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Soviet Shuttle Buran Found In a Junk Heap

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wipe-away-a-single-tear dept.

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.

14 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Not News by WED+Fan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember seeing pictures of Buran on the junk heap about 10 years ago. Why is this news today?

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    Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
    1. Re:Not News by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Funny

      I remember seeing pictures of Buran on the junk heap about 10 years ago. Why is this news today?

      THIS. IS. SLASHDOT!

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      If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
    2. Re:Not News by arivanov · · Score: 4, Informative

      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...

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    3. Re:Not News by craash420 · · Score: 4, Funny

      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.

      Great, I discover this after I spent all of my time in Burgas!

      --
      Extra medication for all!
  2. Which one is it? by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This page contains a list of the Buran airframes and their locations. This page has a photo of the OK-1K2 unfinished orbiter, this is the closest match to the photos shown in TFA. Aerospaceweb lists this orbiter as having been sold to the Technikmuseum Speyer in 2004, but I've recently been there and they have the OK-GLI atmospheric test bed on display, not OK-1K2.

    1. Re:Which one is it? by hcdejong · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  3. Amazing... by advocate_one · · Score: 5, Funny

    slashdot having problems... target website holding fine... "In Soviet Russia, Buran slashdots you..."

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    Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
  4. Re:The caption says it is Buran. by voss · · Score: 4, Informative

    Buran is not just one ship but an entire class of ships, there was one finished (destroyed), one partially finished (in Kazakhstan)
    and several more in various states of unfinishedness.

    This one is possibly 2.02
    http://www.buran-energia.com/bourane-buran/bourane-modele-202.php

  5. Re:They should be thankful by ObsessiveMathsFreak · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...ended up tethering the U.S. to low earth orbit for decades instead of moving on like we should have to a permanent moon settlement and Mars.

    I'll take the Hubble Space Telescope and the myriad of other LEO scientific/communication satellites over your pie-in-the-sky Buck Rogers fantasies any day of the week.

    --
    May the Maths Be with you!
  6. Re:Translation by AaxelB · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've heard good things about this small, obscure start-up that's done a lot of work on machine translation and has a pretty good site available. Maybe you should give them a shot ;)

  7. Re:The caption says it is Buran. by Em+Ellel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Google translate says:

    And unprecedented case. Seemingly abandoned spaceship on the streets of Moscow - it is something from the realm of fantasy. But alas, this is the true reality. Correspondent "MK" discovered orbiting Soviet "Buran" play like garbage on the outskirts of the capital. Nobody cares what was once a symbol of cosmic power of our country.

    Surprisingly close to accurate.

    Actual translation:

    "Sometimes impossible is possible. You would think that an abandoned spaceship lying on the streets of Moscow is something out of science fiction, but unfortunately this is reality. A Correspondent of "MK" discovered a soviet orbiter "Buran" lying like trash in the capital's suburbs. Nobody cares about what once was a symbol of the space might of our country"

    (And yes, "Buran" is not a name of a ship, its a type of ship.)

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  8. Re:well by JoshuaZ · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If we had done the same and gone back to the Apollo program, 14 people would still be alive.

    Right, because no one died in the Apollo 1 fire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1 . And because no one almost died on Apollo 13. And because no Soviets died in craft similar to the Apollo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_11 .

    If we had stayed with Apollo type craft there would have almost certainly been more fatalities. Space travel is very dangerous. This isn't going to change anytime soon and wouldn't be different if we had used Apollo-like vehicles. Indeed, I'd tentatively guess that the reduced expense of such vehicles might mean many more launches and thus likely even more fatalities.

  9. Re:They should be thankful by samkass · · Score: 5, Informative

    That they did not spend a crazy amount of money on what ended up in the U.S. as a net negative to what we COULD of had

    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.

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    E pluribus unum
  10. Re:They should be thankful by countertrolling · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yeah, space is too complicated. Total waste of time and effort. If it can't be built in your garage by one guy, it's not worth building, right? Especially if it takes over a week... Talk about your lust for instant gratification...

    Pure masturbation all this space exploration stuff. We have everything we need right here. Why would anybody want to leave? And there's certainly no reason to believe that the whole process could possibly be mechanized in the future, reducing human effort (thus costs) to near zero. Nope, let's just sit here on our duffs, munching on Doritos, and feed the poor... to the gods of war

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