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Soviet Space Shuttle Found In Bahrain?

Posted by michael on from the grain-of-salt dept.

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.

29 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Funny... by daveschroeder · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...how much that thing looks like the US space shuttle.

    1. Re:Funny... by DaHat · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I heard a former Russian engineer respond to a thought like that once... that the shape was governed by aerodynamics, that there are only so many configurations a functioning craft like that could take and they too independently came up with a similar one to the Americans.

      I had also heard a NASA engineer respond a little later saying that if the Russians asked for the plans for the shuttle, that he doubted that NASA would have said no.

      --
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    2. Re:Funny... by pbranes · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Check out the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Buran

      It looks like the US shuttle on the outside, but inside it is totally different. Interestingly enough, in many ways it is superior to the US space shuttle - for example if could do everything automated - including the landing.

    3. Re:Funny... by wwest4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In an old defense industry job I had, they still had cold war era security warnings around the buildings. They were printed two-tone on posterboard with war propaganda cartoons and obnoxious fonts... one had pictures comparing our shuttle to theirs, and the F-15 to the Mig-29, etc, with the heading "Somebody Talked!" Since they were propaganda sheets, I don't know if there was any truth behind the idea that the Russians actually spied to get ideas for their shuttle, or just copied the basic airframe by looking at it. Looks pretty damning superficially, at least.

    4. Re:Funny... by BigGerman · · Score: 3, Interesting
      realistically, it is not like stealing how a new car looks.
      All the things that fly require a great deal of design "inside" to work well with what "outside". Similarities in COncorde and Tu144 and in Buran and "classic" shuttle are caused by aerodynamics. Both machines had to perform in identical environments so no wonder they come out looking the same. Kind of mechanical darvinism at work.

      The only exception I know of is the B-29. Soviets got hold of several shut down over Europe and replicated it bolt-by-bolt (Tu-4?).

    5. Re:Funny... by HeghmoH · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A minor correction; the B-29s that the Soviets used to create the Tu-4 came into their hands because they performed an emergency landing in the USSR after a raid on Japan. The B-29 never performed any missions in Europe. It was indeed as close to an exact copy as you could reasonably expect.

      The OP's examples (F-15/MiG-29 and Shuttle/Buran) are pretty poor; they look similar only to one who is not familiar with them.

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    6. Re:Funny... by phayes · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Given that there were no western witnesses, nor videos nor pictures of Buran in the process of being launched, it is widely assumed that buran never achieved orbit & that the pictures being presented as the return from orbit are actually those of one of the atmospheric tests (like Enterprise).

      Corrections welcome of course, but it's been 20 years & you'd have thought that someone would have turned up a picture if buran had really made it to orbit.

      --
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    7. Re:Funny... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interestingly enough, in many ways it is superior to the US space shuttle - for example if could do everything automated - including the landing.

      This is true. The Russians has NASA's 10+ years of experience behind them when they were working on the Buran. As such, they avoided several points which made the shuttle such a difficult craft. A few items:

      - The Buran had no launch engines. All lift power was provided by the Energia it was strapped to.

      - The Buran had more advanced computers with real-time control abilities instead of the "key in the program" design of the shuttle.

      - The Buran stack was lighter due to the single-booster design.

      - The complexity lost in the single-booster design meant that turn-around times would have been far faster than the shuttle.

      - Future versions of the design would have made the Energia booster able to fly back to Earth and be reused.

      All of this did come at a price, however. IIRC, the Russian program was about twice as expensive in R&D as the US program. As for the aerodynamics, my understanding is that the Russians did have stolen shuttle specs as a reference. Even if they didn't, they still had a large collection of photographs from which they could divine the areo-shell design. As a result, the Buran was nearly an exact aerodynamic copy of the space shuttle.

      And for anyone who thinks that may have been a coincidence, think again. There was no need for the Russians to have built a large cargo craft. They already had excellent cargo boosters, so they could have built a man rated vehicle for much less. They built the Buran to compete with the shuttle on every point, but did it in such a way as to show that Russian design was "better".

      That being said, I'd love to see the Energia program revitalized. With those rockets, we could have cut the costs of ISS construction several fold!

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    8. Re:Funny... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Yeah, and the Americans never landed on the moon. You know there were no witnesses.

      Come on, every launch by one side is tracked by another side. Buran flew to the orbit once allright. Landed automatically, too. No people onboard though.

    9. Re:Funny... by twiddlingbits · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The link to astronautix.com has a great history of the effort, how they copied the STS (without engines) and how they developed the N-1 Launch Vehicle. The test flight discussed seemed to a bit odd with a very eccentric orbit of like 150km x -20km, so they barely got into LEO. And I don't think they tested payload delivery either. The big debate was if the first flight was to be manned or unmanned. Unmanned won. I am assuming with the fall of the Soviet Union that the history of Buran is pretty solid by now free of the typical Soviet mis-information about success OR failure.

    10. Re:Funny... by ckaminski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Considering that the U.S. would have known that Buran was flying, in order to prevent WW3, NORAD almost certainly had opportunity to debunk the flight of Buran with orbital tracking data. At the height of the Cold War, you can be certain that any U.S. proof of failure of the Energiya-Buran to achieve orbit would have been leaked by the Administration if the Soviets tried to play of a technological coup and failed...

    11. Re:Funny... by Buran · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It looks similar for several reasons:

      1. The work was based in part on non-classified US shuttle information that was publicly available.

      2. The US design was already tried, tested, and known to work. Why do something new when you can duplicate? The Soviets were very good at this; e.g. quickly copying the jet engines they were given during the 1950s, even going so far as to secretly collect metal shavings dropped on the floor by machining tools at the engine factory in England to find out what thte turbine blades were made from.

      3. Convergence. This is an evolutionary principle which states that often, recurring similar solutions will arise spontaneously when two different organisms evolve to fill the same niche or accomplish the same goals, even if they evolved in separate parts of the world with no genetic exchange taking place. In other words, what engineers find works for a given goal in country/company A will also often come up as the best solution selected by engineers in country/company B. The principles of science and nature are absolutes the world over.

      More on the history of Buran:

      Buran - In Depth History

      --
      i am a soviet space shuttle
    12. Re:Funny... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      IAAA (astrophysicist) and I've personally seen the launch and landing videos and some of the telemetry from the flight. I'm convinced they launched, orbited and landed sucessfully. There are some videos are on the net if you look for them, but I'm not going to subject the already flakey server to /. . You can find them if you spend a little time looking. :)

  2. Grain of Salt by RainbowBrite · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Grain of Salt by troggan · · Score: 5, Interesting

      http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/weltraum/0,1518 ,319521,00.html

      (Sorry, only German)

      The Location is Secret. The Shuttle is only "parked" there.

      A German Museum has bought it and is waiting to ship it to Germany. The Museum has bought many things like this in the past (Tupolew TU-144, a Concord...)

    2. Re:Grain of Salt by IAR80 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wasn't spiegel just another tabloid? If it is not it is certainly going in that direction.

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  3. Is this the one that overran the runway way back w by pillageplunder · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

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  4. Buran history by Leomania · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  5. What the Russians didn't publicize by kippy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:What the Russians didn't publicize by madprof · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If this is the case then how come the western media has not picked up on these stories before?
      This would be a significant change to our established history of space exploration.

    2. Re:What the Russians didn't publicize by kippy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Like I said, it may or may not be true.

      Even if it were true, the Soviets would have kept it under wraps. NASA underwent a lot of public crap whenever something blew up on the launching pad. In Soviet Russia all they had to do was tell Pravda to shut up and their space program looked flawless. If it never got out of Russia, how would we find out about it?

      --
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    3. Re:What the Russians didn't publicize by dapyx · · Score: 3, Interesting
      If this is the case then how come the western media has not picked up on these stories before?

      Because all the proofs are burried deep in the archives of the KGB.

      However, the Russian media wrote about this (in English)

      As 40 years have passed since Gagarin's flight, new sensational details of this event were disclosed: Gagarin was not the first man to fly to space.
      Three Soviet pilots died in attempts to conquer space before Gagarin's famous space flight, Mikhail Rudenko, senior engineer-experimenter with Experimental Design Office 456 (located in Khimki, in the Moscow region) said on Thursday.
      According to Rudenko, spacecraft with pilots Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov at the controls were launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome (in the Astrakhan region) in 1957, 1958 and 1959. "All three pilots died during the flights, and their names were never officially published," Rudenko said.
      He explained that all these pilots took part in so-called sub- orbital flights, i.e., their goal was not to orbit around the earth, which Gagarin later did, but make a parabola-shaped flight. "The cosmonauts were to reach space heights in the highest point of such an orbit and then return to the Earth," Rudenko said.
      According to his information, Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov were regular test pilots, who had not had any special training, Interfax reports. "Obviously, after such a serious of tragic launches, the project managers decided to cardinally change the program and approach the training of cosmonauts much more seriously in order to create a cosmonaut detachment," Rudenko said.
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    4. Re:What the Russians didn't publicize by benito27uk · · Score: 3, Interesting
      That's true, but Alexei Leonov and David Scott's autobiography Two Sides of the Moon has no mention of anyone getting into space before Gagarin.

      Leonov is very frank in talking about the censorship that occurred during this period and has no reason to perpetuate any lies.

  6. Re:How did I get here? by Itsik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What scares me is that if they lost such a huge spacecarft can you imagine what else they could have easily "misplaced" without anyone knowing???

  7. Buran in Sydney by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Buran in Sydney by dbarlett · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I was in Sydney in August of 2001, read about Buran, and thought "I have to see this." We parked at a casino and spent almost half an hour tracking down the tent where they were keeping it. We were the only people there, and there was a lone ticket-taker/tour guide who left us to watch a Russian/English hurrah-for-Soviet-space-program movie, followed by actually going to see the shuttle. Sitting in the cockpit was an extra $20 (US), IIRC, which I didn't elect to do. Overall an interesting experience.

  8. Re:it goes back in time awhile........ by gadget+junkie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ....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.

    --
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  9. Is the Russian gov making good money? by wikinerd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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! :-)

  10. revolutionary WIKIPEDIA! (Re:Funny...) by perler · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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

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