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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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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/
Except that the US shuttle does an automated landing as well. Didn't you know that?
Have you seen a US space shuttle up close? It has those tiles too. They make up most of the heat shielding so the shuttle doesn't burn up on reentry. The absence of heat shielding (due to it being knocked off by other insulating foam) is part of the reason the Columbia broke up on reentry last year.
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.
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.
No, it's not a tabloid. Its a "serious" weekly political magazine.
This page would tend to indicate that the rumours are not true. If they were, I'm sure by now the truth would have come out.
It can't fly the entire mission unmanned like the Buran did.
That's pretty easy. The facility was in Ukraine, and was pawned to the Ukrainian government in exchange for a loan. The Ukrainian government has been pretty poor about the upkeep, and the original orbiter was lost during a hanger collapse. The test vehicles were considered scrap and have been known to show up in several locations.
For example, Gorky Park in Moscow managed to snag one of the test vehicles as an attraction. If you ever go there, you can walk through the shuttle and take a 3D ride.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm aware of the Zenit strap-on boosters reuse. In addition, the Protons are still launched by Lockheed-Martin IIRC. But none of them compare to the amazing launch power of an Energia. Over a hundred metric tons could be put up in the Buran configuration. The Vulkan configuration could have done 150 metric tons. The Hercules configuration could have done a whopping 175 metric tons!!! That's only about a dozen tons shy of the current weight of the ISS! One launch!
Wow.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
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.
At the risk of being labelled a pedant;
"the Pacific" - Not Europe
"airfield in Russia" - Also not Europe.
I actually knew about the B-29s that were downed, because it led to one of the more interesting aspects of the cold war in terms of the idea of scaling arms. Before the TU-4, there was no way for Russia to get to the US, and Russia was already reeling from the attack of a European superpower.
Regarding the reverse engineering, there was a story that Rolls Royce supplied a Merlin aero engine to China on technology transfer that they copied down to the last bolt, and there's some speculation that the EP-3E forced down in China was heavily catalogued before Lockheed Martin engineers were allowed in to dismantle and crate the plane.
Oddly Draconis
Too cynical to live, too stubborn to die.
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.
Think of it as the German Time magazine
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
It flew up there and returned all by itself, on autopilot. No one else managed to pull this off ever since.
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
http://www.snopes.com/history/american/gauge.htm
All urban legends. Check snopes.com.
The boosters are made in Louisiana, and shipped by barge to Florida. No trains at all.
And the implicit stupidity of putting the SSME's in the Shuttle when there was no provision for engine restart, especially since that great fuel tank was already falling into the ocean. Yeah, the Soviets did it better in that regard.
As to tile technology, well that has matured some, but the fragility of the entire system is keeping NASA from any major overhauls in that regard. Had the Soviets actually continued with the program, they might just have built a flyback booster, aka, what the STS was supposed to be.
Ah, the perils of money...
The 'forced down' EP-3E was nothing less than a technology gift to China. Standard procedure is to make a water landing, bail out, and let the explosives inside (which are activated by being soaked in salt water) scuttle the plane. Laughable also were the reports of the crew valiantly chopping away at the 'computers' inside, so China couldn't acquire them. Anyone who knows anything would know that the crew was certainly only attacking monitors and keyboards, the real computers being stored in armored racks.