Abandoned Soviet hangar photos

<p>Stuff that belong in museums are left to rot. <br>

<a href="http://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/man-noticed-this-abandoned-hangar-but-whats-inside-caught-him-by-surprise/">http://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/man-noticed-this-abandoned-hangar-but-whats-inside-caught-him-by-surprise/</a></p>

<p>It's not a NASA hanger. It very clearly is russian.</p>

<p>At least *our* shuttles are in museums unlike the totally failed russian program.</p>

<p>Indeed, Howard. That was my brain before coffee this morning when I clearly wanted to type "Soviet" but instead typed NASA. </p>

<p>[Title Edited - Moderator]

<p>Pretty interesting, although I found the narrative's repetition rather irritating. I would not called the Russian shuttle system "iconic". Most of us know little about it, and it was a failure. Perhaps it was an "iconic failure"? Urgh.</p>

<p>Winners get to write history ;)</p>

<p>It wasn't until somewhat recently that the Russians even acknowledged their mucho failed N1 rocket and failed attempt to put a man on the Moon.</p>

<p>I'd love to spend about a week in and around that place shooting both stills and video, including with some camera-carrying drones for those impossible interior crane shots. That would be a blast. </p>

They ought to see the inside of my garage.

Interesting, I recall reading one article recently that some ways their equipment was superior due to our rush and budget

constraints. It seemed like a valid article at the time but I can not remember where I read it and it was only 1 article. It is hard sometimes for me to call this space trace since the Earth is 8,000 miles in dieter and they are only a few hundred miles above the surface where there is still a thin atmosphere that orbits will decay and they will fall back to Earth. Certainly not space travel in terms of teaveling significant distances from Earth.

<p>WOW! And WOW!!</p>

<p>This has the same feeling to me as watching "Forbidden Planet" as a kid. I savored every image and read the annoyingly repetitive narrative, wondering, "Will they be able to enter one of the shuttles?" Tantalizing!</p>

<p>I have to smile at the culture of the Russian space program. The Russians are often brutally practical. One photo is particularly interesting -- the first shot of the cockpit. The pilot and copilot seats would appear to be wooden.</p>

<p>God, I would love to see that hanger in person! Matt, maybe we can shoot the facility together!</p>

<p>WOW!</p>

<p>Did they steal America's shuttle design?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I have to smile at the culture of the Russian space program. The Russians are often brutally practical. One photo is particularly interesting -- the first shot of the cockpit. The pilot and copilot seats would appear to be wooden.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If I'm reading the translation of the original page correctly, that shot is of the cockpit of the engineering mockup OK-MT (made for testing purposes), not the real orbiter that's also in the hangar: http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://ralphmirebs.livejournal.com/219949.html ('a few elements are replaced by wooden blocks with the name and weight of the unit.').</p>

<p>You have to wonder how things would have turned out if the USSR had not collapsed. But perhaps it's just as well - the US shuttle was a great achievement, of course, but after 2 disasters in just 135 flights perhaps the simpler and more reliable Soyuz (on which NASA also now depends) was the wiser option.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>Did they steal America's shuttle design?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>No. It was obviously a direct response to the US shuttle, but there are only superficial similarities - e.g. Buran had no main engines in the orbiter, it was attached to a complete disposable rocket rather than a fuel tank with boosters.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I think it's A LOT more than 'superficial similarities'. Perhaps it's because they didn't have or couldn't duplicate the shuttle's RS-25 main engine so they adapted the entire propulsion system. And who knows if their 'tile' system would have actually worked during re-entry. </p>

<p>I actually knew the engineer who engineered the windows on their space craft. Just brilliant and his work was original. I imagine their tiles would have been just fine. For us the tiles were a cost cutting measure and had their problems.<br>

He was also given the project to redesign the cover on Lenin's coffin after they discovered the original had developed defects.</p>

<p>"At least *our* shuttles in museums unlike the totally failed Russian program",<br>

well, "totally failed Russian program" still delivering NASA astronauts to space station.<br>

It took two disasters to shut down NASA program. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>I think it's A LOT more than 'superficial similarities'. Perhaps it's because they didn't have or couldn't duplicate the shuttle's RS-25 main engine so they adapted the entire propulsion system. And who knows if their 'tile' system would have actually worked during re-entry.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, certainly the overall shape and size was more than 'inspired' by the STS! Probably they saw no reason to go with something different just for the sake of it, given that they wanted similar capabilities and the aerodynamics of the US design were proven. But internally they made quite distinct engineering decisions. Apart from reasons of national prestige, Buran was built to counter the perceived military threat of the US STS (which did of course fly a series of classified missions for the DoD). The Energia rocket that got it into orbit could also be configured to fly completely independently, so the Buran programme also gave them a general purpose heavy lifter. It was actually used to launch a prototype orbital weapons platform that would have been armed with a giant frikkin' laser, though unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately for us) while Energia did its job without a hitch, the platform's guidance system malfunctioned and pointed it straight back at the ground.</p>

<p>The Soviet liquid fuel engine technology was very advanced, and a descendant of the Energia main engine is still in use, even powering the first stage of the current US Atlas V rocket. The US approach of sticking big engines in the orbiter also had some significant disadvantages. Although the engines could be refurbished and re-used, this was a long and expensive process, while for most of the mission (i.e. after orbit was reached) the engines were just dead mass. The USSR were apparently behind in the solid fuel technology that powered the STS booster rockets, though their all liquid fuel approach gave them engines that could be throttled back - the US SRBs had no more control than a firework after ignition, and tragically the design used until Challenger was fatally flawed.</p>

<p>Buran would also have add other advantages, including a bigger payload and crew capacity, longer endurance in orbit (30 days) and the ability to fly completely unmanned, as its first and only flight demonstrated. The tiles, incidentally, worked very well - only 8 of 38,000 were lost in this mission. They also planned to fit jet engines to the orbiter for atmospheric manoeuvering after re-entry.</p>

<p>It's a shame that the only surviving Buran actually designed for spaceflight is in that hangar, and not in a museum. It's apparently owned by Kazakhstan, and I don't imagine there's a budget to do anything with it. However, one of the atmospheric test vehicles (equivalent to the Enterprise prototype on the Intrepid in NYC) is well-preserved and on display in a German museum: http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran</p>

<p>I remember the whole space race, Sputnik, hiding under my desk at school to prepare for atomic war, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, preparing for war in Europe, the whole cold war. It was a scary period in our history; frankly makes ISIS rather tame by comparison. The space race embodied space exploration on the one hand. But often unspoken it also represented national pride as well as military prowess. America's landing on the moon was payback for Sputnik.</p>

<p>We should continue with space exploration and science at a much higher level then we are currently. It's unfortunate that Obama killed so many programs and put NASA on a diet.</p>

<p>As an aside, I wonder how many high tech cameras, films and digital sensors came out of the need for imaging in space and for military surveillance? We civilians really have benefited from these discoveries.</p>

<p>I thought all those space programs were waste of money, but change my mind when GPS and sat TV came, it paid off after all.</p>

<p>Worth correcting is that the text accompanying the photos states:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>NASA Space Program was recently shut down...<br /></p>

</blockquote>

<p>NASA's Space Shuttle program was ended indeed, other space programs (including unmanned like New Horizons mission to Pluto) are still funded and going.</p>

XM radio, satellite maps of the land on yahoo and

gioogle, land management for farming, Teflon,

temperature and other measurements of land and sea

for climate change research, military surveillance of

enemy movement and drone operation although this

probably done through military budgets, better

communication worldwide, medical research, and just

plain scientific research of space that expands human

knowledge and understanding of the universe. It's a

worthwhile enterprise. Fortunately private investors

are willing to get into it and pick up some of the

governmental slack.

<p>I was really disappointed to read that the freeze-dried 'Astronaut' ice cream that every science museum seems to sell was only taken into space once, and apparently proved too crumbly to be practical in zero gravity!: http://narrative.ly/stories/aborted-launch-and-meteoric-rise-astronaut-ice-cream/ On the other hand, NASA and the Russians really do use those 'space pens'.</p>

<p>As I understand it, the Russians said why use invent a space pen? We just use a pencil.</p>

<p>I was also disappointed to read that the story about NASA spending a vast amount of money on developing the Space Pen, while the Russians just used pencils, isn't accurate either. In fact both countries have used pencils throughout the short history of space travel, and mechanical pencils (with a thick lead that helps reduce the risk of breakage) are still used on the ISS by both countries, together with marker pens (Sharpies these days) and the famous Space Pen. The latter wasn't developed by the US Space Program but by a private company, Fisher, which offered its pressurised ink pen to NASA for testing in the Apollo era. It was accepted and flown, then shamelessly marketed back on Earth as THE Space Pen. The Russians bought their own batch from Fisher in 1969. Another pen, a Duro felt-tip marker, was not as successfully marketed but played a crucial role on the Moon - Buzz Aldrin poked it into the ascent engine circuit breaker after the original switch had snapped off, allowing them to take off and go home.<br>

http://www.spaceflownartifacts.com/flown_writing_instruments.html<br>

http://www.quora.com/Why-do-astronauts-use-pencil-instead-of-pen-in-space</p>