So what was up with the Buran?

Question

The Buran was a soviet shuttle that flew in '88. It had one unmanned launch then the next thing in the time line on the net is it lost funding in 92. So why no manned flights? Was it faked? Seems like they spent a lot of money for a orbital rc plane. NE1 know more about the program after 88?

Answer 1

The Soviets realized it was expensive and cumbersome to operate compared to their tested Soyuz-derived technology.  All first Soviet flight tests at the time were unmanned; this was their rule.

Answer 2

Not much...it was actually mostly down! As far as I know it only ever made one flight, without a crew, and was then set aside and never used again. I think the russians basically wanted a type of spacecraft to compete with America's space shuttles, but they found that they didn't really have the resources to keep it running, or much use for its particular capabilities, and ended up just using standard rockets for their space flights.

Answer 3

The Buran was very costly to develop and fly, just like the American Space Shuttle. However, that wasn't the reason why it was shelved. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, funding for the space program there dried up, and the Russians ran out of money. Had that not happened, the Buran probably would have carried crews into space. It's one full-scale test flight was flawless and demonstrated the feasibility of automation. Like the Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn V's first several test flights, the Buran's one full scale test flight was unmanned. Now the Burans the Russians built are now in parks and museums.

Answer 4

way back when the US gov't was trying to convince everyone that the Shuttle program was a good thing, one of the arguments they used was cost.

they managed to convince enough people that a re-usable shuttle would cost less than a 'throw-away' rocket.

turns out they were lying threw their teeth.

the Buran test flight occured after the Challenger disaster and much of the Shuttle Honeymoon was long gone.

not to mention that in '88 the Soviets had many more important things to worry about, like Ronald Reagan wearing Superman tights as he single-handedly knocked down the Berlin Wall.

Answer 5

It made an unmanned flight, then was later canceled due to budgetary reasons.  It wasn't as if the Soviets were abandoning their space program, it was just that the Buran shuttle wasn't as efficient as their existing craft.  That is to say, that the Soyuz program got them more bang for the buck (or ruble).  

Long periods of testing are normal for something this complex, especially when America had already developed a shuttle (the Soviets would have had nothing to gain by rushing the program).  The first manned flight was scheduled for 1994, but the Buran shuttle never made it that far, for obvious reasons.

To be honest, the space shuttle is good for certain applications (namely deploying large satellites, carrying out experiments, and bringing things back from orbit), but it has serious limitations.  It's very risky to take it into high orbit (which was done once to deploy the Hubble, once to repair it, and will be done again for its final maintenance).  

Plus, a space shuttle incredibly expensive.  Originally, when the design was pitched, it was predicted that the shuttle could launch 56 times a year - a little more than once a week.  Obviously, it has fallen short (it topped out at 9 launches in one year).  The shuttle must undergo extensive maintenance and refurbishment between each launch, and the Buran would have been likely to as well.

There were many mock-ups made (for atmospheric and structural testing), but only two functional orbiters.  Of those, only one made an unmanned orbital flight.  The first functional orbiter was destroyed when their hangar collapsed in 2002.  The second is in Kazakhstan, but there aren't any plans to do anything with it.

Answer 6

Clavius is correct. Unmanned testing of craft is standard practice.

The Buran was not a fake. You are right that it made only one unmanned flight in 1988 before the program was scrapped. It orbited Earth twice and landed by preprogrammed computer guidance. The original plan was to have a manned mission in 1994.

A prototype of the Buran was tested on 24 or 25 sub-orbital flights before the Buran was unveiled.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK-GLI

The soviets design was racked with more technical problems than the American shuttle. The largest mistake was the continued use of liquid rocket boosters instead of solid fuel boosters like the NASA program.

The problems in the Soviet space program mirror the economic collapse of the Soviet Union into separate States. When Ronald Reagan was US President, he bluffed Mikhail Gorbachev into believing that the US had a space defense blanket that would stop all Soviet warheads before they struck American soil.

Attempting to compete with Reagan's technology (which did not really exist) almost led to Nuclear War between the two countries. Instead (luckily for the US), the Soviet Union fell apart from internal corruption,collapsed into an economic depression and underwent radical economic reforms. No Soviet orbiters were completed after 1990 due to lack of funds. Boris Yeltsin took power in 1991 and Russian states began their claims of independence from the USSR.

This was not a good time to be spending millions on a space program which had it's own problems when citizens were demonstrating in the streets about the high price of a loaf of bread. Yeltsin terminated the Buran program in 1993.

It is not practical today to reinvest in the Buran vehicle after 15 years of disrepair and non-use.

The Russian space program continues with the Soyuz capsule for their space journeys.