posted April 17, 2007 12:57 AM               

Chris.

Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle
by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis
Jointly published with Praxis Publishing, UK
2007, Approx. 500 p., 170 illus., Softcover
ISBN: 978-0-387-69848-9 (Due: July 2007)
approx. 74,15 €

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In Energiya-Buran: the Soviet Space Shuttle System, the authors describe the long development of the Soviet space shuttle system, its infrastructure and what was planned to follow the first historic unmanned mission. Comparisons are made with the American shuttle system and details of the talented Soviet test pilots chosen to train to fly the system are included, as well as the operational, political and engineering problems that finally sealed the fate of Buran and ultimately of NASA’s Shuttle fleet.

The coverage starts with a Foreword provided by a former Buran cosmonaut, and goes on to provide a detailed description of the first orbital test flight of the Buran shuttle in 1988, giving details of the development of the various Soviet space plane projects of the 1950s and 1960s. A review is included of the decisions to proceed with the US space shuttle in 1972 and the Soviet decision to construct Buran in 1976 and a physical description of the Energiya system and a comparison with the American system is provided in tabular form.

The authors then detail ground support, and the facilities and infrastructure created to prepare, launch, control and recover the Buran vehicle. They go on to detail the selection and training of teams of civilian and military test pilots for crew assessment to Buran missions, and despite the fact that no cosmonaut flew on a space shuttle, the authors describe how several Russian cosmonauts have experienced shuttle missions, courtesy of the American shuttle as part of the ISS co-operative program. In addition to detailing the work on preparing the first flights of the Soviet shuttle which commenced in the l980s and the problems they encountered, the authors conclude with a comprehensive view on what might have been had the Buran program been fully developed.

The Energiya-Buran programme was primarily a story of unfulfilled promises and shattered dreams and is a story that deserves to be told.

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posted May 03, 2007 09:14 AM               

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The Energiya-Buran programme was primarily a story of unfulfilled promises and shattered dreams and is a story that deserves to be told.

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posted May 03, 2007 09:32 AM               

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Originally posted by garymilgrom:
I am no expert but I think the Buran program was primarily a story of theft and espionage. The Buran design is an exact copy of the US Space Shuttle.

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An exact copy? Not at all: I don't see any SRBs, no SSMEs, Buran accomplished an-all automatic flight from launch to landing (something the US space shuttle can't do?), and Energyia is a heavy-lift vehicle that do not have any equivalent elsewhere (and it could have been used for larger Earth-orbit stations, Moon/Mars missions)...The tools were (almost) available, but the political and financial will were not.

Sounds familiar (hint: current NASA's budget crisis)?

posted May 03, 2007 04:38 PM               

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Originally posted by garymilgrom:
I am no expert but I think the Buran program was primarily a story of theft and espionage. The Buran design is an exact copy of the US Space Shuttle.

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That said, Buran was clearly INFLUENCED by the US shuttle, and here the issue becomes complex.

First of all, they benefitted technically from the American data on the tiles and thermal stresses. I've read claims that all of that information was published openly in the United States. However, such claims have lacked detail. How much of that info was published openly? Plus, telling everybody what the tiles and other thermal protection was made of is not the same as telling people how to make it.

Second, and I think equally important, is the question of why the Soviet engineers picked the dimensions that they did for Buran. Why is the payload bay the same size as the US shuttle? It could have been smaller. And why did they seek wings that were roughly the same dimensions? We know that the US shuttle wings were dictated by crossrange requirements. Why did the Buran designers pick the same crossrange requirements?

In summary, I think that the Buran espionage story is overly simplistic on both sides. The people who say that the Buran designers "stole" the US shuttle design are wrong. But the people who counter by saying that Buran _had_ to look the same as the shuttle are also wrong. It _could_ have been smaller. It _could_ have had less crossrange. It could have looked significantly different than it did.