The first and only. On November 15, 1988, the Energia launch vehicle launched the Buran spacecraft into orbit from Baikonur.
He will talk about one of the largest and most expensive projects of the Soviet Union in the field of space, on which 1,200 organizations and 1.5 million people worked.
Answer to American transportation. Borans began to be developed at the behest of the Ministry of Defense of the Soviet Union out of concern that the United States had invented the space shuttle as an orbital bomber.
space fighter Initially, Buranov's missions were primarily military - from "de-orbiting" potential enemy satellites and combating ballistic missiles to launching gliding nuclear combat modules and destroying enemy shuttles. Its cargo is about 30 tons.
first flight "Buran" made two orbits around the Earth and landed in automatic mode - based on data from its "brain". Alas, this was his last flight. The program was closed due to the army's need for an orbital spacecraft and lack of money. At that time, 16.4 billion Soviet rubles were invested in the project.
They wanted to make five borans, but managed to make only two. The third was supposed to go into space in 1994. At the time the program was closed, it was 50% ready. Many materials and technical solutions of Energy-Born were created from scratch, they have no analogues and are still used not only in Russia, but also in the West.
Video not loading?