Acknowledgments

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.