The Buran cosmonaut team

Describing the history of the Buran cosmonaut team is not as straightforward as it may seem at first glance. Unlike the situation in the US, where NASA has always been in charge of selecting and training the (career) astronauts that make up Space Shuttle crews, the Soviet Union’s space program lacked a central coordinating NASA-type organization. Several organizations involved in test pilot and cosmonaut training felt they should all independently select their own cosmonaut teams. From these groups, Buran crew members representing those organizations would be assigned.

Three organizations selected cosmonauts specifically for Buran:

• The Cosmonaut Training Center named after Yu. A. Gagarin (TsPK for Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov) based in Star City (Zvyozdnyy Gorodok) near Moscow.

This Soviet Air Force unit, set up in I960, had been in charge of selecting and training cosmonauts for flights on Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, and Salyut.

• The Flight Research Institute named after M. M. Gromov (LII for Lyotno – Issledovatelskiy Institut) in Zhukovskiy, some 35 km southeast of Moscow.

The Flight Research Institute, a civilian research and development entity subordinate to the Ministry of the Aviation Industry (MAP), was founded in 1941 as the leading test center for experimental and production aircraft. LII had a Test Pilot School (ShLI).

• The State Red Banner Scientific Test Institute named after V. P. Chkalov (GKNII for Gosudarstvennyy Krasnoznamennyy Nauchno-Ispytatelnyy Institut) in Akhtubinsk, some 130 km west of Volgograd and about 50 km south of the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome in the Volga delta.

This Air Force unit was set up in 1960 at the same site that had served since 1947 for testing various unmanned flying apparatuses, such as surface-to-surface missiles, air-to-surface missiles, and the Burya intercontinental cruise missile.

The site was sometimes referred to as Vladimirovka, after a nearby railway station. With the establishment of GKNII its role was expanded to testing various aircraft for the Air Force and it also included an Air Force test pilot school known as the Test Pilot Training Center (TsPLI).

In March 1979 MOM, MAP, and the Ministry of Defense jointly decided that a pool of 17 pilots would be required for the Buran test flight program: six from LII, six from GKNII, and five from TsPK [1]. Part of the reason for assigning pilots from three different organizations was no doubt the departmentalism typical of the Soviet space program. However, there appear to have been more rational considerations as well. Since Buran was far more complex than any Soviet spacecraft flown before, the unmatched flying skills of the LII pilots were probably considered necessary to safely guide the vehicle through its initial atmospheric and orbital flight tests, with GKNII becoming involved in the test flights at a somewhat later stage. It was not uncommon in the former Soviet Union for the Air Force team in Akhtubinsk to further test new aircraft once they had been declared airworthy by the LII pilots, and in this respect Buran was no exception [2]. Presumably, the LII pilots were to fly test flights with civilian payloads, and the GKNII pilots test flights with military payloads.

Once their job was completed, these career test pilots would then return to their usual line of work, passing the torch to the “regular” TsPK pilots to finish the test program, and ultimately fly Buran’s operational missions. This, at least, appears to have been the original intention when the first pilot teams were selected in the 1970s and Buran was expected to begin flying in the first half of the 1980s. As the orbital test flights slipped into the late 1980s and were spread out over many years, the opera­tional phase became a distant and vague goal. Therefore, in the end the only pilots seriously considered to fly on Buran were from LII and GKNII, and further TsPK selections were solely aimed at the mainstream Salyut/Mir space station program.

In addition to the pilots, engineers from both NPO Energiya and the Air Force were assigned to Buran as well, although none of them ever appear to have been specifically selected for the program. Because of all this, it is not possible to really give one single founding date for the Buran cosmonaut team.