Category Energiya-Buran

One of the lessons learned from the ill-fated N-1 program was the need to build a test stand for full-scale test firings of the Energiya’s rocket stages. The site selected for the test stand was situated several kilometers to the northwest of the Raskat complex, where any explosions would not damage buildings in the Technical Zone. The test stand was designed to support both individual as well as joint test firings of the core stage and strap-on boosters. The opportunity to test the rocket’s engines in actual flight configuration minimized the risk of catastrophic launch failures and was one of the reasons the Energiya-Buran pads remained relatively close to the Technical Zone.

Designed to withstand the pressure of an Energiya rocket bolted to the pad and producing 3,600 tons of thrust for dozens of seconds, the test stand could also be easily converted into a launch pad for Energiya rockets with payloads other than Buran and also for the massive Vulkan rocket, an Energiya with eight strap-on

boosters. It therefore became known as the Universal Test Stand and Launch Pad (UKSS or 17P31).

The UKSS had one fixed service tower, almost identical to the “fueling tower” of the Energiya-Buran pads. It also featured an equally high mobile tower that provided access to virtually every part of the rocket and was equipped with a crane for hoisting operations. The UKSS had one enormous flame trench with a depth of 40 m that could easily be seen on satellite photographs of the cosmodrome. Being exposed to much higher temperatures and acoustic pressures than the Raskat pads, the UKSS had a much more elaborate sound suppression water system, consisting of three reservoirs containing a total of 18,000 m3 of water which was sprayed onto the pad at a maximum rate of 18 m3 per second. The UKSS was surrounded by two lightning protection towers and several floodlight towers. A special propellant storage complex was built several kilometers from the pad. Several support facilities for the UKSS were located at the neighboring Site 250A. The most important of these was a control center some 3 km from the test stand which was designed to withstand an on-the-pad explosion.

The groundbreaking ceremony for the UKSS was held on 20 August 1978. The stand was supposed to have been ready for the first test firings in 1982, but construc­tion ran into serious delays. Initially, the prime contractor for the construction of the facility was NIIKhimmash, which operated several rocket engine test stands at a site north of Moscow not far from Zagorsk. However, because it was of the utmost importance to have the test stand ready before the Energiya-Buran pads, it was decided early on to assign the task to the leading launch pad design bureau KBOM, while NHkhimmash remained in charge of the actual test-firing program.

The first roll-out of an Energiya mock-up to the UKSS took place in early 1983. The pad was used for a series of core stage fueling tests with the Energiya 4M vehicle in 1985. Original plans for individual and joint test firings of the core stage and the strap-on boosters were severely curtailed. In 1986 the UKSS witnessed two test firings of the core stage of the Energiya 5S vehicle. These test firings were to continue with Energiya 6S, but in 1985 a decision was made to turn that vehicle into a flightworthy rocket (redesignated 6SL) and fly it with a payload called Polyus. As a result, the UKSS was converted into a launch pad much earlier than planned. The launch of Energiya 6SL took place on 15 May 1987 and, although the rocket operated flaw­lessly, the payload was not inserted into orbit due to a navigation error. The pad itself was seriously damaged because the sound suppression water system failed to operate (see Chapter 6) [15].

When Levchenko died of a brain tumor just eight months after his space mission, the new Buran back-up crew (Stankyavichus-Zabolotskiy) was again without spaceflight experience. Therefore, LII started pursuing another Soyuz mission, with Stankyavichus as the prime candidate.

The final decision to go ahead with the mission was jointly made in February 1989 by the Ministers of General Machine Building, the Aviation Industry, Public Health, and Defense as well as the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force, the head of UNKS (the “military space forces’’), and the President of the Academy of Sciences. The plan was for Stankyavichus to go up with Mir’s EO-6 resident crew (Solovyov – Balandin) aboard Soyuz TM-9 in September 1989 and return a week later with the EO-5 crew (Viktorenko-Serebrov) aboard Soyuz TM-8. Stankyavichus and Zabolotskiy got down to training at Star City in March 1989. At the time, the EO-6 crew was busy performing back-up duties for the EO-5 mission (then scheduled for launch in April 1989), which is why the two LII pilots were temporarily teamed up with the EO-6 back-up crews:

Viktor Afanasyev Gennadiy Manakov

Vitaliy Sevastyanov Gennadiy Strekalov

Rimantas Stankyavichus Viktor Zabolotskiy

As Stankyavichus got down to training, the Mir flight schedule underwent changes that would jeopardize his Soyuz mission. In February, due to delays in the launch of Mir add-on modules, the EO-5 prime and back-up flight engineers had swapped places, with Viktorenko and Balandin now scheduled to go up in April to be replaced by Solovyov and Serebrov in September. That in itself was no problem for Stankyavichus, but in March the Soyuz spacecraft he was supposed to fly in September was seriously damaged during testing in a vacuum chamber at the Baykonur cosmodrome and had to be sent back to NPO Energiya for repairs. This meant that it would not be available as a back-up vehicle for the launch of Soyuz TM-8 in April. As a result, a decision was made that the EO-4 crew (Volkov, Krikalyov, Polyakov) would return to Earth in April and leave Mir behind unmanned until September, when the originally planned EO-5 crew

(Viktorenko-Serebrov) would be launched on Soyuz TM-8. The ЕО-6/Soyuz TM-9 launch was delayed until February 1990.

At first sight, the only implication for Stankyavichus was that his mission would now take place in February 1990 rather than September 1989. However, because of the postponement, NPO Energiya now refused to fly Stankyavichus, arguing that the Soyuz TM-8 descent capsule would be needed to return 100 kg of additional cargo. In correspondence with MOM and NPO Energiya, LII officials and test pilots as well as the Minister of the Aviation Industry strongly urged to fly Stankyavichus in February 1990 anyway, citing several reasons.

First, the additional cargo could be returned in newly developed ballistic capsules called Raduga that were scheduled to begin flying on Progress spacecraft later in 1990. Second, the February mission possibly was Stankyavichus’ last oppor­tunity to fly for several years. A Japanese journalist was scheduled to fly during the EO-7/EO-8 handover in late 1990 and there was public pressure to fly a Soviet journalist before that during the EO-6/EO-7 handover in the summer of 1990. After that, all Soyuz passenger seats were reserved for foreign cosmonauts until at least 1993, by which time Buran was expected to make its first manned flight. An additional argument for urgency was that Stankyavichus was an ethnic Lithuanian, all this at a time when the spillover from the 1989 upheavals in Eastern Europe began reverberating throughout the Baltic republics. Indeed, Lithuania would become the first Baltic republic to proclaim its renewed independence in March 1990 [68].

Despite the pleas from MAP and LII, Stankyavichus and Zabolotskiy were forced to suspend their training at Star City in September 1989. Both were assigned to conduct one or more approach and landing tests on the BTS-002. Although the two did a preparatory ground run in December 1989, they would not take the vehicle to the skies. Another opportunity for Stankyavichus to get his space legs did present itself during the EO-6/EO-7 handover in August 1990. The third seat on Soyuz TM-10 became available due to delays in the Soviet journalist-in-space project, but for unknown reasons Stankyavichus was not offered the ride. Tragically, Stankyavichus died in a plane crash in Italy in September 1990. With no further Soyuz slots immediately available and the future of Buran ever more hanging in the balance, no further Soyuz familiarization flights were planned for the Buran back-up crew members that replaced him.

Skif-DM’s FSB section was delivered to Baykonur in May 1986, followed by the Payload Module in July 1986. Amazingly, the latter had been built virtually from scratch in less than a year’s time. Final assembly of the spacecraft took place in the Proton area of the cosmodrome. The originally planned launch date of September 1986 turned out to be overly optimistic and initially slipped to 15 February 1987 and later to April. In late January 1987 both Energiya 6SF and Polyus were transferred to the MZK, where they were mated on 3 February. Roll-out to the UKSS, which had been quickly modified to serve as a launch pad, took place on 11 February 1987.

Meanwhile, the political tides in Moscow had been turning against Skif-DM’s intended mission, which did not fit in with Mikhail Gorbachov’s propaganda campaign against America’s SDI program. During a US-Soviet summit in Reykjavik in October 1986, Gorbachov and Reagan had come close to striking a radical arms reduction deal, but the talks had finally stalled over Reagan’s refusal to abandon SDI. Despite all the carefully concocted cover-up stories for Skif-DM, the Russians were probably well aware that it wouldn’t take Western analysts long to figure out what the spacecraft’s real mission was. Clearly under political pressure, the State Commission in charge of the flight decided in February to cancel all the “battle station’’ related experiments—namely, deployment of the targets, tests of the laser-pointing mechanism, and release of the xenon and krypton gas. Save for the technological and geophysical experiments, Skif-DM would now essentially fly a passive one-month mission before deorbiting itself above the Pacific. One wonders if this type of mission wouldn’t have spawned even more rumors than it was supposed to avoid.

The Energiya-Skif-DM stack (also known as 14A02) spent more than three months on the pad, braving temperatures between —27° and +30°C. Finally, by early May all the tests and preparations had been completed. Actually, the launch could have taken place earlier, were it not for the fact that it was timed to coincide with a visit to Baykonur by Gorbachov in mid-May. Cosmodrome workers were not informed of the impending visit, but became suspicious when they were asked to repeat the same checks over and over again. There is conflicting information as to whether Gorbachov was supposed to watch the launch or not. One version has it that he was offered the opportunity to witness the launch, but declined. Other sources say

the State Commission in charge of the mission decided not to push its luck and delayed the launch from 12 May to 15 May, by which time Gorbachov would have returned to Moscow. Officially, Gorbachov would be told the launch had been postponed for technical reasons.

Gorbachov arrived at the space center’s Yubileynyy runway on 11 May and watched the launch of a Proton rocket with a Gorizont communications satellite later that day. On 12 May he was treated to a tour of the Energiya-Buran facilities. After inspecting the Energiya-Polyus poised for launch on the UKSS, Gorbachov was taken to one of the Energiya-Buran pads, where an Energiya rocket with the OK-MT Buran model strapped to its side had been erected for a series of tests. He also visited the Energiya and Buran assembly buildings.

As Boris Gubanov recalls in his memoirs, Gorbachov made several remarks during the tour that raised serious doubts about his support for the program and left a bitter aftertaste among the space officials accompanying him. He openly questioned whether Buran would have any future applications and on several occasions voiced his opposition to the militarization of space, of which Buran was supposed to be part and parcel. He even expressed skepticism about the readiness of Energiya, although later that day he informed the launch team that the Politburo had given its official approval for the launch. He also approved Glushko’s suggestion to officially call the rocket Energiya. Up till then the rocket had received no individual name, with “Buran” being used to refer to the combination of the rocket and the orbiter and “Buran-T” for the combination of the rocket and an unmanned payload canister. On 13 May, Gorbachov was on his way back to Moscow, after having watched the launch of a Zenit rocket with a Tselina-2 electronic intelligence satellite.

In another demonstration of glasnost, the TASS news agency issued a statement on Gorbachov’s visit later that day, saying:

“Right now preparations are underway at the cosmodrome to launch a new universal rocket carrier, capable of placing into near-Earth orbits both reusable orbital ships and large-size spacecraft for scientific and economic purposes, including modules for long-term space stations.’’

This was the first confirmation by TASS of the existence of a new heavy-lift launch system and a Soviet shuttle vehicle. However, there were still limits to openness when it came to the launch of an untried launch vehicle. While Soviet television and radio had begun carrying live coverage of manned Soyuz launches in March 1986, the exact launch date for Energiya was kept secret and TV images of the launch would not be released until after it had taken place.

The launch of Energiya was targeted for 15 May at 15:00 Moscow winter time (12: 00 gmt). Fueling of the rocket got underway at 8: 30 with the loading of liquid oxygen in the core stage and strap-on boosters. However, problems with the gaseous helium supply to one of the strap-on boosters and also a stuck valve in the core stage’s liquid hydrogen tank pushed back the launch 5.5 hours. By that time the sun had set at Baykonur, but, since the payload did not impose any launch window constraints, the launch team decided to press ahead. At T — 10 minutes the countdown entered the so-called “pre-launch phase’’, with all operations being controlled automatically. Any hold during this final part of the countdown would automatically lead to a scrub. A major malfunction did occur with less than a minute to go in the countdown, when the sound suppression water system could not be activated. Although this would lead to higher than usual thermal and acoustic loads on the vehicle and the pad, tests conducted at NIIkhimmash had shown that Energiya could safely lift off without the sound suppression water. Therefore, computers had been programmed not to stop the countdown in the unlikely event such a failure took place.

With about 9 seconds left in the countdown, Energiya’s four RD-0120 engines roared to life. As the huge cryogenic engines built up thrust, the four RD-170 engines of the strap-on rockets were ignited at T — 3 seconds and, with all engines having reached full thrust, Energiya 6SL leapt off the pad at 21: 30 Moscow time (17: 30 gmt), lighting up the night sky at Baykonur. Just moments later onlookers saw to their consternation how the rocket significantly leaned over in the direction of Polyus, only to stabilize itself as it cleared the tower. Energiya’s automatic stabiliza­tion system had been programmed to remain inactive until T + 3 seconds to ensure that it would not command the engine nozzles to gimbal as they emerged from the Blok-Ya launch table adapter. Therefore, the deviation from the trajectory had been more or less expected, but not everyone watching the launch was aware of this and for a few hair-raising moments it seemed as if Energiya would befall the same fate as its

illustrious predecessor, the N-1. For the next launch the stabilization system was programmed to kick in earlier to prevent a repeat of this scenario.

Having cleared the tower, Energiya initiated a roll and pitch maneuver to place itself on the proper azimuth for a 64.6° inclination orbit. There had been some debate in the months prior to launch whether to put Polyus into a 50.7° or 64.6° orbit. A launch resulting in the lower inclination would have allowed Energiya to be about 5 tons heavier, but at the same time would briefly carry the rocket over the territories of Mongolia, China, and Japan. An argument against a 64.6° inclination orbit was that launches were not possible between mid-May and August because the strap-on boosters and Polyus’ payload shroud would impact in the nesting grounds of the pink flamingo, a protected species that has its breeding season during that time of the year. In the end, concerns about Energiya debris raining down on foreign territory seem to have outweighed any environmental arguments.

Managers breathed a sigh of relief at T + 30 seconds, by which time Energiya 6SL had moved far enough downrange to prevent damage to the UKSS in case of an explosion. Also, the objectives of the originally planned combined static test firing of the core stage and strap-on boosters had now been achieved. Any success beyond that was a bonus as far as managers were concerned. To their delight, Energiya continued to perform outstandingly. The four strap-ons were separated from the core stage at T + 2m26s, and at T + 3m34s Polyus shed the shroud that had protected its upper FSB section against the aerodynamic pressures experienced during the early stages of launch. At T + 7m39s the RD-0120 engines shut down, followed moments later by the separation of Polyus from the core stage, which according to unconfirmed reports came down relatively intact in the Pacific Ocean [12]. The Energiya control room at Baykonur erupted into applause, but while Energiya had completed its job, Polyus still had some critical maneuvers to do.

Not having reached orbital velocity yet, Polyus now was to perform two burns of its FSB main engines to place itself into a circular 280 km orbit. With the FSB section placed on top (as during a TKS launch on Proton), Polyus first had to carry out a 180° flip maneuver around its z-axis so that the engines would face aft for the burns, followed by a 90° roll around its v-axis. Unfortunately, due to a programming error, the FSB’s thrusters failed to stop the flip maneuver and by the time the main engines were ignited Polyus was not oriented properly and as a result deorbited itself. Later analysis showed that the thrusters had been deactivated by a command usually issued during a TKS launch that somehow had not been erased for the Polyus launch.

The official TASS launch statement released the following day acknowledged the failure to place the payload into orbit:

“The second stage of the rocket delivered a satellite mock-up to the required point, but due to a malfunction of its on-board systems the mock-up did not go into the planned orbit and splashed down in the Pacific.’’

The day after the launch Soviet television viewers were treated to spectacular shots of the super-booster on its launch pad. One of the television shots offered a side view of the payload, revealing it to be a black pencil-shaped object. However, photographs

released subsequently only showed the aft part of Energiya, hiding Polyus from view. It was not until many years later that detailed photographs and descriptions of the payload became available.

The loss of Polyus was a bitter pill to swallow, especially for the designers and engineers of KB Salyut and Khrunichev, who had managed to get the improvised payload ready for launch in such a short period of time. Another setback was the significant damage to the UKSS launch pad, caused by the problem with the sound suppression water system and the rocket’s deviation from its trajectory shortly after lift-off. The Blok-Ya launch table adapter, designed to support at least 10 launches, was rendered useless because thermal protection covers had been either torn loose or closed too late.

Still, the primary goal of the launch had been to test Energiya and demonstrate its capability to carry a heavy payload and both these objectives had been accom­plished. Particularly useful for the subsequent Buran mission was the use of the same systems needed to separate the vehicle from the core stage. Moreover, all the four technological experiments and even some of the geophysical experiments planned for launch and the post-separation phase were actually carried out successfully. Energiya had performed better than anyone could have hoped and was declared ready to carry Buran on its next mission [13].

The orbiter for the first space mission (vehicle 1K, mission 1K1) arrived at the Baykonur cosmodrome on a VM-T carrier aircraft on 11 December 1985. Although eventually called Buran, it had the name Baykal painted on its side until at least April 1988 (see Chapter 2). The MIK OK orbiter-processing building on Site 254 was only 50/60 percent ready, with only one of the five bays (bay 104) available. The decision to send Buran to Baykonur so early came in an apparent response to the August 1985 government/party decree calling for a maiden mission in late 1986. The move was also designed to stimulate and speed up work at Baykonur. For the same purpose MOM minister Oleg Baklanov flew to Baykonur in January 1986 and set up three teams to prepare for the flight: the first team (headed by Yuriy Semyonov) had to ensure that Buran was ready for flight in the third quarter of 1987, the second team (led by Boris Gubanov) had to concentrate on readiness of Energiya-Buran as a whole, and the third team (led by Baklanov’s deputy S. S. Vanin) focused on readying

launch facilities and other ground equipment. Between January and March 1986 the number of people working at the Buran processing facility rose from a mere 60 to 1,800.

Not only the Buran facilities but also the orbiter itself was far from ready when it arrived at the cosmodrome. This was related not only to the earlier than planned shipping date, but also to the limited payload capacity of the VM-T aircraft. Many systems needed for orbital flight as well as major components such as the vertical stabilizer and landing gear had not yet been installed. Furthermore, only 70 percent of the thermal protection tiles had been installed, making it necessary to set up a special tile-manufacturing facility in the Buran processing facility.

In the summer of 1987 leading program officials were invited to attend a meeting of the Defense Council, the supreme decision-making body on national security issues. Chaired by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachov, it included the highest party and military officials in the Soviet Union such as the Minister of Defense and the Minister of Foreign Affairs. At the meeting, the officials pledged to launch Buran in the first quarter of 1988, although some (including Boris Gubanov) privately had strong doubts the orbiter would make that target date [36]. Presumably, Soviet space officials were under pressure to launch Buran before the post-Challenger return to flight of the US Space Shuttle, then planned for June 1988.

Final assembly of Buran was not officially completed until 15 October 1987, after which the vehicle was transferred to MIK OK’s control and test bay for electric tests and to the anechoic chamber for tests of the radio systems. It had already spent some time in those bays before completion of assembly to uncover any potential problems at an early stage. On 15 February 1988 preparations began for test firings of the ODU propulsion system and the Auxiliary Power Units at the orbiter test-firing stand,

located in open air right next to the MIK OK. On the whole, the tests, conducted between 25 April and 9 May, produced satisfactory results. During the two weeks that Buran spent outdoors, several communication tests were carried out between the orbiter and Mission Control in Kaliningrad near Moscow using relay satellites.

The goals outlined for Buran in the original February 1976 government and party decree were primarily military in nature, although civilian satellite deployment and retrieval missions as well as space station servicing missions were seen as additional objectives (see Chapter 2). At any rate, unlike the Space Shuttle in the US, Buran was not supposed to replace the entire expendable launch vehicle fleet, but merely complement that fleet by flying missions that it was uniquely designed to perform. However, strange as it may seem, all indications are that the primary emphasis throughout the history of the program was on the development of the rocket and orbiter themselves, not so much on the type of missions they would eventually fulfill. The Russians were so blindly focused on building a system matching the capabilities of the Space Shuttle that this became almost a goal in itself.

This is not to say that no thought was given to payloads at all. Specific orders to design payloads and work out flight programs for the Soviet orbiter came in party and government decrees issued in December 1981, August 1985, and August 1987. In 1981-1982 the military space R&D institute TsNII-50 conducted studies of possible military uses of Buran until 1995 under the name “Complex”. In January 1984 the Ministry of Defense, MOM, and the Academy of Sciences jointly approved a program of Buran missions until the year 1995, and a concrete program of Buran operations up until 2000 seems to have been included in the earlier mentioned government/party decree of June 1989. Unfortunately, details of all those decrees and studies remain classified.

What is known is that all the major Soviet space design bureaus were asked to come up with ideas: NPO Energiya in Kaliningrad (manned spacecraft), NPO Mashinostroyeniya in Reutov (manned spacecraft, military satellites), KB Salyut in Fili (manned spacecraft, space combat means), KB Yuzhnoye in Dnepropetrovsk (military/scientific satellites), TsSKB in Kuybyshev (photoreconnaissance, remote sensing, materials-processing spacecraft), NPO Lavochkin in Moscow (deep-space probes and early-warning satellites), and NPO PM in Krasnoyarsk (communications and navigation satellites). The chief designers of those organizations were asked to take into account not only the significant payload capacity of the Soviet orbiter, but also its ability to repair satellites in orbit and return them back to Earth.

Despite the repeated calls to formulate ideas for Buran payloads, the response was meager. Presumably, all the new satellites being designed at those organizations could easily be accommodated by existing launch vehicles, and their chief designers must have felt as if they were asked to invent payloads to fit a space transportation system with which they had little affinity. It also made little sense to launch existing satellites on Buran, because (unlike the Space Shuttle) the intention of the Buran program had never been to replace the expendable launch vehicle fleet. Moreover, there had always been a tradition in the Soviet space industry that the design bureaus that developed rockets also needed to design payloads tailored to fly on those rockets. As far as the chief designers were concerned, Buran would be no exception and it was up to NPO Energiya to think up missions for its shuttle system.

Another factor that probably discouraged the satellite chief designers from becoming involved in Buran was that there was little confidence that the Soviet shuttle would ever fly. Already made wary by the N-1 debacle, they became even more skeptical when the RD-170 development problems brought the Energiya – Buran program to the verge of collapse in the early 1980s, and the original 1983 launch date kept slipping ever further. It wasn’t really until the first missions of the Zenit rocket in 1985 and, ultimately, the first flight of Energiya in 1987 that the program to many became a credible undertaking, but by that time the political constellation that would eventually lead to its downfall was already beginning to take shape [29].

The result of all this was that Buran was never seriously considered for routine satellite deployment missions. NPO Energiya’s predecessor OKB-1 had moved out of satellite construction back in the early 1960s, farming out the development of communications satellites, photoreconnaissance satellites, and deep-space probes to other organizations. Instead, Buran’s primary mission would be to support NPO Energiya’s core business—namely, space station operations. Unlike the situation in the US, where the Space Shuttle had to wait until the mid-1990s to perform its originally planned role of a space station ferry, the Russians had space stations readily available from the outset. Most of the missions that were seriously planned beyond the first flight were related either to Mir or its planned successor Mir-2, with the primary payload (the 37KB modules) being developed by KB Salyut, a branch of NPO Energiya between 1981 and 1988.

While military missions were expected to become Buran’s main goal, few such missions have ever been identified. Ironically, by the time Buran was ready to fly, the Pentagon was withdrawing from the Shuttle program in the aftermath of the Challenger disaster, reorienting its heavy payloads to unmanned rockets.

In the end, the relative dearth of payloads and missions backfired on the program as the Soviet empire collapsed and became one of the main arguments to justify its cancellation.

The Buran/Mir/Soyuz mission

The only other Buran mission that ever came close to flying was 2K1, in which vehicle 2K would have been launched unmanned to the Mir complex, and after undocking would have been briefly boarded by a Soyuz crew before returning to Earth unmanned. This mission, along with crew assignments, has been described in detail in Chapter 5.

Using the experience gained in the Skif program, KB Salyut proposed a heavy Energiya-launched space factory to produce ultra-pure semiconductor alloys and crystals. First announced in 1990, the factory was called TMP (“Technological Production Module’’) and had a launch mass of 102 tons and in-orbit mass of 88 tons. It was about 35 m long with a main diameter of just over 4 m. The spacecraft consisted of a Laboratory Compartment based on the main core cylinder of the Proton rocket’s first stage, and an Instrument Cargo Compartment derived from the FGB. Solar arrays extended from both compartments, producing 60 kW for a mission exceeding five years.

The on-board production complex, derived from that of Mir’s Kristall module, would weigh a total of 25 tons. The finished products would return to Earth in ballistic or gliding-type return capsules that could each hold up to 140 kg of materials. Robotic manipulator arms would be used to remove a capsule from storage, load it, and then transfer it to a small airlock for ejection. The TMP had two docking ports to receive Progress resupply ships and Soyuz spacecraft or air-launched MAKS space – planes, with crews being able to spend up to 10 days aboard the facility to unload supply ships and perform maintenance work. In KB Salyut’s vision, the TMP was only the final step in a phased program for space-based materials processing, which also included the launch of small 1.2-ton capsules and bigger 20-ton vehicles [61].

Although Buran was the focus of attention between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s, in the background the Russians continued working on other spaceplane concepts to either complement Buran or succeed it in the future. Many of these efforts concentrated on smaller spaceplanes that were considered to be more efficient for space station support. At the same time, looking further into the future, con­siderable research has been done into single-stage-to-orbit spaceplanes that may one day significantly reduce the cost of Earth-to-orbit transportation.

CHELOMEY’S LKS

Vladimir Chelomey’s Central Design Bureau of Machine Building (TsKBM), already engaged in spaceplane research in the early 1960s, resumed work on reusable spacecraft in the mid-1970s in response to an order by the Military Industrial Commission on 27 December 1973 to formulate proposals for reusable space trans­portation systems of different sizes (see Chapter 2). That work continued even after the February 1976 Energiya-Buran decree, with Chelomey enjoying the support of Yakob Ryabov, who was Central Committee Secretary for Defense Matters from late 1976 to 1979, succeeding Dmitriy Ustinov [1].

By 1978, after having studied numerous configurations, launch, and landing techniques for a small reusable spaceplane, Chelomey’s engineers had settled on a Light Spaceplane (LKS) to be launched by the bureau’s Proton rocket. Weighing 20 tons, it would be a delta-wing vehicle capable of carrying four tons of cargo, two tons of fuel and a crew of two. The pressurized compartment of the LKS had a volume of 16 m3 and consisted of two decks, an upper deck with the cockpit in front and a living compartment in the back, and a lower deck with support equipment. The ship would not be protected from the heat of re-entry by tiles, but rely on a different type of heat shield material said to be rated for 100 missions. It was similar to the

material used on the return capsules of Chelomey’s Transport Supply Ships (TKS), the reusability of which was demonstrated during a number of test flights in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The LKS would land on a runway at a speed of 300 km/h using a nose wheel and aft skid landing gear. The relatively low landing speed meant that it could use a wide variety of runways. The LKS had emergency escape systems allowing the crew to be saved during virtually any phase of the flight.

TsKBM worked out plans for both unmanned and manned versions of the LKS, capable of staying in orbit for up to one year and 10 days, respectively. Its missions would range from crew transport and cargo delivery to space stations to a broad array of military missions. By the end of the 1970s the LKS was seen by Chelomey as a key element in a “Star Wars’’ plan to deploy a space-based missile defense shield to protect the entire territory of the Soviet Union from nuclear attack. All this was several years before President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983.

Chelomey considered Energiya-Buran as a vastly expensive undertaking that the country could barely afford. One of his associates once quoted him as saying:

“Whereas for the Americans the expenditures on [the Space Shuttle] are

[serious], but bearable, for us [such expenditures] will plunge us into bankruptcy.

I won’t be surprised if our cosmonauts will have to fly on our shuttle naked.’’

Convinced that Buran would not be ready to fly for many more years, Chelomey pitched the LKS as a vehicle that could be ready in four years’ time.

In 1980 Chelomey took the risky move of “going public’’ with the LKS. He sent his LKS proposals directly to Leonid Brezhnev, who in response set up an inter­departmental commission headed by deputy Defense Minister V. M. Shabanov and consisting of representatives of the major design bureaus and research institutes. The commission turned down Chelomey’s proposal, calling it “cumbersome”, “difficult to realize’’, and “expensive” (terms that could have very well been applied to Buran as well).

Nevertheless, Chelomey ordered his team to clandestinely build a full-scale mock-up of the LKS in just a month’s time, a task that was successfully accom­plished. However, news of Chelomey’s underground initiative was soon leaked to the Ministry of General Machine Building, which strongly reprimanded Chelomey for having illegally spent 140,000 rubles of government money. Still undeterred, Chelomey pressed on with his LKS work and was finally stopped dead in his tracks with an official reprimand from the Communist Party.

In the political constellation of those days Chelomey stood no real chance of mustering the support needed to get LKS off the ground. His star had been waning ever since his lifelong enemy (and Glushko supporter) Dmitriy Ustinov had become Minister of Defense in 1976. In 1978 Ustinov had already been instrumental in canceling Chelomey’s Almaz military space station program. The LKS followed suit. Seated next to Chelomey in the very cockpit of the LKS mock-up during a visit to TsKBM, Ustinov made it clear to him that the LKS had no future given the amount of effort and money already invested in Energiya-Buran. Things got much worse for Chelomey in December 1981, when the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a decree that banned TsKBM from any further involvement in the Soviet ballistic missile and space program, essentially ending Chelomey’s career as a missile and spacecraft designer. In a cruel twist of fate, Ustinov and Chelomey passed away only days apart in December 1984—moreover, in the same hospital. Even the LKS mock-up did not survive. It was demolished in what has been described as “an act of sabotage’’ in 1991.

With hindsight, if the Soviet space program required any type of reusable space­craft in the 1970s/1980s, the LKS probably would have been the way to go. Leaving aside its potential military applications, it could have played an important role in ferrying crews and cargo to space stations, reducing the number of Soyuz and Progress missions. Having said that, one wonders if it would have been an economic­ally advantageous system, since it relied on the expensive and expendable Proton rocket and on a heat shield that possibly required long turnaround times [2].

(Listed here are only those cosmonauts who originally were selected specifically for the Buran program)

Afanasyev, Viktor Mikhaylovich was born in Bryansk on 31 December 1948. He graduated in 1970 from the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, where Yuriy Sheffer, Aleksandr Puchkov, and Aleksandr Shchukin, all future Buran cosmonauts, had been his classmates. Following graduation, he served as an Air Force pilot until he enrolled in the Air Force’s test pilot school in 1976, graduating the following year. He subsequently worked as a test pilot in the flight test center in Akhtubinsk and in 1985 he and two colleagues were selected to join GKNII’s cosmonaut team. From 1985 until 1987 the three underwent OKP training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. After they had graduated and qualified as cosmonaut-tester, TsPK chief Vladimir Shatalov offered them a transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut detachment, which all three accepted. Afanasyev would make three long-duration space flights to Mir: Soyuz TM-11 in 1990-1991 (EO-8),

Soyuz TM-18 in 1994 (EO-15), and Soyuz TM-29 (EO-27) in 1999. He also made a short mission to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz TM-33 in 2001. In total, Viktor Afanasyev logged over 545 days in space, during which he conducted seven EVAs, totalling over 38 hours. He has since retired from the cosmonaut team.

Artsebarskiy, Anatoliy Pavlovich was born on 9 September 1956 in the village of Prosyanaya, Dnepropetrovsk Region in the Ukraine. In 1977 he graduated from the Kharkov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and remained there as instructor. In 1982 he transferred to the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk and graduated as a Test Pilot 3rd Class the following year. In 1985 he was selected as one of three new cosmonauts in the GKNII Buran cosmonaut group and sent to Star City for OKP. However, upon graduating in 1987, Artsebarskiy and his two colleagues accepted the offer to transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut detachment and remained in Star City. After having been for Soyuz TM-11, he went on to command Soyuz TM-12 and Mir expedition EO-9. It would be his only spaceflight. The official reason that he didn’t fly again is unknown, but it has been said that he was grounded for attending the 1992 Planetary Congress of the Association of Space Explorers without explicit personal permission from TsPK head Pyotr Klimuk. In September 1993 he was detached to the Russian Academy of Sciences and considered a member of their cosmonaut group. When the government decided to limit the number of institutions to which military personnel could be detached, the Academy of Sciences was not among them. In July 1994 Artsebarskiy was sent to the Academy of the General Staff to study. In 1998 he retired from the Air Force.

Bachurin, Ivan Ivanovich was born on 29 January 1942 in Berestovenka in the Kharkov Region. In 1959 he entered the Orenburg Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and following graduation in 1963 he remained there as an instructor. In 1967 he enrolled in the Soviet Air Force’s Chkalov test pilot school, graduating the following year and beginning flight testing at the flight test center in Akhtubinsk. In 1973, he also graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute. Five years later, Bachurin was selected as one of the GKNII cosmonaut candidates to eventually fly on Buran. As senior officer, he was also named the group’s commander. In 1980, he completed OKP, becoming a cosmonaut-tester. Bachurin then began Buran – related test flying in Akhtubinsk, and in 1987-1988 was involved in the approach and landing test program on BTS-002. Together with Aleksey Boroday, Bachurin flew BTS six times, three times in the commander’s seat. He also trained as one of three GKNII cosmonauts for a Soyuz docking mission with an unmanned Buran, but that was never flown. Shortly thereafter, Bachurin was medically disqualified and left the cosmonaut group in 1992. He is retired and lives in the town of Chkalovskiy, near Star City.

Boroday, Aleksey Sergeyevich was born on 28 July 1947 in the village of Borodayevka, near Volgograd (then still called Stalingrad). After finishing school he worked in a factory but at the same time took flying lessons in a DOSAAF air club. In 1969 he graduated from the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and subsequently served as a fighter pilot in the Air Force. In 1977 he graduated from the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk and began test pilot work in GKNII. Soon, he was selected to become one of the GKNII Buran cosmonauts and together with the other candidates he was sent to Star City for the OKP basic cosmonaut training course, finishing that in 1980. In 1981, he graduated from the Akhtubinsk branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Together with Ivan Bachurin, Boroday took part in the approach and landing test flight program on Buran’s analog BTS-002, flying a total of six missions in 1987 and 1988. Later he trained as commander of one of three crews that was preparing for a Soyuz docking mission with an unmanned Buran. He left the GKNII team in 1993. Boroday returned to flying on heavy transport planes, including the Antonov An-225 Mriya while it was transporting the Buran orbiter. On 8 October 1996, he commanded an Antonov An-124 Ruslan on a cargo flight to Turin, Italy. During landing the plane lost engine thrust and hit the ground with a wingtip. The plane cartwheeled and crashed in a field near the airport, killing the co-pilot and injuring the other crew members. Boroday, who regained consciousness in a hospital after five days, lost both his legs. He still lives in Star City.

Chirkin, Viktor Martynovich was born on 13 July 1944 in Barnaul. He graduated from the Armavir Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1971 with the qualification of pilot – engineer. From 1973 he studied in Akhtubinsk at the Air Force’s test pilot school, becoming a Test Pilot 3rd Class in 1974 and a Test Pilot 2nd Class in 1977. The following year Chirkin was one of the GKNII pilots selected for Buran and was sent to Star City for OKP. He graduated in November 1980 and received his cosmonaut-tester certificate, but by then Chirkin had growing doubts that Buran had a future and decided to resign from that program and return to full­time test flying in Akhtubinsk. Eventually, he would rise to the rank of Major – General and become both a Merited Test Pilot and a Hero of the Russian Federation.

Grekov, Nikolay Sergeyevich was born in Kalinin in Kirgizia on 15 February 1950. After graduating from the Armavir Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1971, he served with the Soviet Air Defense Forces in Belorussia and in the city of Gorkiy. In May 1978 Grekov (representing the Air Defense Forces) was selected to join the 1976 Buran cosmonaut group of TsPK. As had been the case with the 1976 candidates, he was first sent to the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, from which he graduated as Test Pilot 3rd Class in July 1979. He then went on to undergo OKP basic cosmonaut training and finished that in February 1982. Shortage of qualified commanders for Soyuz and delays in the Buran program then led to the decision to transfer all members of the TsPK Buran team to the Soyuz-Salyut training group. However, in spite of this transfer, Grekov would not fly in space. After Vladimir Vasyutin had been forced to return to Earth due to illness in November 1985, all cosmonauts were given an extra physical examination. Grekov was found to have a chronic form of hepatitis and was forced to end his cosmonaut career in December 1986. He did stay on at TsPK, however, eventually becoming the head of the Search and Recovery Department. In that capacity, he was responsible not only for the recovery of crews after landing, but also for splashdown and winter survival training of cosmonauts. Grekov retired in 2004.

Ivanov, Leonid Georgyevich was born on 25 June 1950 in Safonovo near Smolensk. He attended the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and following graduation in 1971 he served in an Air Force unit in the town of Mukachevo in the Prikarpat military district. After having been selected by TsPK in 1976 to become a cosmonaut, Ivanov and his fellow cosmonaut candidates were sent to the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk. Having graduated as Test Pilot 3rd Class in 1977, the group underwent OKP in Star City until September 1978. Ivanov then became one of seven pilots to return to Akhtubinsk to obtain the title of Test Pilot 2nd Class. During this training course on 24 October 1980 Ivanov’s MiG-27 fighter went into a spin and crashed, killing the pilot. Ivanov was buried in the village of Leonikha, near Star City.

Kadenyuk, Leonid Konstantinovich was born on 28 January 1951 in what is now the city of Chernovtsi in the Ukraine. In 1971 he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, becoming an Air Force pilot until he was selected as a cosmonaut candidate in 1976. Together with the other pilots from his selection group, he was sent to the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, where he graduated as a Test Pilot 3rd Class in June 1977. He then took the OKP basic cosmonaut training course at TsPK, qualifying as a cosmonaut-tester in September 1978. Next, Kadenyuk and a number of other cosmonauts from his group returned to Akhtubinsk and continued their test pilot training. In 1981 he finished that and became a Test Pilot 2nd Class. The group returned to TsPK and began Buran-related training, but in March 1983 Kadenyuk’s divorce resulted in his dismissal from the cosmonaut detachment. He subsequently returned to GKNII in Akhtubinsk to work as a test pilot. In December 1988 he managed to be included in the GKNII Buran cosmonaut team and was assigned as one of three commanders to train for a Soyuz mission that was to dock with an unmanned Buran. Despite cancellation of that flight, Kadenyuk didn’t give up his dream of flying in space. After the break-up of the Soviet Union he moved to the Ukraine and became a pilot in the Air Force. When the United States signed a contract with the Ukraine to fly a Ukrainian astronaut on the Space Shuttle, Kadenyuk applied for the Ukrainian cosmonaut team. In November 1996 Kadenyuk was assigned as payload specialist for Space Shuttle mission STS-87.

He flew a 15 day 16 hour mission on the Shuttle Columbia from 19 November until 5 December 1987. All in all, he had waited 21 years and 3 months since he had first been selected as a cosmonaut. With that Kadenyuk holds the record for time elapsed between initial selection and the first spaceflight.

Kononenko, Oleg Grigoryevich was born on 16 August 1938 in the village of Samarskoye in the Rostov Region. In 1958 he graduated from the DOSAAF school in Saransk and became a pilot instructor. In 1965 he entered the Ministry of the Aviation Industry’s test pilot school in Zhukovskiy, graduating a year later from the helicopter branch. In addition, in 1975 he graduated from the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Kononenko was selected by LII for Buran training in 1977 and began his OKP at TsPK in 1979. Kononenko was in the middle of his final exams when his Yak-38 jet crashed in the South China Sea on 8 August 1980.

The vertical take-off and landing jet lost engine power shortly after take-off from the aircraft carrier Minsk. Kononenko, who had been a Merited Test Pilot of the Soviet Union, didn’t manage to eject in time and was killed instantly. Although he received the Order of Lenin (his second) posthumously, he did not get the title of cosmonaut-tester posthumously, as he had not yet passed all his final exams at that time.

Levchenko, Anatoliy Semyonovich was born on 21 May 1941 in Krasnokutsk, near Kharkov in the Ukraine. Eager to become a pilot, he enrolled in the Kremenchug Higher Air Force Pilot School, but it was closed a year later and he finished his pilot education at the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, where he was a classmate of future cosmonaut Pyotr Klimuk. Upon graduation he served for five years as a MiG-21 pilot in Turkmenistan, and then left the Air Force to enroll in the test pilot school of the Ministry of the Aviation Industry in Zhukovskiy. He graduated in 1971, becoming a test pilot at LII. In 1977 Levchenko was one of the pilots selected to undergo cosmonaut training for the Buran flight test program. He was also one of the pilots who flew approach and landing tests on BTS-002, conducting four flights. As he was the designated back­up commander for Buran’s first manned orbital mission, Levchenko first acted as back-up to Igor Volk for the Soyuz T-12 mission to Salyut-7 in 1984 and then went on to fly an eight-day mission to the Mir space station on Soyuz TM-4 in December 1987. However, several months after his flight he was diagnosed with a brain tumor, from which he died on 6 August 1988.

Maksimenko, Valeriy Yevgenyevich was born on 16 July 1950 in Tyumen. He graduated from secondary school in 1967 and went to the Kharkov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, where he studied until 1971. Upon graduating, he remained there as a pilot instructor. In 1977 he enrolled in the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, becoming a test pilot the following year. After having been selected to become a cosmonaut in the GKNII group, he followed the OKP basic cosmonaut training course at TsPK from 1989 until 1991. At the same time, he continued test flight work for the Air Force, almost exclusively in high-performance fighter aircraft like the MiG-29 and Su-27. When he came to the conclusion that his future was not in the Buran program, he requested to be allowed to return to full-time test flying, a request that was granted. In January 1993 he became the head of the GKNII test pilot school (TsPLI).

Manakov, Gennadiy Mikhaylovich was born on 1 June 1950 in Yefimovka, in the Orenburg Region. He graduated from the Armavir Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1973 and remained there for two years as an instructor. After that he served in Kamchatka and in the Moscow military district.

In 1979 he was admitted to the Chkalov test pilot school of the Soviet Air Force in Akhtubinsk, graduating in 1980. He was assigned as a test pilot of fighter planes, at the same time taking a course at the Akhtubinsk branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute, from which he graduated in 1985. In August of that year, Manakov was one of three test pilots who were assigned to GKNII’s Buran cosmonaut group. They underwent OKP training in Star City until 1987, but upon graduation were offered to stay in Star City as members of TsPK’s cosmonaut detachment. Manakov accepted the offer and began mission training for Soyuz flights to the Mir space station. Eventually, he would fly to Mir on Soyuz TM-10 in 1990 (EO-7) and Soyuz TM-16 in 1993 (EO – 13), logging a total of 310 days in space. In addition, he conducted three EVAs, spending more than 12 hours outside the station. Manakov was training for the Soyuz TM-24/EO-22 mission in 1996, when he was medically disqualified and grounded. In July 2000 he retired from the Air Force.

Moskalenko, Nikolay Tikhonovich was born on 1 January 1949 in the village of Goragorskiy, in the Chechen-Ingush Republic of the Russian Federation. From 1966 until 1970 he attended the Yeysk Higher Military Aviation School, and upon graduating he served in the Air Force, until he was selected as part of the 1976 TsPK intake. Having first been trained as military test pilots until June 1977, the group took OKP between October 1977 and September 1978. Moskalenko was then sent back to Akhtubinsk for further test pilot training and, after becoming a Test Pilot 2nd Class

Sovetskiye і rossiyskiye kosmonavty

in 1981, he returned to TsPK for mission training as a cosmonaut. He was assigned to the third crew of what eventually became Soyuz T-14, but he would never fly in space himself. His divorce resulted in his expulsion from the cosmonaut detachment in June 1986. Moskalenko returned to test flying in Akhtubinsk until he left the Air Force in June 1990. He died after a long illness on 26 November 2004.

Mosolov, Vladimir Yemelyanovich was born in Kaliningrad (now Korolyov) near Moscow on 22 February 1944. He enrolled in the Tambov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, from which he graduated in 1967. After that he served in long-range aircraft units. In 1976 Mosolov graduated from the Soviet Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk and became a test pilot at GKNII. When the Air Force began looking for a group of test pilots to fly on Buran, Mosolov was one of the eight candidates selected. In 1979 the group went to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center to undergo OKP, with five members graduating in 1980. The following year Mosolov also graduated from the Akhtubinsk branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. For a number of years, Mosolov did Buran- related test flying until he was dismissed from the cosmonaut group in 1987 because of his divorce. He returned to regular test flying and left the Air Force in 1995 to work for private aviation companies.

Polonskiy, Anatoliy Borisovich was born on 1 January 1956 in the village of Pogranichnik in Kazakhstan. In 1977 he graduated from the Orenburg Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and served as a pilot in units of the Baltic Fleet until 1985, when he enrolled in the test pilot school in Akhtubinsk. He graduated in 1986 and went to work as a test pilot for GKNII. In February 1988 Polonskiy was selected as one of the new GKNII cosmonaut candidates to undergo OKP training in TsPK, qualifying as a cosmonaut – tester in April 1991. However, as Buran never flew in space again, Polonskiy became occupied full-time with test flying and operational flying of heavy transport aircraft, becoming a squadron commander in GKNII. Among the planes Polonskiy flew was the largest aircraft in the world, the Antonov An-225 Mriya. He lives in Chkalovskiy near Star City.

Prikhodko, Yuriy Viktorovich was born on 15 November 1953 in Dushanbe, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Tadzhikistan in Central Asia. After graduating from secondary school he worked as a laboratory assistant for a short time, before enrolling in the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1971, where he was a classmate of Sergey Tresvyatskiy. Upon graduation in 1975, he remained at the school as a pilot instructor until he resigned his commission from the Air Force and enrolled in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry’s test pilot school in Zhukovskiy. Upon graduation in 1986 he became a Test Pilot 3rd Class and began test flying different types of aircraft. At the same time, in the evenings, he studied at the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute, graduating in 1989. The previous year, he had been selected to join the LII cosmonaut team and in 1989 he began OKP, passing his final exam on 28 March 1991 and earning the qualification of cosmonaut-tester. By that time, however, it was becoming clear that Buran would probably not fly again. After having worked as a test pilot for twelve years, he left LII in 1998 and went to the United States, where he worked as an exchange pilot in California. His dream was to earn a green card and stay in the US, possibly even as a test pilot for NASA, but on 27 July 2001, he died from cancer, only 47 years old. He is buried in the town of Ostrovtsy, not far from Zhukovskiy.

Protchenko, Sergey Filippovich was born on 3 January 1947 in the village of Senitskiy in the Bryansk Region. In 1969 he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and then served as a pilot in the Air Force until 1976, when he was one of nine pilots selected to become cosmonauts for the TsPK cosmonaut detachment. Protchenko and his eight fellow pilots were sent to Akhtubinsk to be trained as test pilots at GKNII. Upon earning the qualification of Test Pilot 3rd Class, Protchenko proceeded to take the OKP basic cosmonaut training course at TsPK, which he successfully concluded in 1978. He was then one of the seven group members who were sent back to Akhtubinsk for further training as test pilots. It was during this second course in Akhtubinsk in 1978 that Protchenko failed a medical and was dismissed from the cosmonaut team. In August 1986 he also retired from the Air Force with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Puchkov, Aleksandr Sergeyevich was born on 15 October 1948 in the town of Medyn in the Kaluga Region. In 1966, Puchkov enrolled in the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in Volgograd, where three more future Buran cosmonauts, Viktor Afanasyev, Yuriy Sheffer, and Aleksandr Shchukin, were his classmates. Upon graduation Puchkov and Sheffer both worked as pilot instructors. In 1977, Puchkov finished his test pilot course at the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk and stayed there to work as a test pilot. In 1989 he was selected to undergo OKP training in order to become a cosmonaut in GKNII’s Buran cosmonaut group. Puchkov graduated in 1991, although he had continued his test pilot work during OPK. His Buran career ended in November 1996 when the GKNII cosmonaut team was officially disbanded. In June 1997, he retired from the Air Force and went to work for VPK MAPO, a company in which a number of design bureaus had merged to produce MiG fighter aircraft. Puchkov became a department head in VPK MAPO.

Pushenko, Nikolay Alekseyevich was born on 10 August 1952 in the village of Povalikha in the Altay Region. He graduated from the Barnaul Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1974, and subsequently served in Air Force units until 1982, when he was admitted to the Air Force test pilot school in Akthubinsk. He graduated in 1983 and became a GKNII test pilot. In 1989 he was selected as one of six new Buran cosmonaut candidates for the GKNII team and from 1989 until April 1991 he underwent OKP in Star City.

When it became clear that Buran would never fly again, Pushenko requested a transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut detachment, but, although his commander had promised him the transfer, this never took place for unknown reasons. After the GKNII cosmonaut team was disbanded in November 1996, Pushenko returned to test flying until he retired from the Air Force in 1998. In 2000 he began working for the State Research Institute for Civil Aviation at Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow.

Saley, Yevgeniy Vladimirovich was born on 1 January 1950 in Tavda in the Sverdlovsk Region. He studied at the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School from 1967 until 1971 and after graduation worked there as an instructor. Later, he was stationed at Air Force units in Poland and Uzbekistan. In 1975 he applied for enrollment in the Gagarin Air Force Academy in Monino, but instead was offered to undergo the selection procedure to become a cosmonaut. In 1976, Saley was selected by TsPK and together with the other group members spent the next nine months in test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, graduating as a Test Pilot 3rd Class. After an additional parachute course, the group then took OKP in Star City, and upon graduating as cosmonaut-testers in September 1978, seven group members, including Saley, returned to Akhtubinsk. Saley graduated as Test Pilot 2nd Class in June 1981. After their return to Star City, they were moved over to the Soyuz-Salyut group, given the shortage of commanders for Soyuz and the delays Buran was facing. Saley trained as a back-up crew member for Soyuz T-14 in 1984-1985. He would undoubtedly have been assigned as prime crew member for a subsequent Soyuz mission, but reportedly had a falling-out with cosmonaut training chief Vladimir Shatalov over crew assignments, after which Shatalov immediately grounded him. He left the cosmonaut team in October 1987. He went on to become deputy director of the Chkalov Central Flying Club in Moscow. Saley still lives in Star City.

Sattarov, Nail Sharipovich was born on 23 December 1941 in the village of Kabakovo in Bashkiria. In 1967 he graduated from the Orenburg Higher Aviation Military Pilot School, and stayed on there as an instructor until he was invited to train at the Air Force test pilot school in Akhtubinsk. In 1978 Sattarov was one of the eight pilots selected by GKNII to fly Buran. In April 1980, before ending his OKP training, he left the training group, reportedly because he had violated safety rules by making a roll maneuver in a Tupolev Tu-134 passenger jet. Sattarov was also grounded for a short period but eventually went back to test flying in Akhtubinsk. He rose to the rank of Colonel, and in 1993 left GKNII and the Air Force, becoming a test pilot for the Tupolev design bureau in Zhukovskiy.

Shchukin, Aleksandr Vladimirovich was born on 19 January 1946 in Vienna, where his father was serving in the Soviet army when it was occupying Austria after the war. In 1966 Shchukin enrolled in the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in Volgograd, where Viktor Afanasyev, Yuriy Sheffer, and Aleksandr Puchkov were among his classmates. After graduating in 1970 he served for five years in the former German Democratic Republic.

In 1975 Shchukin, then a Major, left the Air Force and enrolled in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry test pilot school in Zhukovksiy. In June 1977 he graduated as a Test Pilot 3rd Class and began working at LII in Zhukovskiy. Soon afterwards he was included in the first selection group to train as cosmonauts for the Buran program. He underwent basic cosmonaut training at TsPK without interrupting his test pilot work and upon graduation was awarded the title of cosmonaut-tester. During the approach and landing test program from 1985 until 1988 Shchukin flew seven times on Buran’s analog BTS-002. He also served as back-up to Anatoliy Levchenko on Soyuz TM-4. On 18 August 1988 Shchukin was killed when his Sukhoy Su-26 sports plane crashed during a test flight.

Sheffer, Yuriy Petrovich was born on 30 June 1947 in Chelyabinsk. He attended the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in Volgograd, where he studied in the same class as Aleksandr Shchukin, Viktor Afanasyev, and Aleksandr Puchkov, graduating in 1970. He remained as an instructor, and had another future colleague, Sergey Tresvyatskiy, as one of his students. Sheffer left the Air Force in 1975 and enrolled in the civilian test pilot school of the Ministry of the Aviation Industry in Zhukovskiy. Upon graduation in 1977 he became a test pilot at the Tupolev design bureau, moving to the Flight Research Institute in 1985. In 1980 he completed a graduate degree at the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Sheffer was selected as a member of the LII cosmonaut team in 1985 and underwent OKP, graduating in 1987. He conducted Buran-related flight testing, but in the end, no manned missions would take place. While the cosmonaut team dispersed, Yuriy Sheffer remained at LII. He retired as a cosmonaut in early 2001, but became a department head while continuing his duties as a test pilot. On 5 June 2001 he died of a heart attack while in his office.

Sokovykh, Anatoliy Mikhaylovich was born on 12 January 1944 in Skovorodino in the Amur Region. He graduated from the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1966, and subsequently served as a pilot in the former German Democratic Republic. In 1973 he enrolled in the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, graduating as a Test Pilot 3rd Class the following year. In 1978 he was selected as one of the pilots to form the GKNII Buran cosmonaut team. He underwent OKP in Star City in 1979 and 1980, qualifying as cosmonaut-tester. However, he didn’t get involved in any Buran mission training. In 1985 he was involved in an accident for which he was blamed. As a consequence, he left the cosmonaut group, although he remained in Akhtubinsk, test flying for GKNII, until his retirement in 1999. In 1994 he was awarded the title of Merited Test Pilot of the

Solovyov, Anatoliy Yakovlevich was born in Riga (Latvia) on 16 January 1948. He graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1972 and then served as a pilot in the Far East until 1976, when he was selected as a TsPK cosmonaut. He trained in Akhtubinsk to become a Test Pilot 3rd Class. After his OKP he returned to Akhtubinsk and became a Test Pilot 2nd Class. He was subsequently transferred to the space station training groups. His first spaceflight came in 1988 as commander of Soyuz TM-5, a Soviet-Bulgarian visiting mission to the Mir space station. He subsequently flew four more missions, all long-duration expeditions to Mir: Soyuz TM-9 (EO-6) in 1990, Soyuz TM-15 (EO-12) in 1992-1993, STS-71 (EO-19) in 1995, and Soyuz TM-26 (EO-24) in 1997-1998. For the third of these four, Solovyov and his flight engineer Gennadiy Strekalov were launched on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1995 on its first docking mission with the station under the joint Shuttle-Mir program. Solovyov was slated to fly the first expedition mission to the International Space Station, but when it became clear to him that not he, but American astronaut Bill Shepherd would be the commander, he declined the assignment. With five flights as commander, a flight experience of 651 days in orbit, and 16 EVAs totaling more than 82 hours under his belt, he refused to be subordinate to an American who had flown only three missions, none as commander, with a total of fewer than 19 days and no EVA experience at all. He reportedly was offered to become the commander of TsPK after Pyotr Klimuk’s retirement but declined the offer. Solovyov has since retired from the Air Force and gone into business.

Stankyavichus, Rimantas Antanas-Antano was born in Mariyampole in Lithuania on 26 July 1944. In 1966 he graduated from the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School and then served in Soviet Air Force units in Poland, Central Asia, and Egypt, where he flew 25 combat missions during the Six-Day Israeli-Arab war of 1967. In 1972 he was awarded the Order of the Red Star. The next year Stankyavichus left the Air Force and enrolled in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry test pilot school in Zhukovskiy, graduating in 1975. Three years later, he was selected as one of five LII pilots to undergo cosmonaut training for the Buran program. Stankyavichus became one of the principal members of the LII cosmonaut team, flying a total of 13 approach and landing test flights on BTS-002 between 1985 and 1988. He was also LII’s prime candidate to occupy the co-pilot seat on Buran’s first manned orbital mission. In 1989 he was assigned to a Soyuz mission to Mir in order to prepare him for his future Buran mission, but later that year he was dropped from the crew because of changes in the Mir flight schedule. Stankyavichus returned to test flying and was killed on 9 September 1990 when his Sukhoy Su-27 crashed during a demonstration flight in Italy.

Sultanov, Ural Nazibovich was born on 18 November 1948 in the village of Nikifarovo in Bashkiria. He attended the Kharkov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, and after graduating in 1971 remained there as a pilot instructor. In 1983 he joined LII’s cosmonaut group and undertook OKP from 1985 until 1987, when he was awarded his cosmonaut – tester certificate. From April until November 1988 Sultanov joined several other LII cosmonauts at Baykonur, flying MiG-25 jets and Tupolev Tu-154LL flying laboratories in Buran approach and landing profiles. When Buran made its only spaceflight, he was Magomed Tolboyev’s back-up as MiG-25 chase pilot. At the same time, he continued his other test pilot duties at LII. Sultanov left LII in March 2002, becoming an Ilyushin Il-18 pilot for an aviation company named after Valentina Grizodubova, a famous female pilot in the Soviet Union. Currently, he is the deputy chief of Bashkir Airlines.

Titov, Vladimir Georgyevich was born on 1 January 1947 in Sretensk in the Chita Region. After graduating from secondary school, he enrolled in the Chernigov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School. Upon graduating he remained there as an instructor until 1974. From 1974 until his selection to the TsPK cosmonaut detachment in 1976, he served in the Seryogin Regiment, TsPK’s air wing at Chkalovskiy air base near Star City. After selection in 1976 Titov and his fellow selectees were first sent to the Air Force test pilot school in Akhtubinsk to become Test Pilots 3rd Class. They underwent OKP from October 1977 until September 1978. When it became clear that Buran was suffering delays and there was a growing shortage of Soyuz commanders, some of the group were transferred to the Soyuz-Salyut program. Titov would fly four missions. His first, on Soyuz T-8 in April 1983, had to be cut short because his ship failed to dock with Salyut-7. The next attempt almost ended in disaster in September 1983 when his launch vehicle caught fire and exploded on the launch pad. Titov’s Soyuz was pulled away to safety by the launch escape system with seconds to spare. Following this almost fatal accident, Titov and his flight engineer on both occasions, Gennadiy Strekalov, were separated. They were considered an unlucky crew. Paired with a new engineer, Musa Manarov, and with LII cosmonaut Anatoliy Levchenko in the third seat, Titov flew Soyuz TM-4 to the Mir station in 1987 for the first mission that would spend over a year in orbit: 365 days and 22 hours. His third and fourth missions were both on the Space Shuttle. He was a mission specialist on STS-63 in 1995, the dress rehearsal rendezvous mission with Mir. The Shuttle didn’t dock with the station on that occasion, but on Titov’s second shuttle mission, STS-86 in 1997, Atlantis did dock. During the docked phase, Titov and NASA astronaut Scott Parazynski performed a five-hour EVA. Following the flight, Titov retired from the cosmonaut detachment and the Russian Air Force to become Boeing’s representative in Moscow. On his four missions, Vladimir Titov logged a total of 387 days in space. He performed four EVAs, totaling a little under 19 hours.

Tokarev, Valeriy Ivanovich was born on 29 October 1952 in Kapustin Yar, where his father was serving on the missile launch base. In 1969 he finished secondary school in Rostov and in 1973 he graduated from the Stavropol Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, after which he began service in the Air Force. In 1981 he began studying at the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk, graduating in 1982 and becoming a test pilot at GKNII. Selected for the Buran program, Tokarev underwent OKP from 1989 until 1991, without interrupting his test pilot work. Like Leonid Kadenyuk, Valeriy Tokarev had set his mind on flying in space, if not on Buran, then on another spacecraft. When it became clear that Buran would not fly, he requested a transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut team. On 29 July 1997 the State Interdepartmental Commission agreed to the transfer and as early as December 1998, Tokarev was assigned as the Russian mission specialist for Space Shuttle mission STS-96. As such, he flew on Discovery to the International Space Station between 27 May and 6 June 1999. From August 2001 he trained as flight engineer for ISS Expedition 8, but then lost his prime crew assignment as a result of the crew reshuffling that took place after the February 2003 Columbia accident. Instead, he was reassigned as Expedition 8 back-up commander. His next assignment was as Soyuz commander and ISS flight engineer for Expedition 10, but when his commander Bill McArthur was temporarily grounded for medical reasons, the crew was replaced and moved down the line. Once McArthur was returned to flight status, he and Tokarev were teamed up again and assigned as back-up crew for Expedition 10. The two were eventually launched as the Expedition 12 crew from Baykonur on 30 September 2005. After a successful mission of almost 190 days, during which he performed two EVAs, Tokarev and his crew landed their Soyuz safely in Kazakhstan. In late 2006, he was preparing for new flight assignments.

Tolboyev, Magomed Omarovich was born on 20 January 1951 in the Dagestan Soviet autonomous republic in the Caucasus. In 1969 he enrolled in the Yeysk Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, from which he graduated in 1973. After that he served in Air Force units until 1980. In 1976 he tried to get selected as a cosmonaut in the TsPK cosmonaut detachment but didn’t pass the medical commission because of a spine trauma he had suffered in an accident with a Sukhoy Su-7B. He made another attempt in 1979 but again failed the medical commission, this time because of a foot injury that was the result of another ejection from a plane. In 1980 Tolboyev left the Air Force and enrolled in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry test pilot school in Zhukovskiy. Upon graduation in 1981 he began working for LII. In 1983 he was selected to the LII cosmonaut group for Buran, and the following year he graduated from the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. Tolboyev followed the OKP basic cosmonaut training course between 1985 and 1987, qualifying as cosmonaut-tester. From April until November 1988 Tolboyev flew Buran approach and landing profiles on the Tupolev Tu-154LL flying laboratory and on MiG-25 jets. He acted as a chase plane pilot during the launch and landing of Buran on its one and only mission on 15 November 1988. His MiG-25 is the one visible in the well-known video of the orbiter’s roll-out after landing. For some time he was slated to become Igor Volk’s co-pilot on Buran’s first manned mission. After resigning from LII, Tolboyev entered politics in 1994, becoming a representative for the Republic of Dagestan in the State Duma. In 1997 he became president of the biennial MAKS air show in Zhukovskiy.

Tresvyatskiy, Sergey Nikolayevich was born in the town of Nizhne-Udinsk in the Irkutsk Region on 6 May 1954. After graduating from secondary school in 1971, he enrolled in the Kachinskoye Higher Military Aviation Pilot School. There his future colleague Yuriy Sheffer was one of his instructors and Yuriy Prikhodko was a classmate. From 1975 until 1980 he was assigned as a pilot in the former German Democratic Republic and later he was stationed in the Far East. In 1981 Tresvyatskiy left the Air Force and enrolled in the Ministry of the Aviation Industry test pilot school in Zhukovskiy. Upon graduation in 1983, he became a test pilot at the Flight Research Institute. In 1985 he graduated from the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute, where he had attended evening classes. That same year he was included in the LII cosmonaut team that was preparing for spaceflights on Buran. He followed the OKP training at TsPK from 1985 until 1987, when he received the qualification of cosmonaut-tester. From April until November 1988 Tresvyatskiy worked at the Baykonur cosmodrome, rehearsing pre-landing maneuvers, runway approaches, and landings using the Tupolev Tu – 154LL and MiG-25 jet aircraft. While it became clear that the Buran program was dying, Sergey Tresvyatskiy stayed on as a test pilot at LII. Besides that, he also performed demonstration flights on the MiG-29. He became world famous when his MiG collided in mid-air with his colleague’s during an air show at RAF Fairford on 24 July 1993. Both pilots were able to eject and survived unharmed. Especially Tresvyatskiy’s cool reaction after he had landed was the talk of the town. After he had removed his parachute, he simply lit up a cigarette and walked away to meet the emergency services that were hurrying toward the place where he had come down. Tresvyatskiy later was placed in charge of LII’s Ramenskoye airfield in Zhukovskiy. In 2004 he became the last of the Buran pilots to leave LII and went on to become general director of the Samara Scientific and Technical Complex (the former Kuznetsov design bureau), which develops the NK series of aircraft and rocket engines.

Vasyutin, Vladimir Vladimirovich was born on 8 March 1952 in Kharkov in the Ukraine. He studied at the Kharkov Higher Air Force School from 1970 until 1974, and upon graduation was assigned as pilot instructor there until he was selected as a TsPK cosmonaut candidate in 1976. He was first sent to the test pilot school in Akhtubinsk to become a Test Pilot 3rd Class. Subsequently, he took the basic cosmonaut training course at TsPK to qualify him as a cosmonaut-tester. Unlike the other cosmonauts from his group, Vasyutin and Vladimir Titov were not sent back to Akhtubinsk for further test pilot training, but were transferred to the Soyuz-Salyut program. After three back-up assignments (Soyuz T-7, Soyuz T-10, and Soyuz T-12), Vasyutin was finally launched aboard Soyuz T-14 in September 1985. However, after a few weeks aboard the Salyut-7 space station Vasyutin became ill and, when treatment on board didn’t help, Mission Control was forced to cut his mission short. Upon his return, Vasyutin was hospitalized, but, although he fully recovered, he never flew in space again. He retired from the cosmonaut team and went back to the Air Force, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General and became Deputy Commander of the Gagarin Air Force Academy in Monino. Vasyutin passed away on 19 July 2002.

Viktorenko, Aleksandr Stepanovich was born on 29 March 1947 in Olginka in Kazakhstan. He graduated from the Orenburg Higher Aviation Pilot School in 1969, after which he served as an Ilyushin Il-28 pilot in the Baltic Fleet. In May 1978 Viktorenko (representing the Navy) was one of two additional candidates selected to join the 1976 Buran cosmonaut group of TsPK. Like the 1976 candidates, he was first sent to Akhtubinsk in order to qualify as a military test pilot. He graduated as Test Pilot 3rd Class in July 1979 and then went on to OKP basic cosmonaut training, finishing that in February 1982. Shortage of qualified commanders for Soyuz and delays in the Buran program then led to the decision to transfer all members of the TsPK Buran team to the Soyuz-Salyut training group. Eventually, Viktorenko would fly four missions to the Mir space station (Soyuz TM-3, Soyuz TM-8, Soyuz TM-14,

Soyuz TM-20), logging a total of 489 days in orbit. He also spent almost 18 hours outside the spacecraft during six EVAs. In July 1997 Viktorenko retired from both the cosmonaut team and the Air Force.

Volk, Igor Petrovich was born in the city of Zmiyev in the Kharkov Region in the Ukraine on 12 April 1937. He attended the Military Aviation Pilot School in Kirovograd in the Ukraine, graduating as a bomber pilot. He was then stationed in Baku where he flew Tupolev Tu-16 and Ilyushin Il-28 bombers. In 1962 Volk left the Air Force and from 1963 underwent test pilot training at the Ministry of the Aviation Industry test pilot school in Zhukovskiy, graduating in 1965. Volk’s first involvement in the manned space program was in that same year, when he was a pilot on the Tupolev Tu-104 in which cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Aleksey Leonov flew parabolic flights to train for Leonov’s EVA on Voskhod-2. In 1969 he graduated from the Zhukovskiy branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute, and in 1975 he was a member of the examination board that passed his future crewmate Svetlana Savitskaya as a test pilot. In 1976 Volk performed a brief flight on the 105.11 atmospheric test bed of the Spiral spaceplane. In 1977 Volk was selected as one of the pilots to undergo cosmonaut training in preparation for the initial test flight program for Buran. He flew 12 times on Buran’s analog BTS-002. Volk was the designated commander for Buran’s first manned orbital mission. In order to get the mandatory spaceflight experience and see what the influence of spaceflight on his piloting skills would be, he made a spaceflight on Soyuz T-12 in July 1984. Igor Volk became a deputy head of LII in 1995, but left the institute in February 2002 for a position in private industry. He lives in Moscow.

Volkov, Aleksandr Aleksandrovich was born on 27 April 1948 in Gorlovka in the Donetsk Region in the Ukraine. He enrolled in the Kharkov Higher Military Aviation Pilot School in 1966, and, upon graduation in 1970, he stayed as an instructor until he was selected as a TsPK cosmonaut candidate in 1976. After his selection Volkov and the other eight candidates were sent to Akhtubinsk to qualify as Test Pilots 3rd Class. After finishing OKP in September 1978, Volkov returned to Akhtubinsk and in 1981 he became a Test Pilot 2nd Class. After that he was transferred to the Soyuz-Salyut program. Volkov subsequently made three spaceflights, one to Salyut-7 in 1985 (Soyuz T-14) and two to Mir in 1988-1989 (Soyuz TM-7) and 1991-1992 (Soyuz TM-13). In total he logged 391 days in orbit. He also conducted two EVAs, spending more than 10 hours outside the spacecraft. Volkov has held various management positions at TsPK, among them commander of the cosmonaut team from 1990 until 1998.

Yablontsev, Aleksandr Nikolayevich was born on 3 April 1955 in Warsaw (Poland) where his father was stationed. After graduating from secondary school in 1972, he enrolled in the Armavir Higher Military Aviation Pilot School, where he studied until graduating in 1976. He subsequently served in various Air Force units before entering the Air Force’s test pilot school in Akhtubinsk. After graduation in 1985 he worked there as a test pilot. In January 1989 the State Interdepartmental Commission confirmed Yablontsev and five colleagues as cosmonauts in the GKNII team. They underwent OKP in Star City without interrupting their test flight work, and in 1991 they passed their exams, qualifying as cosmonaut-testers. In 1989 he had also successfully concluded a course at the Akhtubinsk branch of the Moscow Aviation Institute. In September 1996 TsPK’s commander Pyotr Klimuk offered him a transfer to the TsPK cosmonaut team, but Yablontsev declined, feeling that flying on Soyuz wasn’t really flying. In 1997 he retired from the Air Force and, like Nikolay Pushenko, became a civilian test pilot at the State Research Institute for Civil Aviation.

Zabolotskiy, Viktor Vasilyevich was born on 19 April 1946 in Moscow. He began flying in the First Moscow Flying Club in 1964, and went on to study for two years (1967-1969) in DOSAAF’s Central Joint Flying and Technical School.

After graduating, he worked in Kaluga as a pilot instructor on the MiG-15 and MiG-17. In 1973 he was admitted to the test pilot school in Zhukovskiy. He graduated two years later and began working as a test pilot for LII. In 1981 Zabolotskiy graduated from the Academy of Civil Aviation in Leningrad. He joined the LII Buran team in 1984 and underwent OKP in Star City between 1985 and 1987. In 1988 Zabolotskiy was scheduled to fly a MiG-25 chase plane during the landing phase of Buran’s only spaceflight, but this assignment was canceled when he was assigned to the commission that investigated the Su-26 crash that had killed Aleksandr Shchukin. In 1989 Zabolotskiy became a Merited Test Pilot of the Soviet Union. It was also in that period that he was assigned as Rimantas Stankyavichus’s backup for a familiarization spaceflight on a Soyuz, but this flight would never take place. Viktor Zabolotskiy left LII in late 1996 to become a test pilot for the Khrunichev Center and also became head of the Russian Federation for Aviation Amateurs.

Even as officials were still pondering over the need to respond to the Space Shuttle, specialists were already busy figuring out what the Soviet equivalent should look like. Glushko had not come to NPO Energiya empty-handed. He and his engineers at Energomash had devised plans for a new family of heavy-lift launch vehicles called RLA, which stood for “Rocket Flying Apparatus”. This was the same term that Glushko had used for some experimental liquid-fuel boosters he had developed way back in the early 1930s while working for the Gas Dynamics Laboratory in Lenin­grad. In Glushko’s original vision, the Soviet shuttle was going to be just one payload for the RLA family.

With Glushko’s background in engine development, it was logical that his initial efforts at NPO Energiya focused mainly on launch vehicles. Until then he had only concentrated on designing and building the rocket engines themselves, with other design bureaus (Korolyov, Chelomey, Yangel) being responsible for building the rockets that were powered by those engines. Now, with the merger of Energomash and TsKBEM, Glushko received the infrastructure and workforce to design not only engines, but also the rockets themselves.

The RLA plan revolved around two key concepts. First, it required the development of a new generation of powerful rocket engines using liquid oxygen (LOX) as oxidizer, and kerosene and hydrogen as fuel. Second, it envisaged the use of standardized rocket stages that could be assembled into different configurations tailored to the specific payloads to be placed into orbit.

The name Buran was first publicly applied to the orbiter individually when the TASS news agency announced the launch date for the first mission on 23 October 1988. Actually, the name originally painted on the first flight vehicle had been “Baykal” (after the famous Siberian lake), but this was later erased. Strictly speaking, Buran had now become the name of the vehicle that made the one and only Soviet shuttle flight on 15 November 1988, placing it on an equal footing with NASA’s Shuttle Orbiter names Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. However, since Buran was the only vehicle ever flown, the name later also began to be used for Soviet orbiters in general, as it will be in this book.

It is not known what official names the other vehicles would have been given had they ever flown. The only other ship that came close to flying was sometimes referred to in the press as “Buran-2’’, but it is unclear if this would have become its official name. A persistent myth is that it was called Ptichka (“Birdie”), which actually was a general nickname for Soviet orbiters that somehow got misinterpreted by Western journalists as being the name of the second orbiter. There is some speculation that it was to be dubbed Burya (“Storm”), continuing a tradition of naming orbiters and some heavy-lift launch vehicles and their upper stages after violent natural phenom­ena. Burya, incidentally, had also been the name of the Lavochkin bureau’s cruise missile that won the competition from Myasishchev’s Buran back in the 1950s. Presumably, the Russians would have given this matter serious thought only if the second orbiter had entered final launch preparations, which it never did. No name was ever painted on this vehicle and therefore it can be said that it was never officially named.

The individual vehicles did have designators comparable with the OV designators of the US Shuttle Orbiters (OV-099, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105). Buran was 1K, the second orbiter was 2K, the third one 3K, etc. These designators also appeared in the mission designations. The first flight of orbiter 1K was 1K1, the (planned) first flight of orbiter 2K was 2K1, etc. In documentation these numbers were also used to refer to the vehicles themselves, so “vehicle 1K1’’ would be “flight vehicle 1 as configured for its first mission’’. Some Western publications claimed the first flight was desig­nated “VKK-1”, but this is not true. VKK (Vozduzhno-Kosmicheskiy Korabl) literally means “aerospace ship’’, a general term for winged spacecraft, although it is most often used for single-stage-to-orbit spaceplanes. Within NPO Molniya the airframes of the flight articles had designators such as 1.01, 1.02 (for the first two orbiters) and 2.01 (for the third orbiter).

Even though the word “Buran” has been used to refer to different things at different times and the name “Energiya” was not introduced until 1987, for the sake of clarity the two names will be used further in this book to refer to the orbiter and the rocket, respectively, irrespective of when the events discussed took place.