‘Abandoned’ Soviet Shuttle

7 comments to ‘Abandoned’ Soviet Shuttle

• Alan Bickerstaff

  September 6, 2024 at 9:43 pm

  Amazing pictures. It’s surprising how many people have never heard of the Buran (translates as snowstorm or blizzard). it was bigger than the Shuttle and had a bigger payload, plus could return a bigger load to Earth. Only one flew in space, controlled totally automatically - sadly that one was destroyed when it’s hanger collapsed in 2024. To test some, they basically strapped jet engines to the tail so they could take off from a runway. There is some film of it flying on the Energia website and Russianspaceweb.

• Matt

  September 7, 2024 at 1:51 am

  That was on show in Sydney about 10 years ago - I went to see it. It was scary just how analog and creaky it looked then in failry pristine condition

• n00tch

  September 7, 2024 at 5:13 am

  What’s so freaky about analog? Analog got us to the moon and back!

• johnrey

  September 8, 2024 at 8:28 pm

  That’s not the Sydney airframe (that’s now beautifully preserved in a german museum, this is on of the test articles, there’s loads of info on these two sites!

  http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Friverforum.ru%2Fshowthread.html%3Ft%3D389

  http://www.buran.ru/htm/news.htm#27-06-2012

  Kind regards

  John

• Matt

  September 9, 2024 at 12:54 am

  @nOOtch - would you fly in it then?

• n00tch

  September 11, 2024 at 5:20 am

  @Matt If it were restored, why not? I think it would be pretty damned amazing tbh!

• Dave Carey

  September 18, 2024 at 7:23 pm

  http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/03files/Buran_005.html

  Go to this site lots of pictures and an Article on the Machine now in Gorky park. It is now used as a coffee house