space plane
The idea of a space plane, a spacecraft that could land and fly like an airplane, existed long before America’s reusable Space Shuttle project. Even during the Second World War, German designers proposed a project for the cosmospheric bomber “Silbervogel” (“silver bird”). It looked like modern hypersonic gliders (The name given to ballistic missiles whose warheads have active maneuverability in the atmosphere and rise back into space to confuse missile defenses, including aerodynamic forces. Examples: Chinese DF-ZF, American Black Eagle, Russian Avangard) – It took off with a rocket, entered the atmosphere, rose again using the wings, fell again, and this was repeated several times. According to the designers’ plans, this space-atmospheric bomber could drop bombs on New York and then land in Japan.
However, as the post-war analysis of the project draft showed, the “silver bird” was clearly not suitable for hypersonic flight and could crash at the first re-entry. In the early 1960s, the Americans tried to implement the same idea in the Dyna-Soar project. It reached the final stages of design and was quite realistic, but pointless – an intercontinental rocket is cheaper and simpler than an orbital bomber. Therefore, the “dinosaur” was also abandoned, and future space plane projects were much more peaceful.
The Space Shuttle originated as part of a large-scale American space expansion program. It included the construction of bases on the Moon, flights to Mars, and the creation of a near-Earth orbital station where regular spacecraft flights were required.
Since launching them with expendable rockets would be too expensive, Lockheed engineers proposed a space launch system that would launch only the fuel tank. It was located on the side of the rocket and supplied fuel to the propulsion engines.
After the success of the Apollo program, the United States decided to abandon grandiose plans for space exploration, leaving only two projects left: the station and the shuttle. They decided to start with this, but due to military requirements the Shuttle had to be significantly enlarged compared to the original plans. The cargo bay expanded large enough to accommodate a bus, but launch required two powerful side-mounted solid rocket boosters that could be recovered after being dumped into the ocean.
As a result, the American shuttle failed to fulfill its main mission – to reduce the cost of space launches. Although reusable, oxygen-hydrogen engines were so complex that they required complete disassembly and inspection by mechanics before each flight. The final cost of the mission could be up to $1.5 billion. The development of the project cost the budget 10 billion dollars at the prices of those years.
A replica of the Space Shuttle?
The similarity between Buran and the Space Shuttle is obvious, and Soviet designers do not hide the fact that it arose as a direct response to the American program. “The need to create an indigenous, reusable space system to deter a potential enemy was identified during analytical studies carried out by the Institute of Applied Mathematics of the USSR Academy of Sciences and NPO Energia in the period 1971-75. “Technology for Youth” 1999 No. 2
“It has been demonstrated that by operationalizing the reusable Space Shuttle system, the United States can gain a decisive military advantage in launching a preemptive nuclear missile attack on vital facilities on our nation’s soil.” – said Vyacheslav Filin, deputy chief designer of the system.
A typical Cold War misunderstanding between the USSR and the USA arose. Soviet experts considered the Shuttle economically unfeasible and that its cargo carrying capacity exceeded America’s needs many times over. From this, experts concluded that the main goal of the program was the full-scale deployment of weapons, including atomic bombs, into space. The American shuttle was created under the auspices of the civilian organization NASA, but in fact it sometimes performed military missions, such as launching reconnaissance satellites. But the Americans never (at least according to declassified documents) planned to use it as an attack system. The most “aggressive” use of the design is the ability to steal Soviet orbital stations by putting them in “trunks”.
As a result, in 1976, USSR Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov approved the mission statement of the reusable space system; accordingly, its capacity had to be the same as that of the Shuttle. NPO Energia, the developer of the launch vehicle for future orbital aircraft, immediately took the final American layout of the system as a basis. But speaking at one of the meetings of designers, academician Valentin Glushko resolutely stated:
“What we certainly won’t do is copy the American shuttle.”
Buran can indeed be considered an exact copy of the shuttle in concept, but the implementation turned out to be fundamentally different. First of all, the main oxygen-kerosene engines of the Soviet orbital aircraft were located not on the central (second) stage (the Shuttle had a tank there). Basically, this design was chosen because the RD-0120 engine has a thrust of 155.6 tons at sea level, while the American RS-25 has a thrust of 181.4 tons. In addition, the Soviet orbital aircraft turned out to be heavier than the American aircraft (due to the lag in engineering skills and materials science). Therefore, it needed four main engines instead of three, and there was no longer room for that in the aircraft. But Glushko did not consider this a tragedy: the Energia launch vehicle became an independent launch vehicle and could be used not only to launch Buran, but also for other missions.
Soviet designers quickly realized that they would not be able to replicate large solid-fuel boosters in the near future. Instead, they decided to use liquid fuels powered by the well-studied oxygen-kerosene fuel pair. For this purpose, they created the RD-170, the most powerful liquid rocket engine in history, with a thrust of approximately 8 tons, but this was still not enough compared to the 15 tons of thrust of solid-fuel boosters. As a result, they were placed in groups of four around the central stage at Energia.
At the same time, these blocks could not withstand falling either into the ocean or into the ground, but in the future the designers planned to come up with a recovery system for engines from fallen boosters.
From a certain angle, “Buran” turned out to be more “advanced” than its American counterpart. The first and only test flight on 15 November 1988 was fully automated, including landing on the runway, which was considered a difficult task for drones until the 21st century. The landing of the Space Shuttle was done manually only.
Is there a need to revive Buran?
Soviet designers rejected the idea of reusability, but in other respects the Buran was successful: It was indeed capable of launching a Shuttle-like payload into orbit, along with humans. Modern rockets launch either a manned spacecraft of minimum payload or an unmanned “truck.” For this reason, in unmanned launches, the payload must be completely autonomous, that is, a spacecraft. The American shuttle and possibly the Soviet Buran carried any cargo of suitable size and an “assembly team” into orbit. This was a decisive advantage that can be easily demonstrated with two examples.
First, American astronauts placed the Hubble telescope into orbit, which needed to be repaired after launch. When it turned out that the telescope was assembled incorrectly, the astronauts flew to Hubble again, docked with it and installed correction equipment, which is clearly impossible with the help of Soyuz or Crew Dragon. Second, the Shuttle carried the ISS’s lattice elements into orbit, which were then assembled by hand. They accommodate a significant part of the payload, and placing them inside classical isolated habitable modules will be problematic.
But it makes sense to consider the advantages of space systems only in relation to their cost, and here the answer is obvious. The decision to create Soviet orbital aircraft was made only in the context of the Cold War and a possible nuclear war with NATO. The space shuttle was considered too expensive even by the United States, and Buran was unlikely to be cheaper. Roscosmos also makes the same assessment.
“The idea of a reusable ship was nice, of course, but it only works if there is a large flow of cargo up and down. As we see from current programs, there is no such need. The Americans used the same reusable system, the Shuttles, to build the station. But according to their calculations, it is recommended to launch 50 or more such ships per year. “There are not that many launches now,” he said. report “socialbites.ca” Sergei Krikalev, general director of Roscosmos for manned space programs.
SpaceX’s Starship can be considered the ideological successor to the shuttles. Elon Musk believes that both stages will be reusable, and replacing hydrogen with methane will significantly reduce the cost of maintaining reusable engines and tanks. It was Starship that was chosen by NASA as the system to land humans on the Moon as part of the Artemis program. The development of the system is at an advanced stage, and the second orbital flight tests are planned to be held in November.
“Buran” was an outstanding success of Soviet designers, as well as Shuttle – American. And although both systems were abandoned, their work was not in vain and paved the way for new design solutions.