While the eventual Buran shuttle would bear a strong resemblance to the American orbiters, Glushko made one major change that let him keep his Moon base alive surreptitiously. Though it did go to space twice in 1987-88 it qualifies for this blog because it didn’t fly any more after that, despite being intended as the heavy-lift backbone of the Soviet Union for well into the 21 st century.ĭetails: For about twenty months after taking over TsKBEM (the former OKB-1) from the disgraced Vasili Mishin, Valentin Glushko worked toward a lunar base centred on a derivative of the Proton rocket, a design of Vladimir Chelomei’s using hypergolic engines designed by Glushko.īy early 1976, however, Glushko had been told by Soviet leadership to stop work leading to the Moon and instead focus on a Soviet space shuttle in response to what they perceived as the military threat posed by the US’ own Space Shuttle. Its other main role was to act as a booster for the Soviet space shuttle, unlike the American one which got itself to space using its own engines fed by its large external fuel tank. It was one of the three most powerful rockets ever built, in the same class as the Saturn V as well as the ill-fated N1 it was partially intended to replace. What it was: A Soviet super-heavy lift launcher. Please contact the author if you know of its origins. Image source and copyright status unknown. Unlike the American shuttle stack, the rocket could be launched on its own, and was in the same class as the Saturn V. The Buran cargo bay contains a model of the MIR core module.A rendering of the Energia rocket launching its primary payload, Buran.
Click on the small imagesīelow to have a access to bigger pictures.Įxcept for the main engines of the second stage the Energia booster is scratch built. Resused the US shuttle OMS engines for the Buran engines and the shuttle main engines for the second stage of the Energia rocket. Of course I had to redo all the back part of the Buran shuttle since it does not have main engines and OMS pods.
These models of Buran and the Energia / Buran launcher have been made using the Revell 1/144 space shuttle as a base. An other difference is the nose landing gear that is moved backward and has the same height than the main Moved frontward compare to the US space shutte. Because of the lack of main engines on Buran and the less important weight on the back of the orbiter, the wing are However Buran has two small engines that are equivalent to the shuttle OMS. On the opposite, the main engines of Buran are located on the Energia launcher, so Buran is only a payload thatĬan be replaced by a more conventional non-winged payload. (called OMS for Orbital Manoeuvering System). The US shuttle has three main engines that are part of the orbiter and two small engines for final orbit insertion, orbit change and deorbiting The paylaod bay has about the same size as well as the cockpit section. The Buran orbiter is very similar to the US space shuttle orbiter. However came late since the launch of the Energia/Buran took place more than 7 years (October 88) after the first flight of the US space shuttle Columbia (21 The Energia/Buran vehicle was the response from the Soviet Union to the United States in the space race as far as the space shuttle is concerned.
0 kommentar(er)
