Thread by @ClosertoSpace

[Thread] - 🇬🇧

31 years. It's been 31 years that the most complex vehicle in history has made its one and only flight, becoming at the same time the most expensive launch in history...
Let's talk about this incredible flight!
(Photo credits at the end)

We are at the beginning of October 1988. It has been more than 17 years since the Energiya/Buran program was started, and it's finally getting ready to become real! The country has spent several billion rubles and more than 6 million people have worked on it...

This program wasn't simple. This isn't the purpose of this thread, but before being launched, Buran has been tested and transported. At the beginning of October, it's finally assembled with its launcher, Energiya, and is about to make its first flight...

On October 10th, Buran's hangar gates open early in the morning, and the huge transporter of the old N1 lunar rocket carries the super-heavy launcher to the pad. The transfer will last in total 6h before arriving on the launching area.

Then, the gigantic hydraulic arm of the platform puts the 2600 tons of Energiya and Buran vertically on the pad... Surrounded by gigantic 250m high lightning rods, Energiya seems almost small!

Yet, the second most powerful launcher in history (after the N1) remains very impressive, and impressed the engineers and military who comes to admire it...
The launch date is 26 October 1988.

On the evening of the 26th, everything is ready for the launch of Buran. But, 56 seconds before the launch, Energiya's onboard computer blocks the countdown due to a malfunction of the azimuthal guidance system... The launch is postponed!

On the evening of November 14, the Baikonur cosmodrome is bustling with activity. Indeed, it is at 20h that the launcher must liftoff! Unfortunately, various problems caused engineers to spend the entire night before launching the Soviet Space Shuttle.

Two hours before the launch, the staff leaves the pad by the 200m long toboggan that leads them to the bunker near the launcher. They will take the latest pictures to date of a Soviet space shuttle on a launcher at the vertical...

Gradually the tanks of the gigantic launcher are filled (liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen, kerosene ...), and the Buran systems are started slowly.
But there is a problem. At this moment, the pad is immersed in a huge snowstorm...

Nevertheless, Buran was designed to take off regardless of the ground conditions (it was military-oriented...), winds over 80 km/h will not prevent liftoff, set at 6 am in the morning, Moscow time.

Note the irony, Buran (meaning "blizzard in the steppe") liftoff in the middle of a blizzard in the Kazakh steppe...
At T-14 seconds, the 4 central engines are ignited, joined 10 seconds later by the 4 engines on the side boosters, then, Energiya liftoff!

Energiya rises in a deafening thunder, which the controllers hear and feel in their bunkers. Very quickly, it disappears in the clouds to reappear enlightened by the dawn above the clouds, direction space!

Atmospheric flight is followed by millions of television viewers in the USSR, but also by the three fighter jets, which are responsible for monitoring the launch.
After 4 minutes of flight, Buran is already more than 50km from the ground...

8 minutes after liftoff, the boosters separate in pairs. One pair contained flight measuring instruments instead of recovery parachutes. The content of the second pair remains unknown, we don't know if there were parachutes or not...

After separating from the central stage of Energiya (which will be found intact in the Pacific), Buran is officially in orbit!
Buran becomes the most capable shuttle ever launched, able to go into orbit completely automatically.

When Buran is released, his cargo bay is facing downwards, allowing the Earth to be filmed with its on-board camera. Thereafter, it will realize its first orbital maneuver, which will increase its apogee of about fifty kilometers.

A few minutes later, Buran will orient his heat shield towards the Sun, so as not to overheat the cockpit and the cargo hold, although not inhabited.
You can see below the exact flight plan of the shuttle, including the signatures of officials, on the right.

About an hour after liftoff, Buran is preparing for a major test, opening his cargo bay and deploying his two robotic arms.
Until then, all the data collected from the flight seems to show that it behaves exactly as expected...

The gigantic cargo bay of the shuttle opens, revealing as seen here a space station module model (~ 8 tons), and its two robotic arms (~ 1 ton). On the images, the docking module at the front of the shuttle wasn't present during the flight.

At that time, it was possible to test the cargo doors, which serve as thermal radiators.
The results will be convincing, the shuttle dissipating enough heat for a crew to survive.

Another important element tested was the ground communication antenna, located between the two gears in the heat shield. You can see it here on the bottom of the shuttle.

Finally, one of the major tests of this flight, the deployment of the two robotic arms of the shuttle, which deployed fully automatically, and simulated the release of a load, and its manipulation.
All his operations were done without human intervention.

Buran will also perform various docking trials (dummies, no ships have docked with it) by simulating a rendez-vous with a Soyuz, and with another Soviet shuttle.
After more than 45 minutes of testing, the cargo bay was closed.

At around 8:20, Buran ingnited its orbital engines one last time to get on a re-entry trajectory. Yes, this flight was quite short... The control room decided to test an atmospheric re-entry of very long duration to test the capacities of the shuttle.

At 8:40, as the shuttle flies over Brazil, we lose all contact with Buran. The plasma of the atmosphere around it is so powerful that communications are impossible.
During 30 minutes of blackout, it's the on board computer that will choose the actions to perform.

And they are very numerous. Buran has to choose its airport, between two main ones (Yasny and Baikonur), and the two emergency airports (in Crimea and Vladivostok (like of Istres in France for the american one)). At first, it chooses to land at Yasny.

To go there, the shuttle "skies" on the atmosphere. it turns its wings in one direction, then in the other, by changing its pitch. It will do so for about twenty minutes, before finally deciding to land in Baikonur. It will make a 15 ° turn...

... This will cause many thermal tiles to be torn off by the power of the atmosphere (it will take more than 5G). Nevertheless, unlike the American shuttle, it was designed to withstand the loss of about 1500 thermal tiles. In total, 23 will fall.

Buran is almost entirely covered with tiles. They serve to protect it, but beneath them a layer of resistant resin was applied, allowing it to resist to the loss of its tiles. Columbia, will not have this chance unfortunately...

During the rest of the atmospheric reentry, Buran will lose many more thermal tiles. But the control center doesn't know anything. It is only after 30 minutes and 30 seconds that Buran will exit atmospheric plasma and receive data from the Earth.

The control center then finds a shuttle flying to Mach 10, towards Baikonur. Immediately, the fighter planes that will follow the shuttle take off.
On the ground it's an immense relief, this reentry being one of the roughest that a spaceship had to undergo...

The shuttle now maneuvers like a hypersonic plane into the atmosphere, there is not enough plasma to be able to "ski" on it.
The fighter planes finally manage to see it, when Buran arrives over the USSR at 9:15 am.

From his cockpit, a pilot will film the return of the shuttle to Baikonur.
The last kilometers are perfect, but the shuttle seems to go too far to land on the Baikonur runway...

Indeed, it must still lose speed to land. For this, it must make one or more loops above the airport. But to the engineers' surprise, it suddenly changed course a few kilometers from the runway...

Finally, it will fly over the track before making his loop behind it! The on-board computer avoided Buran from crashing. Indeed, if it had land immediately, it would have had too much speed! (despite the reentry of 30 minutes...)

Finaly, Buran will line up with the track and make its final approach by losing two more thermal tiles, which will eventually be recovered. Buran will touch the ground with a slight shift between its right wheel and his left wheel.

It will spend several seconds rolling on its rear wheels, the 90 tons of the shuttle resting on only for tires, then the front of the shuttle lowered, the parachutes unfolded, and the shuttle will stop, more than 45 minutes after leaving space.

The difference between the two wheels when Buran landed was due to the onboard computer, which didn't take into account that the plate protecting the front wheel opened to the right, resulting in a weight of over 500kg on this side...

The onboard computer decided to compensate for this by leaning slightly to the left, which explains this difference.
Even with a weight of 500kg on one side, Buran remains unruffled, and will land even 1 second ahead of schedule!

It is said in the control room that no human pilot could have made a more graceful and precise landing than this one. The pride of the engineers is immense, 17 years of their lives to finally see the first flight, they hope, of a long list...

The atmospheric reentry of 30 minutes will have left marks on the shuttle. First, they find that one of the types of tiles used has been burned all over its upper surface, giving it this brown color. We clearly see the delimitation of these tiles:

As soon as the shuttle landed, the military rushed to secure it, and to perform a test exit cosmonauts, to prepare for the next flight Buran, which should have been crewed...

Then it's time for the ground crews to take a picture of themselves in front of their big 90-ton baby...
At this moment, the whole country is amazed by this first successful flight of the new Soviet shuttle!

Dozens of people have seen the landing, including... The French president! Arriving in Concorde the day before, he witnessed this first flight.
Buran will then be brought back to its hangar to be rehabilitated for its next flight scheduled for the next year.

The heat shield will have suffered. Buran has a wing with a hole and the vertical stabilizer was also damaged...

After its restoration, Buran will be transported to France, at the Paris Air Show, to be presented as the centerpiece of the event. It will fly over the Champs-Elysées, framed by the "Patrouille de France", before returning to the USSR for its second flight.

Once back in the USSR, Buran will be installed on the third Energiya, ready for its second flight... But. Buran will have cost a total of 16.4 billion rubles plus 11 billion rubles for the development of other equipment (Energiya, An-225, etc...)

This exorbitant cost led, among other things, to the fall of the USSR in 1991. The program was paused until today, no one wanting to put a definitive mark on this huge program.
The facilities were no longer maintained...

The inevitable happened. The shuttle hangar collapsed in May 2002, forever destroying the only Buran shuttle ever to fly into space.
Buran, now with broken wings, was dismantled and dumped, destroying any hope of seeing it again someday.

Today the shed is rebuilt. What's left of the program is abandoned sheds, abandoned shuttles, and an exorbitant bill.
The first flight of Buran will have cost in total about 8.2 billion dollars...

That's all there was to say about Buran's orbital flight. All the photos used here come from the site Buran.ru that I can only oblige you to go to see (if you have Google Translate).
So, happy birthday Буран!

[End of thread]

@nextspaceflight For next year I want you to create a notification on Next Spaceflight to celebrate its birthday :p