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The Soviet shuttle: The storm around the "Buran"
There are even opinions that the Soviet Union was destroyed by two things — the war in Afghanistan and the exorbitant costs of the "Buran".
Is it so?
Why and for what was Buran created, and who needed it?
Why is it so similar to the overseas "Shuttle"?
How was it arranged?
What is the "Buran" for our cosmonautics — a "dead end branch" or a technical breakthrough that was far ahead of its time?
Who created it and what could it give to our country?
And of course, the most important question is why it does not fly?
We are opening a column in our magazine, in which we will try to answer these questions.
In addition to the" Buran", we will tell you about other reusable spacecraft, both flying today and not going further than design kulmans.
Vadim Lukashevich
31.08.2007
August 30, 2007
92007
November 15, 1988: "Buran" over the planet
The creator of "Energy" Valentin Glushko
"Father "of" Buran " Gleb Lozino Lozinsky
KA "Bor 4" after the flight
This is how the Buran could dock with the ISS
The intended payloads of the Buran in the failed manned flight
Fifteen years ago, on November 15, 1988, the Soviet reusable spacecraft Buran made its flight, which ended with an automatic landing on the Baikonur runway that has not been repeated until now.
The largest, most expensive and longest lasting project of the Russian cosmonautics was terminated after a triumphant single flight.
In terms of the amount of material and financial resources spent, human energy and intelligence, the Buran creation program surpasses all previous space programs of the USSR, not to mention today's Russia.
Background
Despite the fact that the idea of an airplane spacecraft was first expressed by the Russian engineer Friedrich Zander in 1921, the idea of winged reusable spacecraft did not cause much enthusiasm among domestic designers — the solution turned out to be excessively complex.
Although for the first cosmonaut, along with the Gagarin Vostok, Pavel Tsybin's OKB 256 designed a winged spacecraft of a classic aerodynamic scheme — a PKA (Planning Spacecraft).
Approved in May 1957, the preliminary design provided for a trapezoidal wing and a normal tail.
The PKA was supposed to launch on the royal launch vehicle R 7.
The device had a length of 9.4 m, a wingspan of 5.5 m, a fuselage width of 3 m, a launch mass of 4.7 t, a landing mass of 2.6 t and was designed for 27 hours of flight.
The crew consisted of one cosmonaut, who had to eject before landing the device.
A special feature of the project was the folding of the wing into an aerodynamic "shadow" of the fuselage in the area of intensive braking in the atmosphere.
The successful tests of the Vostok ,on the one hand, and unresolved technical problems with the cruise ship, on the other, caused the termination of work on the PKA and for a long time determined the appearance of Soviet spacecraft.
The work on cruise spacecraft unfolded only in response to the American challenge, with the active support of the military.
For example, in the early 60s, work began in the United States to create a small single seat returnable Dyna Soar (Dynamic Soaring) rocket plane.
The Soviet response was the deployment of work on the creation of domestic orbital and aerospace aircraft in aviation design bureaus.
The Chelomey Design Bureau developed the R 1 and R 2 rocket planes, and the Tupolev Design Bureau developed the Tu 130 and Tu 136.
But the greatest success of all aviation companies was achieved by the Mikoyan Design Bureau 155, in which in the second half of the 60s, under the leadership of Gleb Lozino Lozinsky, work was launched on the Spiral project, which became the forerunner of the Buran.
The project provided for the creation of a two stage aerospace system consisting of a hypersonic booster aircraft and an orbital aircraft made according to the "carrier body" scheme, launched into space using a two stage rocket stage.
The work was completed with atmospheric flights of a manned aircraft analog of an orbital aircraft, called EPOS (Experimental Manned Orbital Aircraft).
The Spiral project was significantly ahead of its time, and our story about it is still ahead.
Within the framework of the "Spiral", already actually at the stage of closing the project, rocket launches into orbit of artificial Earth satellites and suborbital trajectories of the BOR spacecraft (Unmanned Orbital Rocket Plane) were carried out for full scale tests, which at first were reduced copies of the EPIC ("BOR 4"), and then large scale models of the Buran spacecraft ("BOR 5").
The decline in American interest in space rocket planes led to the actual cessation of work on this topic in the USSR.
Fear of the unknown
By the 70s, it became finally clear that the military confrontation would be transferred to space.
There was a need for funds not only for the construction of orbital systems, but also for their maintenance, prevention, and restoration.
This was especially true of orbital nuclear reactors, without which the combat systems of the future could not exist.
Soviet designers tended to favor well proven disposable systems.
But on January 5, 1972, US President Richard Nixon approved the program for creating a reusable space system (ISS) Space Shuttle, which was developed with the participation of the Pentagon.
Interest in such systems was automatically aroused in the Soviet Union — already in March 1972, the ISS was discussed at the Commission of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on Military Industrial Issues (MIC).
At the end of April of the same year, an extended discussion of this topic took place with the participation of the chief designers.
The general conclusions were as follows:
- The ISS is not effective for putting payloads into orbit and is significantly inferior in cost to disposable launch vehicles;
— there are no serious tasks requiring the return of cargo from orbit;
— The ISS created by the Americans does not pose a military threat.
It became obvious that the United States was creating a system that did not pose an immediate threat, but could threaten the country's security in the future.
It was the uncertainty of the future tasks of the "Shuttle" with a simultaneous understanding of its potential that determined the strategy of copying it in the future to provide similar opportunities for an adequate response to future challenges of a potential enemy.
What were the "future challenges"?
Soviet scientists gave free rein to their imagination.
Studies conducted at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the M. V. Keldysh Institute) showed that the Space Shuttle makes it possible, by performing a return maneuver from a semi - or single orbit orbit along the traditional route passing from the south over Moscow and Leningrad, making a slight descent (dive), to drop a nuclear charge in their area and paralyze the combat control system of the Soviet Union.
Other researchers, analyzing the size of the shuttle's transport compartment, came to the conclusion that the shuttle can "steal" entire Soviet space stations from orbit, just like in the James Bond films.
Simple arguments that to counteract such a "theft" it is enough to place a couple of kilograms of explosives on a space object, for some reason did not work.
The fear of the unknown turned out to be stronger than real fears: on December 27, 1973, the military Industrial Complex decided to develop technical proposals for the ISS in three versions — based on the lunar rocket N 1, the Proton launch vehicle and on the basis of the Spiral.
The work on the "Spiral" did not enjoy the support of the top officials of the state who supervised cosmonautics, and in fact were curtailed by 1976.
The same fate befell the H 1 rocket.
Rocket aircraft
In May 1974, the former royal design bureaus and factories were merged into a new NPO Energia, and Valentin Glushko was appointed Director and General Designer, eager to put a winning point in a long standing dispute with Korolev over the design of the "lunar" super rocket and take revenge, going down in history as the creator of the lunar base.
Immediately after being confirmed in office, Glushko suspends the activities of the ISS department — he was a principled opponent of the" reusable " topic!
They even say that immediately after arriving in Podlipki, Glushko spoke specifically: "I donot know yet what we will do with you, but I know exactly what we will NOT do.
Glushko reasonably believed that work on a reusable spacecraft would close the lunar programs (which subsequently turned out), slow down work on orbital stations and prevent the creation of his family of new heavy rockets.
Three months later, on August 13, Glushko offers his space program based on the development of a series of heavy rockets that received the RLA index (Rocket Aircraft), which were created by parallel connection of various numbers of unified blocks with a diameter of 6 m.
It was supposed to install a new powerful four chamber oxygen kerosene LRE with a thrust of more than 800 tons in the void on each block.
The rockets differed from each other in the number of identical blocks in the first stage: RLA 120 with a payload capacity of 30 tons in orbit (the first stage — 2 blocks) for solving military tasks and creating a permanent orbital station; RLA 135 with a lifting capacity of 100 tons (the first stage is 4 blocks) to create a lunar base; RLA 150 with a load capacity of 250 tons (the first stage is 8 blocks) for flights to Mars.
Strong willed decision
However, the opala of reusable systems continued on Energia for less than a year.
Under the pressure of Dmitry Ustinov, the direction of the ISS reappeared.
The work was started as part of the preparation of the "Integrated Rocket and Space Program", which provided for the creation of a unified series of rocket aircraft for landing a manned expedition to the Moon and building a lunar base.
Trying to maintain his program of creating heavy missiles, Glushko proposed using the future RLA 135 rocket as a carrier for a reusable spacecraft.
The new volume of the program 1B was called "Reusable space system "Buran".
From the very beginning, the program was torn apart by opposite requirements: on the one hand, the developers were constantly under severe pressure "from above", aimed at copying the Shuttle in order to reduce the technical risk, timing and cost of development, on the other hand, Glushko was trying hard to maintain his unified rocket program.
When forming the appearance of the "Buran" at the initial stage, two options were considered: the first an aircraft scheme with a horizontal landing and the location of the main engines of the second stage in the tail (an analogue of the "Shuttle"); the second a wingless scheme with a vertical landing.
The main expected advantage of the second option is to reduce the development time by using the experience of the Soyuz CC.
The wingless version of the ship consisted of a crew cabin in the front conical part, a cylindrical cargo compartment in the central part and a conical tail compartment with a fuel reserve and a propulsion system for maneuvering in orbit.
It was assumed that after the launch (the ship was located on top of the rocket) and work in orbit, the ship enters the dense layers of the atmosphere and makes a controlled descent and parachute landing on skis using soft landing powder engines.
The problem of planning range was solved by giving a triangular (in cross section) shape to the ship's hull.
As a result of further research, an aircraft scheme with a horizontal landing was adopted for the Buran as the most appropriate for the requirements imposed by the military.
In general, a variant with a side mounted payload was chosen for the rocket when placing unsaved main engines on the central block of the second stage of the carrier.
The main factors in choosing such an arrangement were uncertainty about the possibility of developing a reusable hydrogen rocket engine in a short time and the desire to preserve a full fledged universal launch vehicle capable of independently launching into space not only a reusable orbiter, but also other payloads of large masses and dimensions.
Looking ahead, we note that such a decision justified itself: Energia provided for the launch into space of vehicles weighing five times more than the Proton launch vehicle, and three times more than the Space Shuttle.
Works
Large scale work unfolded after the release of a secret decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1976.
The Ministry of Aviation Industry organized the NGO "Molniya" under the leadership of Gleb Lozino Lozinsky to create a spacecraft with the development of all means of descent in the atmosphere and landings.
The production and assembly of the Buranov airframe was entrusted to the Tushinsky Machine Building Plant.
The aviation engineers were also responsible for the construction of a landing complex with the necessary equipment.
Based on his experience, Lozino Lozinsky, together with TsAGI, proposed to use the "carrier body" scheme for the ship with a smooth coupling of the wing with the fuselage based on an enlarged Spiral orbital aircraft.
And although this option had obvious layout advantages, they decided not to risk it — on June 11, 1976, the Council of Chief Designers" volitional order " finally approved the version of the ship with a horizontal landing a monoplane with a free bearing low wing double sweep and two air jet engines in the tail section, which provided deep maneuvering during landing.
The actors have decided.
It remained only to make a ship and a carrier.
The article was published in the journal "Popular Mechanics "(No. 16, February 2004).
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