The other day I was chatting with a couple of friends about the Space Shuttle program and how I would dearly love to go to watch a launch, when it came up in conversation that the Russians had developed their own Space Shuttles too!

At first I laughed it off thinking this was a joke or another one of those crazy conspiracy theories that you hear people witter on about. But then my friend asserted this was true, and was actually surprised someone “as into space stuff” as me wouldn’t know this. But I had no idea, I have never ever heard of a Russian space shuttle, this was news to me, albeit very old news.

Now I won’t bore you all too much because maybe I am the last person on earth not to know all of this, but the Russians started developing their own space shuttle in 1976, shortly after the Americans. It was developed in secret and primarily as a weapon of the cold war. However the Russians were seriously strapped for cash so their development program was far slower than NASA’s.

The Russian shuttle was, in effect, simply a ‘knock off’ of the NASA one, only the Russian one was able to address a few of the issues NASA had with theirs, and in some respects some might argue that the Russian shuttle had made some significant improvements on the NASA one. For example the Russian space shuttle was 4600kg lighter than the STS and could carry 5000kg more payload, with a slightly bigger payload bay. It also required less fuel to get into orbit.

After building a few test models and making atmospheric test flights, the Russians launched their shuttle, named Buran, at three in the morning on Nov 25th, 1988. The flight was unmanned due to the fact that the life support system aboard the shuttle was untested, and the computer displays in the cockpit had no software because they hadn’t yet finalized that part of the shuttles development. Indeed the shuttle could only make two orbits of the earth, returning at 6:25am that same day, due to the fact the computer system they used didn’t have enough memory to do any more than that!

Despite this the Buran flight was a huge technical success. The autopilot was able to correct for a 34mph cross-wind on landing; high enough for NASA to divert to their alternate landing site in White Sands. Plus Buran lost significantly fewer insulating tiles on re-entry, possibly due to the Russian wing design.

Two other orbiters were planned and construction had begun on them. But neither of them were completed due to the lack of funds and goodwill from the Russian government. By the time Buran had actually made it’s first flight the cold war was almost over, and the the Russian political climate was changing dramatically.

The space shuttle Buran never flew again. Buran and the various other mock-ups and test models were either disassembled or sold off. One found its way to Australia where it was displayed in Sydney. However the company that owned it went into bankruptcy and the Buran was allowed to fall into a state of disrepair and become vandalized. it was eventually moved to Bahrain and purchased by a German consortium.

Oddly enough, another Buran shuttle found its way to America, or at least it might have done. There isn’t much explanation as to what the craft pictured in Kansas city by Google Earth is. But it would appear to be a Buran shuttle sitting alone by a river. Maybe someone there had grand plans for it. Who knows. One thing’s for sure, I never knew the Russians had a space shuttle!

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Shuttle Buran
Russian space shuttle
Russian website of the Buran
Buran down under
More pictures of the Buran
Loads of information of the Buran
BBC on the Buran
Russians to revive the Buran
A Buran in Kansas City!?