On this day, November 8, 1976, the Minister of Defense of the USSR Dmitry Fedorovich Ustinov approved the tactical and technical specifications for the development of the reusable space system Energia-Born, issued by the Main Directorate of Space Facilities of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR.
The creation of Boran was a response to the American space shuttle program, which was considered by the Soviet Union as a potential military threat. Therefore, the Defense Minister's signature moved the Energy-Born development from the category of promising projects to the status of a task of special national importance.
The Energy-Born program became the largest space project in the country's history: more than a million people and about 1,300 enterprises participated in its creation. Many technical solutions developed for the program - from powerful engines, unique materials that protect against heat to an automatic landing system - are still in use in local and global rocket and space technology.
MTKS Energia - "Buran" in the beginning. Baikonur. 1988 Archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences. P. 2,293. Op. 1. D [111].