> > I left my last job as a full-time programmer in 1990. A young
> > Russian (who had written some of the software tools used in
> > generating the control programming for Snowflake, the never-used
> > Soviet space shuttle)
> I've seen the Buran (sitting in Gorky Park at the moment). I've never
> heard it called "Snowflake". Is this the same bird? The Buran flew
> once, unmanned, and is now a tourist attraction, rotting away in the
> Russian weather. I have some pictures I can scan if anyone cares.
Buran can be translated as Snowflake - as always words tend to have
different areas of usage/meaning in different languages - as the
English have created tons of words for rain, the russians have some
more versions of snow than other nations :)
AFAIR there have been 3 orbiters build, but only one has ever
been launched for an unmanned flight in the autum of '88. There
have been several projects to use Buran during the '90s, but
due money constrains none became realized.
This flight is also often mixed up with the BOR flighs during
development. The BOR units have been scaled models to test
stuff like the ceramic tiles.
Buran has been a bit shorter than the Shuttle, but the payload
area was bigger and the maximum payload was 20% more mass than
for the US shuttle. Also all pay load bay dimensions have been
a bit bigger ... including an already build adapter to host
pay load modules build acording to the US specifications. This
was ment to gather some transport missions in a competitive
situation (What would have been a great thing to boost space
transportation, as competition among classic rocets proof).
After all, Buran was in some aspects a more advanced version
of the shuttle. The russians did study everything thy could
about the US space plane. Lets just agree that the Buran is
as independant as the Japaneese Kikka has been in '45 :)
(And I don't want to put any doubt on japaneese development
skills).
In fact, I've read that one of the three orbiters is at the
moment leased to NASA for some aerodynamic tests (the 'original'
is displayed in a Moskwa Theme Park).
And last but not least, Buran was AFAIK thename of the this
particular unit.
--
VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
Received on Mon Jun 19 2000 - 14:36:09 BST