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Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain?
An anonymous reader writes "German news source Spiegel are reporting (english babelfish translation) that some TV journalists have found a seemingly abandoned Russian space shuttle in the Persian Gulf. It looks like it could be the atmospheric test demonstrator Buran OK-GLI which was in Sydney, Australia. Pictures here (external) and here (internal). Boy, what I would give to be able to sit in that seat and flip those switches!" Another reader, grm_wnr writes "German tabloid newspaper Bild reports that a russian Buran shuttle has been found in the Bahrain desert. Here is the story (in german, Google translation here). What's funny is that noone knows how it ended up there. At least the fate of one of the four Buran prototypes is now confirmed." There is not much confirmation on this, outside of a few pictures... let the reader beware.
...how much that thing looks like the US space shuttle.
The SPACE SHUTTLE finds YOU!
Kill the GNAA and Furries
Njet. WE zont need ze bakup systems. We need moore thruzt .
I'm am definitely sceptical. I live in Bahrain and it is about three times the size of Washington DC. I think I would have heard of this. I do not see an exact location in the story. If I can find one I will go check it out.
Uhhh... it flew?
OK, not under its own power. But it had to be flown, right? So that's how.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Folks remember the pics back in the 80's of one of the prototypes sitting bogged in mud at the end of a runway taxi test?
"Work is the curse of the drinking class" Oscar Wilde
What's funny is that noone knows how it ended up there.
Who is this Mr. noone you talk about?
Free XBox, PS2
What's funny is that noone knows how it ended up there
You ever tried to parallel park one of those things... trust me its easier just to park it in the desert.
...Noah's space shuttle.
Hey, that's the shuttle simulator I used at Space Camp back in 1987. ;) How'd it get out there?
particlesphere.com - quantum
anyone who touched our Buran!
We in Russia badly need it home!!!
God, here come the "In Soviet Russia" trolls.
"So which one of these buttons turns on the hyperdrive? I need to get the hell out of Tatooine... /watched way too much Star Wars the past few days :)
Trolls come to YOU!
tell me this wouldn't be the coolest find ever. One day you're walking out in the wilderness and you find a spacecraft.
If they did actually abandon it out in the desert (which I find unbelievable, you think they would lock it up in a hanger or something), it's probably been completely gutted for the cool parts anyway.
Did this thing actually get used at all?
How could it be "lost"? Bahrain is only about 650km squared in size.
I read with great interest the history of Buran on astronautix.com. Man, once I found that site I burned several hours reading about the N1 program, Buran, just tons of Soviet-era information that I had no idea was out there. Amazing that the N1 engines were bought by an American company and will end up being used; great story about how they were squirreled away after being ordered destroyed.
I was amazed to learn that Buran flew into space completely by remote control. Kudos to the Russians for this feat.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
A friend in germany pointed this story out to me yesterday. he said he knew of its origins from some russian friends. in short when USSR was doing flight testing of the Buran they simply used standard MIG engines. during one of the tests(in the pacific) they had some engine problems and had to do a forced landing. Rather than bring the shuttle back to Russia they just stripped all the important equipment, packed up and went home and left the shuttle shell there.
I already posted this one here two days ago, but it got rejected, no wonder that things have happened. The shuttle already got sold to the German Sinsheimer Museum (for cars and technik). More info here. Sorry it is in german and my company doesn't allow translations.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Some cosmonauts left it idling in front of a convenience store while they ran in for some smokes and carbs. When they came out it was gone. Apparently it ended up in a Bahrain chop shop and the parts ended up on eBay. The pictures tell the rest of the story.
What's funny is that noone knows how it ended up there.
/no-one
I went to school with Chuck Noone. He was always getting in these kinds of situations... I'll have to track that ol' devil down...
RE: Copy of US Shuttle
Time for RIAA and SCO to send Russia a lawsuit for billions of dollars for copying valuable IP!
Was there a white cloth tied to the antenna or door?
For that matter how did a coconut get to england? Are you suggesting that coconuts are migratory?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ahh, remember the good old days of manned space travel and rapid advances in aeronautics. Seems like just yesterday.
Christ, haven't you guys ever watched Close Encounter Of The Third Kind?
How do I buy it for $5 (10000000 rubles) and bring it home? It would make a cool yard ornament, definately a sort of "I'm a better redneck than you -- instead of cars on blocks, I have a RUSSIAN SPACE SHUTTLE, BIAOTCH!!!".. *sigh* oh well...Guess not..
= Grow a brain...
Also at the Spiegel, the shuttle in question appears to have been bought by a German Museum and the reason why it's in Bahrain is because it was supposed to be shown at an exhibition in 2002. However that never happened and a legal struggle resulted, which is apparently still going on and left the shuttle stranded in Bahrain, the exact location being kept secret.
reminds me of the scene from Close Encounters where they find the boats and airplanes in the desert
Lets see how long this takes before it ends up on Ebay.
1 slightly used space shuttle prototype.....
This find is likely similar to the STS structural test article vehicle--an engineering-exact duplicate of an Orbiter vehicle used for tests in the early days of the Space Shuttle program in America. The Russians needed something similar, obviously.
Our STA, STA-099, was retrofitted after it was clear that retrofitting the test Orbiter Enterprise would be too costly. So, STA-099 become OV-099, Challenger. There might have been much gnashing of teeth to have seen Enterprise destroyed on that cold January day in 1986 for some fanboys than Challenger, I would think--not to belittle that death of a vehicle or its crew would seem any more or less important based on its name.
Everything you want to know about the Buran program in Russian, amongst many other space information, can be found at this popular and comprehensive web site.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I just told a coworker who grew up in Romania under the Soviet influence about this. He said that it was sort of common knowledge that Yuri Gagarin was by far not the first human in space. Rather, he was the first one to come back.
Of course, there's no way to prove that one way or the other but it does illustrate the fact that the soviets didn't have the "burden" of a free press to publicize when things went really haywire as this shuttle seems to have.
Blaze a trail to the New World
...a "Rather-ized" story???
What they're NOT reporting is that the Buran was found along with an ENTIRE SQUADRON of Grumman Avengers that disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle over 50 years ago.
Anyone up for a trip to Wyoming?
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
We toured the Buran in Sydney when it was an ill-fated tourist attraction. It was a very nice exhibit, video on Soviet space accomplishments and it included sitting in the actual cockpit.
The Buran in Sydney lacked the navigation avionics, leaving a rather large empty space in the deck below the cockpit. The Russians removed that before they exported the shuttle. The guide claimed the avionics were heavily borrowed from Russian ICBMs and had even included targeting data for U.S. sites.
It's sad that Buran failed as a tourist attraction.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This article (in german) reports that the Technik Museum Sinsheim has bought the shuttle for an undisclosed six figure sum.
:-)
The Technik Museum Sinsheim already has a Concorde, the Tupolev TU144 (soviet counterpart of the Concorde), and a Porsche 959, "The blue Flame" and a lot of others tech stuff.
The shuttle will be kept in good company
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
Based on the lack of corroborating evidence I'd guess it's a fake, but I can't imagine how they would doctor photos like that. Any gimp experts in the house?
Ze spaze shootel izt shid. uze ze roked.
yeah, then you could go watch spongebob in your footie-pajamas, and drink hi-c from your sippie-cup!
actually, that sounds kind of fun.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Headline in the supermarkets next week: "Lost Atlantean shuttle found in the desert. New 'Bermuda Triangle' to blame."
Maybe some enterprising Russians sold it to someone with a lot of money (hmmm, anyone like that in Bahrain?) and convinced them that they could use it to begin an Islamic space program. Then they towed it out to the desert before anyone found out how gullible and backward they were (or how much money they got taken for).
:-) it is perfect!
Hahaha that was great, I laughed so hard I probably extended my life by a good few minutes!
Islamic space program
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
The way the heat tiles are laid it looks like it's made of Legos.
Did anyone else immediately think of the scene in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" where the Navy patrol planes were found in the middle of the desert?
What the hell is he rambling on about?
There's only one logical explanation for this- Russian Time Travel experiments. The timeline is in danger, folks. We need an eclectic group of geeks and scientists to stop this meddling before the Cold War turns into World War III. So who's with me?! Coming Summer 2006 to a theater near you.
on the lower right corner of that Bild.de link. ;-)
/.
Now you can see all those small details Nasa doesnt want you to know about. Geez, this must be the lamest incarnation of digital zoom I ever saw. But then again, Bild is germanies most unreliable newssource anyway so I have to wonder why it was linked to on
The shuttle not being able to land was a conscious decision. Opening the landing gear doors is one of those actions that cannot be undone except in the service bay. When the Shuttle was being designed, they were quite frightened about the way computers had to be integrated, and their dependence on them. Hence the fabled 5-way, multiple fail system. The thing was designed to be recoverable from just about *any* computer glitch. But a glitch that opened the doors too early would cause a bad day, with no chance of recovery. They left the decision to open the landing gear up to a human.
Other than that, the shuttle can land automatically, too.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
By the way, the Wikipedia has a page about the museum in Sinsheim.
I believe that "Bild" is the German equivalent of the US's "National Enquirer" or the UK's "Sunday Sport". These are hardly reliable sources of information!
Standards are slipping here...
-KB
Buran in Bahrain. Someone has dyslexia ... or is it a kids book?
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Russian space program = strapped for cash
Bahrain oil sheik = using treasury notes for kleenex
Russian space program: "Who wants to buy a shuttle prototype? Some assembly required."
Bahrain oil sheik: "That would make a cool water pipe!"
The story looks very far fetched. I do not just loose a space shuttle. This things cost an arm and a leg. You might abandon one prototype due to lack of funding in a desert junk yard but deffinitely not in Bahrain and also forget about it.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
From the looks of the internal picture, you could assemble better switching crap with hobbiest equipment in the spare room of your basement. I've seen more exciting machinery in 'Back To The Future'-Delorean mock-ups. ;-)
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
That was a perfect mod description. Agreed. What was he rambling about?
Don't get too excited - this is "Bild" - the German equivalent of the Sun or the National Enquirer!
you're probably US military; that's why you deny. i live in neighboring dhahran! give me mod points! is there any confusion in the story?
--- widget evolution: enhanced, plus, super, ultra, extreme, exxxtreme, ultra-extreme,
I'm glad someone's metal detector has finally found their treasure that those ads always promise. ;)
Here's a manual translation of the article. It may not be very elegant; I didn't have much time ...
Soviet space shuttle: Curious discovery at the persian gulf
While shooting footage for the formula 1 race in Bahrain, a TV crew from Düsseldorf by chance stumbled over a rumour about a russian space shuttle, said to be located since some time in that region, without anybody taking an interest in it. A little while later, the Germans were standing in front of a relic of the soviet space shuttle program of the eighties: A vehicle strongly resembling the US shuttles. It may be a prototype version of the space shuttle "Buran" ("Snowstorm".
With this shuttle project, at times employing up to 30'000 people, the soviets wanted to catch up with the americans in manned space flight. But the project was not under a good sign. Already at its inception in the late seventies it was clear that the Soviet union actually had no use for a re-usable space craft. "Buran", the name of the sole soviet shuttle ever to make it into space, was a pure prestige project - and an extremely expensive one at that.
November 15 1988, after more than ten years of development, Buran took off for the first and last orbital flight, without crew. This flight ended according to plan after two orbits of the earth. One year later, the iron curtain came down - and with it, the major part of funding for soviet space exploration.
[CAPTION]: TV producer Maier in the cockpit of the shuttle: Relic from the soviet union
While the "Buran" shuttle was able to carry more payload than US shuttles and could be controlled remotely, neither its on-board computer nor its life support system ever worked satisfactory. The space ship was decomissioned, and was destroyed in May 2002, when the ceiling of a hangar in the Baikonur space center crashed. A second shuttle named "Ptitchka" ("Little bird"), which was completed in 1990, was never used: The program was stopped officially in 1993.
Besides the two soviet shuttles that were ready to fly, there were said to be three more, unfinished, shuttles, and a series of test versions. Today, one is being used as a restaurant in Moscow, another was sold by Russia to Sydney as an exhibition piece for the 2000 olympic games. "Ptitchka" is said to be in Baikonur still.
It is not clear which model was found at the persian gulf by the TV crew from Düsseldorf. Nobody knows, how this museum piece ended up there. According to TV producer Chris Maier, this could be the model once located in Sydney. This notion is supported by the fact that the shuttle supposedly performed 25 atmospheric test flights. Various reports claim that the Russians delivered the aerodynamic test plane "Buran OK-GLI" to Australia, which was used to test the automatic landing system of the space shuttles. For this reason, the shuttle was the only test variant equipped with engines.
"We need to get confirmation on which version this is", concedes Maier. However, the shuttle has already attracted a potential buyer: According to Volker Hartmann, a member of the TV crew, German enterpreneur Kai Niedermeier, who is doing business in the gulf states, wants to do a world tour with the space shuttle - and auction parts of its hull on the internet.
A poorly translated summary of the dialogue regarding the shuttle's untimely disappearance...
Slava: Zutroy, what is red light?
Zutroy: Red light is bad.
Slava: Was it last vector?
Zutroy: Last vector, yes. Last vector is bad.
Slava: Light is bad, vector is bad, what is good?
Zutroy: Chance of hit desert is good.
Slava: Pass the Stolchinaya.
Zutroy: Yes, Stochinaya also good.
stuff |
I live in germany, and guess what is in our local Newspaper? Seems like the Technik Museum Sinsheim, a Museum a few kilomters from where I live, bought this thing. (Since they also have a Concorde, I think they quite do have the possibilities to do so.)
....to the fifties and sixties, when the US was building prototype lifting bodies, primarily for the military aspect: http://www.astronautix.com/project/nasgbody.htm.
see also this: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/dynasoar.htm.
by the time the soviet union was developing the buran, these designs were well known in their basic terms; they might as well have obtained some classified data by the usual avenues.
THe key issue tough, and one that plagues the shuttle as well to this day, is the thermal shock of reentry and the cumbersome combination of tiles that covers the whole surface. in the article, it is stated that this, apart from the sensor tecnhology required, was the major anticipated obstacle to a full development of the Dynasoar military lifting body.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Confucius say "Ack..." *dies*. Because Confucianism is counter-revolutionary superstition!
Folks, so sorry about the popups; I had no idea as I'm using Firefox and they just didn't happen to me. I'd have mentioned it had I known.
- Leo
You don't use science to show that you're right, you use science to become right.
If this story is true, then it may be possible that the Russian government is making good money by selling its old space shuttles to rich oil businessmen! :-)
Hey Rocky, whatch me pull a Russian Space Shuttle out of my hat! Boris & Natasha would not be pleased... Next weeks episode: Moon over Buran OR This thing was using DOS 3.2?
Indecision may, or may not be my problem! -- Jimmy Buffett
and look, isn't that great that the story mentioned some minutes ago here and published some hours ago in spiegel-online.de is already mentioned in wikipedia? this beast is revolutionary..
PAT
SEO Test: TIGI und SEBASTIAN - Online Shop - V
I call BS. the shuttle in the first picture is obviously made of LEGO's.
It's only a model.
One is on display as a park for children.
One is under a pile of rubble
One has been sold to the Germans.
And one is still missing.
If memory serves (and I can't be bothered to look it up), an atmospheric test variant of the Buran was fitted with Turbojet engines so it could actually climb or extend its glide during testing.
Does anyone else know more on this as I recall an image of a Buran with these 'outboard' jet-engines fitted.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
that they found a little kid near by who lifted a car with his two hands.
Boy, what I would give to be able to sit in that seat and flip those switches!
Me too. Especially once I found the switch that turns on their top secret warp drive.
The shape is the same, but not too much else.
The American (US and Canada) shuttle had integrated engines. Fuel fed from the big external tank into those engines during lift off. Buran was not designed with those engines. Buran was to use a modified Energia rocket to lift into space. This is a major design difference that does not show in the shots here.
This design by the soviets lowered the cost of developing their shuttle, and would give Buran more cargo space and load capacity. However the soviet design would need new engines for each launch. The American design reuses the engines for several launches.
The Soviets could have copied the general shape of the shuttle in order to implement a known working aerodynamic design. This is not the same thing the first poster is saying. They could have spent money developing a completely new working aerodynamic design, but chose to copy instead of innovate. The USSR wasn't exactly swimming in cash during this period, so I can see why they chose the cheaper route.
My father (who's been deployed several times in the last couple years =/ ) sent me pics of the shuttle over a year ago. He says it's in some sort of salvage yard, visible from the harbor. Sold for scrap when the USSR fell or some such. So I'm not sure, but that's what I've been told.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Ashton Kutcherkov, was found face down in the sand near by. Upon questioning, her replied with heavy vodka breath, "Dude! Where's my Buran?"
Just because you can, does not mean you should.
At least the fate of one of the four Buran prototypes is now confirmed." There is not much confirmation on this, outside of a few pictures... let the reader beware Confirmed or not? Make up your mind.
--- If we knew half the things we shouldn't we'd stop wishing we knew it all
Boy, what I would give to be able to sit in that seat and flip those switches!
I doubt that they'll let you sit in it, but you can see the American space shuttle Enterprise for yourself at the McDonnell Space Hangar facility of the Smithsonian Institute's National Air and Space Museum. It's out near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
Enterprise was parked out at Dulles for a while, and it too seemed to be abandoned, but in retrospect it seems likely that it was just waiting during the construction of its new home.
Anyone seen Steven Spielberg around? This sounds strangely like the opening of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
This has been a test. If this had been an actual Sig, you would have been amused.
This is what happens when you flip the switches.
So a frickin' space shuttle can remain hidden for years and years (which was not actually "hidden") in the desert, but people expect to be able to find WMD 's in an even BIGGER desert that actually WERE _HIDDEN_ in a few months... I just don't get it.
What I don't know I just fake...
... cause when I think how many people are gonna read about this, and how many of those will just be flat out believers of whatever bull-crap story blah blah...
This is exactly what happened when americans elected Bush to be president... blah blah...
That's some baaaaad-ass acid you've been hittin' dude. I'm curious though...what are your thoughts on the Apollo missions?
here :
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/978
News briefs: June 15-16
Posted: Mon, Jun 17, 2002, 6:27 AM ET (1027 GMT)
A test model of the Buran space shuttle will be featured during a festival this summer in the Persian Gulf nation of Bahrain, RIA Novosti reported this weekend. The Buran will be the centerpiece of an exhibit on Russian achievements in space exploration. The Buran had previously been in Sydney, Australia for an exhibit that eventually closed because of a lack of visitors.
IIRC, Buran never flew a manned mission. The computers handled all the test flights.
Egads. Babelfish translations are so bad they are funny. I had never tried to use it before. Just reading Der Spiegel in German reveals that the Dusseldorf TV station guys weren't particularly looking for the Buran shuttle. They were covering something to do with Formula 1 racing in Bahrain. I think it was a sort of 'Hey, you cats wanna see something cool' kinda trip on the part of the Sheik.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
I think that joke's been done here before.
I am Sartre of the Borg. Existence is futile.
Some background information on why Soviet space exploration was so advanced.
Stalin had spies in the USAF and Civilian contracting sector even before Japan surrendered in '45. And thus, many of the brilliant aeronautical ideas developed by American and German scientists (German Scientists came to America after the war) were transmitted to the Soviets almost before they were even on paper. And that is how the Soviets were able to suprise the US with their sudden leap in fighter and bomber technologies (until 1980 when almost 100% of russian spys were found and expelled or killed), on par and sometimes better then our own planes. The Soviets had the benefit of hindsight, with their stolen/espionaged documents, and thus were able to not just create the planes but add improvements of their own.
There would never have been a cold war without Stalins spies in America. But even that was not enough at the outset. In order for Stalin to prevent what he thought would be an American invasion after the war, he had to make a most audacious grab before the war ended to ensure his armies met the Americans and British on even terms. In 1942 Rosevelt commissioned the bombing of Japan after they attacked Pearl Harbor. After the initial surprise bombing of Tokyo, 3 airplanes had to be ditched in Northern China. The Russians seized those planes, and that is how the cold war began. They cloned them, calling them TU-4's. Now that Stalin had LRBs or Long Range Bombers, he was capable of striking the US.
Before accurate nuclear missiles were developed, B-29's and TU-4's roamed the skies night and day with atomic and then nuclear payloads. These were the true walls between the USSR and the USA.
Almost everything the USSR developed from 1945 until 1985 was the direct result of espionage. But that doesnt mean the Russians are stupid. The first fighter they developed free of anything American was in 1995, the S-37 Air Superiority Fighter which is still in service today. The S-37 upgrades found today are widely regarded as the best non-stealth fighter planes in the world. Along with the new MiG 29's the Russians field an extremely competent airforce.
But with all the problems in Russia right now, and no more stolen documents to glean information from, they wont be able to keep up in the air race anymore. The newest planes in America are stealth fighters that blow away anything imaginable. Stealth planes can drop bombs and dog-fight, and they can be on you before your radar senses them. One of the real terrors to imagine is what would happen if a terrorist nation got their hands on a stealth plane. They could bomb a dozen cities with nukes in just a few minutes time.
All this info is available in a google search.
In Soviet Russia, space shuttle prototypes find lost you!!
If you can't say something nice, make sure you have something heavy to throw.
I was told by a Russian friend that it was literally a replica. Except for one crucial part... the heat tiles. They never got that right and when it landed it was covered in blackened soot. Never to fly again.
It flew up there and returned all by itself, on autopilot. No one else managed to pull this off ever since.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=123011 &cid=10339831
One simple rule for its versus it's
From the pictures it almost looks like it was made out of Legos...
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
Actually, IIRC it wasn't a taxi test of the shuttle. It was mounted on the back of a Bison bomber and the bomber went off the runway. They had timed this so that no US spy sats would be overhead. (Timing outdoor operations to avoid surveillance is a common thing in military programs). Getting stuck pushed them out of that time window, and they were photographed.
This is the same as how the US uses a modified 747 to move the US shuttle.
Why is the guy who's called Volker Hartmann in the Spiegel original, called "Volker hard man" in the English translation?
no, I don't have a sig
And yes, this name was indeed selected because of the Soviet shuttle. Whenever I am asked about it, I point people here:
Buran
Shuttle Buran - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
i am a soviet space shuttle
This type of "visual aid" did not go away with the "cold war", and neither did the security paranoia that spawned them. As a current DoD employee, I can tell you that OP and COMSEC are alive and well, as is compartmentalized project security. There are some things where I work that you just don't talk about, and if you do, even to joke, you will very likely be interviewing with a security guy. Fortunately I don't work with any of that crap.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
the blue flame was dis-assembled in the mid 80s bye IIT. I have a few pieces of it in my basement.
The Soviet system places the main engines on the Energia booster because the system is powerful enough to do this. That reduces some complexity in the orbiter due to it not having to carry the main propulsion system and it also increases the maximum payload capacity. The Buran orbiter only carries the engines required for achieving the final orbit, on-orbit maneuvering, and retrofire (for the US system, these are the OMS and RCS engines -- two OMS engines and 44 RCS jets.)
See Buran - In Depth History for more info.
i am a soviet space shuttle
Read a little further down the discussion, and I can definitely confirm that there were MiG engines attached to tail fin of the shuttle, and the literature there identified it as the atmospheric test article.
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm
I saw it there in the desert with my own eyes. I was even in the partially wrecked capsule. I flipped one of the switches and heard a scruffy voice stating "Let's Rock". I brushed the sand from the dash and to my surpise was a 13 in color screen. On that screen was nothing other then Duke Nukem forever. I followed the wires and the unit that was running the game did not look familiar to me, it looked like a plastic computer case glued together, it had a partially scratched off label that said "Phantom". Shortly after I exited the capsule, some dude with a jetpack shot an RPG into the capsule and destoyed it.
[Insert snooty remark about Bahrain not being Iraq]
;)
He should have kept it in his palace and used it as his escape pod when the bombs dropped "Bwahahaha you may take Iraq, but i'll be back George W, i'll be back!" - I can see 3 years on, the US will have found 2 oil-tanker ships in the middle of the desert, 3 russian space probes, Darwins missing link and a McDonalds, but no WMDs
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
"I like my golf courses like my women - lush, flat and full of holes."
so you like the flatchested whores who are bullet riddled?
These Germans are jackasses! That shuttle has been there for years. It's not like they suddenly 'discovered' it. What a crock of shit. Every Bahrainy / expat living in the country knows about it.
--"A Saudi bought the shuttle, but forgot it in the desert"--
Overheard 10 years ago in the desert: "That silly Osama. He has way too much money, I mean look. The fool bought a Space Shuttle for Allah's sake! What in Hades is he gonna do with that?"
This is one of those items that -- although wrong in many of its details -- isn't exactly false in an overall sense and is perhaps more fairly labelled as "True, but for trivial and unremarkable reasons."
So, it really is true overall although some of the reasons are someone stretched (not unlike a Michael Moore movie)
This story is plausible. I recall a potential legal struggle over MiGs at the Paris Airshow several years ago. Creditors of Russia looking to recoup their money got an order to hold a state-of-the-art MiG which was in Paris for the show. The Paris Airshow, wanting to keep good relations with the Russians so that they would see MiGs in the future, quietly passed word that the MiG was on the verge of being impounded. Minutes before the creditors showed up, the Russian pilot jumped in the jet and roared back to Russia. Pretty dramatic, and apparently no one was able to stop it.
Lies about crimes
For two million Euros:
http://www.barnstormers.com
and search on "Buran"
Close Encounters Of the Thrid Kind anyone ?
This signature was left intentionally blank.
They're gonna suicice bomb us from space those filthy ragheads!
I was deployed in the Saudi desert during Gulf War I, and there were times when we were to all appearances in the middle of no-where.
No matter how far into the desert we went you could always find some random piece of crap out in the sand.
I found a tennis shoe and a coffee percolator. I think the shoe fell from an airplane, I have no idea where the percolator came from. Now and then I still wonder where the other shoe is.
...much of the shuttle info was publically openly available, not classified.
if anyone "talked", it was nasa administrators who were publishing the information openly for anyone who wanted copies.
If anything was folly it was making the reusable shuttle in the first place when a cheaper conventional discardable design would have been better.
"The American design reuses the engines for several launches"
More realistically, it refurbishes the engines after every launch: it's debatable as to whether it would have been cheaper to have built expendable engines in the first place. Certainly they've never even come close to the original goal of 50-ish missions between overhauls.
What part isn't true? I read the Snopes article and he doesn't actually refute anything, but merely indicates that history was much more complicated than the story goes.
lol... hilarious... one of the best comeback jokes :) ... Both jokes were funny :)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
I haven't sat in that seat, but I *have* had my picture taken in the pilot's seat of the US shuttle Endeavour.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
DC is not exactly the best example of "small place, therefore it's hard to keep a secret"!
So it happened? Pix please.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Leutenant: I don't know, they must have hyper-jets on that thing!
Dark Helmet: And what do we got on this thing, a cuisenart?
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
The Google translation reads:
"Volker hard man (54) from foam castle, Chris G. Maier (32) from Duesseldorf and Kai Niedermeier (39) from Solingen met the Kronprinzen sheikh Salman in the island state Bahrain are Hamad aluminium-Khalifa (34)."
sounds like a scenario for a porn movie..
Hi I'm not sure if someone here has mentioned this already, but the Buran was in Bahrain a few years ago as part of some exhibition. I live in Bahrain, and I went and had a look during the exhibition and it was great! But I had no idea that it is still lying around on the island. I'll definitely go out looking for it in the desert and will share the photos with you folks on my blog: http://chanadbahraini.blogspot.com Let's hope that I manage to find it in the heat. Cheers, Chan'ad
ALl quite a boring story really:
"A GIANT Russian spacecraft is lying in pieces in a Bahrain yard - while two foreign companies argue over who owns it. The shuttle craft Buran was brought here in June 2002 as one of the Bahrain Summer Festival attractions.
Visitors were able to climb inside the spacecraft, once the pride of the Soviet space programme, as it stood on land at the Manama seafront.
Once the festival was over it should have been dismantled and shipped to Thailand as a tourist attraction.
But it is still in the Sitra storage yard of Bahrain company Pico, which brought it here for the festival.
"NPO Molniya, the company which we negotiated with to bring the spacecraft and another Russian company both claim ownership of Buran," Pico chairman Khalid Juman told the GDN.
First, a case was filed by a Bahrain-based foreign company at Bahrain's civil courts in October 2002, to order NPO Molniya to remove the craft from the Manama dock area.
NPO had allegedly delayed meeting the terms of a contract with the foreign company to dismantle the spacecraft and ship it to Thailand, where it was set to go on display later that month.
Early last year it was dismantled into four pieces - the hull, two wings and the tail section - and moved to Pico's storage area.
Mr Juman said a ruling was still pending in the case over the ownership of the craft, also being dealt with in Bahrain's courts.
The German daily newspaper Bild recently reported that an offer had been made by a German businessman to purchase the spacecraft for approximately $1 million (BD378,000).
Before coming to Bahrain, Buran was shipped to Australia in 2000 to become a tourist attraction, but failed to earn enough money to keep it open.
The Buran flew only once, in 1988, as an unmanned mission. "