![]() But by the Soviet military’s assessment, the shuttle wasn’t economically viable and inexplicably large. There wasn’t much guesswork involved since NASA, being a civilian organization, shared its plans for the new vehicle publicly. A year late, he was not alone in wondering why the Americans were building such a large space shuttle. At the same time, he also took stock of the Soviet’s position in space. In 1974, engineer Valentin Glushko merged the TsKBEM design bureau with his own KB Energomash organization to form a new bureau called NPO Energiya. Instead, different design bureaus managed different projects. Unlike America’s national space agency NASA, the Soviet Union did not have a unified body managing its space activities. But that began to change in the mid-1970s. The announcement of NASA’s shuttle plans didn’t worry the Soviet Union who didn’t have any use for a shuttle there was no need to compete with the Americans on this program. The shuttle would make spaceflight routine while keeping the cost low, thanks in large part to the Department of Defence who would be sharing the cost with the space agency in exchange for using it to launch military satellites. On January 5, 1972, President Nixon announced that NASA would turn its attention to building a new spacecraft to transform the final frontier, something that could shuttle astronauts between the Earth and an orbital space station, though the station would come later. I tend to be in the camp that says anything you build which successfully goes to space and comes back safely is pretty exceptional, but I wouldn't say Buran was a tremendous advancement over existing technology, and ultimately it's always going to be difficult to really assess a ship which only flew once.NASA’s decision to pursue the space shuttle on the heels of the Apollo program came down, in short, to funding. I have no idea where the crosswind number came from, but it was almost certainly exaggerated, either on accident (perhaps mistaking wind conditions on approach for surface wind), or intentionally exaggerated to show how great and superior Buran was. Notice how the upwind wheel hits the runway about a second before the downwind wheel hits - very indicative of a crosswind. Note the wing movement at 8:58 which is to correct for about a 12-knot crosswind gust, which looks about right to me. You see the wings doing very little correcting, and the wheels touchdown at almost the same time, which is very much not indicative of a crosswind.įor comparison, take a look at STS-133 landing. Does that look like a 33 knot crosswind to any pilot? To me, it looks like about a 5-10 knot crosswind at most. However, I urge you to go look at video of Buran landing ( example, mute recommended). I think that would indeed be pretty impressive. Lastly, I've heard and read many times how amazing it is that Buran landed so close to centerline in such a dramatic crosswind (around 33 knots). So once Buran got on approach, the fact that landed safely probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise. In fact, it would have been the only phase of the autopilot that saw real-world testing prior to launch. I would note that even though there was only one orbital flight of Buran, there were atmospheric tests of prototype vehicles (some prototypes had jet engines), so there were opportunities to safely test the autopilot during the landing phase of flight prior to the orbital test. Although, it may have been the fastest autolanding to date, which could be an argument for exceptional. ![]() That seems to be at the heart of what you're asking, so I'll address that specifically.Īutoland had existed for decades before Buran, so it certainly wasn't the first airplane to land on autopilot. The only thing Buran really did that the NASA shuttle never did was fly unmanned, including an automatic landing. Does that in itself make the Buran exceptional? Probably not. The Soviets used some lessons learned and, in some respects, built a better shuttle. Buran could almost be thought of as an iteration on that design. It's also the vehicle which pioneered the thermal tiles, the reentry profile of a space plane, and the general concept of a shuttle. The NASA shuttle was flown in fully-automatic mode for launch, and most of reentry. There's really nothing it did that wasn't done by something else. Your question is very subjective, but I think there are two ways to look at it:īuilding a working space plane is pretty exceptional.
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