Lagging behind the United States in their design of large Solid Rocket motors, an early decision was made to utilize liquid propulsion to power the stack off the launch pad. However, there were major departure points, not least on the propulsion side. With Soviet engineers tasked with creating a competitor to the US Shuttle, the basis for Buran resulted in mirroring both the capabilities and design of the US Shuttle, resulting in the two orbiters having a very similar appearance. See AlsoĪs such, Buran was focused as becoming a military asset, which also resulted in the program becoming classified.Īligned with the public knowledge of the US Shuttle’s development program, RKK Energia managed the Buran response from 1974, under the Reusable Space System (MKS) program. The Soviets believed the US Shuttle had a key role in America’s military ambitions and feared the system could even be used to deploy nuclear payloads over Soviet territory. She was destroyed during the collapse of her hanger roof at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2002.ĭeveloped by Gleb Lozino-Lozinskiy, Chief Designer at NPO Molniya, Buran was designed to be a direct competitor to the US Space Shuttle. It was to be her only flight in space, with the program mothballed in 1993, following the dissolution of the USSR. In 2015, photographer Ralph Mirebs ventured into the complex and captured images of the forgotten monuments to a bygone space race.Under a veil of secrecy, the Soviet Space Shuttle “Buran” launched on her maiden mission 25 years ago. Ptichka and this other test shuttle remain at Baikonur, beckoning those who enjoy visiting moldering relics of the Cold War and yesterday’s quests to send humans to space. In 1993, Boris Yeltsin canceled the program entirely, leaving some vessels to rot in a hangar while others were put on display in such places as the Sydney Summer Olympics and Moscow’s Gorky Park.īuran, the shuttle that actually flew, was destroyed in 2002 when its hangar collapsed after an earthquake, killing eight people. As envisioned, the Soviet shuttles would not only be able to fly themselves, they would also lift vastly heavier cargo into space that could then be used to build space stations and weapons.Ī casualty of the waning days of the Cold War and a collapsing Soviet economy, the shuttle program never took off - despite the successful flight in 1988 of an unpiloted orbiter named Buran, which loosely translates to “snowstorm” or “blizzard.”īuran would be the only Soviet orbiter to leave Earth. The space shuttles were designed and built during the 1970s and 1980s as part of the USSR’s attempt to outdo the U.S. It’s a rather unceremonious end for these abandoned icons of a once-proud space program. The other, a test vehicle, was never meant to fly. One shuttle, named Ptichka, never left Earth. They’re also attracting photographers eager to sneak around the ruins, such as Alexandar Kaunas, who recently filmed part of his journey into the cavern where the derelict shuttles are housed. Tucked into a lonely hangar at Baikonur Cosmodrome on the Kazakh steppe, two Soviet-era space shuttles are quietly gathering dust, bird poop, and rust.

Buran shuttle reaer