Beyond Buran

Although Buran was the focus of attention between the mid-1970s and the early 1990s, in the background the Russians continued working on other spaceplane concepts to either complement Buran or succeed it in the future. Many of these efforts concentrated on smaller spaceplanes that were considered to be more efficient for space station support. At the same time, looking further into the future, con­siderable research has been done into single-stage-to-orbit spaceplanes that may one day significantly reduce the cost of Earth-to-orbit transportation.

CHELOMEY’S LKS

Vladimir Chelomey’s Central Design Bureau of Machine Building (TsKBM), already engaged in spaceplane research in the early 1960s, resumed work on reusable spacecraft in the mid-1970s in response to an order by the Military Industrial Commission on 27 December 1973 to formulate proposals for reusable space trans­portation systems of different sizes (see Chapter 2). That work continued even after the February 1976 Energiya-Buran decree, with Chelomey enjoying the support of Yakob Ryabov, who was Central Committee Secretary for Defense Matters from late 1976 to 1979, succeeding Dmitriy Ustinov [1].

By 1978, after having studied numerous configurations, launch, and landing techniques for a small reusable spaceplane, Chelomey’s engineers had settled on a Light Spaceplane (LKS) to be launched by the bureau’s Proton rocket. Weighing 20 tons, it would be a delta-wing vehicle capable of carrying four tons of cargo, two tons of fuel and a crew of two. The pressurized compartment of the LKS had a volume of 16 m3 and consisted of two decks, an upper deck with the cockpit in front and a living compartment in the back, and a lower deck with support equipment. The ship would not be protected from the heat of re-entry by tiles, but rely on a different type of heat shield material said to be rated for 100 missions. It was similar to the

material used on the return capsules of Chelomey’s Transport Supply Ships (TKS), the reusability of which was demonstrated during a number of test flights in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The LKS would land on a runway at a speed of 300 km/h using a nose wheel and aft skid landing gear. The relatively low landing speed meant that it could use a wide variety of runways. The LKS had emergency escape systems allowing the crew to be saved during virtually any phase of the flight.

TsKBM worked out plans for both unmanned and manned versions of the LKS, capable of staying in orbit for up to one year and 10 days, respectively. Its missions would range from crew transport and cargo delivery to space stations to a broad array of military missions. By the end of the 1970s the LKS was seen by Chelomey as a key element in a “Star Wars’’ plan to deploy a space-based missile defense shield to protect the entire territory of the Soviet Union from nuclear attack. All this was several years before President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) in 1983.

Chelomey considered Energiya-Buran as a vastly expensive undertaking that the country could barely afford. One of his associates once quoted him as saying:

“Whereas for the Americans the expenditures on [the Space Shuttle] are

[serious], but bearable, for us [such expenditures] will plunge us into bankruptcy.

I won’t be surprised if our cosmonauts will have to fly on our shuttle naked.’’

Convinced that Buran would not be ready to fly for many more years, Chelomey pitched the LKS as a vehicle that could be ready in four years’ time.

In 1980 Chelomey took the risky move of “going public’’ with the LKS. He sent his LKS proposals directly to Leonid Brezhnev, who in response set up an inter­departmental commission headed by deputy Defense Minister V. M. Shabanov and consisting of representatives of the major design bureaus and research institutes. The commission turned down Chelomey’s proposal, calling it “cumbersome”, “difficult to realize’’, and “expensive” (terms that could have very well been applied to Buran as well).

Nevertheless, Chelomey ordered his team to clandestinely build a full-scale mock-up of the LKS in just a month’s time, a task that was successfully accom­plished. However, news of Chelomey’s underground initiative was soon leaked to the Ministry of General Machine Building, which strongly reprimanded Chelomey for having illegally spent 140,000 rubles of government money. Still undeterred, Chelomey pressed on with his LKS work and was finally stopped dead in his tracks with an official reprimand from the Communist Party.

In the political constellation of those days Chelomey stood no real chance of mustering the support needed to get LKS off the ground. His star had been waning ever since his lifelong enemy (and Glushko supporter) Dmitriy Ustinov had become Minister of Defense in 1976. In 1978 Ustinov had already been instrumental in canceling Chelomey’s Almaz military space station program. The LKS followed suit. Seated next to Chelomey in the very cockpit of the LKS mock-up during a visit to TsKBM, Ustinov made it clear to him that the LKS had no future given the amount of effort and money already invested in Energiya-Buran. Things got much worse for Chelomey in December 1981, when the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers issued a decree that banned TsKBM from any further involvement in the Soviet ballistic missile and space program, essentially ending Chelomey’s career as a missile and spacecraft designer. In a cruel twist of fate, Ustinov and Chelomey passed away only days apart in December 1984—moreover, in the same hospital. Even the LKS mock-up did not survive. It was demolished in what has been described as “an act of sabotage’’ in 1991.

With hindsight, if the Soviet space program required any type of reusable space­craft in the 1970s/1980s, the LKS probably would have been the way to go. Leaving aside its potential military applications, it could have played an important role in ferrying crews and cargo to space stations, reducing the number of Soyuz and Progress missions. Having said that, one wonders if it would have been an economic­ally advantageous system, since it relied on the expensive and expendable Proton rocket and on a heat shield that possibly required long turnaround times [2].