

Rare Photos of the Russian "Buran" space program - suprgeek
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/11/rare-photos-of-russian-buran-space.html

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Luc
> Climb inside to experience rickety-looking Soviet computer panels and
> monitors. It takes guts to fly into space with these...

Eh. It takes guts to fly into space _tout court_ , of course, but I don't
think those look rickety. Solid, proven, dependable, as used by dozens of
spacecraft and kosmonauts!

~~~
dylanz
Exactly. Every picture of space shuttle control panels "look" old, but are
(most likely) state of the art technology. It must be the beige toned cases
that immediately make us think "rickety looking". They are created to work, by
NASA... not make by Apple, in order to look sharp.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Actually, the computers used for mission-critical systems are very old.
Generally to keep the electronics big enough that an alpha particle hitting
the box does not give off enough energy to flip a bit and corrupt the program.

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JoeAltmaier
And why fly unmanned missions? Its often said "You couln't find anyone willing
to fly that thing" but of course for the priviledge of flying into history,
any number of volunteers could always be found. Imagine the inspiring example,
the publicity! Even with an occasional spectacular failure, folks will line up
for that. Modern institutions quash this impulse for adventure and glory. A
nation that used to revel in riding-a-barrel-over-Niagara now makes it
illegal. Is it a strange twist of modern psychology/PC?

~~~
electromagnetic
Well of course they make it illegal, it's certain death over the American
Falls, and there's immigration issues as the actual good falls to go over a
wholly Canadian territory.

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bbg
Very interesting. Strangely, no mention of the hangar collapse that destroyed
the Buran. At least that's what happened if Wikipedia and this picture from
buran.ru can be trusted:

<http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/bbur89.jpg>

~~~
borism
There were 5 production and 8 mock-up vehicles:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_program#Current_status>

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jacquesm
many more here:

[http://worldmysteries9.blogspot.com/2009/02/abandoned-
space-...](http://worldmysteries9.blogspot.com/2009/02/abandoned-space-
technology.html)

Actually looking at them side-by-side I think that's the original page, the
posted link a very nice re-working with a bunch of new material.

~~~
ja2ke
The posted link's dated 2007 and yours is dated 2009, though, unless I'm
mistaken.

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amichail
Was the development of the a225 overkill? How come a 747 is sufficient for the
shuttle?

~~~
NikkiA
It was probably necessary, the only other options would have been to continue
with the VM-T which the soviets were using for the same task on smaller space
parts, or the An-124. The VM-T would have been underpowered for the Buran, it
was really used to carrying smaller parts and only had a payload of 50,000Kg
(1/5 of the An-225, and only slightly higher than the 42,000Kg of the Buran
orbiter).

The An-124 on the other hand was too short, even though it had adequate
payload capacity. So the An-124 would have been needed to be extensively
modified to carry the Buran anyway. They may have over-engineered it somewhat,
but then better to over-engineer than under-engineer and end up with an
embarassing accident.

The 747-100 that Nasa chose to use for the SCA didn't need quite as much
modification to make it usable, and had a fairly high payload rating anyway
(around 170,000Kg), and was long enough to carry the shuttle.

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lucifer
Soviet infrastructure never fails to amaze. Simply colossal.

~~~
alexitosrv
Awesome.

But the sad fact of its abandonment remains.

~~~
c00p3r
That picture of an abandonment remains could be used as an epilogue to entire
soviet era.

Almost everything was spoiled and ruined in past 20 years.

