Abandoned Buran Shuttle facility found.

[Rincewiend]

The Buran shuttle was the soviet answer to the American Space shuttle.
Some great pictures here:

http://www.idealistrevolution.org/the-ruins-of-the-soviet-space-shuttles/

Yes, i had a bit of a nostalgic science nerdgasm...

 

[JES]

I'm really hoping that they will be restored. They belong in a museum at least.

 

[Shawnster]

Such potential...

 

[B.J.]

One of those is the ~95% complete second orbiter, the other is a static test model, not meant for flight. Unfortunately, the only one that flew was destroyed in 2002 by a building collapse.

 

[beamMe]

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Ofss2TVuU[/yt]


and on top of the "Dream" that was designed to carry it.

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7MYgsPhi0[/yt]

 

[Dryson]

Maybe a smaller version of the Buran could be designed to be a passenger transport to and from the Moon. Remove the scientific mission modules and equipment and replace them with passenger monitoring and survival modules and equipment.

 

[sojourner]

Carrying wings to the moon is a waste of mass.

 

[BillJ]

The Buran shuttle was the soviet answer to the American Space shuttle.
Some great pictures here:

http://www.idealistrevolution.org/the-ruins-of-the-soviet-space-shuttles/

Cool photos. Thanks for sharing the link.

 

[publiusr]

Similar
http://www.buran-energia.com/bourane-buran/bourane-modele.php


The big difference between the Russian shuttle and the Columbia style American shuttle was that we kept the big hydrogen engines on the orbiter and used the External Tank in the same way as Mustang fighters used drop-tanks in WWII to increase their range. The B-59 Hustler was a larger example.

The Russians put their big hydrogen engines under the ET itself.

This became the Energiya HLLV, their SLS, except with side mount payloads, that could be swapped out with their simpler Buran orbiter design.

We even looked at that ourselves here in the USA.

See Figure 21 here:
https://www.aiaa.org/uploadedFiles/...uttle_Launches/ShuttleVariationsFinalAIAA.pdf

Similar Block II shuttles
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=6348.0

Nice piece here on an Americanized Energiya concept by Wayne Ordway
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19910018890.pdf

Some shuttle concepts here
http://www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/uslp02ad2.jpg