Other test articles and remains of other Buran shuttles are scattered all across Russia and Kazakhstan which other adventures have also found.įor more rocket planes such as the STS Space Shuttle or X-37B check out Star Core's Rocket Replicas. Some adventures have explored some of the abandoned hangers in the Cosmodrone and have found K2 Pitchka as well as another test article Buran slowly rotting away. Today you can see a Test Bed Article Buran OK-M on display at the Baikonour Cosmodrone as well the OK-GLI Buran in the Speyer Technik Museum in Germany, which flew around testing its jet engines. The second Shuttle called K2 Ptichka (Little Bird) was 96% complete when the program was cancelled and K3 was at least 50% complete. The K1 Buran (meaning Snowstorm) was the first of at least five USSR Shuttles to be produced. Both craft ended up being placed into storage until 2002 when the hanger they were stored in collapsed due to poor maintenance which tragically killed the workers trying to repair the roof as well as destroying the only flown Buran and last Energia rocket. Afterwards the Energia and Buran never launched again as the Soviet Union collapsed which meant there was barely any money to launch such an expensive vehicle. The second and final launch was on the 15th November 1988 launching the Buran Shuttle into space before the shuttle landed back at the Cosmodrome just over 2 hours later. The Shuttle showed that a spaceplane has some disadvantages. Reactivating these programs would be enormously expensive at this point. Both projects have ended, and the orbiters have gone to museums (or have been destroyed). First launch took place in 1987 when the Energia launched the Polyus space craft into orbit (except it did not get into orbit as Poylus rotated 180 degress and de-orbited by mistake). Buran and the American Space Shuttles will not fly again. However, the Energia only ever launched twice. The Energia was the USSR's only Super Heavy launch vehicle to take cargo into orbit (as the N1 Moon Rocket failed all four attempts).
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