RUSSIA plans to reassert itself as a major power in space by resurrecting the Buran space shuttle, a relic of the Soviet era. It will pay for the development programme in part by taking more space tourists like Dennis Tito up to the space station.
Buran was mothballed in the early 1990s by the cash-strapped Russian government. But with the satellite launching business expanding and the International Space Station running behind schedule, Russian space officials think Buran鈥檚 time has come.
Last week Energia, the state company which built Buran, opened its hangars at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to show Western aerospace engineers that Buran is ready and waiting for relaunch. 鈥淭here is a future for this programme,鈥� says Leonid Gurushkin, director of launch operations at Baikonur. 鈥淏uran is the only launcher with a 100-tonne payload,鈥� he says. 鈥淏y extending the length we can carry 200 tonnes. There is no alternative to Buran and I don鈥檛 see any coming.鈥� The largest load possible in a Western launcher is little more than 20 tonnes.
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So far, the giant craft has made only one flight, in 1988. Flying without a crew, it orbited the Earth twice, before landing on a purpose-built strip at Baikonur.
Energia built two Buran shuttles and three main boosters to carry them. While the Soviet Union was crumbling around them, Energia鈥檚 engineers continued to get funding because the military saw Buran as vital to any missile defence system similar to America鈥檚 Star Wars. Buran鈥檚 only imported component was heat-resistant paint.
The Buran project would have employed 30,000 people, and there were plans for up to 30 launches a year. The new Russian government finally cut off funding in 1992.
Now the buildings where Buran was designed and built are being renovated to accommodate Western engineers who come to Baikonur for commercial satellite launches by Russian Proton rockets. The 4.5-kilometre landing strip that was built for Buran was recently refurbished by an American company to land Russian Antonov cargo aircraft, the only planes large enough to carry big satellites.
Like all Russian space vehicles, and the nuclear-armed missiles on which they were based, Buran is assembled horizontally and moved by rail to the launch pad, where it is raised to vertical. The process takes only a few days. All the necessary machinery is still in place at Baikonur, and the hangars are stacked with spare rocket motor parts and fuel tanks. 鈥淭he launcher is powered by hydrogen, oxygen and kerosene,鈥� says Gurushkin. 鈥淭he strap-on boosters are reuseable. They drop back to the airstrip. In fact only the core unit is lost.鈥�
Energia thinks there is now a role for Buran because the International Space Station is creating the need to carry ever larger loads into low orbit. 鈥淲e have been dreaming of this time,鈥� says Gurushkin.
Russia鈥檚 other state space company, Khrunichev, is a rival to Energia, but its director Alexander Kondratiev says he welcomes any opportunity for Russian space engineers to compete with the West on an equal footing. 鈥淯ntil 1990 we couldn鈥檛 tell anyone what we were doing. But now we can show the world our worth.鈥�
Ironically, the money for Buran鈥檚 revival will be coming from the West. In the past 17 months, Russian Protons have launched 17 commercial satellites, earning Russia more than $100 million per launch. And despite NASA鈥檚 opposition, Gurushkin says Russian flights to the space station will soon carry more space tourists. 鈥淲e already have many applications. We are currently considering them all and will take whoever pays most,鈥� he says.
