(Photo credit: Daily Mail) – During the 1980s, the Russian government was hellbent on getting a space shuttle program together like NASA was operating here in the USA. Incredible resources were thrown at developing such a vehicle and in 1988 the first test flight of a Russian Buran space plane was made. It was an automated flight with no one on board but it was successful and proved that the Russian Space Agency had built a functional and capable craft. The program was them immediately scrapped. The Buran crafts have not seen the light of day since and just recently photographer Ralph Mirebs gained entry to the massive hanger in Kazakhstan where both of the forlorn Burans are sitting. Mirebs took a slate of awesome photos that you can see at the link below.
If you are thinking that these things look a lot like an American space shuttle, you’d be right. There were claims that the Burans were the direct result of Russian espionage and others contend that the similarities in shape are only because this is the best design to accomplish the intended job. Either way, faced with funding shortages and needing financial resources in more immediate places, the Russian government lowered the boom on the project and since 1988 these things have been sitting in a massive reinforced steel hanger with birds crapping on them and people apparently sneaking in to peek inside.
Mirebs photos are great because he takes us through the hanger, around the Buran crafts and ultimately inside them to see exactly what they would have been like to be in all those years ago. People seem to have had their way with some of the innards of the machines but otherwise they are just old and neglected. What will happen to them in 30 years? Who knows but if history is a guide they will be right where they sit today.
Then again, someone is likely going to be really made that these photos are out in the first place so maybe this will hasten their demise. A failed success, indeed.
CLICK HERE TO SEE THE AMAZING PHOTOS OF THE ABANDONED BURAN SPACE SHUTTLES
There’s is one on exhibition for some years now in Germany at the Technik Museum Speyer so there are more then two in existence.
The one in Germany made 25 atmospheric flights between 1984 and 1989 and significantly contributed to the successful orbital flight of a BURAN shuttle in 1988.
http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
How eerily cool. I vaguely remember hearing about this, but it disappeared so quickly. I wondered what had happened to the Russian shuttle. A sad fate that makes for incredible pictures and a strange story.