Category Energiya-Buran

As the Cold War shifted into higher gear in the late 1940s, the Russians began looking at more realistic ways of delivering nuclear warheads over intercontinental distances. Unlike the US, the USSR did not have the luxury of having bases along the enemy borderline, making rockets a more convenient way of transporting nuclear bombs than strategic bombers. The leading rocket research institute was NII-88, set up in 1946. Sergey Korolyov, released from the sharaga in 1945 to study V-2 missiles in Germany, headed one of its departments. By the end of the decade NII-88 was investigating both ballistic and cruise missiles as a means of delivering nuclear bombs over long distances. In the winged arena, the emphasis now shifted from a hori­zontally launched piloted bomber with rocket and scramjet engines to a vertically launched unmanned two-stage cruise missile carrying rocket engines in the first stage and supersonic ramjets in a winged second stage. Unlike the ballistic missiles, the cruise missiles would remain within the boundaries of the Earth’s atmosphere, developing top speeds of around Mach 3.

A Soviet government decree issued on 4 December 1950 approved a new rocket research program, one part of which (“theme N-3’’) focused on intercontinental missiles. The conclusion of the N-3 studies was that the development of a cruise missile with a range of 8,000 km was feasible, but needed to be preceded by further

research into scramjets and navigation systems. A government decree on 13 February 1953 gave the go-ahead for the simultaneous development of both intercontinental ballistic and cruise missiles, assigning both tasks to OKB-1, which was the name given to Korolyov’s reorganized department within N11-88 in 1950. Since the cruise missile required a significant leap in technology, OKB-1 would first design an intermediate Experimental Cruise Missile (EKR). With a targeted range of 730 km, it would consist of an R-11 missile as the first stage and a winged second stage with a Bondaryuk RD-40 scramjet.

By the end of 1953 preliminary ground-based testing of EKR components had given the Russians enough confidence to skip this intermediate step and move directly to an intercontinental cruise missile with a range of 8,000 km. Since Korolyov’s OKB-1 was too heavily preoccupied with its R-7 ICBM, responsibility for the cruise missiles was entrusted to the aviation industry by a government decree released on 20 May 1954. Three aviation design bureaus were tapped to build cruise missiles with different missions:

• OKB-49 (Georgiy Beriyev): a missile called Burevestnik (“Petrel”) or “P-100” to be used for long-range reconnaissance (fulfilling the same role as the American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft) and also to deliver small 1.2-ton nuclear warheads.

• OKB-301 (Semyon Lavochkin): a missile called Burya (“Storm”) or La-350 to transport 2.18-ton atomic bombs.

• OKB-23 (Vladimir Myasishchev): a missile called Buran (“Blizzard”) or M-40 to transport 3.4-ton hydrogen bombs.

Keldysh’s NII-1, which had once again become independent in 1952 after having been a branch of the Central Institute for Aviation Materials (TsIAM) since 1948, had overall scientific supervision of the cruise missile effort, relying on its earlier experience in high-speed and high-altitude aeronautics obtained during the antipodal bomber projects.

All cruise missiles consisted of a “core stage’’ with air-breathing scramjet engines, flanked by rocket-powered “strap-on boosters’’ (two for Burevestnik and Burya and four for Buran), giving them an appearance somewhat reminiscent of the Space Shuttle. Burevestnik seems to have been a very short-lived program that never came close to flying. Buran featured four first-stage boosters with Glushko RD-212 kerosene/nitric acid engines and a core stage with a Bondaryuk RD-018 scramjet. In August 1956 OKB-301 started work on an improved version (Buran-A or M-40A) with upgraded RD-213 engines, increasing payload capacity to 5 tons. Interestingly, Myasishchev at one point considered equipping Buran with a small crew cabin, from which the pilot was to eject prior to impact. One of the objectives of this plan was to see if a man could endure the psychological and physical rigors of hypersonic flight. Buran was scrapped in November 1957 before making its first flight.

Burya’s two strap-ons had Isayev S2.1100 rocket engines (later replaced by the S2.1150) and the core stage was powered by a Bondaryuk RD-012 scramjet. The missile underwent a series of 17 test flights from the Vladimirovka test range in the Volgograd region between September 1957 and December 1960. The maximum range achieved was 6,425 km, less than the prescribed 8,000 km, because the scramjet had a tendency of igniting too early. However, even as Burya was overcoming its teething problems, its fate had already been sealed by the successful test flights of OKB-1’s R-7 ICBM, the first of which took place in August 1957. Cruise missiles were very vulnerable to defensive measures due to their low flight altitudes (around 17-25 km) and took more than two hours to reach their targets, whereas ICBMs could deliver their deadly cargo in a matter of minutes. The US Air Force had come to the same conclusion, closing down its Navaho intercontinental cruise missile project in July 1957. The Soviet government followed suit by releasing a decree on 5 February 1960 that canceled all further work on Burya, although it allowed some of the remaining missiles to be tested in flight [12].

For many years official histories of the Soviet space program created the impression that Vostok had been the only Soviet piloted space project in the late 1950s/early 1960s. Not until the days of glasnost in the late 1980s/early 1990s did it emerge that just like the United States the Soviet Union had considered winged spacecraft as an alternative to ballistic capsules in the early years of the space program. Surprisingly, it turned out that this option was studied in no fewer than five design bureaus.

In the US winged spacecraft were long seen as the logical culmination of research into high-speed aeronautics conducted since the mid-1940s with air-launched rocket – propelled X-planes. The first phase had seen aircraft such as the X-1, X-2, and

Skyrocket gradually push the envelope from Mach 1 to Mach 3 between 1947 and 1956. Phase 2 had been initiated in late 1954 with the decision to press ahead with the development of the X-15 high-altitude hypersonic research aircraft, which eventually performed a largely successful test program between 1958 and 1969. Ultimately, suborbital and orbital capability would be achieved using the “boost-glide” principle, where a spaceplane would be launched vertically with the help of a con­ventional rocket and eventually glide back down to the runway like an ordinary aircraft. In late 1957, responding to Sputnik, the Air Force consolidated three “boost-glide” feasibility studies (Hywards, Brass Bell, and Rocket Bomber) into a single program called “Dyna-Soar” or X-20. Unlike the X-15, however, Dyna-Soar was not seen as an experimental system, but an operational weapon system capable of orbital nuclear bombardment, reconnaissance, and satellite identification and neutralization [13].

During 1958 the exigencies of the Cold War and the fledgling space race with the Soviet Union gradually pushed the ballistic capsule approach to the foreground, especially after the formation of NASA in October of that year. Having lost face after the early Sputnik successes, the United States was intent on restoring its reputation by putting the first man into orbit and capsules were a more efficient and quicker way of achieving that goal than winged spacecraft. The Air Force continued work on Dyna-Soar against the backdrop of NASA’s Project Mercury, but in December 1963, with the first flight an estimated three years away, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara canceled the program. X-20 funds were reappropriated to a military space station called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). After that the United States did not have another officially sanctioned spaceplane project until the approval of the Space Shuttle by President Nixon in early 1972.

The winged approach to piloted spaceflight was probably less central in Soviet thinking than it was in the US, at least when it came to building the first manned spacecraft. For one, the Soviet aviation industry and the Air Force were far removed from missiles and space-related matters after the Ministry of the Aviation Industry had declined offers in 1945-1946 to bear responsibility for long-range missile pro­grams. Instead, the assignment went to the Ministry of Armaments, which had developed artillery during the Second World War. This had far-reaching implications for the Soviet space program (essentially an offshoot of the missile program), which until the break-up of the USSR remained tightly in the grip of the “artillery” camp. Moreover, missiles were soon favored over strategic bombers to deliver nuclear warheads to US territory and there was little incentive for research into high-speed, high-altitude aircraft, reflected in the absence of high-altitude “X-type” airplane research programs in the Soviet Union. On top of that, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchov had become particularly enamored with missiles in the mid-1950s, curtailing contracts for the aviation industry and even dissolving several aviation design bureaus towards the end of the decade.

The earliest plans for piloted missions beyond the atmosphere revolved around the use of converted R-2 missiles to send people on vertical trajectories to altitudes of up to 200 km. Although one common cabin design was planned, different methods were studied for returning the capsule to Earth. One option presented by Korolyov

during a speech in September 1955 was to equip such a capsule with wings, allowing it to make a long ballistic suborbital flight rather than a short vertical hop [14].

Research on piloted spaceflight began in earnest in the spring of 1957 with the establishment within OKB-1 of Department 9, which was to focus exclusively on the development of lunar probes and piloted spaceships, signaling the beginning of the bureau’s reorientation from missiles to spaceflight. Between September 1957 and January 1958 OKB-1 and the NII-1 research institute carried out a comparative analysis of various basic shapes for piloted spaceships, paying particular attention to thermal protection requirements and the ^-forces exerted on the crew. The con­clusion was that the heat-resistant alloys available at the time were not up to the task of protecting winged vehicles with high lift-to-drag ratios against the severe thermal stresses of re-entry. Instead, the recommendation was that the first piloted spaceship should have a lift-to-drag ratio between just 0.5 and 0, depending on the ^-forces that were deemed acceptable for the crew. The ship would preferably be shaped as a blunt cone with a rounded nose and a spherical base, with the pilot being ejected from the descent capsule before touchdown.

In April 1958 one of the main obstacles to manned ballistic flight was eliminated when a key meeting of leading experts in the field of aviation medicine came to the conclusion that people could withstand forces of up to 10g as long as the body was properly positioned inside the capsule. All this would lead later that year to preliminary designs for the manned vehicle that eventually became Vostok, redesigned in early 1959 to serve the dual function of carrying people into space and performing unmanned photoreconnaissance missions [15].

Nevertheless, Korolyov, a veteran of several rocket plane projects in the 1930s and 1940s, did not abandon the idea of winged piloted spaceflight. Outlining their ideas on the future of spaceflight in a joint letter to the government on 5 July 1958, Korolyov and his associate Mikhail Tikhonravov called for developing a manned space capsule in the 1958-1960 timeframe and then to design a manned vehicle “with a gliding return profile” in 1959-1965 [16].

Preoccupied with work on the R-7 rocket and the first satellites, Korolyov turned to a befriended aircraft designer to start preliminary research on a manned space – plane. This was Pavel V. Tsybin, who had got acquainted with Korolyov back in the early 1930s while building gliders. After leading research on the LL “flying labora­tories” in the late 1940s, Tsybin worked on missiles at N11-88 from 1949 to 1951 and subsequently became involved in the design of the air-launched Kometa anti-ship cruise missile at the Mikoyan design bureau. Finally, in May 1955 Tsybin was placed in charge of a newly founded design bureau called OKB-256, situated in Podberyozye, which in 1956 became part of the newly founded city of Dubna. Its primary assignment was to create the RS, a long-range bomber powered by super­sonic ramjet engines, although by mid-1956 the focus had shifted to a supersonic reconnaissance aircraft named RSR.

Sometime later, presumably in 1958, Korolyov proposed Tsybin to design a small winged spaceship that could be orbited by an R-7 based rocket. Tsybin’s team readily set to work, assisted by specialists from OKB-1. What they came up with was a vehicle called PKA (for “Gliding Space Apparatus’’), which because of its shape was also nicknamed Lapotok (“little bast shoe’’).

Having a launch mass of 3.5 tons, the one-man spaceplane was to be placed into a circular 300 km orbit by a Vostok rocket for missions lasting up to 24-27 hours. Built into the fuselage was a small pressurized cabin with a control panel, life support systems, and three windows, one of them for an astronavigation system. In case of a launch abort, the pilot could eject from the cabin up to an altitude of 10 km and in an emergency at higher altitudes the entire spaceplane would be separated from the rocket. Located behind the cabin was a pressurized instrument compartment with on-

orbit and re-entry support systems. The spaceplane also had a detachable engine compartment with two 2,350 kg thrust nitric acid/kerosene engines, one for on-orbit maneuvers and the other for the deorbit burn. Also on this compartment were an infrared vertical sensor and a thermal control system using radiators. The dry mass of the engine unit was 350 kg and the propellant mass at launch was 430 kg. For orientation in orbit and during the early stages of re-entry the ship used small hydrogen peroxide thrusters.

The deorbit, re-entry, and landing phase was to last up to 90 minutes. After the deorbit burn the engine compartment was to be separated at an altitude of 90 km. During re-entry the spaceplane’s steel fuselage was protected from the high tempera­tures by a heat shield consisting of a 100 mm thick organic silicon layer and a 70 mm thick fibre layer as well as by special air ducts to cool the outside structure. Places with maximum heat exposure such as the nose of the heat shield and the leading edges of the two elevons and the tail were to be cooled with the help of liquid lithium. During maximum heating the angle of attack was 55 to 60°. At an altitude of 20 km, having reduced its speed to 500-600 m/s, the PKA would deploy two wings with a span of 7.5 m and an area of 8.7 m2, which until then had remained folded back to protect them against the highest temperatures during re-entry. The spaceplane was to land on a dirt runway using a skid landing gear. Landing speed was 180-200 km/h and landing mass was 2.6 tons.

The preliminary design (“draft plan’’ in Russian terminology) for the PKA was officially approved by Tsybin on 17 May 1959 and the following day Korolyov sent a letter to the State Committee of Defense Technology (GKOT, the former Ministry of Armaments) with the request to include the spaceplane in its long-range plans and assign OKB-256 to the project as the lead organization [17]. However, wind tunnel tests conducted at the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute (TsAGI) showed that the PKA would be exposed to much higher temperatures than expected (up to 1,500°C), requiring significant changes to the heat shield. Moreover, it turned out

that the use of liquid lithium to cool the hottest parts of the fuselage would make the design much heavier and more complex than anticipated [18].

Tsybin invited specialists of the All-Union Institute of Aviation Materials (VIAM) to deal with these issues, but by the end of 1959 clouds were gathering not only over the PKA, but over Tsybin’s design bureau as well. The RS supersonic strategic bomber had been canceled in the wake of the Soviet Union’s early ICBM successes and in October 1959 OKB-256 was absorbed by Myasishchev’s OKB-23. When OKB-23 in turn became a branch of Vladimir Chelomey’s OKB-52 in late I960, Tsybin returned to Korolyov’s OKB-1, where he would eventually go on to play an important role in the Energiya-Buran program and later in the design of single-stage-to-orbit spaceplanes [19].

Vladimir Myasishchev’s OKB-23 (situated in the Moscow suburb of Fili) was mainly engaged in the development of long-range strategic bombers, but branched out into cruise missiles with the M-40/Buran project in 1954-1957 and also did considerable research on spaceplanes even before Tsybin had started his PKA project. Unfortu­nately, most of the archival materials related to Myasishchev’s spaceplane projects have not been preserved, making it difficult to piece together their history. According to Russian historians Myasishchev, inspired by plans for the X-15 and US boost – glide concepts, began spaceplane research “on his own initiative’’ as early as 1956 under a program named Project 46. Also involved in the research were the NII-1 and NII-4 research institutes.

By 1957 he came to the conclusion it would be feasible in the short run to develop a reusable vehicle called a “satelloid’’ or “intercontinental rocket plane’’. Its primary goal would be to conduct strategic reconnaissance over enemy territory without the risk of being shot down by anti-aircraft defense means. Such missions would last 3 to 4 hours, with the spaceplane using radar and both optical and infrared photographic equipment to detect troop movements and spot enemy aircraft and missiles. Included

in the early warning network would be high-orbiting relay satellites. Later goals were to send vehicles of this type on bombing missions or to destroy enemy missiles and satellites. A reconnaissance version was expected to be ready by 1963 and a combined reconnaissance/bombing version was planned for 1964-1965. Myasishchev is said to have presented his ideas for spaceplanes during a visit to OKB-23 by Khrushchov in August 1958, but the Soviet leader was unimpressed, telling Myasishchev to stick to the field of aviation and leave rocket-related matters to others.

Undeterred by Khrushchov’s scepticism, OKB-23 pressed on with its spaceplane research. By April 1959 the bureau had worked out plans for a 10-ton rocket plane flying between altitudes of 80 and 150 km and capable of increasing orbital altitude by 100 km (to a maximum of 250 km) and changing orbital inclination by 3°. As Dyna-Soar, it was envisaged as a “boost-glide” system, being launched into orbit by a conventional ballistic rocket and then gliding back to a horizontal runway landing. The launch vehicle was to be an upgraded three-stage version of Korolyov’s R-7 missile. The third stage apparently consisted of four “boost engines’’ drawing propellant from four jettisonable tanks mounted on the spaceplane itself. In April 1960 Myasishchev revised his plans and was now aiming for a 6-ton vehicle flying in 600 km orbits and capable of performing inclination-changing maneuvers of as much

.

Meanwhile, OKB-23 was tasked with the development of another manned space vehicle by a government and party decree (nr. 1388-618) issued on 10 December 1959. This decree, considered to be the first macro-policy statement on the Soviet space program, encompassed a wide range of space projects. Myasishchev’s bureau in particular was assigned to develop a manned vehicle capable of ensuring “a reliable link’’ between the ground and “heavy satellites’’. Known as Project 48, this appears to have been an early version of a transportation system for space stations, although it was supposed to solve defense-related tasks as well. It was only the second piloted space project to be officially approved by a party/government decree after Vostok. Work on the project got underway after orders from the State Committee of Aviation Technology (GKAT) on 7 January and 4 March 1960.

48-2 spaceplane (reproduced from A. Bruk, 2001).

Weighing no more than 4.5 tons, the spacecraft was to be launched into a circular 400 km orbit by an R-7 based launch vehicle and stay in orbit anywhere from 5 to 27 hours. Re-entry through the atmosphere was to consist of a ballistic and a “controlled gliding” phase, reducing deceleration forces to no more than 3-4g. This required an aerodynamic shape providing at least some lift and ruled out a Vostok – type spherical design. Thermal protection was to be provided by ceramic tiles and/or by super-cold liquid metals circulating under the spacecraft’s skin.

Myasishchev’s team came up with four possible designs to meet these require­ments, each capable of carrying two men. Vehicle 48-1 (launch mass 4.5 tons) had a cone-shaped fuselage with highly swept delta wings (79°) and fins on the wings and fuselage to provide braking during re-entry. The crew cabin was located in the back. Both the fins and the glider’s engine compartment were to be jettisoned when the spaceplane had decelerated to a speed of Mach 5. Vehicle 48-2 (launch mass 4.3 tons) had a cylindrical fuselage with delta wings (leading edge sweepback of 65°) and small canards in the front. There were vertical tails both on top of and under the fuselage. The crew cabin was situated in the middle and the spaceplane was outfitted with a non-jettisonable engine compartment. The two other schemes envisaged a Mercury/ Gemini look-alike inverted cone with a rotor for a helicopter-type landing (48-3) and a conically shaped spacecraft for a parachute landing (48-4). Missions of the two-man ship were to be preceded by test flights of a single-seater spaceplane to demonstrate

the functioning of life support systems and test the “gliding re-entry” technique. The proposals were reviewed at a meeting of leading aviation specialists on 8 April I960, but no consensus was reached on the way to go forward.

There was yet another OKB-23 proposal for a single-seater spaceplane, which Myasishchev historians also link to Project 48, although it does not appear to have been the aforementioned one-man demonstration vehicle. It has been referred to as VKA-23 (VKA standing for “Aerospace Apparatus” and “23” referring to the name of the design bureau) and was the brainchild of OKB-23 designers L. Selyakov and G. Dermichov, who had originally presented it to NII-1 chief Mstislav Keldysh. Two versions of the delta-wing VKA-23 were studied between March and September 1960, one with a single fin at the rear (launch mass between 3.5 and 4.1 tons, length 9.4m) and one with two fins at the tips of the wings (launch mass between 3.6 and 4.5 tons, length 9.0 m).

The VKA-23 was to be launched either by an R-7 based rocket or a much more powerful rocket developed in-house under the so-called Project 47. In a launch emergency, the pilot could eject from the vehicle up to an altitude of 11 km, higher than that the entire vehicle would be separated from the rocket. The VKA-23 was supposed to borrow some elements from the Vostok spacecraft such as the Chayka orientation system and the Zarya communication system. Thermal protection was provided by ultra lightweight ceramic foam tiles very similar in shape to the ones later used by the US Space Shuttle and Buran. The leading edges of the wings were protected by a thick layer of siliconized graphite. A small turbojet engine was to give the ship extra maneuverability during re-entry. Just like the Vostok cosmonauts, the pilot was not supposed to land inside the ship, but eject at an altitude of about 8 km, with the spacecraft itself making an automatic landing on skids.

Although Project 48 had received the official nod with the party/government decree of December 1959, it was no longer mentioned in an even bigger space decree released on 23 June 1960. Actually, OKB-23 was counting its final days, falling victim to Khrushchov’s policy of downsizing aviation in favor of missiles. In October 1960 Myasishchev’s design bureau became Branch Nr. 1 of the OKB-52 design bureau of Vladimir Chelomey and was assigned to various missile, rocket, and spacecraft projects. Myasishchev was named head of TsAGI, but in 1967 was placed in charge of the EMZ design bureau, which would go on to play a vital role in the Buran program [20].

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.