
Photos from inside the Baikonur Cosmodrome - jpatokal
http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html
======
jpatokal
On reading up, "finding" isn't quite accurate, as the locations of these two
shuttles were perfectly well known. They're OK-1K2 and OK-4M on Wikipedia's
list below, located in MZK building 80, area 112a, Baikonur Cosmodrome,
Kazakhstan:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Buran-
class_sp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Buran-
class_spacecraft_and_test_vehicles_on_display)

However, obviously sneaking in to take pictures is not an everyday occurrence,
it's still a Russian military base and parts of the site remain in active use
for the Russian space program.

~~~
Paul_S
I'm sure it's not impossible to come to an arrangement with the locals to go
and have a look at the shuttles.

~~~
kweks
Well, you can pay to go on Baikonour tours. 10k around launch times, cheaper
when its not a launch time.

I'm sure if you're got that type of cash to drop - dropping a few more k to
see the Buran isn't an issue

Or you can sneak in. It's in the middle of nowhere.

------
Osmium
I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite
commendable, in a way. Not that it's always the right call, but to be able to
avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy'[1] on this scale is something that large
governments/companies seem rarely capable of. That said, in this case, maybe
they just didn't have a choice and ran out of money...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment)

~~~
rbanffy
> I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite
> commendable, in a way.

Oddly enough, this is much easier to do without a democracy. It was not what
happened there (it was the Soviet Union's collapse that did it) but the
reasoning stands.

~~~
rdtsc
Well they did keep their Soyuz and other space programs. I think even the
wasteful Socialist bureaucrats realized this is not a project worth pursuing.

~~~
rbanffy
It was built, most likely, to replicate the American capability of launching,
stealing a satellite and returning within a single orbit (hence the cargo bay
the size of a Hubble/Keyhole and the enormous wings). Since the Energia was a
stand-alone heavy launcher (that didn't rely on shuttle engines), that they
had a whole fleet of lighter launchers and the Soyuz/Progress were excellent
for carrying astronauts and cargo to LEO, the only mission for which the Buran
was indispensable was stealing American spy satellites.

That's a very narrow niche for a very expensive spaceplane.

~~~
yellowapple
There was also the appeal of having a reusable spacecraft. The Buran's
similarities to the Space Shuttle are no coincidence; the Soviets weren't
about to let the United States have the coolest spaceship ever, so they had to
build one that was cooler.

And by God was the Buran cooler.

------
rbryan71
History spirals. This is an objective process, repeated over and over again.
You can regret for the lost time and to mourn about the past greatness, but
the facts remain above this - Russia is rapidly losing its status as a leading
space power. For more than twenty years, the country does not produce anything
new in principle, continuing to exploit the legacy of the Soviet Union. Only
lead the modernization of the old backlog, but otherwise everything is just
words on paper and projects. Sure, notable past will allow to stay afloat even
a decade or two in the role of a space cab, but only as long as the Chinese
missiles are not overstep its proper boundary changes and hurl prices on the
conclusion of cargo into orbit. From Space romance gone, leaving her only dry
figures of financial statistics. Why spend billions on the space, if it does
not bring profit for the foreseeable future? In times of confrontation of
political systems, the race between the two superpowers has a beneficial
effect on the scientific and technical progress. The possible use of military
and ideological gave rise to dozens of various projects. Yes, most of them did
not go beyond the drawings and models, but the ones that leaked through the
sieve test and commissions received unlimited support. The future of the
Soviet reusable orbiters not been predetermined even before birth. Despite the
huge financial loss ratio of such starts, they can hold out for long on the
world stage, giving the vector for future horizons. And to finish my article I
want to play on the title and epigraph. Rise My God! From ashes rise! Awake,
my God! Rise from the ashes!

~~~
ethbro
I assume you are photographer?

If yes, would you share how you got inside? What arrangements were needed? I
am curious!

Also, thank you for these pictures. Despite what happens politically (projects
die, or supported to success), it is inspiring to think about how many people
worked on this project. All that effort... as it is now. :(

It is only fair their work gets viewed and known!

PS: I assume English is not your first language. Hopefully my sentences were
understandable. Your English is still much better than my (zero) Russian
(assuming). :)

PPS: Before someone mentions it, yes, I am aware there were charges thrown
around of technology copying in the Buran program. Whether or not those have
any truth, they obviously weren't handed "shuttle in a box" plans. Imho, it's
still nice to appreciate all the work that was put into something that never
flew into space.*

 _Edit:_ I stand corrected. As others mentioned, it launched and performed two
orbits _without a crew_ before successfully returning in November of '88\.
Impressive!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Orbital_flight...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Orbital_flight_of_Orbiter_K1_in_1988)

------
rdtsc
Fun fact: Buran was the first fully automated space shuttle. It did a complete
flight cycle without human intervention. I believe our space shuttle could
that that too eventually but not at the time.

Even funner fact: There is a remnant of software that powered that shuttle
still around. In the form of a visual programming language DRAKON
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON))

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The STS was purposely designed not to do that due to political reasons, pilots
didnt want to feel like they were passangers, emergency restrictions, etc.
Eventually those restrictions were lifted and was fully autonomous at a
certain point, I don't remember which models have the full autonomy suite, but
the capabilities varied as these things were built out.

Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, its still fair to
call it an experimental and a failed project. The STS was doing all these
things and more. Its an interesting bit of Soviet trivia, but all the
attention it gets on the internet is fairly amusing for whats essentially the
poster-boy in mismanaging a spacecraft project and what essentially became a
Soviet "make work" jobs program, as the higher-ups knew early on that this
thing would never be put into production due to a variety of factors including
cost and technical issues.

I find it interesting that these things haven't been turned into scrap yet.
There's something to be said about how overly prideful and nostalgic Russians
are about the USSR. I think Putin put one of the Burans indoors after it was
discovered to be sitting out amongst the elements. Most governments would just
recycle failed capital projects. Unless they're bringing this thing back, it
seems weird to have it sitting around in various corners of their launch
complex.

~~~
rdtsc
> The STS was doing all these things and more.

Ok but if Buran failed didn't STS fail too, just took more money and killed
more people? No current space vehicles are based on it. It was too big. Too
expensive. Too failure prone (it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even
though Soyuz is older). Once the concept was proven, after a few space walks,
maybe fixing Hubble, it was time to realize it was a bad idea scrape it. Which
eventually happened.

Otherwise if you say, "Ok" it was for research, well so was Buran it was
research and jobs program. They showed they could build a space plane just
like Americans. Cold War was full of such "we can do it too" feats. Some
advanced science and engineering some didn't.

> poster-boy in mismanaging a spacecraft project and what essentially became a
> Soviet "make work" jobs program

Yes but by that token they can still laugh at us for mismanaging it longer and
making it into an even more glorified jobs program.

> I find it interesting that these things haven't been turned into scrap yet.

It is not that surprising. Not sure how much nostalgia plays into but it is
probably too expensive and cumbersome to go and start tearing the building and
the spacecraft apart.

~~~
yellowapple
> it killed a lot more astronauts than Soyuz even though Soyuz is older

That's only because Soyuz has a smaller crew capacity. Both Soyuz and STS have
had the same number of catastrophic failures (Soyuz 1 and Soyuz 11 on the
Soyuz side; _Challenger_ and _Columbia_ on the STS side).

Neat fun fact: Soyuz 11 also has the distinction of being the cause of the
only _in-space_ human fatalities (all other spaceflight-related fatalities
occurred either during launch or during reentry).

------
agounaris
For the geeks... Buran had prolog code in its brain and could land on its
own...in the 80s!!!

~~~
junto
This is the CIA document that noted that (May 1990):
[http://web.archive.org/web/20120611225718/http://www.foia.ci...](http://web.archive.org/web/20120611225718/http://www.foia.cia.gov/docs/DOC_0000498691/DOC_0000498691.pdf)

Notably, it also stated:

    
    
      The telecommunications deficiency is a particularly serious 
      problem for the Soviets. The USSR lacks the type of extensive, 
      serviceable, open-access, civil telecommunications infrastructure
      has proved to be an essential ingredient in the U.S. software
      industry's capability to support the needs of software uses an 
      all sectors of the U.S. economy technologies critical to the U.S. 
      Industries lead include wide area networks such as INTERNET, 
      TYMNET and TELENET accessible to most software developers in the 
      United States; equally important are the local area networks used 
      to connect software development teams distributed in different 
      locations within large buildings or among several facilities 
      within a large industrial park.
    

This is a fascinating insight into the projected future, although of the
three, it was the INTERNET that hang around and turned the world on its head!

TYMNET by the way is noted here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet)

------
vhffm
For people wanting to go see a Buran, there's a prototype on display in a
museum in (SW) Germany.

[http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran](http://speyer.technik-
museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran)

------
ourmandave
This reminds me of the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider in Texas.

The argument to keep building it was they'd already invested billions and it
would _cost millions of dollars to stop building it._

I guess that cost would have been from contract guarantees to the builders or
something.

Looks like when the Soviets stop building something they just walk away.

~~~
scrrr
>> Looks like when the Soviets stop building something they just walk away.

According to Wikipedia [1] the Buran-program was cancelled when the Soviet
Union stopped existing. It was a time of chaos and many parts of the country
were not working. Resuming construction on a space shuttle was probably at the
very bottom of their priorities in 1990.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_\(spacecraft\))

------
jpatokal
Business Insider has a partial translation of most of the captions:
[http://www.businessinsider.com.au/photos-of-russian-
abandone...](http://www.businessinsider.com.au/photos-of-russian-abandoned-
space-shuttles-by-ralph-mirebs-2015-6)

------
at-fates-hands
This was in the news a few weeks back, in mid June:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russian-
abandoned-s...](http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russian-abandoned-
space-shuttles-by-ralph-mirebs-2015-6)

[http://www.popsci.com/why-soviet-space-shuttle-was-left-
rot](http://www.popsci.com/why-soviet-space-shuttle-was-left-rot)

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/17/buran-soviet-
space-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/17/buran-soviet-space-
shuttles_n_7598308.html)

My only thought is if this is a decommissioned facility, imagine all the steel
that could be recycled and reused! With such a shortage of some metals around
the world, I see places like this and wonder why nobody does a better job of
reusing old steel like this.

------
nnain
What awesome machinery! There's something inexplicable beautiful about old
decommissioned equipment.

------
mrmondo
Fascinating. Why wouldn't it have been scrapped for parts or at least the
metal?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Probably because scrapping it would've cost a small fortune and what's left
over just wouldn't be worth it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In the UK you only have to leave something on the pavement and scrap metal
hunters will come by and take it ... seems like there has to be a net gain to
scrapping this much metal - if it were a ship then salvage companies would
have had it already.

I'm surprised that they didn't post a guard there with clean up duty to at
least keep it all from rusting in to the ground.

Wonder how much it would be to buy and whether you could get enough visitors
to the "secret Russian space base" to make it pay.

~~~
bluedino
In many rust belt cities, any building that sits unprotected will be
vandalized and stripped of any valuable metals. This is on a Russian military
base so it's safe.

Scrap collectors on the street don't charge for their time. It would cost the
Russian government more in wages and such to scrap the site than they would
ever get back out of it.

~~~
KJasper
That's why you would let some scrap collectors in and basically say to them:
What would you pay me for this scrap if you have to haul it away yourself?

------
Crito
This is actually much better than I expected. I thought all Burans were
thought destroyed, with the last being that one that a building fell onto. It
seems that one was the one that actually made a test flight, but there are
other incomplete or test vehicles surviving:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Fleet_status_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Fleet_status_and_locations)

~~~
outworlder
That's what I thought too. They belong in a museum.

------
chrisacree
How abandoned is the hangar? There are some other people in the photos, and no
matter how isolated the area is, surely the nearest town or two has wandered
into the giant complex up the road a few times.

Still, it's amazing that this is the sort of thing people can just potentially
wander into. Really makes you want to go explore the world.

~~~
kweks
Pretty damned abandoned. I've driven through Baikonour.

For background, it's literally a circle of land, 100km in diameter, in the
middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan.

There is one road in, and one road out. From this road, the only trace of
'Baikonour' that you see is a small enclave bearing the same name on the side
of the road.

We actually drove past it - it's that small. Inside this enclave (and it is -
it's got huge concrete walls around it) - are the famous sputnik hotel, and
various bits and pieces. But it's first and foremost a small town for people
who live and support the program.

There are armed guards at the entrance - who don't let anyone in that's not a
local, or doesn't have permission from ROSMOS.

North of this, is the actual launch / test zone. It's desert. From the road,
you see nothing.

The advantage of this being: if something blows up, you just try again
elsewhere. There are many abandoned launch pads / facilities in this zone.

The actual 'creeping in' \- there are no physical fences keeping you out of
the zone. If you've bothered to make the effort to get there, getting into the
zone and the hangar itself wouldn't be too difficult at all.

And yes - go and explore the world. Kazakhstan is an amazing place. You wanna
find desolation, you can find it there.

By the way, if you go through Baikonour, don't stop in the next town. The cops
enjoy extorting cash :D

------
caf
I've seen a Buran up close - a few years ago (I think in the early 2000s?) one
of them was toured around as a static display. Quite impressive - they let you
walk right through it. I believe it was the sub-orbital testing craft.

~~~
sarnu
There is one in a museum in germany: [http://speyer.technik-
museum.de/de/spaceshuttle-buran](http://speyer.technik-
museum.de/de/spaceshuttle-buran) It was used for the landing tests and is
still in pretty good shape.

------
fsloth
Great photos. Does anyone have details why soviets thought a carbon copy of
the botched shuttle design was a good idea in the first place? Where the
economics of the vehicle not so obvious back then?

~~~
vilhelm_s
According to the book "Energiya-Buran, the Soviet Space Shuttle" by Bart
Hendrickx and Bert Vis, they correctly noted that the stated reasons for the
US space shuttle did not make any sense, so they assumed there must be some
secret rational reason for building it:

> As TsNIIMash [Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building]
> director Yuriy Mozzhorin later said: "[The Space Shuttle] was introduced as
> a national program, aimed at 60 launches per year ... All this was very
> unusual: the mass they had been putting into orbit with their expendable
> rockets hadn't even reached 150 tons per year, and now they were planning to
> launch 1,770 tons per year. Nothing was being returned from space, and now
> they were planning to bring down 820 tons per year. This was not simple a
> program to develop some space system ... to lower transportation costs (they
> promised they would lower those costs tenfold, but the studies done at our
> institute showed that in actual fact there would be no cost savings at all).
> It clearly had a focused military goal".

As for what the secret military goal be, apparently the Soviet speculations
was that either it might be part of some nuclear fractional-orbit bombardment
system, or it might be part of a plan to launch lots of laser weapons into
orbit. In any case, we can't have a space shuttle gap, so:

> [Central Committe Secretary for Defense Matters, Dmitri] Ustinov had made
> the following argument: if our scientists and engineers do not see and
> specific use of this technology now, we should not forget that the Americans
> are very pragmatic and very smart. Since they have invested a tremendous
> amount of money in such a project, they can obviously see some useful
> scenario which is still unseen from Soviet eyes. The Soviet Union should
> therefore develop such a technology so that it won't be taken by suprise in
> the future.

Let's build it now, and see what it is good for later! :D

~~~
fsloth
Great summary :) - without the internet the F-35 design would probably be
evaluated in similar vein - makes no sense so there must be some hidden
purpose.

~~~
yellowapple
This is how lots of really creative uses for things come about. If you haven't
any idea what something's _supposed_ to do, you're now totally free to come up
with your own use.

------
ErikRogneby
These are great! Being an American who wasn't taught anything about the Soviet
space program I hadn't ever heard of Baikonur until I read about it in
Seveneves.

------
yellowapple
Hey Russia, seeing as your Burans are, like, sitting there literally rotting
away... can I have one? I'll take good care of it, promise.

------
dharma1
Makes you wonder if Russia's contributions to science back in the Soviet days
were bigger than today under Putin's rule...

~~~
Yetanfou
No, it does not. It is clear that the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, was one
of the foremost nations (or collection of such) when it comes to scientific
endeavours. Where they failed was in the translation of scientific data to
'products', but that is another story.

Modern Russia still has its share of eminent scientists, but they lack the
s(t)olid backing of a nation which felt like it had something to prove.

~~~
briandear
Lysenkoism was certainly a highlight of the Soviet sciences. Mendelian
inheritance was considered a capitalist fabrication.

~~~
Yetanfou
What Lysenkoism was to the Soviet Union, is Creationism to the United States
of America. Both 'doctrines' are completely nonsensical, but supported by
strong religious currents in their respective environments. It just so
happened the state religion in the Soviet Union had mortal gods versus the
man-on-the-cloud of the born-again evangelical religion entertained by some
recent US leaders.

~~~
kryptiskt
People were persecuted and killed because of Lysenkoism.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov)

Your false equivalences trivializes that persecution.

~~~
Yetanfou
I'd put this persecution more in the hands of Stalin and his cronies. He
hardly needed an excuse to persecute and kill anyone, after all.

~~~
pvg
That's not how Soviet scientists felt about Lysenko. Just check his Wikipedia
page.

 _In 1962 three of the most prominent Soviet physicists, Yakov Borisovich Zel
'dovich, Vitaly Ginzburg, and Pyotr Kapitsa, presented a case against Lysenko,
proclaiming his work as false science. They also denounced Lysenko's
application of political power to silence opposition and eliminate his
opponents within the scientific community. These denunciations occurred during
a period of structural upheaval in Soviet government, during which the major
institutions were purged of the strictly ideological and political
machinations which had controlled the work of the Soviet Union's scientific
community for several decades under Stalin.

In 1964, physicist Andrei Sakharov spoke out against Lysenko in the General
Assembly of the Academy of Sciences:

He is responsible for the shameful backwardness of Soviet biology and of
genetics in particular, for the dissemination of pseudo-scientific views, for
adventurism, for the degradation of learning, and for the defamation, firing,
arrest, even death, of many genuine scientists._

------
tdy721
Okay, there has to be someone capable of taking care of the orbiters around?
How much would just a minimum amount of maintenance really cost? I think this
a real world manifestation of state secrecy and its a shame.

On a similar note, I was very happy to see that parts of __both __Columbia and
Challenger will be on display for the public.

------
cdnsteve
I thought cancelled web projects were hard to deal with mentally, this puts a
whole new perspective on no go for launch.

------
jackreichert
Here's a google translated version
[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fralphmirebs.livejournal.com%2F219949.html)

------
emddudley
The page is in Russian, here is the Google Translate link:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fralphm...](https://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fralphmirebs.livejournal.com%2F219949.html)

------
sizzzzlerz
Its interesting to see how these shuttles mirror the US ones on the outside
due to Soviet spies getting pictures and plans but the interior, especially
the cockpit, is all Russian, sparse and uncomfortable. I guess they didn't get
intel on that.

~~~
outworlder
Or perhaps because the interiors don't matter much, as long as they do what's
required by the mission.

The exterior, however, has aerodynamics constraints. Being a shuttle, you also
have to account for reentry effects. Presumably the US had way better
computing technology and simulation capabilities that were very expensive.

~~~
ethbro
I'm reading through Skunkworks ([http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-
Memoir-Lockheed/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-
Lockheed/dp/0316743305/)) on a recommendation from HN, and thoroughly enjoying
it.

I'd heard this before, but the actual genesis of Lockheed's Have Blue/F-117
was this: 1) Petr Ufimtsev in the 1960s develops the equations for calculating
the radar energy reflected by a given geometric configuration 2) USAF notices
and translates this into English 3) Denys Overholser and Bill Schroeder at
Lockheed find, read, and implement it in software (which the Russians didn't
have the computational power to do) 4) Lockheed is looking for a new
Skunkworks project (this is post-SR 71, and Kelly Johnson was transitioning
out of Skunkworks after handing things over to Ben Rich) and decides to bet on
stealth ("What?! That'll never work! It's crazy!") 5) {... many, many, MANY
person-hours later} 6) F-117

Side note: the reason the F-117 has geometric surfaces is that when it was
being designed in the 60s and 70s there wasn't enough available computational
power to calculate more complex shapes (e.g. F-22).

------
metasean
cached version:
[http://web.archive.org/web/20150702121612/http://ralphmirebs...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150702121612/http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html)

------
sanoli
I wonder what would go through in the russian people's minds when they saw
that their shuttle was a rip-off of the american's. With all the competition
to see who was better, how did they rationalize this?

~~~
avmich
Well, in 1988 when Buran was publicly shown, people already had rather
different things in mind to worry about :) - it was third year of Perestroika,
and things were changing...

Of course, for those interested in the subject differences became quickly
known. A launcher rocket which uses only liquid engines - so you can have a
safer flight with an ability to actually shut down stages if necessary. A
bigger payload and an automated landing - something which wasn't so clearly
demonstrated by the American counterpart. Little details like launch during
heavy wind, launcher which is able to fly separately, non-toxic fuel onboard
Buran...

------
ehosca
this is heartbreaking :(

------
cekanoni
looks amazing

~~~
scrrr
many more pics here:
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=buran%20launc...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=buran%20launch)

------
jmnicolas
I believe in the next 50 years we will see a lot of this in occidental
countries. I don't think the problems will stop with Greece default, it just
started with it.

~~~
rwmj
A lot of space shuttles?

~~~
swasheck
you get a space program. YOU get a space program. EVERYONE GETS A SPACE
PROGRAM!

~~~
yellowapple
I have a feeling Oprah could actually afford that.

------
DonHopkins
It's just too cool looking not to be computer generated. You know: That
complex hyper-realistic look with lots of fancy shaders to show off the latest
hardware.

Is it certain that this isn't some brilliant Blair-Witch-esque promo hoax for
a "Soviet Space Race" computer game/movie where you have to save the Earth
from destruction by resurrecting one of the old Soviet space shuttles?

I don't actually doubt it's real, but I'd hella love to play that game!

~~~
exar0815
Def. Not. Seen the shuttle myself, one of them sits in a german Museum. Next
to a Concorde and a Tu.144.

