I am curious as to what the KSP community thinks and which is the 'better' system, in terms of design practicality and performance in KSP itself. Buran-Energia : The Soviet Space Shuttle 2.One of my favorite automotive/satire blogs, Jalopnik, recently featured a post about the 'superiority' of the Energia-Buran system, highlighting it has a higher payload fraction from not having to lug its SSMEs around and back to base, and the Russians being able to use Energia as a separate super heavy launch system.Īrticle: Did the Soviets Build a Better Shuttle Than We Did?.Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle. Official website by the NPO “Molniya”, makers of the Buran.History and Transportation of the Russian Space Shuttle OK-GLI to the Technik Museum Speyer. Elser, Heinz Elser-Haft, Margrit Lukashevich, Vladim (2008).Buran – the Soviet space shuttle at BBC.This version has four turbo jet engines which provided enough thrust for the shuttle to make atmospheric test flights.īuran-Energia : The Soviet Space Shuttle 2.0 on a Moon Rocket, On this day, a Buran space shuttle prototype, which never flew to space, can be seen at Gorky Park, Moscow, Russia and another can be seen at Technik Museum Speyer, in Speyer Germany. Still, the Buran orbiter is ranked among the world’s first space planes, others were SpaceShipOne, or Boeing X-37 and became known as the first to perform an unmanned allround flight completely automatic. Originally, another launch was planned for 1993, with a flight duration of 15 to 20 days, but after the program was halted, it never happened. During the postflight inspection, it was discovered that seven heat protection tiles had fallen off during the flight, but this had not endangered the flight.Ī schematic tile view of the Buran production family, Leebrandoncremer, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Legacy This remained Buran’s only flight into space and the program was cancelled almost immediately after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. After the refurbishment work, the space shuttle was brought back to a hangar where it was refurbished for another flight.

The ship was launched unmanned and flew two orbits while traveling 83,707 km in a little more than 3 hours. The very first operational spacecraft flew one test mission on November 15, 1988. The Soviet Union passed a new rule, saying that all Soviet space missions contain at least one crew member who has been to space before, wherefore nearly all crew members had to gather some experience before the actual mission could start. The actual construction period started in 1980 and three years later, the first test flights started. The space craft was officially designed for the delivery to orbit and return to Earth of spacecraft, cosmonauts, and supplies. the program became more organized, better financed and the designs were accomplished fast. However, in the 1970s, the Buran project started from the beginning and was supposed to be the Soviet Union’s answer to the U.S. W-350 Burja nuclear cruise missile A New Start

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