THE FIRST LAUNCH ATTEMPT

On 26 October the State Commission in charge of test flights of the Energiya-Buran system met at Baykonur to set a launch date for the mission. Such commissions were set up routinely in the Soviet Union to oversee launch preparations for specific projects. The composition of the Buran State Commission reflected the importance attached to the flight. Established in December 1985, it was headed by none less than the Minister of General Machine Building himself, initially Oleg Baklanov, replaced in April 1988 by Vitaliy Doguzhiyev. In all, the commission numbered 44 people, including 9 ministers, 10 deputy ministers, the President of the Academy of Sciences, leading Ministry of Defense officials, and several general and chief designers (Glushko, Gubanov, Semyonov, Lozino-Lozinskiy, Konopatov, Radovskiy, Barmin, Andryushenko, and Lapygin). The “technical leader” of the State Commission, somewhat comparable with a “launch director” in the US, was NPO Energiya head Valentin Glushko. However, the 80-year old Glushko, who had suffered a stroke only months earlier, was recovering in a Moscow hospital and had to be replaced by his deputy Boris Gubanov. Final preparations at the pad were the responsibility of the military teams of the so-called 6th Test Directorate under the leadership of Major – General Vladimir E. Gudilin.

Despite last-minute concerns over problems with another ODU test firing near Leningrad on 19 October, the commission declared Energiya and Buran ready to go. With meteorologists predicting excellent weather conditions, the commission set the launch for 29 October at 6:23.46 Moscow time (8:23.46 local time at Baykonur, 3: 23.46 gmt), a decision announced by TASS the same day. Lift-off was timed such that the launch could be observed by the orbiting crew of the Mir space station (Vladimir Titov, Musa Manarov, and Valeriy Polyakov). Mir would be a minute or two short of a Baykonur flyover at lift-off time, allowing the crew to watch virtually the entire launch. Mir’s orbit had been adjusted on 16 October to permit close coordination during the brief Buran flight, including launch and retrofire. However, the observations from Mir were not a strict requirement and the launch was not likely to be scrubbed if that objective could not be met. The main constraint for the launch window was to ensure a landing at Baykonur well before local sunset, ideally around noon. Speaking to reporters later that same day, Doguzhiyev did not hide the tension felt around the cosmodrome:

“No one is indifferent or passive at the cosmodrome… Behind outward calm

there is much nervous pressure. Even we [State] Commission members find it

difficult to answer questions’’ [41].

Among the final tasks to be accomplished at the pad in the last three days prior to launch was the retraction of the 145 m high rotating service structure, a relic of the N-1 days, which was now moved back to its parking position, fully exposing Buran to the elements. Strict safety measures were in place to protect personnel against any potential accidents on the pad. The region around the launch complex was divided into four safety zones. Zone 1 (2 km radius around the pad) was completely evacuated 12 hours before launch. By that time any personnel involved in final countdown operations were required to go to hermetically sealed and heavily armored bunkers, from where all final launch preparations (including fueling) were controlled. The bunkers were said to be capable of surviving impacts of rocket debris. Zone 2 (5 km radius) was cleared of personnel at T — 8 hours as final preparations got underway for loading of liquid hydrogen. Zones 3 and 4 (8.5 km and 15 km radius) were evacuated at T — 4 hours and T — 3 hours to ensure safety of people in case of an explosion during engine ignition and during the early stages of ascent. The rules were much stricter than at the Kennedy Space Center, where people are allowed to watch Shuttle launches in open air from a distance of just about 5 km.

Two days before the planned launch, concern arose over some equipment in Buran’s automatic landing system. VNIIRA, the design bureau in charge of the system, requested installing back-up equipment aboard the orbiter and first test that aboard a Tu-134B aircraft. Although this required activation of all the navigation and landing support systems at the Yubileynyy runway, the landing tests were authorized given the potentially catastrophic consequences of a failure in the auto­matic landing system. The back-up equipment was successfully tested during several approaches to the Yubileynyy runway on 28 October.

On the eve of the launch, Soviet officials backed down from their earlier promises to provide live television coverage of the launch and were now planning to show the recorded launch 35 minutes after the event. The landing would not be carried live either. As expected, the planned launch time of 3: 23 gmt went by without any comment from the Soviet media. Anxiety grew as nothing was heard in the following 45 minutes or so. Finally, shortly after 4:00 gmt, TASS broke the silence by issuing a brief two-line statement:

“As has been reported earlier, the launch of… Energiya with the orbital ship Buran had been planned for 6.23 Moscow time on 29 October. During pre­launch preparations a four-hour delay of the launch has been announced.’’

This now theoretically put the launch time at 7: 23 gmt, raising serious doubts among observers that the launch would take place that day at all. According to the original flight plan, landing would have taken place at 6: 49 gmt, but the launch delay would now move this to around 11: 00 gmt (16: 00 local time at Baykonur), close to sunset. At around 7: 30 gmt, shortly after the rescheduled launch time, TASS reported what had been obvious all along:

“During final launch preparations for the rocket carrier Energiya with the orbital ship Buran there was a deviation in one of the launch support systems. As a result of this an automatic command was issued to stop further work. At the present time work is underway to eliminate the problems. A new launch date and time will be announced later.’’

It wasn’t until later in the day and in press interviews the following days that officials began providing details about the exact cause of the scrub. It turned out the countdown had been halted at T — 51 seconds because a platform had failed to properly retract from the rocket. When it came to describing the exact nature of that platform, Soviet space officials, not used to communicating problems to the media, did a poor job. Talking to a Pravda reporter, Vladimir Gudilin, the head of launch pad operations, said:

“51 seconds before the launch one of the servicing platforms did not move away from the rocket. To be more precise, it visually moved away, but the signal confirming this did not reach the computer checking the launch readiness of all systems. Until the last seconds this platform holds an aiming platform, controlling the gyroscopes. The computer [did not receive the retraction signal] and instantaneously stopped the launch program” [42].