“Energy-Buran” is a Soviet space project, which meant not a one-time use, as it happens in most cases even now, but multiple use of the ship to deliver cargo into orbit. Its uniqueness was not only in its form - the United States had a Shuttle program with a ship of a similar form factor, but in the fact that it could return to Earth and land in a fully automatic mode. The creation of this miracle of technology cost the Union large forces and means, however, after the first and only successful flight, this spacecraft never took off again.
Arms race
The reason for the development of the Energiya-Buran project, as well as for many technical innovations of that time, was the Cold War. After the start of development in the United States of the Shuttle project, this information was not classified. On the contrary, all the American media were in a hurry to cover this event as much as possible and tell the details of the development: technically, this was justified by the fact that the return of the ship gave significant savings and required fewer resources.
However, Soviet scientists quickly made calculations and showed that the calculations of an economic nature do not converge and this is just a screen. The main idea of the Shuttle turned out to be combat use - with its help, the States could carry out a nuclear bombardment of any region of the USSR.
To restore nuclear parity, the country's leadership immediately issued a decree on the development and construction of a potential adversary at least as good as the model.
Rocket
The name of the Energia-Buran project consists of two words for a reason. In fact, these are the names of two separate components. Buran was the name of the space shuttle itself, and Energia was the name of the rocket carrier itself, which brought the entire complex into space.
The rocket became the most powerful of all created in the USSR, which is not surprising - its weight at the start is 2400 tons, and at the same time the rocket was supposed to launch a shuttle into orbit, the starting weight of which was 105 tons, and the payload was 30 tons.
The upper block was made according to a two-stage package scheme - two pairs of additional ones are located on the sides of the main block. When running out of fuel, they shot back and fell to the ground.
In total, in the history of its existence, the Energia rocket made only two flights - the first time it launched an overall layout, and the second - directly with the Buran shuttle. In the future, it was not used simply because each launch was expensive, and there was simply no need to deliver such an amount of load into orbit.
Shuttle
The development of the shuttle, which was a reusable component of the program, turned out to be even more difficult than the launch vehicle. And although such work was a novelty for Soviet aircraft designers, the result was an excellent car. The appearance of Buran turned out to be very similar to the American Shuttle, however, the internal filling made this device an order of magnitude better than its counterpart: it could land in automatic mode without human intervention and put into orbit 5 tons more payload mass.
The special cargo container of the shuttle could fit any satellite that existed at that time, and the unique skin withstood super-temperatures during atmospheric entry.
But the main difference is still automatic system management, which has no analogue so far. The computer was "taught" to fly by a team of six test pilots led by Hero of the Soviet Union Igor Volk. All possible situations were driven into the algorithm, which came in handy during the landing of Buran. Returning from space, the shuttle went to the landing site along a trajectory across the takeoff runway, however, he was able to independently turn around over it and land successfully.
First and last flight
Unfortunately, Energia-Buran made only one flight and never took off again. The period of its development fell on the last days of the existence of the USSR, and the project itself, according to some economists, became one of the nails in the coffin of the country of the Soviets.
The development and manufacture of only one copy of the spacecraft cost, transferring into modern money, about 2 trillion. rubles, and the launch cost another tens of millions of rubles. The task of the party was to make 10 copies, but only one was made to the end.
Curse of Buran
After the collapse of the USSR, it remained in the ownership of Kazakhstan and was stored there in the assembly and testing building next to the Baikonur Cosmodrome until May 12, 2002, when part of the roof collapsed in the building in the morning. As a result of the incident, Buran was completely destroyed, and 8 workers died under the rubble, who at that moment were just repairing the roof.
Some developers even at the design stage considered Buran cursed. Even at the stage of formation of the flight squad, which was supposed to teach the shuttle computer to fly, out of 8 candidates, two died, and after the launch, under circumstances not related to Buran, five more died. As a result, now only the commander of the detachment, Nikolai Volk, survived from the first detachment.
For a long time, the program of reusable spacecraft during launches into orbit was for modern Russia irrelevant. However, since 2016, developments in this direction have begun again. It is known that scientists, who were engaged in the design of Energia and Buran, were again invited to work at the Khrunichev State Space Research and Production Center in Moscow. Perhaps someday the time will come for a new Buran...
Work on the reusable orbital ship began in 1974 as part of the preparation of the "Comprehensive Program of NPO Energia". This area of work was entrusted to the chief designer I.N. Sadovsky. P.V. Tsybin was appointed deputy chief designer for the orbital ship. The central issue when determining the technical appearance of the orbiter, it was the choice of its concept.At the initial stage, two variants of the scheme were considered: the first - an aircraft scheme with a horizontal landing and the location of the main engines of the second stage in the tail section; the second - a "carrying body" scheme with a vertical landing. the advantage of the second option is the supposed reduction in development time due to the use of experience and backlog on the Soyuz spacecraft.As a result of further research, an aircraft layout with a horizontal landing was adopted as the one that best meets the requirements for reusable systems. In order to optimize the reusable space system as a whole, they determined a variant of the system in which the main engines were transferred to the central block of the second stage of the launch vehicle. The energy and structural decoupling of the launch vehicle and the orbiter made it possible to carry out independent testing of the launch vehicle and the orbiter, simplified the organization of work and ensured the simultaneous development of the Energia universal super-heavy domestic launch vehicle. The lead developer of the orbiter was NPO Energia, whose activities included the creation of a complex of onboard systems and assemblies for solving space flight problems, the development of a flight program and the logic of the onboard systems, the final assembly of the spacecraft and its testing, the linkage of ground complexes for the preparation and implementation of launch and organization of flight control. Creation of the supporting structure of the ship - its glider, according to the TOR of NPO Energia, development of all means of descent in the atmosphere and landing, including thermal protection and on-board systems, manufacture and assembly of the glider, creation of ground means for its preparation and testing, as well as air transportation of the glider , ship and missile units were entrusted to the NPO Molniya, specially created for this purpose, and the Tushino Machine-Building Plant (TMZ) MAP. With exceptional energy and great enthusiasm, relying practically on the newly created team, the work on the Buran ship was carried out by the general director and chief designer of the NPO Molniya G. E. Lozino-Lozinsky. His closest aide was the First Deputy CEO and chief designer G.P. Dementiev. A great contribution to the creation of the airframe of the Buran ship was made by the director of TMZ S.G. Arutyunov and his deputy I.K. Zverev. The main goals of creating the Buran ship were determined by the tactical and technical requirements for its development:
The lead developers NPO Energia and NPO Molniya with the participation of TsAGI (G.P. Svishchev) and TsNIIMASH (Yu.A. Mozzhorin) comparative analysis two schemes of a ship with a horizontal landing - a monoplane scheme with a low-lying double-swept wing and a "carrying hull" type scheme. As a result of the comparison, the monoplane scheme was adopted as the optimal option for the orbital ship. The Council of Chief Designers with the participation of the IOM and MAP institutes on June 11, 1976 approved this decision. At the end of 1976, a preliminary design of the orbital ship was developed.
In the middle of 1977, a large group of specialists was transferred from service 19 for spaceships (headed by K.D. Bushuev) to service 16 (headed by I.N. Sadovsky) to further develop work. An integrated design department 162 for the orbital ship was organized (head of department B.I. Sotnikov). The design and layout direction in the department was headed by V.M.Filin, the program-logical direction - by Yu.M.Frumkin, the issues of the main characteristics and operational requirements were led by V.G.Aliev. In 1977, a technical project was issued containing all the necessary information for the development of working documentation. Work on the creation of an orbital ship was under the most severe control of the Ministry and the Government. At the end of 1981, General Designer V.P. Glushko decided to transfer the orbiter to Service 17, headed by First Deputy General Designer, Chief Designer Yu.P. Semenov. V.A. Timchenko was appointed Deputy Chief Designer for the Orbital Vehicle. This decision was dictated by the need to maximize the use of experience in designing spacecraft and to improve the organizational and technical level of leadership in the creation of an orbital ship. Simultaneously with the transfer of cases on the orbital ship, a partial reorganization is being carried out. The design department 162, transformed into department 180 (B.I. Sotnikov), and the division of the lead designer V.N. Pogorlyuk are transferred to service 17. Department 179 (V.A. Ovsyannikov) for landing and emergency rescue facilities is being created in the service, where the sector of V.A. Vysokanov, transferred from department 161, joins. issues and deadlines for their implementation. In essence, since that time, the stage of real implementation of ideas into concrete products began.
Particular attention was paid to ground experimental testing. The developed comprehensive program covered the entire scope of testing, starting from components and instruments and ending with the ship as a whole. It was envisaged to create about a hundred experimental installations, 7 complex modeling stands, 5 flying laboratories and 6 full-size models of orbital ships. Two full-size mock-ups of the ship OK-ML-1 and OK-MT were created to work out the technology of assembling the ship, prototyping its systems and assemblies, and fitting it with ground-based technological equipment.
The first model copy of the OK-ML-1 spacecraft, the main purpose of which was to carry out frequency tests both independently and assembled with a launch vehicle, was delivered to the test site in December 1983. This model was also used for preliminary fitting work with the equipment of the assembly and test building, with the equipment of the landing complex and the universal stand-start complex.
The OK-MT prototype ship was delivered to the test site in August 1984 to carry out design prototyping of on-board and ground systems, fitting and testing of mechanical and technological equipment, working out the technological plan for launch preparation and after-flight maintenance. With the use of this product, a full cycle of fittings with technological equipment at the MIK OK was carried out, prototyping of connections with the launch vehicle, systems and equipment of the assembly and refueling building and the launch complex with refueling and draining of the components of the combined propulsion system were worked out. Work with the product OK-ML-1 and OK-MT ensured that the preparations for the launch of the flight ship were carried out without significant remarks. For horizontal flight tests, a special copy of the OK-GLI orbiter was developed, which was equipped with standard on-board systems and equipment operating in the final flight segment. To ensure takeoff, the OK-GLI ship was equipped with four turbojet engines.
|
The main tasks of horizontal flight tests included testing the landing area in manual and automatic modes, checking flight performance in subsonic flight modes, checking stability and controllability, and testing the control system when implementing standard landing algorithms in it. The tests were carried out at the LII MAP (A.D. Mironov), Zhukovsky, on November 10, 1985, the first flight of the OK-GLI spacecraft took place. In total, up to April 1988, 24 flights were carried out, of which 17 flights were in automatic control mode until a complete stop on the runway. The first test pilot of the OK-GLI ship was I.P. Volk, head of a group of cosmonaut candidates preparing under the Buran program. The landing site was also worked out at two specially equipped flying laboratories created on the basis of Tu-154 aircraft. To issue a conclusion for the first launch, 140 flights were performed, including 69 automatic landings. The flights were carried out at the LII airfield and the landing complex of Baikonur. The largest experimental testing in terms of volume and complexity was carried out at the complex stand KS-OK of the Buran orbital spacecraft. The main feature that distinguishes KS-OK from other stands is that it included a full-size analog of the Buran orbital ship, equipped with standard on-board systems, and a standard set of ground test equipment. |
An analogue of the Buran OK, retrofitted with four engines, which carried out a number of flights from the airfield near Moscow in Zhukovsky, to practice piloting during landing after an orbital flight |
At KS-OK, tasks were to be performed that could not be solved at other experimental facilities and stands:
|
Integrated development electrical circuit with the participation of pneumohydraulic systems, including: testing the interaction of onboard systems when simulating normal operating modes and in calculated emergency situations, testing the interaction of onboard and ground (test) multi-machine computing systems, checking electromagnetic compatibility and noise immunity of onboard equipment, testing the interaction of ground and onboard control systems in the mode of transferring control actions with control over the correctness of their execution in on-board systems using telemetric information. |
|
|
Checking the electrical connections of the analog of the Buran orbital ship, which is part of the KS-OK, with the equivalent of the Energia launch vehicle. |
|
|
Development of the program and methodology for complex electrical tests of the Buran orbiter, pre-launch preparation modes and methods for parrying emergency situations that are possible during ground training. |
|
|
Development of on-board and ground (test) software and mathematical software and its interface with the hardware of computer systems, on-board systems and ground test equipment for all workplaces of ground pre-flight preparation of OK Buran, taking into account possible (calculated) emergency situations. |
|
|
Development of operational documentation intended for testing and ground pre-flight preparation of OK Buran at the technical and launch complexes and for full-scale tests. |
|
|
Verification of the correctness of the implementation of improvements to the material part, adjustments to the PMO and ED based on the test results and technical solutions before carrying out the appropriate improvements at the standard Buran OK. |
|
|
Education and training of specialists involved in ground pre-flight preparation and field tests of OK Buran. |
In August 1983, the glider of the orbital spacecraft was delivered to NPO Energia for retrofitting and deployment of a permanent integrated stand on its basis. An operational and technical leadership was created in the association, headed by Yu.P. Semenov. The operational daily management of the work was carried out by his deputy A.N. Ivannikov. Department 107 was created for the development of software and mathematical support for tests (head of department A.D. Markov). Electrical testing at KS-OK began in March 1984. The testing work was headed by N.I. Zelenshchikov, A.V. Vasilkovsky, A.D. Markov, V.A. Naumov and the heads of electrical tests A.A. Motov, N.N. Matveev. Comprehensive experimental development at the CS-OK continued around the clock without days off for 1600 days and was completed only when the Buran OK was preparing for launch at the launch complex. In order to characterize the volume and effectiveness of experimental testing at KS-OK, it is enough to note that 189 sections of complex tests have been worked out, 21168 comments have been identified and eliminated.
Greater efficiency of test work at KS-OK was ensured by high level test automation, which accounted for 77% of the total scope of work. (For comparison, the level of test automation for the Soyuz TM transport spacecraft was 5%.)
An analysis of the results of experimental testing at the CS-OK made it possible to substantiate a number of technical solutions on the possibility of reducing the amount of work on ground pre-flight preparation of the Buran OK without reducing its quality. For example, three versions software BVK (17, 18, 19) were checked according to the program of the first flight only on KS-OK. Assessing the results of experimental testing at the CS-OK, we can conclude that the integrated stand played an exceptional role in ensuring safety and reducing the time for ground pre-flight preparation of the Buran SC, in reducing the cost of material resources for its creation.
The dimension of the OK and the absence of vehicles for the period of assembly work on the ship to deliver the ship in a complete set from the manufacturing plant to the technical complex led to the need for assembly work in stages. At the manufacturing plant - the Tushino Machine-Building Plant - an airframe was assembled with a mass of no more than 50 tons, which was limited by the carrying capacity of the 3M-T aircraft. The glider was transported by water along the Moskva River to Zhukovsky, where it was loaded on a 3M-T aircraft, and then transported by air to the landing complex of the Baikonur test site, where, after being reloaded onto a truck chassis, it was delivered to the assembly and test building. The glider was transported practically without orbital systems and separate units (cockpit, vertical tail, landing gear), only 70% of the heat-shielding coating was installed on it. Thus, in MIK OK it was necessary to deploy assembly production and organize the process of supplying the necessary components. The glider of the first flying orbital ship was delivered to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in December 1985. The sending of the glider of the first Buran flight ship to the technical complex was preceded by a lot of preparatory work. Unlike the Energia launch vehicle, for which the technical position and the main part of the launch complex from the H1 launch vehicle were used, for the Buran launch vehicle everything had to be created anew: all the facilities of the technical complex, on which the additional assembly of the ship and completion of its on-board systems, electrical tests; a landing complex with facilities that provide maintenance of the ship after landing, and a command control tower. Work on the creation of all structures was carried out slowly, and by the time the airframe of the first flight ship arrived, the main technical position of the ship (site 254) was only 50-60% ready. Of the five halls required for the assembly and testing of the ship, only one could be commissioned (hall 104). However, even he in January 1986 was used as a warehouse. It temporarily housed the ground-test equipment of the orbiter (about 3,000 boxes, weighing at least one ton each), which was to be delivered to the control rooms as soon as possible, mounted and commissioned. For testing, it was necessary to put into operation more than 60 control rooms and about 260 rooms. The site for fire control tests of the integrated propulsion system, the assembly and refueling building, and specialized sites for working with the ship at the landing complex were not ready for operation. The decision to send the airframe of the first flight ship at such a low readiness of the technical position was taken after repeated discussions. The dispatch was supposed to revive the work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The work on the Energia launch vehicle was ahead of the work on the spacecraft, since this direction, as in previous years, received more attention at all stages of work. The leadership of the Ministry also gravitated towards these works. In January 1986, during the flight to the cosmodrome of Minister O.D. Baklanov with a large group of industry leaders of related ministries, general and chief designers who participated in the creation of the Energia-Buran complex, a decision was made to improve the organization of work and create operational groups for further preparation of the complex at the cosmodrome. In the same place, O.D. Baklanov signed an order to create three operational groups. The first group was supposed to ensure the preparation of the Buran spacecraft and all the technical means for its launch in the third quarter of 1987. Yu.P. Semenov, chief designer of the ship, was appointed head of the group. The preparation of the Energia-Buran reusable space system, headed by B.I. Gubanov, chief designer of the Energia-Buran complex, was part of the task of the second group. The third group dealt with the preparation of ground and launch equipment. It was led by Deputy Minister S.S. Vanin. The groups included all the necessary specialists, including military builders. The order noted that all members of the group should be directly at the cosmodrome until the solution of the main task - the launch of the Energia-Buran complex. The group leaders were given all the necessary powers to solve the tasks. The reports of the leaders were regularly heard at the Interdepartmental Operational Group (IDG), which, under the chairmanship of O.D.Baklanov, held its meetings, leaving for Baikonur. After the appointment of O.D. Baklanov as Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1988, the MTF was headed by the newly appointed Minister V.Kh.Doguzhiev, who also became the Chairman of the State Commission for the launch.
After the order was issued, round-the-clock hard work began without days off, almost on the verge of human capabilities. The group leaders concentrated all the necessary specialists at Baikonur. All issues were resolved comprehensively. Simultaneously with the construction work, equipment installation and commissioning were carried out. In parallel, various issues were resolved - from ensuring the accommodation of personnel, catering and transport to the recreation of specialists. Significantly increased the number of test service, only at site 254 from January to March 1986, the number increased from 60 to 1800 people. The test teams included representatives of all organizations. In a fairly short period of time, during January-February 1986, operational schedules were developed, the necessary equipment for each operation was determined, a complete list of the material part to be delivered to the technical complex was compiled, and the development of technological assembly passports was organized. In order to streamline the process of manufacturing the material part at the main production facilities and delivering it to the shopping mall in the required time, a system of applications sent from the shopping mall to the plant was introduced. The application indicated a list of the material part for the assembly operation and the time of its delivery to ensure the assembly schedule for the operation. Applications were made not only for "on-board" equipment, but also for any material part necessary for assembly and autonomous testing, including mechanical and technological equipment, consumables, components, etc. The implementation of applications was monitored at daily meetings of the first working group. At the main production, the state of the manufacture and supply of components was regularly reviewed at meetings of the Interdepartmental Operational Group. Such a system of applications made it possible to establish a fairly clear procedure for the manufacture and supply of components (over 4,000 items) and ensured the planning of assembly work. Taking into account the large amount of work on the application of a heat-protective coating, a specialized section for the manufacture of tiles of a heat-protective coating was created at MIK OK. This made it possible not only to ensure the manufacture of the required number of tiles for the regular cycle of application to the airframe body, but also to promptly ensure the repair work to replace the tiles damaged during the preparation of the OK for launch Despite the enormous difficulties, the assembly of the orbiter was completed. The permanent leader of the assembly was the deputy chief engineer of ZEM V.P. Kochka. In almost four months, a complex of ground facilities was prepared. In May 1986, electrical testing began. In parallel, the final testing of the systems was carried out.
|
It should be noted that the results of testing the systems sometimes significantly influenced the process of preparation for launch. For example, during fire tests of the combined propulsion system at the stand in Primorsk, a defect was found in the separating valve at the inlet to the oxygen gasification unit. The valve opened but did not close when commanded. The orbiter at that time was at the ODU fire test site. Further work was called into question: the launch of the ship with this malfunction is impossible, and this meant the failure of the program. I had to promptly conduct a thorough analysis of all ODE tests. The solution is found - the valve closes securely when three commands are given. A corresponding correction of the software was made, which means another regular version and its development. |
|
Orbital ship "Buran"Neither in the domestic nor in the world practice of rocket and space technology there were no analogues equal in complexity to the Buran spacecraft. The following speaks eloquently about this:
|
Buran OK includes more than 600 installation units of on-board equipment, including more than 1000 devices, more than 1500 pipelines and more than 2500 assemblies (bundles) of the on-board cable network with about 15,000 electrical connectors; |
|
|
the control system of OK "Buran" is a multi-machine on-board computer system with unique software in terms of volume and complexity, which amounted to 180 Kbytes for the first flight, which made it possible to implement more than 6,000 commands and 3,000 control algorithms for on-board systems, as well as 7,000 technological commands and parameters; |
|
|
in preparation for the first flight of the Buran orbital vehicle, more than 5,000 telemetric parameters of the onboard systems were monitored. During the testing and ground pre-flight preparation, a significant amount of work was carried out, 7646 comments were identified and eliminated, 3028 on-board instruments were rejected and replaced. |
In the course of work, emergency situations arose repeatedly, such as unauthorized removal of power supply, and the testers had to look for a trouble-free way out of the situation. The following example also speaks of the responsible attitude of specialists to the assigned work. The tester P.V. under tension. In complex 14 (the head of the complex A.M. Shcherbakov), experimental work was organized, which was carried out at the enterprise around the clock, as a result of which the operability of these valves was confirmed. The ODE for their replacement was not withdrawn and the deadlines for the preparation of OK "Buran" were met. The program for the first flight of the orbiter was repeatedly and thoroughly discussed. Two options were considered: three-day and two-orbit flights. The three-day flight solved more problems, but at the same time, the required amount of experimental testing increased significantly. When implementing a two-turn flight, it was possible not to install a number of systems, such as a power supply system based on electrochemical generators, a flap opening system, radiators, and a number of others that require extensive development. At the same time, the two-orbit flight performed the main task - working out the areas of launch, descent into the atmosphere and landing on the runway.
A few months before the launch, a collective letter was sent to the Government, signed, among other things, by pilot-cosmonauts I.P. Volk and A.A. flight, like the Americans, must be manned. A special commission worked, which agreed with the proposal of the technical management for an unmanned launch. As a result of the discussion, a two-turn flight option was adopted for the first launch.
As already noted above, on October 26, 1988, after reports on the readiness of the orbiter, launch vehicle, launch complex, range measurement complex, Mission Control Center, communications and settlements, and on the meteorological forecast for the coming days, the State Commission, chaired by V.Kh. Doguzhieva decided to launch the Buran OK on October 29, 1988 at 06:23 Moscow time. Preparation for the launch was successful, the weather conditions were favorable, the wind speed did not exceed 1 m/s. All commands according to the pre-launch preparation cyclogram were executed normally, it remained to withdraw the transitional docking unit from the Buran, but 51 s before the command OK "Buran" were automatically brought to their original state and turned off with the removal of on-board power. Such an emergency situation was foreseen, worked out at the CS-OK and tested at the Buran OK during experimental transportation to the launch complex. The State Commission decided to postpone the launch and drain the low-boiling fuel components from the OK and LV. The analysis showed that the release of the launch occurred due to the untimely withdrawal of the board of the azimuth guidance system of the launch vehicle. After eliminating all the comments that took place during the prelaunch preparation and reports on readiness for a re-launch, it was decided to conduct a re-prelaunch preparation and launch on November 15, 1988 at 6 am Moscow time.
The pre-launch preparation of the orbiter began 11 hours before launch. This time the weather forecast was unfavorable. The preparation took place without comment, all the ship's systems functioned properly. At 1 o'clock in the morning, a telegram was received about the deterioration of the weather forecast. Cloudiness increased, it was snowing, wind gusts reached 20 m/s. The orbiter was designed to land at wind speeds up to 15 m/s. The State Commission met for an emergency meeting. The decision depended on three chief designers - Yu.P. Semenov, G.E. Lozino-Lozinsky and V.L. Lapygin. They, confident in the capabilities of the orbiter, decided to continue preparations for the launch. The launch took place at 6:00 02 on November 15, 1988. All systems in flight worked normally. Three hours of waiting, and, finally, the returning Buran appeared on the monitor screens. Having done all the pre-landing maneuvers, he went exactly to the runway, landed, ran 1620 m and froze in the middle of the runway, the lateral deviation was only 3 m, and the longitudinal deviation was 10 m at a headwind speed of 17 m/s, the flight time was 206 min. The ship was launched into orbit with an altitude of 263 km and a minimum altitude of 251 km. OK "Buran" brilliantly overcame all the difficulties of descent in the atmosphere and stood on the runway, ready for the next flight. Those were happy moments. The work of a huge cooperation of developers has ended! The flight demonstrated the highest level of domestic science and technology. A system has been created that is not inferior, but in many respects superior to the Space Shuttle system. For the first time in world practice, an automatic landing of a spacecraft of this class was carried out. It was hard to hold back tears of joy at the end of the flight: ten years of hard work was crowned with convincing success. Even opponents of the creation of an orbital ship rejoiced. What was the amazement of I.P. Volk, who did not fully believe in the landing of an unmanned spacecraft, when he saw it with his own eyes! The flight confirmed the correctness of the design and constructive solutions, as well as the validity and sufficiency of the developed program for ground and flight testing. The Buran ISS program provided for the construction of three orbital spacecraft, later, in 1983, by additional order, their number was increased to five. Three of them were made, the last two practically remained "on paper", except for individual units.
According to the work program, during the second launch using the second orbital ship, it was planned to carry out a seven-day flight in automatic mode. The flight program provided for docking with the Mir station in an unmanned version and testing the onboard manipulator for delivering interchangeable scientific modules. The third ship was preparing for a manned flight. It was supposed to introduce all improvements in the design and systems, as well as eliminate all comments on the first launches. In the future, in manned flights of Buran, it was supposed to complete its flight testing, including long-term flights (up to 30 days), and begin operating the ship, including transport and maintenance of orbital complexes and launching unmanned spacecraft into orbit. After the flight, it was decided to subject the first ship to a thorough fault detection. Later, it was used for testing the transportation of the ship in a complete set on the Mriya aircraft.
The Buran reusable orbiter is a fundamentally new spacecraft that combines all the accumulated experience of rocket, space and aviation technology.
The ship is designed for 100 flights and can fly both manned and unmanned (automatic) versions. The maximum number of crew members is 10, while the main crew is 4 people and up to 6 people are research cosmonauts. With a launch weight of up to 105 tons, the ship puts into orbit a payload weighing up to 30 tons and returns a payload weighing up to 20 tons from orbit to Earth. The payload compartment allows you to place cargo up to 17 m long and up to 4.5 m in diameter. 200-1000 km at inclinations from 51 to 110. Estimated flight duration is 7-30 days. Possessing a high aerodynamic quality, the ship can perform a lateral maneuver in the atmosphere up to 2000 km. According to the aerodynamic design, the Buran ship is a low-wing monoplane, made according to the tailless design. The hull of the ship is made non-pressurized, in the bow there is a pressurized cabin with a total volume of more than 70 cubic meters, in which the crew and the main part of the equipment are located. A special heat-shielding coating is applied from the outside of the case. The coating is used in two types depending on the place of installation: in the form of tiles based on super-thin quartz fiber and flexible elements of high-temperature organic fibers. For the most heat-stressed areas of the hull, such as the edges of the wing and the nose spinner, a carbon-based structural material is used. In total, over 39,000 tiles were applied to the outer surface of Buran. The control system is based on an onboard multi-machine complex and gyro-stabilized platforms. It performs both traffic control in all areas of the flight, and control of the on-board systems. One of the main problems in its design was the problem of creating and developing software. The autonomous control system, together with the Vympel radio engineering system developed by the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Radio Equipment (G.N. Gromov), designed for high-precision measurements on board of navigation parameters, provides descent and automatic landing, including a run along the runway to a stop. The monitoring and diagnostics system, used here for the first time on spacecraft as a centralized hierarchical system, is built on the tools built into the systems and on the implementation of monitoring and diagnostics algorithms in the onboard computer complex. At the same time, a fundamental decision was made and implemented - to use as input information the data of the onboard measurement system, which had previously been traditionally used only to transmit measurements to the Mission Control Center, but were not included in the onboard control loop, being considered unreliable. At OK "Buran", a special analysis of the measuring paths was carried out with the provision of the necessary redundancy to eliminate false signals.
The radio communication and control complex maintains communication between the orbiter and the MCC. To ensure communication through relay satellites, special phased antenna arrays have been developed, with the help of which communication is carried out at any orientation of the ship. The system for displaying information and manual controls provides the crew with information about the operation of the systems and the spacecraft as a whole and contains manual controls in orbital flight and during landing. The ship's power supply system, created at NPO Energia, was built on the basis of electrochemical generators with hydrogen-oxygen fuel cells developed by the Ural Electrochemical Plant (A.I.Savchuk). The power of the power supply system is up to 30 kW with a specific energy consumption of up to 600 Wh/kg, which significantly exceeds the specific parameters of advanced storage batteries. During its creation, among many, two main problems had to be solved: to develop for the first time in the USSR a fundamentally new source of electricity - an electrochemical generator based on fuel cells with a matrix electrolyte, which provides direct conversion of the chemical energy of hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water, and to develop for the first time in the world a system of space cryogenic subcritical (two-phase) storage of hydrogen and oxygen without losses. The power supply system consists of four ECGs mounted together with pneumatic fittings and heat exchangers on the frame as a single power unit, two spherical cryostats with liquid hydrogen and two spherical cryostats with liquid oxygen, two hydrogen and oxygen drainage units, through which emergency water discharge can also be carried out, produced by the ECG, and the instrument module, which houses the devices for automatic monitoring and control, as well as electric power switching. Three out of four electrochemical generators provide a regular flight program, two ECGs - landing in an emergency. Sectioning the storage and supply of hydrogen and oxygen to the ECG also increases the reliability of the flight program. The Buran orbiter is equipped with an onboard payload handling complex, which includes an onboard manipulator for various operations with payloads in orbit.
It is especially necessary to dwell on the combined propulsion system. This most complex installation was developed at NPO Energia with the leading role of complex 27 (head of the complex B.A. Sokolov). ODE, operating on environmentally friendly fuel components - liquid oxygen and synthetic hydrocarbon fuel sintin, is designed to perform all dynamic operations of the orbiter from the moment the second stage of the Energia launch vehicle stops working until the completion of the descent of the orbiter in the atmosphere. Liquid oxygen coupled with a high-calorie synthetic hydrocarbon significantly increases the energy capabilities of the orbiter and at the same time makes its operation safer and more environmentally friendly, which is especially important for reusable space transport systems, and the use of oxygen makes it possible to connect ODE with such onboard systems as power supply systems and life support.
For the first time in the practice of engine building, a combined propulsion system was created, including fuel tanks of an oxidizer and fuel with means of refueling, temperature control, pressurization, fluid intake in zero gravity, control system equipment, etc. If we evaluate the rocket upper stages manufactured in previous years by the degree of complexity and labor intensity, then the ODE can be attributed to the most complex and labor-intensive product in terms of the degree of saturation with pneumohydraulic systems, instruments and on-board cable network, types and volumes of leak tests and engine installation control. The technical originality of the ODE, in comparison with other developments of a similar purpose, was largely determined and is determined by the increased requirements for safety and reliability, repeated use, participation in the exit from emergency situations, changing the orientation of overloads during entry into the atmosphere and other features. Most of the new technical solutions in the creation of the ODE were associated with the transportation of liquid oxygen through long pipelines to the attitude control engines and its long-term storage in orbit; a large influence of the mass of fuel on the centering of the OK as a winged aircraft; specific requirements for ODE as an element of a reusable space system (increased resource, large loads, operational flexibility, etc.), as well as a number of technical solutions that required the development of qualitatively new means of monitoring, diagnostics and emergency protection of engines and ODE systems. The combined propulsion system consists of:
The placement of control engines on the bow and tail parts of the OK allows for more efficient control of its position in space, including performing coordinate movements along all axes.
When creating the ODE, complex scientific and technical problems were solved, mainly related to the use of liquid oxygen. The entire supply of liquid oxygen for sustainer and control engines is placed in a single heat-insulated tank at low pressure, and the use of deeply cooled liquid oxygen and active means of mixing it made it possible to avoid evaporation losses in flight for 15-20 days without the use of a refrigeration machine. Particular attention was paid to the reliability and safety of the ODE. New means of monitoring, diagnosing and emergency protection of the operation of the ODE were developed, taking into account the redundancy of its elements: in the event of a malfunction, they were identified and localized in advance, and redundant elements were connected or other protective actions were taken (for example, the flight program was changed), which required the development and hardware implementation a large number various algorithms for monitoring, diagnosing and emergency protection operating in automatic mode for various systems with complex workflows. As a result, a monitoring and diagnostics system was created, capable of analyzing about 80 analog and 300 relay signals and issuing almost 300 different commands to correct the operation of ODU units.
Generally accepted and traditional in the creation of engines and propulsion systems was a phased approach to the development of engines with autonomous testing of individual elements and assemblies. Often, when creating new nodes, several of their options were developed and tested in parallel, from which the best one was ultimately selected. After testing and determining the performance limits of individual units, comprehensive tests began in full force. This approach made it possible to test each element in more difficult conditions than during normal operation as part of the engine, and ensure high reliability, although it was distinguished by increased duration and high costs. The combined propulsion system was manufactured at ZEM, testing of units, engines and individual elements of the systems was carried out at the stands of NPO Energia, complex tests, as well as tests of the ODE in vertical and horizontal positions - at the stand of the Primorsky branch of NPO Energia (V.V. Elfimov ).
The assembly of the ODU went in parallel with the development of units, assemblies, blocks. One of the largest improvements was carried out on the ODE of the first Buran orbital ship after unsuccessful tests of the first bench version of the ODE at the complex bench of the Primorsky branch of NPO Energia. After replacing substandard blocks, assemblies, fittings within four months, the air-hydraulic system of the ODU was restored and ensured the first flight. The development of the integrated propulsion system for the Buran orbiter at NPO Energia was the beginning of the creation of a new, promising class of propulsion systems, the first step in the use of highly efficient non-toxic cryogenic fuels for spacecraft. The creation of the Buran orbital ship, the most complex of all products developed by NPO Energia, required a qualitatively new approach to design, development and testing. A comprehensive system linkage of the ship was carried out, its main characteristics and requirements for all components were determined.
One of the main tasks in technical and organizational terms was the development of the ship's control system. It was supposed to provide control of both all orbital modes and automatic algorithms for descent in the atmosphere and landing at an airfield, which required combining the experience of the space and aviation industries. For all control tasks, it was necessary to ensure a rational distribution of functions between automatic and manual control and control from the MCC. At the same time, in accordance with the tactical and technical requirements for the Buran ship and the tradition of working out products, starting with unmanned ships, all modes should have been performed automatically.
A systematic approach to the construction of the onboard complex made it possible to create reliable controls. In NPO Energia, from the very beginning, measures were taken to organize this work - in complex 3, for this purpose, department 039 was formed (head of department V.P. Khorunov) and the position of deputy head of complex 3 in this area was introduced (O.I. Babkov).
In the summer of 1976, at the NPO AP enterprise (N.A. Pilyugin), employees of the department headed by Deputy General Designer B.E. Chertok issued a technical assignment for a single airborne complex (BKU) for controlling the Buran OK and Energia launch vehicle. The BCU functionally included all systems providing flight control, such as: a traffic control and navigation system, an onboard systems control system, a monitoring and diagnostics system, an onboard radio engineering complex, an onboard telemetry system, an electric power distribution and switching system, an information display system and manual controls.
In 1978, the Energia launch vehicle control system was transferred to NPO EP (V.G. Sergeev), Ukraine. There was also a clarification of the distribution of work and responsibility for BKU between three parent organizations: NPO Energia, NPO Molniya and NPO AP. The work at NPO Energia turned out to be so voluminous that in 1978 a new department, 030 (head of department A.A. Shchukin), and then in 1980 complex 15 (head of the complex O.I. Babkov) had to be organized. In 1981, the work on OK "Buran" in the service of the chief designer Yu.P. Semenov, complex 15 was also reorganized and focused only on work on the orbital ship, also coordinating the work of a number of departments of the enterprise. In 1984, the position of Deputy General Designer was introduced to resolve issues with related organizations and authorities (O.I. Babkov). At the next stage (from about 1980), significant difficulties were identified with the creation of mathematical software for the onboard computer complex. It was necessary to develop a large amount of software (300 thousand machine instructions), place it in a resource-limited BVK and ensure a high degree of sophistication and reliability. It was not possible to solve this problem by the efforts of one NPO AP. Therefore, in August 1983, at the initiative of NPO Energia, a special decision of the Government was issued on the issue of creating mathematical software for OK Buran. It determined the composition of the enterprises-developers of the MO and stipulated measures to strengthen these works. NPO AP is defined as the parent enterprise. A lot of work has been done to determine the structure of the MO, the development of debugging systems and high-level languages, testing methods, a system for documenting and issuing conclusions at all stages of testing and testing. For the first time on space objects, a clear hierarchical structure for managing the product work program was created, starting with general plan flight and to the management of individual systems, which made it possible to structure program units and distribute work among many performers. The development of mathematical software by the subdivisions of NPO Energia was carried out in sections: the program of work of onboard systems, the general flight plan, the receipt of command and program information on board, the flight task, the software of the Flight Control Center, the diagnostics of onboard systems and the logic of their work, the system for automating the development of software provision, documentation of acceptance tests and issuance of conclusions. During the development of software for OK "Buran", special importance was attached to its development. In the absence of reliable reliability criteria in domestic and world practice, only a large amount of statistical data on working out made it possible to draw a conclusion about the high degree of efficiency of the MO. The development of the MO took place in stages: autonomous development of individual programs on universal computers at all enterprises; joint development of programs of each enterprise; integrated testing on the test benches of NPO AP, where the BVK memory loads for typical flight operations were formed as a whole and worked out both with the simulation of the movement of the ship and in a test modification for testing on the OK-KS of NPO Energia; testing on the complex modeling stand NPO Energia; tests on OK-KS together with real equipment with the issuance of a conclusion for sending to the technical complex; flight testing.
In the course of these tests and parallel work on the development of systems and modes (for example, refinement of aerodynamic characteristics, development of the combined propulsion system, airframe systems, etc.), changes were made in the software and the development cycle was repeated on new version MO.
The flight version of the MO of the first flight ship was the 21st in a row. But the orbital ship went into flight with the MO 21a version, in which all the comments on the ODU valves were taken into account. The work of the onboard control complex in this flight confirmed the correctness of the applied approaches to solving problems distributed over a variety of executing organizations and integrated into a single MO of the BVK. As a result of the development of the Buran airborne control complex at NPO Energia and its cooperation, a powerful backlog of technical solutions for organizational and methodological approaches to managing this stage of work was created, which, unfortunately, was not embodied in the subsequent flight program. When developing the means and technology for flight control of the Buran OK, it was required, practically for the first time in the practice of such work, to combine the development and testing of onboard and ground complexes OK control within the unified automated flight control system. In the OCU of the orbiter, a multi-machine computer complex and a radio engineering complex were used, combining the exchange of the main types of information with the Earth in a single digital stream, duplicated by autonomous means for separate transmission of the most critical data (radio communication with the crew and telemetry). The NKU included the MCC in Kaliningrad, a network of tracking stations, a communication and data transmission system between the tracking stations and the MCC, and a satellite monitoring and control system with the transmission of information along the path "OK - satellite-relay - ground relay point - MCC".
As ground tracking stations, six ground stations located in Evpatoria, Moscow, Dzhusaly, Ulan-Ude, Ussuriysk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky were involved in flight control during the first launch of the OK. Two tracking ships in the Pacific Ocean ("Cosmonaut Georgy Dobrovolsky" and "Marshal Nedelin") and two tracking ships in the Atlantic Ocean ("Cosmonaut Vladislav Volkov" and "Cosmonaut Pavel Belyaev") were involved to control the spacecraft flight in the launch phase and on the landing orbit. . The communication and data transmission system included a network of terrestrial and satellite channels using geostationary repeater satellites (SR) "Rainbow", "Horizont" and a highly elliptical SR "Molniya". At the same time, the route for transmitting telemetry data to the MCC on the issuance of a braking impulse for the deorbiting of the spacecraft from orbit, taking into account the use of two SRs in series, was more than 120 thousand km. In the satellite monitoring and control system during the first flight, one SR "Altair" was used, installed in geostationary orbit over the Atlantic Ocean. This made it possible to expand the zone of communication between the OK and the MCC up to 45 minutes on each flight circuit. To accommodate the flight control facilities and personnel of the OK, a new building with the main control room and premises for support groups was built and equipped in the Kaliningrad MCC, as well as the information and computer complex was significantly modernized and re-equipped. The overall performance of the central core of the ITC MCC, based on the fourth-generation Elbrus computer, was about 100x10 11 operations per second, RAM about 50 MB, external memory about 2.5 GB. The volume of the newly developed software for flight control amounted to about 2x10 6 machine instructions and, together with the technical means of the IVC, made it possible to:
The development of requirements for the MCC computing facilities, terms of reference and initial data for the development of flight control MO were created by the teams of complexes 19, 1 and 15 (heads of the complexes V.I. Staroverov, G.N. Degtyarenko and V.P. Khorunov), integration of computing facilities and the development of the flight control MO were carried out by the TsNIIMASH MCC team headed by V.I. Lobachev, B.I. Muzychuk, V.N. The coordination of work on the preparation of technical means, the MO flight control was carried out by VG Kravets, who was appointed flight director of the first OK. The duration of the final stage of creation and development of MO flight control was about two years.
For the first time in the domestic practice of space flights, a direct exchange of command and program information between the computing facilities of the MCC and the OC was developed and used in real time without prior recording of command information at the tracking stations.
For the first flight, the OK provided for the issuance of about 200 control commands on board, of which 16 were required in a regular flight, and the rest were intended to parry possible emergency situations.
The Vympel radio navigation, landing and air traffic control system, means of receiving telemetric and television information of the landing area and the joint command and control tower of the main landing airfield were used to control and control the flight in the descent section of the OK. All telemetric and trajectory information of the OK on the descent section was transmitted in real time to the MCC. The OKDP housed a regional control group, ready, if necessary, on command from the MCC to take over the control and management functions of the landing of the OK. Particular attention during the preparation of the first flight of the OK was given to the experimental development of the automated control system, including:
|
autonomous and integrated testing of separately on-board and ground control systems; |
|
|
complex tests of means and software of NKU and BKU for the exchange of information Earth-board-Earth on a complex modeling stand and a complex OK stand; |
|
|
joint tests of the BKU and NKU for the exchange of information OK-TsUP through SR "Altair" when the orbiter is at the firing test site of the technical position and assembled with the launch vehicle at the launch complex; |
|
|
complex tests of the means of exchanging all types of information on the descent and landing site with the involvement of a flying analogue of OK, flying laboratories Tu-154 and a MiG-25 simulator aircraft. |
General management of the development of QA systems at flying laboratories was carried out by the deputy head of the LII A.A. Manucharov.
The training of flight control personnel at the MCC and the joint command and control tower (OKDP) was carried out in several stages. Training began almost a year before the launch of the OK. In total, more than 30 training sessions were carried out during the preparation for the flight. A feature of the training was the involvement of funds and mathematical support of the MCC to support the testing of the orbiter at the technical position and the landing complex. The high reliability of the automated flight control system tools, their pre-flight autonomous testing and comprehensive testing, a large amount of training for flight control personnel made it possible to confidently work out all the GCC and landing complex means in the first two-orbit unmanned flight and lay the foundation for training for control during manned flights. For 3 hours 26 minutes of the first flight of the OK, four regular communication sessions were carried out with the issuance of 10 planned arrays of command and program information on board to control the operating modes of the radio engineering complex. It was not necessary to issue control actions on the descent section to enter meteorological data and change the landing approach direction, since it turned out to be possible to use the flight task data entered in the OK BVK before the start. The exchange of command and program information due to an incorrectly entered Doppler correction in the means of ground tracking stations was carried out in the "no quota" mode. The telemetric and trajectory information was received, processed and displayed at the flight control personnel's workplaces in the MCC and OKDP in full as planned. When creating the Buran orbital ship, in addition to scientific and technical problems, the task was to create a workable cooperation of performers. The task was complicated by the fact that numerous cooperation of the aviation industry was added to the already established space cooperation, accustomed to working according to certain laws and standards. All this required the improvement of the work organization scheme and their control. Even at the beginning of the development of the ISS, a systematic approach was adopted to the construction of the entire set of technical documentation, the all-Union requirements of the ESKD and Regulation RK-75 were introduced, which defines special requirements for the development, testing and preparation of missile systems. In 1984, a system of supervising by NPO Energia specialists of all elements of the orbital ship, without exception, including design and research work, was introduced, which increased the level of technical coordination of work, improved the flow of information on the progress of development and control over them, and contributed to the prompt adoption of technical decisions. NPO Energia improved the system for constructing design and logical documentation (Yu.M. Frumkin, Yu.M. Labutin), which at three levels (flight program, typical flight operations, on-board systems operation program) determined the requirements for the operation of the ship during preparation for launch, in flight and after landing, including emergency situations, and contained the initial data for everyone who developed the spacecraft systems, its on-board and ground software. The requirements for the design, equipment and layout of the ship were established by the system of general design documents (B.I. Sotnikov, A.A. Kalashyan). A system for monitoring the main design parameters of the ship was also established (V.G. Aliyev). An important direction in the activities of NPO Energia was the development of comprehensive end-to-end work schedules, which were agreed with all the necessary enterprises and departments and submitted for approval to the management of higher authorities. Work on schedules and their control was organized and carried out mainly by the service of the chief designer. These and other measures allowed the chief designer's service to completely concentrate control over the progress of the project in their hands.
The assembly and testing of the orbiter at the technical position of the Baikonur Cosmodrome was controlled by the operational and technical management (the first operational group), headed by the technical director Yu.P. Semenov, and in his absence, by one of the deputy technical directors, who were N.I. .A.Timchenko, A.V.Vasilkovsky. Leading designer V.N. Pogorlyuk and his specialists were responsible for the planning of work, for the daily control of the implementation of plans and instructions. The coordination of work at the interdepartmental level was carried out by the Ministry of General Engineering with the support of the Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues. The Ministers of General Mechanical Engineering (S.A. Afanasyev, then O.D. Baklanov, V.Kh. Aoguzhiev) closely followed the progress of development, led the work of the Interdepartmental Coordination Council (IMCC), regularly held meetings, usually offsite, to monitor the state of affairs and resolving issues that have arisen. The ministers simultaneously served as chairmen of the State Commission for flight tests of the Energia-Buran complex. To create OK Buran, a huge cooperation of enterprises from different departments was connected, opening up a new direction - the aerospace industry. The successful launch of the Buran orbital ship showed that the NPO Energia team brilliantly coped with the task. The creation of a reusable orbital ship is new stage in domestic cosmonautics, which raised all areas of development and creation of spacecraft to a new level, from design to preparation for launch and flight control. The design and systems of the Buran ship are based on technical solutions that have no analogues in world practice. New systems, structural materials, equipment, heat-shielding coatings and new technological processes have been developed. Much of this can and should be introduced into the national economy. One of the real achievements of the creation of the Energia-Buran system was the promotion of negotiations on arms limitation, since the Buran spacecraft was created, among other things, to comprehensively counter plans to use outer space for military purposes. The scientific and technical potential that was demonstrated during the first unmanned flight confirmed our strategic capabilities and the need for an agreement. In time, the completion of the flight of the Buran orbital ship coincided with the speech of the President of the USSR MS Gorbachev at the UN on disarmament issues and allowed him to talk on an equal footing with the American delegation. The leadership of the country gave the highest rating to this work. The government announcement said:
|
To scientists, designers, engineers, technicians, workers, builders, military specialists, all participants in the creation and launch of the Energia universal rocket and space transport system and the Buran orbital ship Dear comrades! Domestic science and technology won a new outstanding victory. The test launch of the Energia universal rocket-space transport system and the Buran orbital vehicle was successfully completed. The correctness of the adopted engineering and design decisions, the effectiveness of experimental testing methods and the high reliability of all systems of this most complex complex have been confirmed. A significant contribution to the development of aerospace technology is the creation of an automatic landing system, the reliability of which was demonstrated by the successful completion of the flight of the Buran orbiter. The launch of the Buran spacecraft into near-Earth orbit and its successful return to Earth open up a qualitatively new stage in the Soviet space research program and significantly expand our possibilities in space exploration. From now on, domestic cosmonautics has at its disposal not only the means of launching large cargoes into various orbits, but also the possibilities of their return to Earth. The use of a new space transport system in combination with disposable launch vehicles and permanently operating manned orbital complexes makes it possible to concentrate the main efforts and funds on those areas of space exploration that will provide the maximum economic return to the national economy and bring science to higher levels. Central Committee Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and the Council of Ministers of the USSR warmly congratulate scientists, designers, engineers, technicians, workers, builders, specialists of the cosmodrome, the Mission Control Center, the command-measuring and landing complexes, the teams of all enterprises and organizations, on the outstanding achievement of Soviet cosmonautics, who took part in the development, creation and flight support of the Energia launch vehicle and the Buran spacecraft. The new success of domestic cosmonautics once again convincingly demonstrated to the whole world the high level of scientific and technical potential of our Motherland. We wish you, dear comrades, great creative success in your important and responsible work in creating modern technology for the peaceful exploration of outer space in the name of progress, for the benefit of our great Motherland and all mankind. CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU PRESIDIUM OF THE SUPERIOR COUNCIL OF THE USSR THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF THE USSR |
The Energia-Buran system was ahead of its time, the industry was not ready to use it. The system, like all astronautics, in the 90s was subjected to unreasonable criticism by amateurs from astronautics. The general decline and collapse of the industry most directly affected this project. Funding for space research was sharply reduced, since 1991 the Energia-Buran system was transferred from the Arms Program to the State Space Program for Solving National Economic Problems. A further reduction in funding led to the impossibility of carrying out work with the Buran orbital spacecraft. In 1992, the Russian Space Agency decided to stop work and preserve the backlog created. By this time, the second copy of the orbital ship had been fully assembled and the assembly of the third ship with improved technical characteristics was being completed. This was a tragedy for the organizations and participants in the creation of the system, who devoted more than a decade to solving this daunting task.
Fulfilling the intergovernmental agreement on the docking of the Space Shuttle with the Mir station in June 1995, our engineers used technical materials for the docking of the Buran spacecraft with the Mir station, which significantly reduced the preparation time. But it was insulting and bitter to see that it was not the Buran that was docking, but a foreign Shuttle, although this docking confirmed all the technical decisions made by the experts on the Buran spacecraft.
About 600 enterprises of almost all industries took part in the creation of the orbital ship, including: NPO Molniya (G.E. Lozino-Lozinsky) - the lead developer of the airframe; NPO AP (N.A. Pilyugin, V.A. Lapygin )-control system; Research Institute of KP (L.I. Gusev, M.S. Ryazansky) - radio complex; NPO IT (O.A. Sulimov) - telemetric systems; NPO TP (A.S.Morgulev, V.V.Suslennikov) - rendezvous and docking system; MRI RS (V.I. Meshcheryakov) - communication systems; VNII RA (G.N.Gromov) - a system for measuring motion parameters during landing; MOKB "Mars" (A.S. Syrov) - algorithms for the descent and landing section; Research Institute of AO (S.A. Borodin) - cosmonaut consoles; EMZ them. Myasishcheva (V.K. Novikov) - cockpit, thermal regime and life support systems; Design Bureau "Salyut" (D.A. Polukhin), ZIKH (A.I. Kiselev) - a block of additional devices; KBOM (V.P. Barmin) - systems of technical, launch and landing complexes; TsNIIRTK (E.I. Yurevich, V.A. Lapota) - onboard manipulator; VNIITRANSMASH (A.L. Kemurdzhian) - manipulator fastening system; NIIFTI (V.A.Volkov) - sensor equipment of the onboard measurement system; TsNIIMASH (Yu.A. Mozzhorin) - strength tests; NIIKHIMMASH (A.A. Makarov) - engine tests; TsAGI (G.P. Svishchev, V.Ya. Neiland) - aerodynamic and strength tests; plant "Zvezda" (G.I. Severin) - ejection seat; LII (A.D.Mironov, K.K.Vasilchenko) - flying laboratories, horizontal flight tests; IPM RAS (A.E. Okhotsimsky) - software development and debugging tools; Ural Electrochemical Plant (A.I.Savchuk, V.F.Kornilov) - electrochemical generator; Ural Electrochemical Plant (A.A. Soloviev, L.M. Kuznetsov) - electrochemical generator automation; ZEM (A.A. Borisenko) - assembly and testing of the ship; TMZ (S.G. Arutyunov) - assembly and testing of the airframe; Kyiv TsKBA (V.A.Ananyevsky) - pneumohydraulic fittings.
The President of the USSR Academy of Sciences G.I. Marchuk actively participated in solving many scientific and technical problems during the creation of the Energia-Buran system. In the creation of the orbital ship "Buran" were directly involved:
Project direction - V.A. Timchenko, B.I. Sotnikov, V.G. Aliyev, V.M. Filin, Yu.M. Frumkin, Yu.M. , E.N. Rodman, V.A. Ovsyannikov, E.A. Utkin, V.I. Tabakov, A.V. Kondakov, A.N. Pokhilko, B.V. Chernyatiev.
Calculation and theoretical work - G.N. Degtyarenko, P.M. Vorobyov, A.A. Zhidyaev, V.F. Gladkiy, V.S. .Reshetin, B.P. Plotnikov, A.A. Dyatkin, A.V. Beloshitsky, V.S. Mezhin, N.K. Petrov, V.A. Stepanov.
Onboard systems of the ship - O.I. Babkov, V.P. Khorunov, A.A. Shchukin, V.V. Postnikov, G.A. Veselkin, G.N. Formin, A.I. Vasyunin, G.K. Yu.B.Purtov, A.V.Galkin, Yu.E.Kolchugin, V.N.Belikov, K.K.Chernyshev, A.S.Pulyatkin, V.M.Gutnik, V.A.Nikitin, A. A. Retin, V.A. Blinov, V.S. Ovchinnikov, E.I. Grigorov, A.L. Magdesyan, S.A. Khudyakov, B.A. Zavarnov, A.V. Puchinin, V.I. Mikhailov, Yu.S. Dolgopoloe, E.N. Zaitsev, A.V. Melnik, V.V. Kudryavtsev, V.S. E.G.Bobrov, V.V.Kalantaev, V.V.Nosov, I.D.Dordus, A.P.Aleksandrov, O.S.Tsygankov, Yu.P.Karpachev, V.N.Kurkin, I. S. Vostrikov, V. A. Batarin, M. G. Chinaev, V. A. Shorin.
Combined propulsion system - B.A.Sokolov, L.B.Prostov, A.K.Abolin, A.N.Averkov, A.A.Aksentsov, A.G.Arakelov, A.M.Bazhenov, A.I. Bazarny, O.A. Barsukov, G.A. Biryukov, V. G. Borzdyko, Yu. Yu.F.Gavrikov, M.P.Gerasimov, A.V.Gollandtsev, V.S.Golov, M.G.Gostev, Yu.S.Gribov, B.E.Gutskov, A.V.Denisov, A. P.Zhadchenko, A.P.Zhezherya, A.M.Zolotarev, G.A.Ivanov, Yu.P.Ilyin, V.I.Ipatov, A.I.Kiselev, F.A.Korobko, V.I. Korolkov, G.V. Kostylev, P.F. Kulish, S.A. Makin, V.M. Martynov, A.I. A.V. Aysenkov, V.F. Nefedov, E.V. Ovechka-Filippov, G.G. Podobedov, V.M. Protopopov, V.V. Rogozhinsky, A.V. Rozhkov, V.E. Romashov, A.A. Sanin, Yu.K. Semenov, D.N. Sinitsin, B.N. Smirnov, A.V. Sorokoumov, A.N. G.Udarov, V.T.Unchikov, V.V.Ushakov, N.V.Folomeev, K.M.Khomyakov, A.M.Shcherbakov.
Design - E.I. Korzhenevsky, A.A. Chernov, K.K. Pantin, A.B. Grigoryan, M.A. Vavulin, V.D. Anikeev, A.D. Boev, Yu.A. V.B.Dobrokhotov, E.I.Droshnev, V.V.Erpylev, B.S.Zakharov, S.A.Ivanov, V.E.Kozlov, A.V.Kostrov, A.I.Krapivner, Yu. K. Kuzmin, N. F. Kuznetsov, V. A. Ayamin, B. A. Neporozhnev, B. A. Prostakov, I. S. Pustovanov, V. I. Senkin.
Equipment of the technical complex and ground equipment - Yu.M. Danilov, V.N. Bodunkov, V.V. Solodovnikov, V.K. Mazurin, E.N. Nekrasov, O.N. .M.Garbar.
Complex electrical tests and ground pre-flight preparation - N.I. Zelenshchikov, A.V. Vasilkovskiy, V.A. Naumov, A.D. Markov, A.A. Motov, A.I. Palitsin, N.N. N.A. Omelnitsky, G.I. Kiselev, I.V. Negreev, A.V. Pokatilov, P.E. Kulikov, E.Ya. Islyamov, B.M. V.Chemodanov, A.F.Mezenov, E.N.Chetverikov, A.V.Maksimov, P.P.Masenko, B.M.Bugerya, A.N.Eremychev, V.P.Kochka, A.A. Medvedev, A.K. Danilov, V.V. Moskvin, V.V. Lukyankin, V.I. Varlamov, V.A. Ilyenkov, K.K. Trofimov, I.K. G.A.Nekrasov, V.V.Korshakov, E.I.Shevtsov, A.E.Kuleshov, A.G.Suslin, M.V.Samofalov, A.S.Scherbakov, G.V.Vasilka.
Flight control - V.V. Ryumin, V.G. Kravets, V.I. Staroverov, S.P. Tsybin, Yu.G. Pulkhrov, E.A. Golovanov, A.I. , V.D.Kuguk, A.D.Bykov, I.E.Brodsky.
Economics and work planning - V.I. Tarasov, A.G. Derechin, V.A. Maksimov, I.N. Semenov.
Leading designers - V.N. Pogorlyuk, Yu.K. Kovalenko, I.P. Spiridonov, V.A. Goryainov, V.A. Kapustin, G.G. , N.A. Pimenov.
V.G. Aliev, B.I. Sotnikov, P.M. Vorobiev, V.F. Sadovy, A.V. Egorov, S.I. Aleksandrov, N.A. Bryukhanov, V.V.Antonov, V.I.Berzhaty, O.V.Mitichkin, Yu.P.Ulybyshev and others.
MOSCOW, November 15 - RIA Novosti. The Soviet reusable transport spacecraft (MTKK) "Buran", created as part of the Energia-Buran program, launched for the first and only time 24 years ago from the Baikonur Cosmodrome.
The need to create a domestic reusable space system as a means of deterring a potential adversary was identified during analytical research conducted by the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and NPO Energia (now RSC Energia) in 1971-1975. According to the results of the research, it turned out that the United States, having put into operation its reusable Space Shuttle system, will be able to gain a decisive military advantage in terms of delivering a preemptive nuclear missile strike.
Work on the Energia-Buran program began in 1976. 86 ministries and departments and 1286 enterprises of the entire USSR (about 2.5 million people in total) took part in the creation of this system.
The Energia launch vehicle was created by NPO Energia, and the Ministry of Aviation Industry (MAP) was entrusted with the task of creating the airframe for the Buran orbital ship (OK). To accomplish this task, on the basis of three design bureaus - Design Bureau "Molniya", Design Bureau "Burevestnik" and the Experimental Machine-Building Plant - a specialized enterprise was formed - NPO "Molniya", which became the lead developer of the airframe OK "Buran". Tushino Machine-Building Plant was chosen as the main production base.
To ensure the use of the existing scientific and technical groundwork in the new development, by order of the Minister of the Ministry of Aviation Industry, NPO Molniya from OKB A.I. Mikoyan and Design Bureau "Rainbow", the main specialists who previously worked on the project to create a reusable aerospace system "Spiral" were transferred. The created NPO Molniya was headed by the most experienced designer Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky, who also worked on the Spiral project in the 1960s.
TEST PILOT "BURAN"
A group of test pilots to participate in the Buran project began to form in 1977 at the Gromov Flight Research Institute (LII) (Zhukovsky, Moscow Region), initially it was planned to enroll eight people. Even before the formation of the group, two candidates died - Viktor Bukreev died on May 22, 1977 from burns received on May 17 in a MiG-25PU accident, and Alexander Lysenko died on June 3, 1977 during a test flight on the MiG-23UB.
As a result, six people were enrolled in the first group on July 12, 1977 - Igor Volk, Oleg Kononenko, Anatoly Levchenko, Nikolai Sadovnikov, Rimantas Stankevicius, Alexander Shchukin.
Nikolai Sadovnikov at the end of 1977 moved from the LII to work at the Sukhoi Design Bureau. At the end of 1978, Igor Volk (future USSR cosmonaut, Hero of the Soviet Union, Honored Test Pilot of the USSR) was appointed commander of the test pilot detachment number 1 of the "A" complex, which was preparing for flights on the Buran.
The detachment of test cosmonauts of the Buran project was officially created on August 10, 1981, Volk was also appointed its commander. Largely due to the extraordinary talents of this man, the squad has fully worked out the most difficult tasks of piloting a unique machine.
According to unverified information, half of the pilots from the detachment preparing to fly on this ship died during the tests of the Buran. This is partly true, however, these tragic events were associated with other programs.
Oleg Kononenko died on September 8, 1980 during tests of the Yak-38 carrier-based attack aircraft, Anatoly Levchenko died on August 6, 1988 from a brain tumor that developed as a result of a hard landing of the Soyuz TM-3 descent vehicle, Rimantas Stankevicius died on September 9, 1990 in the crash of Su -27 during a demonstration performance at the air show in Salgareda in Italy, Alexander Shchukin died on August 18, 1988 in a test flight on a Su-26M sports aircraft.
In the second set of Buran test pilots (1982-1985), when the preparation for the project was the most intensive, the candidates for the squad of test cosmonauts of the Gromov Research Institute were enrolled: Ural Sultanov, Magomed Tolboev, Viktor Zabolotsky, Sergei Tresvyatsky, Yuri Sheffer . On June 5, 1987, by decision of the Interdepartmental Qualification Commission (MVKK), all of them were awarded the qualification of "test cosmonaut".
Finally, in the last set of pilots (1988), test pilot of the LII named after Gromov Yuri Prikhodko was enrolled. In 1990, he was appointed to the position of a test cosmonaut at the LII.
In 1995, after the Buran flight, the State Interdepartmental Commission (GMVK) recommended the Gromov Research Institute to consider the feasibility of preserving special detachment cosmonauts, in which at that time there were five people, but the leadership of the institute and members of the detachment retained hope for the continuation of work. Officially, the LII cosmonaut corps ceased to exist in 2002, having outlived the Buran program officially closed in 1993 for a long time. Of all the selected and trained cosmonauts of the detachment, only two went into space - Igor Volk and Anatoly Levchenko.
Igor Volk, during the tests of the Buran project, performed thirteen flights on a special copy of the ship. He was supposed to become the crew commander of the first space flight of the MTKK "Buran" (together with Rimantas Stankevicius), however, due to complex political intrigues in the highest circles of the space and aviation industries, the first and only flight of "Buran" was made in automatic mode. But a huge merit in the successful completion of this unique flight belongs to Volk and his comrades in the detachment of the Gromov Flight Research Institute.
FLIGHT "BURAN"
The task of the first flight of the Energia-Buran MTKK was to continue the flight testing of the Energia launch vehicle and to test the functioning of the design and onboard systems of the Buran spacecraft in the most stressful flight segments (delivery and descent from orbit) with a minimum duration of the orbital segment.
For safety reasons, the first test flight of OK "Buran" was defined as unmanned, with full automation of all dynamic operations up to taxiing on the runway.
On the launch day - November 15, 1988 - the weather conditions at the Baikonur cosmodrome deteriorated. The chairman of the state commission received a regular report from the meteorological service with a "storm warning" forecast. Given the importance of the moment, weather forecasters demanded a written confirmation of receipt of an alarming forecast. In aviation, landing is the most important stage of the flight, especially in difficult meteorological conditions.
The Buran ship has no engines for flight in the atmosphere, there was no crew on board during the first flight, and the landing was planned from the first and only approach. The specialists who created the Buran spacecraft assured the members of the state commission that they were confident of success: this case was not the limit for the automatic landing system. As a result, the decision to launch was made.
November 15, 1988 at 06.00 Moscow time, the Energia-Buran MTKK breaks away from the launch pad and almost immediately goes into low cloud cover. At 06.08 Moscow time, the Buran spacecraft separated from the Energia launch vehicle and began its first solo flight. The height above the Earth's surface was about 150 kilometers, and the spacecraft was brought into orbit by its own means.
Even when the Buran ship was at an altitude of about seven kilometers, a MiG-25 escort aircraft piloted by test pilot Magomed Tolboev flew to approach it. Thanks to the skill of the pilot, a clear television image of the Buran was confidently observed on the screen.
At 09.24 Moscow time, after completing an orbital flight and passing almost eight thousand kilometers in the upper atmosphere, only one second ahead of the estimated time, Buran, struggling with a strong headwind, softly touched the runway and after a short run at 09.25 Moscow time stopped in its center.
The total flight time was 206 minutes. The ship was launched into orbit with a maximum altitude of 263 kilometers. Thus, a system was created in the USSR that was not inferior, but in many respects superior to the American Space Shuttle system. In particular, the flight took place without a crew, completely in automatic mode, unlike the shuttle, which can only land on manual control. In addition, for the first time in world practice, a fully automatic landing of the apparatus was carried out.
TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SHIP "BURAN" AND ROCKETS "ENERGIA"
The length of the Buran is 36.4 meters, the wingspan is about 24 meters, the launch weight is 105 tons. The ship's cargo compartment holds a payload weighing up to 30 tons during takeoff, up to 20 tons during landing. A pressurized cabin for the crew and people for work in orbit (up to ten people) and most of the equipment for ensuring flight as part of the rocket and space complex, autonomous flight in orbit, descent and landing are inserted into the nose compartment.
When developing software for the Buran spacecraft and ground systems, the mainframe language was used, which made it possible to short time develop software systems with a volume of about 100 megabytes. In the event of failure of the rocket blocks of the first and second stages of the launch vehicle, the control system of the orbiter ensures its emergency return in automatic modes.
The Energia launch vehicle is the first Soviet rocket using cryogenic fuel (hydrogen) at the main stage, and the most powerful of the domestic rockets - the total engine power is about 170 million horsepower. In addition, it was the only rocket in the world at that time that was capable of launching cargo weighing more than 100 tons into orbit (for comparison, American shuttles could launch cargo weighing 30 tons). The launch weight of the rocket can reach 2.4 thousand tons.
The rocket provides for redundancy of the main vital systems and assemblies, including sustainer engines, steering gears, turbogenerator power supplies, pyrotechnics. Rocket equipped by special means emergency protection, providing diagnostics of the state of propulsion engines of both stages and timely shutdown of the emergency unit in case of deviations in its operation. In addition, effective fire and explosion warning systems have been installed.
When developing the software and control programs for the Energia rocket, in addition to the standard flight conditions, more than 500 emergency situations were analyzed and algorithms for their parry were found. In particular, in the event of an emergency, the rocket can continue controlled flight even with one first or second stage propulsion engine turned off.
In addition, in emergency situations during the launch of an orbital spacecraft, the design measures incorporated in the rocket make it possible to ensure the launch of the spacecraft into a low "single orbit" orbit, followed by landing at one of the airfields, or to perform a return maneuver on the active launch site with the spacecraft landing on the regular runway of the landing complex Baikonur.
DIFFERENCES OF THE "ENERGIA-BURAN" SYSTEM FROM THE AMERICAN "SPACE SHUTTLE"
Despite the general external similarity of the projects, they are fundamentally completely different.
The Space Shuttle complex consists of a fuel tank, two solid-propellant boosters and the space shuttle itself. At launch, both accelerators and the first stage are launched. Thus, this complex cannot be used to launch other vehicles into orbit, even smaller in comparison with the mass shuttle. The shuttle sits down with idle engines. It does not have the ability to land several times, so there are several landing sites in the United States.
The Energia-Buran complex consists of the first and second stages and the Buran reentry vehicle. At start, both stages are launched. Having worked out, the first stage is undocked and the additional launch into orbit is carried out by the second stage. This scheme is universal, since it allows launching into orbit not only the Buran MTKK, but also other payloads (weighing up to 100 tons).
When returning to Earth, the Buran behaves differently than the American shuttle. The blizzard enters the atmosphere and starts to slow down. The ship was controlled by rudders, without using the thrust of the engines (in the atmosphere). Before landing, the Buran carried out a speed-damping corrective maneuver, after which it proceeded to land. In this single flight, the Buran had only one attempt to land. When landing, the speed of the ship is 300 kilometers per hour, in the atmosphere it reaches ten speeds of sound.
In addition, unlike the shuttles, the Buran has an emergency crew rescue system. At low altitudes, a catapult works for the first two pilots, at a sufficient altitude, in case of an emergency, the Buran separates from the launch vehicle and makes an emergency landing.
RESULTS OF THE PROJECT "ENERGY-BURAN"
In 1990, work on the Energia-Buran program was suspended, and in 1993 the program was finally closed. The only Buran flying into space in 1988 was destroyed in 2002 by a collapsed roof of the hangar of the assembly and test building at Baikonur.
In the course of work on the Buran project, several prototypes were made for dynamic, electrical, airfield and other tests. After the closure of the program, these products remained on the balance sheet of various research institutes and industrial associations.
At the same time, experts believe that the systems and technologies used in the creation of the Energia-Buran space system can also be used in modern projects. In particular, RSC Energia President Vitaly Lopota told reporters about this, urging the Russian government to pay attention to the possibility of using these developments.
"In the Energia-Buran project, 650 technologies were developed. Many of them could be used today, for example, landing systems ("Buran") could realize themselves in aviation. Most of the systems have not been forgotten. It's a pity that after 20 years we are not ahead, but "Buran" prevented and stopped the American " star Wars" Lopota said.
"I would like the government of the Russian Federation to listen to this (the use of Buran technologies in current projects). Today it is not too late to apply these technologies," he said.
The blackness of space filled with stars has always attracted man. Especially after the development of technology in the twentieth century allowed him to take the first steps. Could anyone then, in the late fifties, think that the beginning of space exploration would become part of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, with its victories and hopes, the pain of losses and the bitterness of disappointments?!
Then, at the end of the sixties, the space confrontation between the two superpowers was only gaining momentum. By that time, the USSR had carried out a good two dozen successful launches of Vostok and Salyut rockets, launched several satellites of the different direction, Soviet cosmonauts first of the earthlings went to outer space, set several records for the duration of stay in orbit. Until 1969, the score was clearly not in favor of the United States, but when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, the Americans recouped. However, a little later, "these Russians" also began to study the moon, and at the same time they also saved money by launching the Lunokhod-1 and Lunokhod-2 programs.
By 1972, when the positions of the rivals were approximately equal, American President Richard Nixon announced that the United States was beginning to develop a new program - the Space Shuttle. The space shuttle program was astonishing in its scale: to build four ships that would make sixty flights a year! In addition, these shuttles, equipped with large cargo compartments, can launch cargo weighing about thirty tons into low Earth orbit, and lower fifteen to the ground. Twelve times more than any of the Apollos!
In February 1976, the then Minister of Defense of the USSR D.F. Ustinov signed a decree on the creation of the Soviet space reusable system "Buran". But it soon turned out that the power of the launch vehicles that existed at that time was not enough to lift the shuttle into low Earth orbit. In this regard, in parallel with the development of the Buran shuttle, the development of the Energia launch vehicle began.
Meanwhile, overseas work on the Space Shuttle project was in full swing. By 1981, flight tests of the Challengers began, and the first full-fledged ascent into orbit took place in November 1984. The USSR, as in the case of the Moon, was again late. The Russian shuttle "Buran" lost in the space race... In any case, it was thought so for many years. In practice, it was so, if you do not remember that both the Challenger and Buran had a predecessor - the Spiral project
The very idea of launching an aircraft into space arose at the dawn of cosmonautics from its “fathers”: K.E. Tsiolkovsky and A.F. the project could not. His time came much later in the mid-fifties, after S.P. Korolev improved his project of the R-7 launch vehicle. The rocket developed by his design bureau could not only deliver a nuclear charge to the territory of the United States, but also launch a satellite into Earth orbit. It was then that the famous Soviet aircraft designer V. Myasishchev, "remembering" the theoretical work of Tsiolkovsky and Zandler, began his own development of an aerospace system. As planned by Myasishchev, the space plane could climb 400 kilometers, starting either from its own first stage or from a high-altitude carrier aircraft.
Examples of such engineering solutions were already worked out in the thirties and forties on troop transport aircraft carrying tanks and boats. During one of the visits to the Myasishchev Design Bureau by the head of the USSR N.S. Khrushchev, the author shared an idea with him and showed a model of a delta-shaped aircraft with a twin tail. Khrushchev liked the very idea of the possibility of inflicting a space strike on the United States, and in 1959 the “project-48” received official status, but a year later the topic was taken away from Myasishchev, transferring the “project-48” to the rocket design bureau of V. Chelomey. Then, after the overthrow of N. Khrushchev, the AKS project “wandered” for a long time in various design bureaus, until, in the end, it was transferred to the A. Mikoyan Design Bureau, where, under code name The "Spiral" began to materialize.
In June 1966. G. Lozino-Lozinsky, appointed chief designer of the system, signed the prepared preliminary design. The main goal of the program was to create a manned orbital aircraft to perform applied tasks in space and provide regular transportation along the Earth-orbit-Earth route. The system with an estimated mass of 115 tons included a reusable hypersonic booster aircraft carrying an orbital stage, consisting of the reusable orbital aircraft itself and a disposable two-stage rocket booster.
The return and landing of the space rocket plane was carried out in the course of three turns, during which the safest mode and airfield were selected. Moreover, the Soviet shuttle, which had a much greater margin of safety and better tactical and flight characteristics than the American Challengers built much later, could freely maneuver both in space and in the Earth's atmosphere, and if necessary, even sit on a dirt road!
The Spiral project was primarily military. On the instructions of the military, the orbital plane was assigned the tasks of reconnaissance, interception of high-altitude targets, including space ones (for example, strategic missiles), as well as bombing, that is, attacking ground targets. To do this, surface-to-air missiles equipped with nuclear warheads were loaded into its cargo compartment as a "payload".
In parallel with the development of the orbital aircraft, the development of a hypersonic booster aircraft was in full swing. Moreover, by the end of the sixties, the project of this aircraft was almost ready. Technical documentation has been prepared and its full-size thirty-eight-meter mock-up has even been built. This aircraft, like the orbital one, was delta-shaped, only more elongated and without a “tail”, without a rear keel, the role of which was played by the ends of the wings bent upwards. The sharp nose changed its angle during takeoff down to create more lift, and after it, during the transition to hypersonic speed - up. The launch of the orbital shuttle aircraft was carried out from the "back" of Tu-95 strategic bombers specially converted for this purpose.
So, according to the work plan for the Spiral project, by 1967-1969, tests of the orbital space system were to be completed. The first unmanned flight of the Spiral was planned for 1970, and from the mid-seventies it was planned to begin regular manned flights!
Before the creation of the Russian "Challengers" there was one step left. And then, at the very end of the sixties, the “Kremlin elders”, at the suggestion of D.F. Ustinov, a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU, who stood up for intercontinental missiles, lose interest in the Spiral project. Now all the forces of the Soviet rocket scientists are belatedly thrown into the "moon race". And how it ended is known ... However, the Spiral project, which is so promising both from the point of view of science and from the point of view of military application, has not been completely forgotten. Many of his ideas and technical solutions were subsequently used in other projects. The main one was, of course, the Soviet reusable orbital ship Buran, which absorbed the lion's share of developments in the space rocket plane.
This is a brief background of the Soviet space shuttle Buran.
In 1976, work on the Buran began. The main developer of the new aerospace system was NPO Molniya, headed by G. Lozino-Lozinsky, who worked on the Spiral. And by 1984, the first full-scale copy of Buran was ready. In the same year, the Buran was delivered by a special barge, first to the city of Zhukovsky, and then by a transport aircraft to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. However, it took another three long years of fine-tuning, final assembly and installation of equipment while the Buran was fully prepared for its first and last flight, which took place on November 15, 1988. The spacecraft was launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome and launched into near-Earth orbit using the Energia launch vehicle, the most powerful at that time.
The flight duration was 205 minutes, the ship made two orbits around the Earth, after which it landed at a specially equipped Yubileiny airfield in Baikonur. The flight took place without a crew in automatic mode using an on-board computer and on-board software, unlike the American shuttle, which traditionally performs last stage manual landings. The Buran, on the other hand, entered the Earth's atmosphere and decelerated to the speed of sound exclusively on automatics controlled by the shuttle's computers.
The funny thing is that after the first flight of the already finished shuttle, pundits, together with the military, started a dispute on the topic: “Does the USSR need a Buran? Many experts believed that the space plane did not meet the given tactical and technical requirements, especially in terms of the weight of the payload put into orbit, and that it was not capable of solving, as they hoped, military applied tasks at a qualitatively new level. When these military experts began to compare the shuttle and the Buran in a number of the most important characteristics, it turned out that the comparison is not in their favor.
Our shuttle lifted into space a load of almost half that lifted by the "American", and our launch costs, as it turned out, were higher. And all this because Cape Canaveral, from which American shuttles took off, is located closer to the equator. And there, the force of gravity of the earth is somewhat lower ... And besides, you don’t need to be a military specialist to understand: the duration of the pre-launch preparation, the cyclopean Baikonur launch complex itself, which cannot be disguised in any way, and the rather limited set of Buran azimuths did not allow take him to arms rapid response”, and any other weapon is generally meaningless. And even more so the space shuttle! But even if we consider the Buran to be a perfect weapon, it still became morally obsolete many years before its birth - it simply would not have had time not only to strike back, but even to take off!
Pre-launch preparation, the command to start, and so on, took time. And a lot! By the standards of war: from six hours (if the launch was one hundred percent prepared) to several days! While a ballistic missile launched from a nuclear submarine reaches enemy territory in 10-17 seconds!..
Strange, but during these disputes, for some reason, science did not appear, for the benefit of which Buran could well serve ...
During its existence, "Buran" managed to visit not only in space, but also at the world air exhibition in La Bourget, where it was delivered by air - on the "back" of the giant Mriya aircraft. The flight of these "Siamese twins", one of which could well take the other into space, caused a stir in the aviation world. Meanwhile, the fatal time for Buran was approaching.
By the ninetieth year, the program was "frozen" and its funding was reduced to almost zero, and then completely stopped - the leadership of the collapsing USSR was not up to Buran. And in 2002, the only Buranov flying into space, together with the Energia launch vehicle, was completely destroyed by a roof that fell on them. The fate of several full-scale layouts was no less sad. One of them was simply plundered in pieces, the other - the first experimental "Buran", which was held at number "two", was "put up" ... as an attraction at a restaurant (!) On the Moscow embankment near Gorky Park. In 2000, they tried to make money on it by exhibiting it at the Olympics in Sydney, Australia. It did not work out ... Six months later, he moved from there to Bahrain as an exhibit for a local millionaire. In the end, the Germans bought it, paying about ten million euros.
What is the result? The quintessence of technical thought - the work of one hundred and twenty enterprises, the work of thousands of engineers and workers - has become an exhibit and a reproach to all of us who abandoned and betrayed Buran.
* * *Based on the article by Vikenty Solomin
As part of the Russian Arms Expo-2013 exhibition held in Nizhny Tagil, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin made a sensational statement that the production of Buran-type spacecraft could be resumed in the country. “Future aviation technology will be able to rise into the stratosphere, space technology today can work in both environments, for example, Buran, which was significantly ahead of its time. In fact, all these spacecraft are the 21st century and whether we like it or not, we will have to return to them, ”RIA quotes Dmitry Rogozin. At the same time, domestic experts disagree about the rationality of such a step. Yes, and to believe everything that Russian officials say, perhaps, is not worth it. A striking example is a much smaller project to restart production. transport aircraft"Ruslan", which, in fact, has advanced no further than talking about this topic.
At one time, the Energia-Buran program cost the Soviet budget very dearly. During the 15 years of this program (from February 17, 1976 to January 1, 1991), the USSR spent 16.4 billion rubles on it (at the official rate, more than 24 billion US dollars). During the period of maximum intensity of work on the project (1989), up to 1.3 billion rubles (1.9 billion dollars) were allocated for this space program annually, which amounted to 0.3% of the entire budget of the Soviet Union. In order to understand the scale of these figures, you can compare the program with the construction of AvtoVAZ from scratch. This large-scale Soviet construction cost the state 4-5 billion rubles, while the plant is still functioning. And even if we add here the cost of building the entire city of Togliatti, the amount will turn out to be many times less.
Buran is an orbital spacecraft of the Soviet reusable space transport system (MTKK), which was created as part of the larger Energia-Buran program. It is one of the 2 orbital programs of the MTKK implemented in the world. The Soviet Buran was a response to a similar US project called the Space Shuttle, which is why it is often referred to as the "Soviet shuttle". The Buran reusable spacecraft performed its first and, as it turned out, the only flight in a fully unmanned mode on November 15, 1988. The lead developer of the Buran project was Gleb Evgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky.
In total, 2 ships were completely built under the Energia-Buran program in the USSR, one more was under construction (degree of completion 30-50%), 2 more space ships were laid down. The backlog for these ships was destroyed after the closure of the program. Also, within the framework of the program, 9 technological models were created, which differed in their configuration and were intended for various tests.
Buran, like its overseas counterpart, was intended for solving defense problems, launching various spacecraft and objects into near-Earth orbit and servicing them; delivery of personnel and modules for assembling interplanetary complexes and large structures in orbit; development of equipment and technologies for space production and delivery of products to Earth; returning to Earth exhausted or defective satellites; performing other cargo and passenger transportation along the Earth-space-Earth route.
Corresponding member Russian Academy cosmonautics them. Tsiolkovsky Yuri Karash expressed his doubts about the need to revive this system. According to him, Buran was an analogue of the American shuttle, the decision to build which was made by Richard Nixon. Therefore, the problems faced by the Americans can be projected onto Buran as well.
To begin with, let's answer the question of why the Space Shuttle system was created. There were a number of factors here, one of which can be called the pioneering space enthusiasm that reigned in the world back then. People assumed that they would soon explore outer space as intensively and on the same scale as they did with unknown territories on Earth. It was planned that a person would fly into space a lot and often, and the number of customers for the delivery of their goods into space would be impressive. Therefore, when the idea of building the Space Shuttle system arose, the people who proposed it believed that they would fly into space almost every week.
And that, in turn, set the law in motion. big numbers. That is, if you do something often enough, then the price of such a single action decreases, the project developers believed that the price of one Shuttle flight would be almost equal to the price of a conventional transport aircraft flight. Naturally, it turned out that this was far from being the case, but only when the Space Shuttle began to really fly into space. On average, he did not make more than 4-5 flights a year, which means that the cost of launching it was huge - the amount reached $ 500 million, which significantly exceeded the cost of launching disposable carriers. Thus, the project did not justify itself from a financial point of view.
Secondly, the Space Shuttle project was developed as a kind of . It was supposed to be equipped with bomb weapons. In this case, the spacecraft could descend over enemy territory, drop a bomb, and then again go into space, where it would be inaccessible to enemy air defense systems. However cold war came to an end, and secondly, in the same period of time, rocket weapons made a very strong qualitative leap, and accordingly, the device did not justify itself as a weapon.
Thirdly, it turned out that shuttles are a very complex and insufficiently reliable system. It turned out under rather tragic circumstances, when the Challenger shuttle exploded on January 26, 1986. At this point, the United States realized that putting all your eggs in one basket is not profitable. Before that, they believed that having shuttles would allow them to abandon Delta, Atlas and other disposable launch vehicles, and everything could be put into orbit using space shuttles, but the Challenger disaster clearly demonstrated that such a bet was not costs. As a result, the Americans still completely abandoned this system.
When Dmitry Rogozin announces the resumption of Buran-type programs, a quite reasonable question arises: where will these ships fly? With a high degree of probability, the ISS will deorbit by 2020, and then what? Why would Russia have such a ship to simply fly into space for 2-3 days, but what is there to do in these 2-3 days? That is, we have a beautiful, but at the same time completely eccentric and ill-conceived idea, Yuri Karash believes. With this system, Russia will simply have nothing to do in space, and today commercial launches are very well carried out using ordinary disposable launch vehicles. Both the American Space Shuttle and the Soviet Buran were good when it was necessary to put a large cargo weighing 20 tons into the cargo compartment and deliver it to the ISS, but this is a rather narrow range of tasks.
At the same time, not everyone agrees that the very idea of returning to Buran-type systems has no right to life today. A number of experts believe that if there are competent tasks and goals, such a program will be necessary. This position is shared by the President of the St. Petersburg Federation of Cosmonautics Oleg Mukhin. According to him, this is not a step back, on the contrary, these devices are the future of astronautics. Why did the United States abandon shuttles at the time? They simply did not have enough tasks for them to make the ship justified with economic point vision. They were supposed to make at least 8 flights annually, but at best they ended up in orbit 1-2 times a year.
The Soviet Buran, like its overseas counterpart, was far ahead of its time. It was assumed that they would be able to throw 20 tons of payloads into orbit and take back the same amount, plus a large crew of 6 people, plus landing on an ordinary airfield - all this, of course, can be attributed to the future of world astronautics. However, they can exist in various modifications. Not so long ago in Russia there was a proposal to build a small 6-seat spacecraft "Clipper", also winged and with the ability to land on an airfield. Everything here, ultimately, depends on the tasks and funding. If there are tasks for such devices - assembly space stations, assembly at the station, etc., then such ships can and should be produced.
Sources of information:
-http://www.odnako.org/blogs/show_29156
-http://www.vz.ru/news/2013/9/25/652027.html
-http://www.buran.ru
-http://ru.wikipedia.org
Loading...