Did The Soviets Build A Better Space Shuttle? The Buran Story
4,464,052
2018-01-06に共有
Support Mustard on Patreon: www.patreon.com/MustardChannel
Mustard Merchandise: www.teespring.com/stores/mustard-store
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mustardchannel/
TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@mustardchannel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Mustard-109952378202335
Twitter: twitter.com/MustardVideos
Website: www.mustardchannel.com/
On November 15, 1988, the world learned that the Soviet Union also had their own space shuttle. It had been secretly under development for well over a decade and it had cost the Soviets billions to build it. Several of the spacecraft were in various stages of construction. But the Soviet shuttle, named the Buran, would only ever launch once. Its development had largely been driven by the need to respond to the perceived military potential of the NASA Space Shuttle.
When the Buran was first launched, the world speculated that it would be used to build Soviet space stations or even assemble spacecraft for a manned mars mission. But as the Soviet Union began to collapse, funding for the Buran program was limited and eventually eliminated.
There’s no denying that the Buran looks very similar to the Space Shuttle. But in many ways, the Buran was quite different from the NASA Space Shuttle. The Buran orbiter didn’t have integrated main engines. Almost all of its lifting power was provided by a separate super-heavy rocket called Energia, which consisted of a core stage and 4 liquid-fueled boosters. Unlike the Space shuttle, which was a single system, the Buran orbiter, and its lifting rockets were actually two separate systems.
While the Shuttle, with its integrated engines, was more reusable, in practice, it required intensive maintenance between launches, which offset a lot of this advantage. But once in space, the Space Shuttle’s integrated engines no longer served a purpose. So, for most of the Shuttle’s mission, it was forced to haul around thousands of pounds of dead weight. Without integrated engines, the Buran could carry slightly more payload than the American Space Shuttle. But the Energia rocket could launch by itself, without the Buran attached. That meant it could carry external payloads into space, and could launch an astounding 100 tons. From the outset, the Buran was also capable of fully automated flight, meaning it could be launched, put into orbit and returned back to earth without any crew on board.
In the final days of the Soviet Union, when it was clear that the American shuttle had no meaningful military potential, the Soviet military no longer wanted anything to do with the Buran. The Soviet space community was left with a spacecraft that was expensive, complex, and largely without a real purpose. #Buran #SpaceRace #Spaceships #SovietSpaceProgram
Further Research:
We highly recommend the book ‘Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle’ by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis. The book was an extremely useful resource in researching this video. You will not find a more detailed or comprehensive look on the Buran program, covering everything from the program’s conception to its legacy:
www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387698489
Thanks for watching! Please Like, Comment and Subscribe!
コメント (21)
-
Thanks for watching! Just wanted to note a correction at 5:32 in the video. I refer to the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters as 'expendable' when I should have said 'reusable'.
-
The way automatic landing happened was a big surprise for a ground control and they even considered to shot down Buran when it went off course... But it turned out autopilot just picked a more optimal route because of weather conditions. Even the engineers who build it were impressed.
-
I feel sad for Buran :( That poor thing should be in a museum.
-
I know this is an old video, but I had to point out how there was no mention of the AN-225 being designed to carry the Buran.
-
buran was sad, but energia is an outright tragedy. 100 tons back in the 80s.... imagine where we might have been now
-
That outro though with the animated rocket launch and synthwave in the background
-
I love the retro green CRT style graphics!!
-
"Buran Energia" sounds more baddass for a name than a simple "Space Shuttle"
-
RIP An-225 😢 Another part of the Buran program (and amazing piece of aerospace history) lost forever
-
I was in the first grade, I remember my class were taken outside our school in Leninsk (now Baykonur) to see the launch of this Buran. But it was completely cloudy, so we didn't see anything...
-
"Let's build it!" It's the best space technology of our century! "Nice, now scrap it Its too expensive"
-
Imagine being a cosmonaut stuck on Mir with no way back, asking for help, and you suddenly see a gigantic bus with wings approaching you
-
Growing up in USSR, I remember that thing being worshipped. My father was in the space program as an engineer, so I was interested in this stuff from a young age. I built a flying model of Buran and Energia, but never launched it, as I was afraid of crashing it. It had a mechanical 2-stage separation system using gas from parachute ejection charge in solid fuel motors. Energia would take the craft up about 100m, on 4x 10N of power, with Buran flaps set to compensate for the drag. Then 2x 3N Buran engines would ignite, taking the plane up a bit more and eject themselves, resetting flaps, shifting the center of balance forward, and letting it glide down from 200m. That's theoretically, of course. Since it was built before microcontrollers and ways to dynamically stabilize the aircraft, I'm sure it would've veered off course. Instead, it decorates a shelf as a piece of personal history in my father's old office. I remember the very first part my father cut out of a wooden rule, that became the wing cross-section, and the rest went from there. I built models of Soyuz rockets also, but those were factory kits. It's not the same thing, compared to studying "secret" blueprints and reverse engineering the Russian Space Shuttle.
-
I remember watching the Buran launch and landing live in a TV in storefront during DDR times. It was actually an important event enough to serve as a major topic in the Eastern bloc for a while.
-
For everyone still wondering where the Buran went to - you can visit it in a german museum situated in Speyer and I highly recommed doing so if you're nearby.
-
A unique masterpiece, not only the Energia and Buran itself, but even the autopilot, that upon return without any human intervention changed the pre-programmed landing path for a better one in the actual weather conditions...
-
It wasn't Buran that made me Sad, It was Energia. A Powerful beast stopped from going to the stars.
-
Another interesting thing about the the Buran is it also spawned the creation of the world's largest cargo plane.
-
As someone who normally has a slightly different perspective on everything USSR-related (born & raised in St Petersburg, Russia), I absolutely loved the video. Both production quality and the content itself are top notch. Please keep it up, you're doing amazing things.
-
The Buran is already visitable in a german Museum. The City is called 'Speyer'. Its in the local 'Technikmuseum'.
