space with fuel, install a couple of Merlin 1d engines (or whatever is commerically available, Blue Origin actually has some really good designs...) If the whole mission is flown autonomously, then there's no need for the life support system to be restored- the most difficult and expensive part. We could just take the crew cabin out wholesale and fill the resulting space and mass fraction with a top-of-the-line S-band communications and control system, and more importantly, MORE FUEL! (I don't know about you, but I am not going to re-enter in anything that had its origins buried under a pile of bird dookie.)

Excuse me while I go all Wikipedia Space Program on this idea. This is actually viable. I'm not saying the Buran would fly as-is, but sink maybe five hundred million into it, and you'd practically be able to set your own price for gross tonnage to LEO.

Spacecraft are not Lego. Rockets don't work that way.

Buran doesn't have engines. It has the equivalent of the Shuttle's OMS thrusters. It was launched on the side of a huge Energia rocket. Its structure is designed for sidemount launch loads, not thrust from the rear end.

It weighs 80 tons, so even if you filled it to the brim with propellant it would not make it to orbit. It would need something the size of SLS to get to orbit. Half a billion dollars wouldn't even pay for the trade studies.

Old unmaintained space hardware is worth zero as a spacecraft. It can go to a museum or on display as plane-on-pole at Baikonur spaceport, but that's it. It's dead Jim.

[Nibb31]

There's already a thread here:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/124524-Rare-photos-of-survived-Burans

[viktor19]

Pitchka

Sorry to interrupt, but in my language (distant relative of russian) it's a vulgar word for a female-only body part.

It's ptichka [bird] IIRC.

[Kryten]

That's actually Ptichka and a structural test article, pictured quite recently. Note the blank RCS ports on the test article.

[Vanamonde]

Overlapping threads merged.

[basic.syntax]

Ars Technica has joined the list of sites commenting about these great photos... they don't have much more to say about it, though.

[A35K]

I read on Wikipedia that they had interest in reviving the Buran and another weird spaceplane program.

Did you mean this:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105

Anyway, wasn't there some talk about reviving the Buran after the Shuttle retired? But then it turned out as expected that it wasn't viable.

[Kryten]

There's been talk at a lot of times and from a lot of people, but nothing more than that. Krunichev were planning to propose a repackaged Energiya called Yenisei 5 for the SHLV program, but that wouldn't have been compatible with Buran.

[Herr Rictus Bingo]

There's a Buran in a Museum in Germany "Speyer" (Technik Museum Speyer).They bought it and completly restored it a long time ago.

There is a various pieces of European and Russian spacecrafts there

[John FX]

http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html

there are far too many pictures to post so I have just posted the link to the site, is in Russian which I don't speak...

I did have a look at the threads apologies if this is a repost.

[xenomorph555]

This has been brought up so many times in the past month, people need to stop posting it.

Also it's a HAB not a shuttle factory.

[Vanamonde]

This has been brought up so many times in the past month, people need to stop posting it.

Translation: Thank you for thoughtfully bringing our attention to this, John FX. However, there is an existing thread for it, and so these will be merged now.

[Mr. Pseudonym]

This relates to the AN-225's story. In the beginning, the AN-225 was designed as a heavy lift vehicle with the Buran and its Energia boosters in mind. It was meant to take the whole Energia-Buran system from one place to the next. Unfortunately, we all saw how the Buran program ended. The AN-225 had no practical use. It sat for eight years, gathering dust and on-ground hours, before someone realized "hey wait, we could use something like this!". So, the government had it repaired and refurbished, and now, the AN-225 is one of the greatest planes known to mankind, being able to haul very large cargo, at an extremely fast (comparatively) rate.

Unfortunately, that's where the Buran and the Mirya's stories differ: the AN-225 has a practical application.

[A35K]

I know reviving the Buran is unreasonable and unrealistic, however reviving the Energia lifter could be more useful, since according to wikipedia it could carry into orbit a payload heavier than what Saturn V could!!! (Provided that this payload has its own propulsion to circularize the orbit.)