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Soviet Shuttle Buran Found In a Junk Heap
gruenz noted the somewhat sad photo slideshow showing what appears to be the Soviet Space Shuttle Buran, lying in a Moscow suburb junk heap. Of course I don't read Russian, so it might also be a carnival ride rusting.
Given that the Buran was destroyed by a hangar collapse: http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/bbur90.jpg
I did take a year of Russian in college, and it is a bit (well, very, very rusty), but it seems to say that it is Buran and it has been "sacrificed" and it laments the fact that it was once a symbol of the Soviet power in space but is now junk. That is no where near an exact translation, but a rough translation of parts of the caption.
"" is buran in Russian
"" is essentially "Soviet" (some variation)
Wikipedia has a better list, it seems. Most likely candidate is orbiter 2.02:
At the time of the halting of the Buran-Energia program, Buran 2.02 was under construction on the factory floor at the Tushino Machine Building Plant just outside of Moscow. Her level of completion was estimated between 10-20 percent.
With funding gone, Buran 2.02 remained unfinished on the factory floor for a number of years. Recently she has been dismantled and moved outside to the back of the premises. She now lies exposed to the elements. Many of her tiles have since been stripped, such as those shown below can now be bought on the internet.
Well, it's not newspaper analogue of Fox News, but still very close - well-known "yellow paper" tabloid. So it's not _the_ "Buran", it's just some model / unfinished project, as it was said above. Still, it's not much worse than fate of original "Buran", which now just serves as a cheap attraction in local theme park.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
In many ways, Buran was what the US could have had. It had no SSMEs, which remain one of the most complex engine systems ever built. It had no solid rocket boosters, which caused Challenger's demise and severely limited the failure modes of the vehicle. And it could be operated entirely by computer and remote control, meaning for many missions no crew or their equipment need consume launch weight.
It lacked capabilities that Shuttle had, but it was a pretty reasonable compromise that would have probably had significantly higher return on investment.
E pluribus unum
I have some doubts about you being able to read russian.
The original article (which is mostly pics) does not refer to any carnival rides. However it is in Moskovskij Komsomolec which is pretty much the Russian equivalent of the UK Sun or the German Build. Classic tabloid stuff.
As far as seeing a rusting hulk of a spaceship on ax Soviet Block scrapyard. Well really - nothing new there. Quite a few other examples come to mind. For example if you drive around Sofia on the ring road there is a fighter jet in a reasonably good condition (much better than the Buran on the picture) parked in one of the laybuys. It is nowdays prime location on the ring road for "truck stop and servicing" by practicioners of the oldest human profession. I can think of at least a couple of examples where there are serviceable tanks, missile launchers and other gear located in similar locations. As the saying goes - welcome to the wild east...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The need to throttle down isn't related to astronaut comfort but to make sure the vehicle doesn't tear itself apart (which, admittedly, would affect astronaut safety).
The engines are throttle back to approx. 65% during the part of the asccent when the dynamic pressure is at its highest - "max q", about 1 minute after launch. Roughly, the dynamic pressure is the combination of speed, air pressure and air flow around the vehicle.
Basically, if the engines weren't throttled back the vehicle would go to fast and induce stresses that may damage or destroy it.
Russian Translation for You
And [nebyvaemoe] occurs. It would seem, the deserted spacecraft on the street of Moscow - this something from the region of fantasy. But, alas, this is genuine reality. Correspondent “MK” revealed orbital Soviet “snow-storm” by that dragging along, as if garbage, in the capital outskirts. There is no one matter to the fact that was once the symbol of the space power of our country. Natalia [Mushchinkina]