Shattered dreams, new beginnings

CHANGING SCHEDULES

The original goal for the Buran program was to fly a total of ten test flights using five orbiters. Although considered test flights, most or all of these missions were to be flown to the Mir space station and carry out what would usually be considered operational tasks. All missions would carry 37KB modules in the cargo bay. Three of those were supposed to be built by the Khrunichev factory (serial nrs. 37070, 37071, and 37072). On the early test flights these modules would mainly carry instrumentation and remain in the cargo bay, but eventually at least two of them were to be turned into small scientific laboratories (renamed 37KBI, “I” standing for “research”) that would be left behind at the lateral docking port of Mir’s Kristall module to be picked up on a subsequent mission [1].

In September 1988 officials of the Energiya-Buran program reported to the Council of Ministers that the plan still was to fly ten test flights, with the first two to be flown unmanned [2]. Internal LII planning documents show that by the end of the year the second unmanned flight was scheduled for late 1989, to be followed by the first manned mission in late 1990. There would be one manned flight in 1991 and two in 1992. All missions would be flown by two-man LII crews, except for the first 1992 mission, which was to be piloted by an Air Force GKNII crew. All these initial missions would use either vehicle 1K or 2K [3].

An improvised payload for Energiya 2L

Even as Buran was undergoing initial post-flight servicing at the MIK OK, assembly of Energiya rocket 2L was nearing completion in the nearby MIK RN. Apparently,

this rocket had been configured from the beginning for launching an unmanned payload canister rather than a Buran orbiter. With no Energiya-tailored payloads or upper stages ready to fly at this stage, a plan was devised to launch 2L with two satellites that would usually be orbited separately by the Proton rocket, an unidenti­fied geostationary communications satellite and an Uragan navigation satellite for the Glonass network. Few details have been released about this configuration, known as GK-199: only that the satellites would have been housed in a Polyus-type vehicle with the payload shroud of the Proton rocket. Two Blok-DM type upper stages were probably required to inject the satellites into their proper orbits. One other objective of the launch was to test the parachute recovery of Energiya’s strap-on boosters. A “draft plan’’ for the GK-199 mission was approved at meetings of the Council of Chief Designers in March and May 1989. The 2L vehicle was expected to be ready for roll-out to the pad by March 1990. However, the project received only lukewarm support from the Ministry of General Machine Building, which argued there was no room in its budget for such a flight [4].