NPO Molniya/TMZ

NPO Energiya’s major subcontractor for the Buran project was NPO Molniya, situated in Tushino in the northwest outskirts of Moscow. The organization was established on 24 February 1976 under the Ministry of the Aviation Industry by the merger of three existing organizations:

– MKB Burevestnik: set up in 1954 in Tushino as the design bureau aligned with Factory nr. 82, renamed the Tushino Machine Building Factory (TMZ) in 1963. The factory serially manufactured surface-to-air missiles and target drones. In 1966 the design bureau and TMZ became involved in the improve­ment and production of the Sukhoy design bureau’s T-4 supersonic bomber, the airframe of which was built with new titanium alloys using new auto­mated welding techniques. Burevestnik was headed from 1965 to 1986 by Aleksandr V. Potopalov.

– MKB Molniya: established in 1948 in Tushino as OKB-4 to design various types of helicopters, but in the early 1950s began specializing in air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles. Placed in charge of the organization in 1955 was Matus R. Bisnovat, who after his death in 1977 was replaced by G. I. Khokhlov.

– Experimental Machine Building Factory (EMZ): set up in 1966 by the merger of a branch of the Khrunichev factory and KB-90, which until then had been part of Branch nr. 1 of Chelomey’s OKB-52 design bureau. Branch nr. 1 was the former OKB-23 design bureau of Vladimir M. Myasishchev, which among other things had worked on the Buran cruise missile and various spaceplane projects, and was absorbed by OKB-52 in 1960. The Khrunichev branch and KB-90 were situated next to one another in the Moscow suburb of Zhukovskiy and had been responsible for modernizing aircraft built at Khrunichev and also performing test flights from a nearby airfield. Myasishchev, who had been placed in charge of TsAGI after OKB-23’s merger with Chelomey’s bureau, was appointed head of EMZ in June 1967. The bureau was involved in the design of several heavy and high-altitude aircraft. Following Myasishchev’s death in 1978, the organization was headed by Valentin A. Fedotov (1979-1986) and Valeriy K. Novikov (1986-2006).

Although several people from the former OKB-23 were apparently transferred to EMZ, none of the three organizations had been involved in any of the numerous spaceplane projects studied in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. Therefore, over 100 Spiral veterans were transferred to NPO Molniya from MMZ Zenit (the Mikoyan design bureau) and its former space branch in Dubna, which in 1972 had merged with MKB Raduga (another former branch of Mikoyan’s bureau) to form DPKO Raduga. These people occupied leading positions within NPO Molniya, first and foremost Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy, who became general designer and director of the organization. He was replaced as general director by Aleksandr V. Bashilov in 1994, but remained in the post of general designer until his death in 2001 at age 91. Also invited to work for NPO Molniya were specialists from Branch 1 of Chelomey’s bureau, NPO Energiya, TsNIIMash, and several other organizations.

NPO Molniya was responsible for the “aircraft-related” elements of Buran: the fuselage, crew compartment, aerodynamic surfaces, landing gear, and hydraulic systems. In addition to that, it oversaw the development of the payload bay doors, the thermal protection system, the power distribution system, and the pressurization and ventilation system. The bulk of the work on Buran within NPO Molniya seems to have been assigned to EMZ, which was involved in the development of the crew module shell, manual flight controls, environmental and thermal control systems, the emergency escape system, and the turbojet engines needed for the approach and

Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy (source: www. buran. ru).

landing tests with the BTS-002 Buran model. EMZ was also in charge of modifying the VM-T aircraft for ferrying Buran and elements of the Energiya rocket to Baykonur. Potopalov’s Burevestnik team was responsible for developing the vehicle’s primary load-bearing structure.

Even after being absorbed by NPO Molniya, the individual design bureaus that constituted the organization did not all abandon their former lines of work. EMZ continued to develop a variety of aircraft, and MKB Molniya continued to work on air-to-air missiles, although most specialists involved in this work (including Khokhlov) were transferred to another design bureau (MKB Vympel) in the early 1980s.

Production of the airframe took place at the Tushino Machine Building Factory (TMZ), which had built a wide variety of aircraft, surface-to-air missiles, and target

Lozino-Lozinskiy’s grave at the Donskoye cemetery in Moscow (B. Vis).

Buran orbiter under construction at TMZ (source: www. buran. ru).

missiles since its establishment in 1932, briefly branching out into trams and trolley­buses after the war. Key aircraft manufactured at TMZ were Sukhoy’s T-4 from 1966 to 1974 and Mikoyan’s MiG-23 from 1975 to 1982. Aside from assembling the airframe and all airplane-related elements of Buran, TMZ was also responsible for installing heat-resistant tiles on Buran’s aluminum skin. TMZ received components for the airframe from more than 450 aviation enterprises across the Soviet Union.

Although TMZ was an existing facility, most buildings needed for the con­struction of Buran seem to have been built from scratch. The most important ones were building nr. 110 (general assembly), nr. 111 (final assembly + production and installation of heat-resistant tiles), nr. 112 (assembly of the crew cabin), and nr. 112a (pressure and strength tests of the crew cabin).

TMZ never delivered flight-ready orbiters, mainly because the VM-T carrier aircraft were not powerful enough to transport fully-equipped orbiters to the Baykonur cosmodrome. Final outfitting was carried out at the cosmodrome’s Buran assembly building by engineers of both ZEM and TMZ. Directors of TMZ during the Buran years were I. K. Zverev (1974-1982) and Suren G. Arutyunov (1982-1999). NPO Molniya also had a so-called “Experimental Factory’’ that among other things built various test stands for Buran (such as the PRSO and PDST landing simulators) and manufactured the Auxiliary Power Units.

One problem in transporting Buran to the launch site was that there was no suitable airfield in the vicinity of TMZ. Therefore, the orbiter had to be transported from Tushino (in the northwest outskirts of Moscow) to Zhukovskiy (southeast of Moscow, some 20 km from the outer ring road around the city). First, a special transportation device moved the orbiter through the streets of Tushino to the banks of the Moscow River. Several streets in the Moscow suburb had to be widened to give the vehicle with its 24 m wingspan enough clearance. The vertical stabilizer was removed for the entire trip from Tushino to Baykonur. Subsequently, the spacecraft was placed on a special barge equipped with ballast tanks, increasing its draught

Buran sails through the heart of Moscow under a giant cover (source: www. buran. ru).

sufficiently for it to pass under the bridges of the Moscow River. The barge then transported Buran to Zhukovskiy, floating right through the heart of the nation’s capital. Most of these transports took place when the Energiya-Buran program was still a state secret, which is why the orbiter was hidden from view by a huge cover that didn’t betray its true shape [3].