How did a Soviet space shuttle end up in Germany?

Definitely in the top-3 of best known Buran orbiters, OK-GLI is the only one on display outside of the former USSR, so how did the "pride of Soviet cosmonautics" end up in the small German city of Speyer?

A thread 🧵🧵🧵 As you probably know by now, the Soviets preferred a rather hardware-rich approach in the development of their space shuttle and built a ton of orbiter prototypes (7) to fuck around and, as a consequence, find out.

You might have seen photos of a mysterious Buran orbiter being transported to a museum recently and you're probably wondering which orbiter this is and how it ended up in this situation.

The story is pretty crazy, so here's a rundown. When the Buran program was approved in 1976, the initial order called for a fleet of two orbiters, These constituted the "first series" with NPO Molniya airframe numbers 1.01 and 1.02. (NPO Energia designators 1K and 2K, respectively).

Not quite the right order; the first Buran flight was planned to be uncrewed from the start, continuing the Soviet tradition.

(though cosmonauts did try to lobby the government to fly with crew a couple of months before the flight)

Here's what you need to know. 🧵

https://twitter.com/DKiSAerospace/status/1819878152555876729

The original 1970s schedule assumed two suborbital Energia missions with full scale orbiter mock-ups (this is how OK-M and OK-GLI got their early designators OK-ML1 and OK-ML2 - "Flight Mockup 1" and "-2") and then in 1984 the first flight orbiter would be launched uncrewed.

37 years ago today, the massive Energia rocket flew for the first time and carried an 80 metric tonne black cylinder with the names "Polyus" and "Mir-2" painted on its side.

Here's a rundown on this spacecraft and its (short) flight! The original plan to launch two orbiter mockups on suborbital test flights of the Energia before an orbital flight with a complete Buran orbiter had changed a lot by the early 80s. The suborbital flights were axed and the complete orbiter would fly on the maiden Energia launch.

I'm in the process of compiling a pretty detailed article on every Buran orbiter and full-size test article airframe, but in the meantime I thought I'd do a compressed rundown on every airframe and where it is currently located.

And there's more of them than you'd think! 🧵





0.01 (1M, OK-ML1, OK-M)
The test article was used for static tests at TsAGI, air transportation tests with the VM-T Atlant, delivered to Baikonur in December 1983 and used for interface tests with and without Energia there. Currently at the Baikonur Cosmodrome museum.

35 years ago today, at 6:00 am Moscow time, the first flight orbiter of the Buran program and Energia 1L took to the skies on what would be the orbiter's first and only flight. 10 minutes before launch, the countdown switched to automatic control. At T-51s the azimuthal alignment plate was retracted away from Energia's intertank.

Buran launch anniversary thread Part 3:

In May 1988, Buran is mated to the Energia stack for the first time in the Rocket Assembly and Test Facility (MIK RN) in preparation for the test rollout to the pad.

In the third week of May 1988, the Buran-Energia 1L stack was rolled out to pad 110/37. The May-June pad tests did not include the fueling of the rocket or orbiter.

Part 2:

December 1985, the Myasishchev VM-T Atlant takes off from Zhukovskiy with the first flight orbiter of the Buran program on its back.

After a couple of refueling stops it will land on Baikonur's Yubileyniy airfield on December 11th. After arriving in Baikonur, Buran is demated from the VM-T and rolled into the Orbiter Assembly and Test Facility (MIK OK) for further outfitting and processing,

We're only a week away from the 35th anniversary of Buran's only orbital flight on 15 Nov 1988, which is the perfect time to share the story of the first Buran orbiter in photos, from manufacturing, through the flight, to the destruction of the orbiter.

Let's start in 1983. The airframe of 1K (which is the official designation of the first flight series orbiter, "Buran") was built by NPO Molniya in the Tushino Machine-Building Plant (TMZ) between around 1983 and 1985.

Note the niches for the jet engines in the aft fuselage in the 4th photo.

Buran vs Space Shuttle 🧵🧵🧵

In this thread I'll outline some of the similarities and differences between the Space Shuttle with Energia-Buran, from the basics like size and vehicle configuration to capabilities and subsystems.

I hope you enjoy! The Shuttle uses two Solid Rocket Boosters and 3 main hydrolox engines (RS-25) mounted to the orbiter, Energia-Buran has 4 kerolox boosters (with RD-170 engines) and 4 main hydrolox engines (RD-1020) mounted to the core stage.