Some say the Buran might have been able to recover the Mir space station piece by piece. The Buran was not a Soviet shuttle, though it was frequently referred to as such. It was never on display in Gorky Park, contrary to a widespread rumor. On November 15, 1988, it completed its first and only flight. Inside the Buran The Buran was a reusable orbiter capable of putting different payloads into space and bringing cargoes back to Earth.

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Some specialists speculate that the rocket-powered glider might have hypothetically recovered the Mir space station piece by piece. Its cargo compartment was capable of easily accommodating any module of the Soviet space laboratory, which would be deorbited and dumped in 2001. The designers suggested using the same compartment for the re-entry capsule Soyuz during manned space flights. In an emergency, the crew would get into the capsule for urgent evacuation. Gross liftoff mass: Payload: Payload returning to Earth: Length: Wingspan: Height (landing gear down): Crew: 105 t 30 t 20 t 36.4 m 24 m 16.5 m 2–10.

Rotate Plans had been in the works for using the Buran not just for carrying space stations’ crews or recovering defunct satellites, but for military purposes as well. It was precisely the combat potential of rocket-powered gliders that explained why the Soviet Union was in such a rush to come up with a world-class rival to America’s space shuttles. Comparing dimensions of some manned spacecraft 0 10 20 m Details Work on the Energia-Buran program commenced in 1976, five years after America’s Space Shuttle. Outwardly similar, the design proposed by Soviet engineers greatly contrasted from their US counterpart.

Up Into Space The Energia-Buran and the Space Shuttle were cutting-edge space systems that fundamentally differed from their predecessors in structural design. Construction planning and management by p s gahlot pdf writer. Each was based on the multi-stage rocket design concept, which predicted back at the beginning of the 20th century. Both reusable launch vehicles had two-stage propulsion systems. Whereas the US Space Shuttle took off thanks to solid-fuel rocket boosters and its own propulsion engines that worked on propellant from an external tank, Soviet designers combined the functions of these two blocks into one rocket — the Energia, which was a two-stage launch vehicle. This enabled Buran to be equipped with a far more functional orbital maneuvering system instead of its own bulky propulsion device. Thrust of the Energia-Buran’s engines First stage (4 lateral boosters): Second stage (central core): Orbital insertion engine (orbiter): Gross liftoff mass: 2,960–3,224 tonnes-force (tf) 592–760 tf 17.6 tf 2,400 t Details Thrust of the Space Shuttle’s engines First stage (2 solid propellant lateral boosters): Second stage (orbiter with external tank): Orbital insertion engine (orbiter): Gross liftoff mass: 2,660–3,100 tonnes-force (tf) 510–640 tf 6.1 tf 2,040 t Details Both spacecraft had their own orbital insertion and maneuvering engines.

This made the launch ecologically cleaner, since near-Earth space was not littered with spent rocket stages. The separated units either burned up in the atmosphere, or returned back to Earth for overhaul, maintenance and repeated use. The Space Shuttle’s first stage was reusable. A similar solution was going to be employed in the Energia-Buran project. The Energia-Buran at the Baikonur Cosmodrome The Energia-Buran liftoff This duo’s historical flight could have taken place 17 days earlier, on October 29, if the computer had not stopped the countdown 51 seconds ahead due to a problem in one of the Energia’s systems. Marilyn manson mechanical animals full album torrent. On November 15, the rocket blasted off and orbited the spaceplane as planned despite bad weather with strong wind and fog.

Journey back to Earth The orbital part of the flight was the most predictable for the designers and engineers. The experience of launching Soyuz rockets, accumulated by 1988, was quite enough, so very few doubted that the Buran would cope with this task. The spacecraft spent just 94 minutes in orbit, although it was capable of staying in space for up to 30 days.