Did The Soviets Build A Better Space Shuttle? The Buran Story

On November 15, 1988, the world learned that the Soviet Union also had their own space shuttle. It had been secretly under development for well over a decade and it had cost the Soviets billions to build it. Several of the spacecraft were in various stages of construction. But the Soviet shuttle, named the Buran, would only ever launch once. Its development had largely been driven by the need to respond to the perceived military potential of the NASA Space Shuttle.

When the Buran was first launched, the world speculated that it would be used to build Soviet space stations or even assemble spacecraft for a manned mars mission. But as the Soviet Union began to collapse, funding for the Buran program was limited and eventually eliminated.

There’s no denying that the Buran looks very similar to the Space Shuttle. But in many ways, the Buran was quite different from the NASA Space Shuttle. The Buran orbiter didn’t have integrated main engines. Almost all of its lifting power was provided by a separate super-heavy rocket called Energia, which consisted of a core stage and 4 liquid-fueled boosters. Unlike the Space shuttle, which was a single system, the Buran orbiter, and its lifting rockets were actually two separate systems.

While the Shuttle, with its integrated engines, was more reusable, in practice, it required intensive maintenance between launches, which offset a lot of this advantage. But once in space, the Space Shuttle’s integrated engines no longer served a purpose. So, for most of the Shuttle’s mission, it was forced to haul around thousands of pounds of dead weight. Without integrated engines, the Buran could carry slightly more payload than the American Space Shuttle. But the Energia rocket could launch by itself, without the Buran attached. That meant it could carry external payloads into space, and could launch an astounding 100 tons. From the outset, the Buran was also capable of fully automated flight, meaning it could be launched, put into orbit and returned back to earth without any crew on board.

In the final days of the Soviet Union, when it was clear that the American shuttle had no meaningful military potential, the Soviet military no longer wanted anything to do with the Buran. The Soviet space community was left with a spacecraft that was expensive, complex, and largely without a real purpose. #Buran #SpaceRace #Spaceships #SovietSpaceProgram

Further Research:

We highly recommend the book ‘Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle’ by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis. The book was an extremely useful resource in researching this video. You will not find a more detailed or comprehensive look on the Buran program, covering everything from the program’s conception to its legacy:

Thanks for watching! Please Like, Comment and Subscribe!

[MustardChannel]

Thanks for watching! Just wanted to note a correction at 5:32 in the video. I refer to the Space Shuttle's Solid Rocket Boosters as 'expendable' when I should have said 'reusable'.

[evilbabai]

The way automatic landing happened was a big surprise for a ground control and they even considered to shot down Buran when it went off course... But it turned out autopilot just picked a more optimal route because of weather conditions. Even the engineers who build it were impressed.

[VardhanShrivastava]

I feel sad for Buran :( That poor thing should be in a museum.

[punkyskunk]

I know this is an old video, but I had to point out how there was no mention of the AN-225 being designed to carry the Buran.

[mayoite]

buran was sad, but energia is an outright tragedy. 100 tons back in the 80s.... imagine where we might have been now

[BraidenRobson]

That outro though with the animated rocket launch and synthwave in the background

[youtubeusrname]

As someone who normally has a slightly different perspective on everything USSR-related (born & raised in St Petersburg, Russia), I absolutely loved the video. Both production quality and the content itself are top notch. Please keep it up, you're doing amazing things.

[theunheardprophet]

For everyone still wondering where the Buran went to - you can visit it in a german museum situated in Speyer and I highly recommed doing so if you're nearby.

[qdaniele]

RIP An-225 😢
Another part of the Buran program (and amazing piece of aerospace history) lost forever

[ArmchairMagpie]

I remember watching the Buran launch and landing live in a TV in storefront during DDR times. It was actually an important event enough to serve as a major topic in the Eastern bloc for a while.

[leokimvideo]

The space shuttle did do quite a few 'secret' missions, I thought it's main purpose was to get parts of the ISS in place.

[umot]

I was in the first grade, I remember my class were taken outside our school in Leninsk (now Baykonur) to see the launch of this Buran. But it was completely cloudy, so we didn't see anything...

[aureusknighstar]

"Buran Energia" sounds more baddass for a name than a simple "Space Shuttle"

[yellowked]

It's "Enérgia", not "Energía".
Буран (pronunciation in the video is correct -- Boo-run, lol) means "blizzard" or "snowstorm". Энергия (Energia) means, obviously, "energy".

The wreckage of Buran you can see on a river barge at the end of the video is not the real one, it's a dummy, a model. It was restored, and now you can visit it as the Buran museum in Moscow's VVC (VDNKh). The one that actually made the flight was destroyed in an accident in the early 2000s.

My father was one of the military officers managing communication before the launch and during the flight. He spent a few days at work without leaving, it was madly intense launch.

When Buran was about to land, it suddenly changed the direction of flying and landed from another end of the landing strip. The automatic landing system correctly decided the wind direction will be more favorable this way :3 But that was a surprise for everyone.

[_Wiseguy]

Another interesting thing about the the Buran is it also spawned the creation of the world's largest cargo plane.

[alexanderbenkendorf]

Wow! As a Russian i expected something like "evil russki-soviets made a big cheap shuttle ripoff but stupid as they are they never used it properly, wa-ha-ha". But i was more than pleasantly surprised with the logical explanations.
You, sir, gained another subscriber and maybe a fan!

[alexanderakh]

A unique masterpiece, not only the Energia and Buran itself, but even the autopilot, that upon return without any human intervention changed the pre-programmed landing path for a better one in the actual weather conditions...

[The-Average-Noob]

"Let's build it!"
*It's the best space technology of our century!*
"Nice, now scrap it
Its too expensive"

[MrSomebodyStrange]

My grandfather was one of the engineer working on Buran's engines. He was very passionate about it and very pissed off that the program didn't have a chance to become functional until his last days.

[constantlycurious]

You are killing it with the animations! Bravo!