Category Energiya-Buran

The troubleshooting was not finished until after the October Revolution holiday, celebrated on 7 November. However, as Gudilin said in one interview:

“the time has gone by when launches were hurried along to fit in with holiday dates.”

On 12 November TASS announced that the launch had been rescheduled for 15 November at 6:00 Moscow time (3:00 gmt, 8:00 local time at Baykonur). Visual observations from Mir were no longer a factor in determining the launch time, probably because orbital precession had shifted the station’s flight path such that it now passed over the cosmodrome much earlier than was acceptable for the Buran launch.

The biggest concern as launch time drew closer was the weather. While skies had been crystal clear for the launch attempt on 29 October, a low-pressure front bringing rain and strong winds was now approaching Baykonur from the Aral Sea. At 17: 00 local time (12: 00 gmt) on 14 November meteorologists reported they were seeing a tendency for the front to bypass Baykonur, although nothing could be guaranteed. Four hours later the forecast had remained unchanged and the State Commission decided to press ahead with fueling of the rocket. First to be loaded were the liquid – oxygen tanks of both the strap-on boosters and core stage, followed about two hours later by the kerosene tanks of the strap-ons and the core stage liquid-hydrogen tank. Soviet media made no secret of the iffy weather conditions. On the eve of launch, a correspondent of the Vremya evening television news program reported:

“Everything that depends on people has been done. But the weather is worsening with each passing hour. If the wind rises into a squall and the orbital vehicle… becomes covered with a crust of ice, then the launch time will be changed again.’’

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Gale warning issued at 6:15 am local time (source: wwww. buran. ru).

At midnight local time, with fueling of the liquid-oxygen tanks underway, the forecast took a turn for the worse. The low-pressure front had broken up in two parts, one of which was now headed straight for the launch site. Less than 2 hours before launch the chief weather officer handed over a gale warning to Gudilin. Conditions expected between 7:00 and 12:00 local time (2:00-7:00 gmt) both at the launch pad and the runway were strengthening southwest winds with speeds of 9 to 12m/s, gusting to 20m/s. Meanwhile, weather balloon data also showed unstable conditions up to altitudes of 25 km, with highly variable wind speeds (maximum 70m/s) and wind directions at different levels. With just 30 minutes left in the count­down, observed conditions were overcast skies with a cloud ceiling at 550 meters, drizzle, winds of 15m/s gusting to 19m/s, a temperature of +2.8°C, and visibility of 10 km. The agreed wind speed limit for launch was 15m/s, while for landing the maximum allowed wind speeds were 5 m/s for tail winds, 10 m/s for crosswinds, and 20 m/s for head winds.

The marginal weather conditions were a matter of concern for several reasons. The combination of drizzle and low temperatures posed the threat of significant ice build-up on the rocket, orbiter, and launch pad. Chunks of ice falling off the rocket during launch could cause significant damage to Buran’s fragile thermal protection system. This risk has always been well understood in the Space Shuttle program, where specialized ice inspection teams are routinely sent out to the pad in the final hours before launch. The available information suggests that the Russians considered
a 2 mm ice layer on the rocket acceptable and decided to go ahead based on the prediction prior to fueling that the thickness of the layer would not exceed 1.7 mm. All indications are that no ice inspection teams were sent to the pad and that any later estimates were based solely on close-up television shots of the launch vehicle. Apparently, those images were not always reassuring. As Gudilin later recalled:

“we could see relatively big chunks of ice falling from the rocket and the

orbiter.”

Aside from ice build-up on the vehicle, there were worries about ice formation on the runway and the general effects of cold weather on vehicle performance. Although Energiya had no solid rocket boosters, the Challenger accident, where cold tempera­tures had contributed to the failure of an О-ring seal in one of the solids, was “in the back of our minds”, as Gudilin puts it in his memoirs.

Another issue were the strong winds both at ground level and in the upper atmosphere. There were fears that ground-level winds could cause the vehicle to hit one of the launch pad structures during lift-off and that unstable upper-level winds could knock the stack off course. Weather officers at Baykonur continuously sent the latest wind data to a team of specialists at NPO Elektropribor in Kharkov, the design bureau that was responsible for Energiya’s guidance, navigation, and control systems. Computer simulations there convinced the team there was enough margin to go ahead, although the observed conditions were clearly outside the experience base for this type of launch vehicle. Winds were also near or above prescribed limits for a return-to-launch-site abort or a nominal landing. That problem was addressed by having Buran approach the runway from the northeast rather than the southwest, turning an out-of-limits tail wind into an acceptable head wind, although even that was on the limit.

The weather on 15 November 1988 violated just about every imaginable meteorological launch commit criterion for a Space Shuttle launch. Leaving aside the temperatures and the wind, two other showstoppers for a Shuttle launch that day would have been the precipitation and the low cloud cover. No NASA launch or flight director in his right mind would even consider launching or landing a Shuttle Orbiter if there is only the slightest chance of precipitation in the vicinity of the launch pad or runway. With the Orbiter moving at high speeds, precipitation has the potential of causing significant damage to the vehicle’s thermal protection system. However, for reasons that are not entirely clear, precipitation was no safety issue for the Russians, even though Buran’s thermal protection system was very similar to that of the Orbiter. Even hail was said to be an acceptable condition, although this may have been bluff more than anything else. In fact, Buran’s tiles suffered serious damage when the vehicle ran into a hail storm during a trip atop the Mriya carrier aircraft in 1989.

Cloud cover was not an issue for the Buran launch because there were no pilots on board who needed a clear view of the runway for a return to launch site or manual landing. The only clouds that meteorologists kept a close eye on were those with lightning potential. The overcast skies did prevent good ground-based optical track­ing during launch and landing, which can be a critical factor in post-flight analysis of anomalies.

Even though conditions were close to violating launch commit criteria, the team decided to fly anyway, despite another gale warning issued just 13 minutes before launch. True, the Russians’ launch weather rules in general were more relaxed than those adopted by NASA or the US Air Force, with some launches known to have taken place in near-blizzard conditions. However, the Buran mission was different from a conventional rocket launch in that the spacecraft was supposed to land like an aircraft.

All this begs the question why officials didn’t wait one or more days for the weather to clear, especially because this was the maiden flight of a vehicle vastly different from anything the Russians had flown before. Speaking shortly after the mission, former cosmonaut Gherman Titov said:

“We deliberately refused to postpone the launch and wait for ideal conditions.

The value of the flight is that its program included the maximum sum of real and

rather difficult tasks’’ [47].

Still, one can only wonder if the team didn’t suffer from what is sometimes referred to in the US as “launch fever’’. Testifying to this is an eyewitness report of one member of the meteorological support team, who claims that some of the observations that morning showed wind gusts of up to 25 m/s. However, the chief weather officer, under pressure to report good news, only presented the launch team with the weather updates that showed the lower wind speed values. The same person notes that Gudilin’s main argument in favor of launching that day was that another scrub could delay the flight until spring. It would require more testing and take them further into late autumn and possibly winter, when weather conditions can get far worse than the ones observed that morning [48].

Another concern with a lengthy delay may have been that the already frail support for the Buran program from the Soviet leadership might dwindle even further and could put the flight on indefinite hold, particularly now that the US Space Shuttle had returned to flight. Still, whatever the real motives were for launching that day, it was a decision fraught with risk [49].

While Buran was never seriously considered for routine satellite deployment mis­sions, the Russians did look at the possibility of placing big payloads in the cargo bay. Among these were spacecraft developed as part of a Soviet “Star Wars’’ program in which NPO Energiya was given the leading role in 1976. It would have seen the use of space-based assets to destroy enemy satellites, ballistic missiles, and ground-based targets. Making maximum use of existing technology, NPO Energiya tabled proposals for “battle stations’’ that would be based on Salyut and Mir technology.

For anti-satellite operations the idea was to develop two types of Salyut look – alike space stations, one equipped with missiles (Kaskad) and the other with laser weapons (Skif). The stations carried much larger propellant supplies than their

progenitors, but had man-tended capability, being able to house two-man crews for up to seven days. Kaskad stations would target high-orbiting satellites, while the Skif stations were to knock out satellites in low orbits. Experimental versions of these stations would be orbited by the Proton rocket, but the operational ones were designed to go up in the cargo bay of Buran. The Soviet orbiter would also be responsible for refueling missions to these stations. In 1981 work on Skif/Kaskad was transferred to Energiya’s new KB Salyut branch, which dropped the Salyut – based design in favor of 100-ton Energiya-launched spacecraft (see Chapter 6). There are no indications Buran still had any role to play in Skif/Kaskad from that moment on.

For destruction of ground-based targets the NPO Energiya planners came up with a Mir-type core module with four specialized modules docked to a ball-shaped multiple docking adapter. Attached to the axial front port was a module with an additional multiple docking adapter that served as the berthing place for so-called “combat modules’’ resembling Buran orbiters without wings or other aerodynamic surfaces. After undocking from the station, the unmanned combat modules would maneuver to the proper location and then deploy small vehicles tipped with (un­specified) weapons that could re-enter the atmosphere. These could be either ballistic – type vehicles or lifting bodies. One design studied for these re-entry vehicles was based on the BOR-4 lifting bodies. Presumably, the idea was that after deploying the weapons the Buran-based combat modules would return to base to be reloaded with new ones [35].

One big military satellite intended for launch by Buran was Sapfir (“Sapphire”), a 24-ton optical reconnaissance satellite developed by TsSKB in Kuybyshev. This was equipped with a 3 m diameter telescope to photograph targets of interest in great detail. The idea was that Buran crews would regularly visit Sapfir for servicing. Although the telescope for the first such satellite was nearly finished, the project was discontinued after the cancellation of Buran, since the Proton rocket was not capable of orbiting the satellite [36].

Another big payload eyed for launch by Buran was ROS-7K (“Radiotechnical Orbital Station”), a man-tended Salyut-derived space station equipped with a 30 m diameter dish antenna called KRT-30. Capable of serving as a radio telescope and a radar, the KRT-30 was to be used for all-weather remote-sensing, astrophysical, and geophysical observations and target localization for the Soviet Navy. Together with the ground-based components needed to receive, process, and distribute data from the station, the system was called Gals (“Tack”, in the nautical meaning), an indica­tion that its observations in support of the Soviet Navy were seen as its primary mission.

Flying in a circular 600 km orbit inclined 64.8° to the equator, ROS-7K could house two-man crews up to seven days for maintenance operations and could be refueled in orbit. The complete ROS-7K with the stowed KRT-30 fitted in the cargo bay of Buran, although launch by the Proton rocket was studied as an alternative. Buran was also supposed to fly a technology demonstration mission in support of ROS-7K/Gals called “Karat”, but no further details on this are available. Gals was studied at NPO Energiya from 1978 until 1987 [37].

Buran (along with Proton) was also considered to launch a giant space tug powered by a nuclear electric engine. Called Gerkules (Russian for “Hercules”), the tug was to be stationed in a 200 km orbit and one of its tasks was to maneuver 100-ton spacecraft launched by Energiya to geostationary orbit. Given the 35m length of the tug, several missions would have been required to assemble it in orbit. Gerkules studies at NPO Energiya began in 1978 and lasted until at least 1986 [38].

Another exotic payload studied for launch by Buran or Proton was an experi­mental, orbiting solar power station, consisting of a solar tug and a dish antenna (based on the KRT-30). Deployment of the experimental solar power station would have required two Proton or Buran launches [39].

NPO Energiya also looked at so-called “Experimental Space Apparatuses” (EKA) that appear to have been prototypes of expensive new satellites that would be thoroughly checked out in orbit by Buran. The crew would, for instance, check if vital systems (such as various appendages) worked and carry out repair work if necessary. The EKA could then later be revisited for maintenance operations or the retrieval of valuable parts for analysis on Earth or reuse on later satellites [40].

Another future assignment for Buran occasionally mentioned by Russian sources was the retrieval of satellites from space. While this may have sounded attractive, such missions usually require that satellites are designed to be picked up by an orbiter—that is, have grapple fixtures for the orbiter’s remote manipulator system and be small enough to fit in the payload bay—and, above all, circle the Earth in orbits that can be reached by it. In practice, that would have virtually limited such

missions to satellites deployed by the orbiter itself and not equipped with a kick motor to be boosted to high orbits. The original 1976 government/party decree on Buran had called for the development of a reusable space tug (11F45) to operate between low and high orbits, but that was never developed. In one interview Yuriy Semyonov mentioned the possibility of retrieving nuclear-powered satellites that threatened to fall back to Earth [41]. The only such satellites operated by the Soviet Union were the US-А radar ocean reconnaissance satellites and it looks unlikely they could ever have been retrieved by Buran, if only because of the radiation threat to the crew.

One other mission studied for Buran was to retrieve elements of the Salyut-7 space station. Launched in 1982, Salyut-7 played host to its final crew in May 1986 before definitively passing the torch to Mir. However, rather than deorbiting it, as had been the usual practice with earlier Salyuts, the Russians boosted the station and the attached Kosmos-1686 spacecraft (a Transport Supply Ship or TKS) to a 474 x 492 km storage orbit in August 1986 to see how well their systems would stand up to a prolonged stay in space and use that experience in designing future spacecraft. Some two weeks after the maneuvers Yuriy Semyonov said in an interview that “in a few years a group of cosmonauts could be sent to Salyut to study the state of the orbital complex” [42].

In December 1988, with Buran no longer a state secret, Semyonov acknowledged that the idea was to send a Buran crew to Salyut-7 in 1995-2000 and retrieve parts of the complex for detailed analysis on Earth, adding this would provide invaluable data on prolonged exposure of materials to space conditions [43]. Some reports at the time suggested the plan was to retrieve the entire Salyut-7 space station, but given the technical complexity of such a mission, that never seems to have been the intention.

However, Salyut’s orbit decayed much faster than predicted due to unexpectedly high solar activity in the late 1980s/early 1990s that caused the upper layers of the atmosphere to expand considerably. On top of that, Kosmos-1686 suffered a failure of its electrical systems in December 1989, making it impossible to use the vehicle’s thrusters to keep the station in a gravity-gradient mode. With little fuel left in Salyut’s own tanks, the complex eventually made an uncontrolled re-entry on 7 February 1991, showering debris over South America.

The unification of the first stage of the medium-lift 11K77/Zenit rocket with the strap-on boosters of Energiya was a sound engineering decision, allowing the RD-170 engine and associated systems to be thoroughly tested in flight before the maiden mission of Energiya. However, the 11K77 was far more than just a test bed for Energiya, having been conceived at KB Yuzhnoye long before Energiya as a rocket in its own right to orbit a new generation of heavier satellites. Before being unified with Energiya’s first stage, the 11K77 had already evolved from an R-36M derived launch vehicle with storable propellants to a LOX/kerosene rocket with a clustered first stage (see Chapter 2). The 11K77 not only pre-dated Energiya, but has now long outlived it, continuing to fly today both in its two-stage domestic version and the three-stage Sea Launch version. Along with the RD-180 engine, it is undoubtedly the most tangible spin-off of the Energiya-Buran program, with a bright future ahead of it more than 20 years after its first flight. Not only did Zenit serve as a pathfinder for Energiya, it was also supposed to be the central component of its own rocket family, including a downsized version (11K55) and several heavier variants (11K37), none of which ever made it off the ground.

Between 1984 and 1993 NPO Energiya studied several relatively small spaceplanes that were primarily intended to replace Soyuz and Progress for space station support. These had the general designator OK-M (Small-Size Orbital Ship).

The basic OK-M was a 15-ton spaceplane launched by the Zenit rocket. The interface between the vehicle and the rocket was an adapter equipped with four 25-ton solid-fuel motors that could be used to either pull the ship away from the

rocket in an emergency or to provide extra thrust during launch by being activated shortly after second-stage ignition. Aerodynamically, OK-M was a mini-version of Buran, having delta wings with elevons and a vertical stabilizer with rudder/speed brake. The outer surface was covered with Buran-type heat-resistant tiles. The ship could carry a crew of two in the cabin and—if required—four more cosmonauts in a pressurized module inside its 20 m3 cargo bay. The nosecap of the vehicle would be retracted to expose an androgynous docking port. OK-M had two orbital maneuver­ing engines and 34 thrusters, all burning nitrogen tetroxide/UDMH. Power was to be provided by 16 batteries, although solar panels were also considered. Payload capacity was 3.5 tons to a 51.6°, 200 km orbit and just 2 tons to a 450 km Mir-type orbit.

Better satisfying the logistics requirements of space stations were two heavier spaceplanes called OK-M1 (31.8 tons) and OK-M2 (30 tons). Jointly developed with NPO Molniya, they were very similar to the air-launched MAKS-OS spaceplane.

However, NPO Energiya felt that such vehicles should be launched with conventional rocket systems until various mass-related and other technical issues associated with the air-launch technique were solved.

The main difference between OK-M1 and OK-M2 was the launch profile. For OK-M1 Energiya studied a rather unwieldy-looking two-stage-to-orbit configuration known as the Reusable Multipurpose Space Complex (MMKS). This consisted of a huge external fuel tank with the small spaceplane strapped to one side and a Buran look-alike vehicle to the opposite side. The external tank contained liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, and kerosene to power tripropellant engines in both vehicles. The Buran-sized vehicle was to act as the system’s first stage. It essentially was a Buran without a crew compartment carrying extra liquid oxygen and kerosene tanks in the cargo bay to feed four main engines in the tail section. After separating from the external tank, it would return to Earth using two jet engines mounted on either side of the mid fuselage. Next the OK-M1 would fire its two main engines to reach orbit. Safety features for OK-M1 included ejection seats for the crew and an emergency separation system.

OK-M2 was to be launched atop an Energiya-M rocket with conventional strap – on boosters or winged flyback boosters. The adapter connecting it to the rocket was virtually identical to that in the Zenit/OK-M configuration and also included solid – fuel motors that could be used either in a launch abort or for final orbit insertion. Another option was to install ejection seats in the vehicle, which would allow the use of a much simplified and lighter adapter section.

Because of the different launch technique, OK-M2 required no main engines, which translated into a higher payload capacity—namely, 10 tons to a 250 km, 51.6° inclination orbit vs. 7.2 tons for OK-M1 (6 and 5 tons, respectively, for Mir-type altitudes). Other differences were a LOX/kerosene orbital maneuvering/reaction control system for OK-M1 (2 OMS engines and 18 thrusters) vs. LOX/ethanol for OK-M2 (3 OMS engines, 27 thrusters). Both vehicles could accommodate four crew members in the crew compartment and another four in a pressurized module in the 40 m3 cargo bay. The power supply system relied on a combination of fuel cells and batteries. Just like MAKS-OS, both ships had foldable wings [13]. In 1994 a proposal was made to launch OK-M2 with a European Ariane-5 booster outfitted with Energiya strap-on boosters [14].

Concurrently with the OK-M studies, NPO Energiya worked out plans for a ballistic reusable spacecraft called Zarya (“Dawn”). This looked like an enlarged Soyuz descent capsule with a small expendable instrument section attached to it. Weighing 15 tons, it would be launched by Zenit and make a vertical landing using a cluster of 24 liquid-fuel braking engines rather than parachutes. The heat shield would be similar to that of Buran. Zarya was mainly intended for space station support, but also was to fly autonomous missions in the interests of the Ministry of Defense and the Academy of Sciences. Maximum crew capacity was eight.

Indications are that Zarya was considered a much more likely contender to replace or complement Soyuz/Progress than the OK-M spaceplanes. While OK-M was no more than a conceptual study, Zarya development was sanctioned by a government decree in January 1985 and even went beyond the “preliminary design’’ phase. Zarya was eventually canceled in January 1989 due to a lack of financing, although Valentin Glushko’s death that same month may have contributed to the decision [15].

Energiya-Buran is the most powerful space vehicle the world has ever seen, and, had it been given the chance to fully develop, it would have been of great benefit to the people of the Soviet Union and, indeed, the world. It didn’t get that chance, but the political and to some extent economical situation were not ideal.

I had the honor of being selected as the lead test-pilot for Buran. As such, I flew Buran’s analog BTS-002 on 12 occasions in the program that tested the atmospheric portion of Buran missions. The team from the Flight Research Institute named after M. M. Gromov consisted of some of the best test-pilots in the Soviet Union. Two pilots from this select group, Anatoliy Levchenko and I, flew in space on a Soyuz spacecraft as part of our preparations to test Buran in orbit. But, after one unmanned flight and before we had the chance to fly Buran ourselves, the program was canceled.

Buran still speaks to the imagination of the people in Russia and many take pride to have participated in the program, even though it never resulted in even one manned mission in space. At the Baykonur Cosmodrome, a model of Buran can be seen at the main gate one passes when coming from the airport. Engineers and technicians who worked on the program and have since passed away even have Buran etched on their headstones.

It is heart-warming to see that, even outside Russia, Buran still lives and I am happy to see that the authors of this book have managed to write an authoritative history on Energiya and Buran, using original Soviet and Russian sources. I sincerely hope that this book will further spread the knowledge of a program that might have yielded enormous economical profit to the world, had it been given the chance.

Igor Petrovich Volk Hero of the Soviet Union Merited Test Pilot

Pilot-Cosmonaut of the Soviet Union

This book is about the Energiya-Buran system, the Soviet equivalent of the US Space Shuttle. Originally conceived in 1976, Buran made its one and only flight in November 1988, more than seven years after the inaugural flight of the Space Shuttle. Prudent as the Soviet authorities were, it was conducted in an unmanned mode, a feat not accomplished by NASA in the Space Shuttle program.

Buran was not unique for being a manned spaceflight project that eventually would never carry a man into orbit. There were other Soviet programs that had suffered the same fate, such as the L-1/L-3 lunar program, and the military space station ferry TKS. Unlike these, however, from its conception Buran was a spacecraft without a clearly defined task. It was solely designed and built in response to the Space Shuttle, whose military potential was a source of major concern to the Soviet Union. Unsure what exactly the threat was, the Russians decided to build a vehicle matching the Shuttle’s capabilities to have a deterrent in the long run. From the Russian per­spective, Buran was just another product of the arms race between the superpowers.

The orbiter resembled its American counterpart to the point that they were aerodynamic twins, but there were important differences between the two systems as well. The most notable one was that Buran did not have main engines and was carried into orbit by a powerful launch vehicle (Energiya) that could be adapted for other missions as well. Despite the copying that unquestionably took place, the Russians still had to develop the technology, the materials, and the infrastructure all by themselves and in doing so often followed their own, unique approach. Building upon the lessons learned from their star-crossed manned lunar program, they brought the project to a state of maturity that allowed them to fly two successful launches of the Energiya rocket and one of the Buran orbiter. This was a remarkable feat, irrespective of whether the expenditures were justified or not.

After the maiden Buran flight in 1988, plans were drawn up for another mission in which the orbiter would again go up and land unmanned, although this time it would be briefly boarded in orbit by a visiting Soyuz crew. Only after the second mission had

proven the system to be reliable, would a crew have been allowed to be launched on board the orbiter.

Unfortunately, it would never come to that. As the Cold War drew to a close and the Soviet Union collapsed, the program largely lost its raison d’etre. In a time where funds allocated to large space undertakings were getting scarcer and scarcer, here was a program that was devouring more and more of that money. Slowly but surely, more and more space program officials began to oppose Buran, emphasizing that all this money was disappearing into a bottomless pit, without anyone being able to give a clear answer to that one question: what do we need Buran for?

Finally, the program died a silent death. It was never officially terminated by a government decree, but those who were involved knew the signs. The cosmonauts who had been training for the manned missions began returning to test flying in their respective institutes, transferred to the Soyuz and Mir program, or tried their luck in private industry.

Hardware was scrapped, stored, or offered for sale. The full-scale test model used for the approach and landing tests was sent to Sydney, where it was put on display. Later it was to be shipped to a museum in Germany, but didn’t make it beyond a junkyard in Bahrain, where it still sits at the time of writing.

Another full-scale test model ended up as a tourist attraction in Gorkiy Park in Moscow, while a third has been parked outdoors at Baykonur for several years, where it has been left exposed to the elements. The only Buran orbiter that flew in space was put in storage in the Energiya assembly building, but was totally destroyed when the building’s roof collapsed in May 2002.

In spite of the sad fates of these Buran orbiters, the program was a source of great pride for everyone who participated in it, from engineers to prospective cosmonauts. In many places models of the orbiter, or the entire vehicle, were erected, sometimes as monuments, sometimes just to embellish the streets in which they stand. As Buran’s lead test pilot Igor Volk says in his foreword and as maybe the ultimate sign of pride, many who were involved in it have the vehicle etched on their gravestones.

Despite cancellation of the project, the technology developed for it has not all disappeared down the drain. The rocket engine of Energiya’s strap-on boosters is still being used today by the Zenit rocket and its Sea Launch version and scaled-down versions of the engine currently power the first stage of America’s Atlas rockets and will also be employed in a new family of Russian launch vehicles called Angara. The docking hardware originally developed for Buran was used in the Shuttle/Mir pro­gram and is now actively used on the International Space Station.

Perhaps Buran was born under an unlucky star, but since the programm ended those who designed and built it have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that the Soviet/Russian counterpart to the US Space Shuttle will be remembered as a state-of – the-art spaceship that was launched by one of the most powerful launch vehicles the world has ever seen. With this book, we hope we can contribute to that endeavor.

Bart Hendrickx

Mortsel

Belgium

This book is a cooperative effort by two authors, but would probably not have come about without the initiative of David Shayler, who originally came up with the idea to write the book but in the end could not participate in it due to other commitments.

Of particular help in preparing the book were several people who were either directly or indirectly involved in the Energiya-Buran program. Thanks are extended to Buran lead test pilot Igor Volk for his foreword and also to the numerous other Buran test pilots who granted interviews to Bert Vis during his countless travels to Star City, Zhukovskiy, and other locations. Lida Shkorkina was instrumental in arranging many of those interviews and also acted as interpreter during most of them. Thanks are also due to Emil Popov, a veteran of the Military Industrial Commission, who shared recollections of the meetings and discussions in the early 1970s that eventually led to the decision to go ahead with Buran. Nina Gubanova, the widow of Energiya – Buran chief designer Boris Gubanov, provided an original copy of her husband’s hard-to-obtain memoirs.

Our special thanks also go to those who gave the authors access to some rare primary documents, most of them from the archives of the late Ernest Vaskevich, who headed the coordination and planning department of the Departmental Training Complex for Cosmonaut-Testers (OKPKI) in Zhukovskiy, which acted as the Flight Research Institute’s own cosmonaut training center. Many of those documents offer unique insight into the training program of the Buran test pilots as well as crewing issues and flight plans.

The authors also wish to thank several researchers who supported them while writing the book. First and foremost among those is Vadim Lukashevich, the web­master of the www. buran. ru website and without doubt Russia’s leading expert on the history of Buran. Vadim never got tired of answering the authors’ frequent and challenging questions and also kindly granted permission to use many of the pictures and illustrations on his website and CD-ROMs. The book would not have been what it is without his dedication, advice, and continued support.

Appreciation is also due to the staff of the unrivaled Russian space magazine Novosti kosmonavtiki, whose tireless efforts to unravel the mysteries of Soviet space history were a great source of help and inspiration in writing the book. Asif Siddiqi, the highly respected American authority on Soviet/Russian space history, was always willing to help and share information from his rich archives. Chris van den Berg, who has been patiently monitoring Soviet/Russian space-to-ground communications for over 40 years, assisted the authors in making sense of Buran’s communication systems. Peter Pesavento provided valuable information on US intelligence assess­ments of the Soviet shuttle program. Rex Hall granted access to his archives and helped with his knowledge of the Soviet/Russian space program.

Several people kindly allowed the authors to select pictures from their photo collections, including Igor Afanasyev, Edwin Neal Cameron, Sergey Grachov, Vadim Lukashevich, Igor Marinin, Timofey Prygichev, Asif Siddiqi, Rudolf van Beest, Luc van den Abeelen, and Simon Vaughan. Dennis Hassfeld was kind enough to make several line drawings based on original Russian sketches.

We thank Clive Horwood of Praxis for his continued support and Neil and Bruce Shuttlewood of Originator Publishing Services for copy editing and generation of proofs.

Last but not least, the authors wish to extend a special word of thanks to their relatives, who put up with them during two years of painstaking and time-consuming research.

When Buran swooped down to a safe landing on its Baykonur runway on 15 Novem­ber 1988, it marked the culmination of more than just the 12 years needed to take it to the launch pad since its official approval by a Soviet government and Communist Party decree in February 1976. Even by the start of the Buran program the Soviet Union possessed a rich database on high-speed aeronautics, gradually accumulated through four decades of work on rocket-propelled aircraft, intercontinental cruise missiles and smaller spaceplanes.

THE FATHER OF SOVIET SPACEPLANES

The first man in the Soviet Union to widely advocate the idea of winged spacecraft was Fridrikh Tsander. Born in 1887 in the Latvian capital Riga into an intellectual German family, Tsander became obsessed with the idea of space travel around the age of 20 and was one of the Soviet Union’s most prominent popularizers of space exploration in the 1920s (with one of his lectures attended by Lenin himself in December 1920). Although inspired by the work of great spaceflight theoreticians like his compatriot Konstantin E. Tsiolkovskiy and the German Hermann Oberth, Tsander was convinced that the most practical way of reaching other planets was not with powerful and expensive rockets, but with winged vehicles. Tsander outlined his ideas in the journal Tekhnika і zhizn in 1924 in an article called “Flights to Other Planets’’, openly taking issue with the ideas of Oberth and Tsiolkovskiy:

“For flight to the upper layers of the atmosphere and also for landing on planets possessing an atmosphere, it will be advantageous to use an aeroplane as a construction keeping the interplanetary ship in the atmosphere. Aeroplanes, having the capability of conducting a gliding descent in case of an engine

shutdown, are far superior to parachutes, proposed for the return to Earth by Oberth in his book “Rocket to the Planets”.

Parachutes do not offer the possibility of freely choosing a landing site or continuing the flight in case of a temporary engine shutdown, and therefore it would be advisable to use them only for flights without people. The part of the rocket that is operated by a man, should be equipped with an aeroplane. For descending to a planet having sufficient atmosphere, using a rocket, as proposed by K. E. Tsiolkovskiy, will also be less advantageous than using a glider or an aeroplane with an engine, because a rocket consumes much fuel during the descent and its descent will cost, even if there is only one person in the rocket, tens of thousands of rubles, whereas descending with an aeroplane costs only several tens of rubles, and with a glider, nothing at all.”

In this and other works Tsander expounded on the design of an interplanetary spaceplane that would reach space by using a combination of propeller, jet, and rocket engines. As the atmosphere got thinner, unneeded metallic components would move into a boiler to be melted into more rocket fuel. For propulsion during the interplanetary cruise, Tsander proposed screens or mirrors driven by solar light, early precursors of today’s solar sails.

Tsander did more than just generate fancy ideas. He set about turning his ideas into practice in the late 1920s with the development of an experimental rocket engine called the OR-1. In the autumn of 1931 Tsander took the initiative to establish an amateur group to study the practical aspects of rocketry and space exploration. Called the Group for the Investigation of Reactive Motion (GIRD), one of its four sections aimed to install rocket engines on gliders and thereby create a high-altitude aircraft, an idea promoted by the young engineer Sergey P. Korolyov. The engine to be used initially would be Tsander’s OR-2. Generating 50 kg of thrust, it used gasoline and liquid oxygen as propellants and had sophisticated features such as regenerative cooling of the combustion chamber using gaseous oxygen, a nozzle­cooling system using water, and a pressure feed system using nitrogen.

In early 1932 a decision was made to put the OR-2 on the BICH-11 flying wing glider. The resulting rocket plane, called RP-1, would be a modest machine, capable of developing a speed of 140 km/h, reaching an altitude of 1.5 km, and staying in the air for just about 7 minutes. However, GIRD had plans for more sophisticated rocket planes, including the RP-3, a two-man plane using a combination of piston and rocket engines to reach altitudes of 10-12 km [1].

While development of the engine got underway, Korolyov himself made several unpowered test flights of the BICH-11 to test its flying characteristics. Before tests of the engine got underway, the overworked and frail Tsander was sent to a sanatorium in the Caucasus, but contracted typhoid fever on the way and passed away on 28 March 1933 at the age of 45. His infectious enthusiasm was surely missed by the GIRD team. Korolyov’s daughter would later describe Tsander as an “adult child’’ in everyday affairs, but the “highest authority’’ in rocket matters [2]. One cannot even begin to imagine what further contributions this man could have made to Soviet rocketry had he not died such an untimely death.

Tests of the OR-2 engine in 1933 proved unsatisfactory and attempts to replace the gasoline by ethanol to facilitate cooling did not produce the expected results either. Modifying the glider to carry a rocket engine also turned out to be more difficult than expected, with one of the requirements being to drop the fuel tanks in flight to increase safety. Before the RP-1 ever had a chance to make a powered flight, GIRD was forced to change direction.

Another organization involved in rocket research in the Soviet Union was the Gas Dynamics Laboratory (GDL) in Leningrad. Established in 1921, it was mainly engaged in developing solid-fuel rockets for arming aircraft or assisting aircraft during take-off. In 1929 a small subdivision was added, headed by 20-year-old Valentin P. Glushko, to conduct research on electric and liquid-propellant engines. While the GIRD members were mainly driven by utopian visions of space travel, the GDL team primarily consisted of military-oriented rocketeers and received its modest funding directly from the military.

In 1932 the Red Army Chief of Staff Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevskiy, convinced that the Soviet Union needed modern technology to arm itself against the forces of capitalism, proposed to unite GIRD and GDL into a single institute to develop both solid and liquid-fuel rockets for the military. After many months of negotiations, the new organization, called the Reactive Scientific Research Institute (RNII) was founded in September 1933. Placed in charge of RNII was GDL’s Ivan Kleymyonov, with GIRD’s Sergey Korolyov acting as his deputy.

The different backgrounds of the two organizations soon led to internal conflicts about the future direction of the new institute. Many of these centered around the types of propellants to be used. While the GDL faction favored solid propellants or storable liquid propellants, the former GIRD team promoted engines burning liquid oxygen. Also, Korolyov was hoping to continue work on rocket planes capable of reaching the stratosphere, but this was of little interest to Kleymyonov, who saw the development of military missiles as the institute’s main objective. These and other disagreements caused Korolyov to be demoted to work as a chief engineer in the section for winged missiles in early 1934.

Winged missiles offered several advantages over ballistic missiles in destroying both mobile and stationary targets. Their flight path could be controlled after shut­down of the engines and they could cover much larger distances thanks to the extra lift provided by the wings, thereby compensating for the absence of powerful rocket engines in those days [3]. However, for Korolyov they also provided an opportunity to covertly pursue his dream of achieving manned stratospheric flight.

Ever since the work on the RP-1 rocket plane, Korolyov had become increasingly convinced that it would be difficult to turn existing aircraft or gliders into efficient rocket planes. Neither was the time ripe to put men aboard ballistic missiles. What was needed instead was a new type of winged machine capable of withstanding higher acceleration forces and fitted with low-aspect-ratio wings, a tail section, and a long fuselage to house the propellant tanks. Although the winged missiles tested at RNII in the 1930s were officially seen as precursors to surface-to-air and air-to-surface missiles, Korolyov developed many of them with the goal of manned stratospheric flight in the back of his mind.

At a conference on the use of rockets to explore the stratosphere in March 1935, Korolyov went public with his ideas to build manned winged missiles that could reach altitudes of up to 20-30 km, emphasizing the need to build “flying laboratories” that would pave the way for such vehicles. Apparently, by late 1935 Kleymyonov was impressed enough to include studies of rocket planes in the RNII’s plans for 1936. By early 1936 Korolyov had drawn up a step-by-step plan calling for the development of ever more capable piloted rocket planes. The first of these (218, later renamed 318), powered by either a solid-fuel or liquid-fuel rocket engine, would reach an altitude of 25 km and be flown by two pilots wearing pressure suits. The ultimate goal was to push the ceiling to a phenomenal 53 km [4].

The rocket engines needed for such planes were not yet available, but Korolyov got approval to build an experimental rocket plane based on his SK-9 glider, which he had probably built with that idea in mind. The rocket plane was initially called RP-218-1 and later renamed RP-318-1 after a reorganization within RNII. The engine selected to power the plane was Glushko’s ORM-65, a nitric acid/kerosene engine capable of generating between 50 and 175 kg of thrust and already under development for the 212 winged missile.

The goals formulated by Korolyov for the rocket plane program in early 1936 were “to achieve a record altitude and speed’’ and “to obtain the first practical experience in solving the problem of piloted rocket flight’’ [5]. To him personally, it was probably the first step on the long road to manned space travel, but Korolyov

was well aware that this would not be enough to receive continued support for the program. As he would have to do more than once in his later rocket and space career, he had to justify his efforts by coming up with military applications. In a study requested by Korolyov, the Zhukovskiy Air Force Academy concluded in 1937 that, despite the limited operating time of the rocket engine, rocket planes could play a vital role as fighters [6]. Their main task would be to intercept enemy bombers. With the development of jet engines in an embryonic stage, rocket engines would be the only practical way of significantly increasing speed in the near future.

After an exhaustive series of tests, the ORM-65 was installed in the SK-9 in September 1937 and began a series of integrated test firings in December 1937. Korolyov was intent on piloting the RP-318-1 himself, going down in history as the first man to fly a rocket plane. However, by this time Stalin’s purges were beginning to sweep through the ranks of RNII (renamed NII-3 in 1937). Tukhachevskiy, Kleymyonov, and his deputy Langemak were executed in January 1938, and Glushko and Korolyov were arrested on trumped-up charges in March and June 1938, disappearing into the Soviet prison system for the following six years.

Work on the RP-318-1 was not resumed until the end of the year under the leadership of A. Shcherbakov. The ORM-65 was replaced by a somewhat simplified but more reliable version called the RDA-1-150 with a thrust of between 50 and 146 kg, developed by Glushko’s successor Leonid Dushkin. After being installed in the plane, it underwent a series of more than 100 test firings between February and October 1939.

In November 1939 the RP-318-1 was transported to an aerodrome in the out­skirts of Moscow, where after several more test firings of the rocket engine it made its first historic flight on 28 February 1940. Piloted by Vladimir Fyodorov, the 675 kg and 7.9 m long rocket plane was towed into the air by an R-5 airplane and released at an altitude of 2.8 km. After gliding down to an altitude of 2.6 km, Fyodorov ignited

the RDA-1-150 engine, which burned for 110 seconds, accelerating the plane from 80 to 140 km/h and taking it to an altitude of 2.9 km. There were two more flights on 10 and 19 March 1940. If it hadn’t been for the delays caused by the repression in the late 1930s, the RP-318-1 might very well have become the world’s first aircraft propelled by a liquid-fuel rocket engine. In the event that distinction went to the German Heinkel He-176, which made its maiden flight on 20 June 1939 using a rocket engine fueled by hydrogen peroxide.