TRAINING FOR BURAN Simulators

The departmentalism of the Soviet space program was not only evident in the selection of cosmonauts for Buran, but also in the construction of simulators needed for cosmonaut training. About a dozen of these were scattered over various organ­izations involved in the Buran program, some of them apparently performing similar roles. For the Soyuz and space station programs, all simulator training was and still is concentrated at Star City, but this was hardly the case for Buran. Although there were ambitious plans for Buran simulator buildings at Star City and some simulators were eventually placed here, little if any Buran-related simulator training appears to have taken place at TsPK. Presumably, this was due to the fact that the Star City facilities were intended in the first place to prepare for manned orbital flights of Buran, which always remained a distant goal, without any really concrete flight plans ever being drawn up.

The bulk of the simulator training took place at NPO Molniya in Tushino and was aimed at preparing for the atmospheric landing tests with the BTS-002 Buran test vehicle. There where three simulators at NPO Molniya. Two of them were called PRSO (“Full-Scale Equipment Test Stand”) and installed on top of each other. PRSO-1 was mainly used for testing the software used during the BTS-002 landing tests. First activated in June 1984, it consisted of a simplified Buran cockpit and a “skeleton” containing the main parts involved in landing. PRSO-2 was supposed to

The PRSO simulators (B. Vis files).

become the principal training device for Buran orbital missions, but was never completed [30].

The third simulator at NPO Molniya was PDST (“Piloting Dynamic Test Stand/ Simulator”), which was also geared to simulating the BTS-002 approach and landing tests. This was a Buran cockpit mounted on a motion platform, and housed all the displays and controls found in BTS-002. Installed behind the cockpit windows was a visual display system showing the surroundings of Zhukovskiy, where the test flights were conducted. A three-degrees-of-freedom motion platform was later replaced by a six-degrees-of-freedom motion platform, capable of imitating the movements made by the vehicle. PDST was used to familiarize crews both with nominal and off – nominal flight situations. Before the first approach and landing test in November 1985 the first four pilots involved in the tests (Volk, Stankyavichus, Levchenko, and Shchukin) each spent about 230-240 hours training on PDST, simulating about 160 off-nominal flight scenarios. In between training sessions PDST was also used to test new manual and flight director landing modes.

Another test stand at NPO Molniya was PSS (“Piloting Static Test Stand”). Completed in March 1984, it consisted of a Buran flight deck in a dome-shaped structure where images of the landing area were displayed on the walls with the help of a wide-angle projection system. It was solely used for research purposes, more particularly to test algorithms for manual flight control. It is not entirely clear if the LII test pilots were involved in this work [31].

The PDST simulator (B. Vis files).

Buran training at Star City was to take place in two buildings. One of these was called KTOK (“Orbiter Simulator Building”), which was planned to house a full-scale mock-up of Buran. Although that mock-up never appeared, three other simulators did end up in the facility.

The first was a motion base simulator designed and built by TsAGI that could be used to practice the controlled flight portion of the landing. In spite of the fact that this was probably one of the highest-performance Buran simulators built, it is remarkable that members of the various cosmonaut groups have stressed that they never trained on it [32]. The motion-base simulator was still intact in 1999, but by 2003 it had been largely dismantled and it has now been removed from the training hall.

The second simulator was a full-scale Buran crew cabin, consisting of both the flight and mid-decks. In addition, a Docking Module was added to the simulator that was to be used for docking to the Mir space station. This Docking Module was equipped with an APAS-89 docking system.

The third simulator was a fixed-base flight deck that was prominently positioned in the training hall. By 2003 it was still standing in the hall, although all equipment had been disconnected and the entrance door was sealed off.

After cancellation of the Buran program, other simulators were placed in the KTOK building in support of the Mir and ISS programs. These were full-scale

The KTOK was constructed particularly for the Buran program (B. Vis).

training models of Mir’s Spektr and Priroda modules and of the Russian ISS modules Zarya and Zvezda.

Construction of a second large Buran simulator building was begun at TsPK, but abandoned as the future of the program became uncertain. Over 20 m high, it never­theless is still one of TsPK’s most conspicuous buildings. If completed, it should have been able to house a complete Buran orbiter and would have been used among other things to train cosmonauts in operating the remote manipulator arm.

Another Buran cockpit simulator at TsPK was called Pilot-35 (“35” referring to the 11F35 designator of Buran), adapted from a Spiral simulator called Pilot-105. This was used mainly to test the placement of control and display systems in the cockpit and to compare automatic and flight director landing modes. It was also used in conjunction with the TsF-7 centrifuge to test manual landing techniques under simulated flight conditions. However, Pilot-35 appears to have been intended primarily for engineering purposes and it is not clear if it was ever used by cosmo­nauts [33].

The Buran pilots also conducted extensive training at TsAGI in Zhukovskiy, using a simulator known as PSPK-102. Constructed in 1983, it was a dynamic simulator mounted on a six-degrees-of-freedom motion platform and was later modified as a simulator for various aircraft [34].

Buran pilots also simulated manual approach and docking techniques on a simulator called Pilot at IMBP. In addition, there were test stands at several organ­izations that were primarily built for engineering purposes, but were at least partially intended for cosmonaut training as well, although it is unclear whether they were ever actually used for that purpose. These included the full-scale Buran mock-up OK-KS and the crew cabin mock-up MK-KMS at NPO Energiya as well as the crew cabin mock-up MK-M at Myasishchev’s EMZ (see Chapter 6). At least three tests stands intended partially for cosmonaut training (KS-SU, ATsK, and Anomaliya) were situated at NPO AP in Moscow, the bureau that was responsible for Buran’s computers.

The dispersion of simulators over so many organizations was obviously not convenient for the LII pilots themselves, who were based in Zhukovskiy. Especially after the formation in 1987 of OKPKI, which was supposed to become LII’s equivalent of TsPK, there were calls to concentrate simulator training there, but to no avail [35].