30 years ago, the Soviet spacecraft "Buran" made its first and last flight.
The Buran spacecraft is both the pride and the curse of Soviet cosmonautics.
Pride - because they could, they did. And the most powerful rocket "Energia", and the shuttle itself - smart, beautiful, capable of flying, unlike the American shuttle, in a fully automatic mode. Moreover, he was able to rescue the crew at any stage of the flight, which the United States did not manage to organize on its own shuttles.
A curse because this project dried up the space program of the USSR and became one of the most painful blows to the economy of the then country.
At the prices of the beginning of 1992, 16.4 billion rubles were spent on Buran. At BAM, a little more - 17.7 billion. Only now BAM is working, revitalizing the Siberian and Far Eastern regions. And the money invested in Buran seemed to evaporate in an airless space.
I once argued about this with Igor Volk, the famous test pilot, cosmonaut, commander of the "Wolf Pack" - a detachment of pilots who taught "Buran" to fly (Igor Petrovich passed away last year, he was 79 years old).
- You do not understand! - Wolf was angry. - "Buran" made it possible to equip thousands of factories with new modern technology. Has given impetus to the development of new industries!
It's like that. But the end of the 80s came, and after them the poor 90s. And new space technologies were not needed. I remember how in the 2000s I walked along the dull, dilapidated corridors of the famous institute, where they came up with unique materials for the tiles that were not afraid of plasma, which were pasted over "Buran" …
Promotional video:
From left to right: Oleg Kononenko, Anatoly Levchenko, Alexander Shchukin, Rimantas Stankevicius.
Space weapon
Buran, of course, is an attempt to respond to the American Space Shattle program.
In Moscow in the 70s of the twentieth century, they nervously watched the development of the US space program and, of course, assumed the most unpleasant thing - the use of shuttles for war. The Americans were going to build an entire fleet of shuttles and wanted them to scurry into orbit and from orbit with the frequency of cruise ships - up to 60 launches and landings a year. What for? The shuttle's carrying capacity is under 30 tons. What kind of cargo will they carry to space and back? Nuclear weapons? Will they not steal Soviet military vehicles?
By the way, these fantasies were unexpectedly embodied in the plot of the recent feature film Salyut-7. Who looked - remember. The scriptwriters decided that the cosmonauts had to fix the Soviet orbital station as soon as possible, because the shuttle launched by the US was already flying to steal the Salute, hiding it in the cargo hold …
We now know that the Americans built only six shuttles. Two of them died along with their crews - in 1986 during takeoff and in 2003 during landing. And in 2011, the program was completely closed - it was too expensive (launches had already cost $ 500 million), dangerous and ineffective. By the end of the 80s, we built two flight ships.
“In 1988, when it was decided to send the Buran on its maiden flight, I got the impression that the top wanted it to end unsuccessfully,” Igor Volk told me.
Why? So much money has been spent …
- It was then the easiest way to close the program. I'm sure no one was going to create a reusable space system in those years. Valentin Glushko (at that time the general designer of NPO Energia - Ed.) Was making the Energia launch vehicle. Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky (general designer of NPO Molniya. - Ed.) - one of the types of load for this rocket - Buran. The ship's aviation concept did not coincide with those of Glushko. There was no system. "Buran" was developed, but cargoes for it were not. Not even a technical assignment was issued for a single satellite that could be launched from the Buran.
The shuttle flight was window dressing
A necessary digression. Many now admire the ability of Elon Musk's Falcon 9 rockets to return the first stages to Earth for a re-launch. Back in the 80s of the last century, Soviet Energia was designed so that it could be launched multiple times.
“The first and only flight of the Buran in 1988 was a show,” Wolf cut hard. - The control system with which he flew completely did not correspond to what was necessary for human flights. It was not by chance that he made only two orbits, although at first it was planned that "Buran" would stay in space for a day. I am afraid that in this case, the automation would not have been able to land him.
However, there is another opinion about the flight of "Buran" - engineers. The Americans landed the shuttle by hand. Therefore, the crews always had two pilots. Already in the 80s, our system was able to control complex equipment automatically. During the flight, "Buran" got into severe weather conditions, under heavy wind. Communication was lost for some time, on Earth they even thought to undermine the secret object. But the automation turned the ship and then brought it exactly to the runway of the Baikonur cosmodrome. True, just in case, the landing ship was accompanied by the MiG-25 fighter-interceptor Magomed Tolboev …
Wolf Pack
The fate of the first pilots who were recruited to teach the Buran to fly seem very strange and fatal. Test pilots began to be recruited in 1978. Igor Volk was appointed commander of the group - he had already taken part in the tests of the Soviet winged spaceplane "Spiral".
- The group was created at the Flight Research Institute (LII) in Zhukovsky. My deputy Tolya Levchenko agreed to enter it without any reservations, - recalled Volk. - Then Oleg Kononenko came from LII. They gave me a hate about him - he's a helicopter pilot, not a fighter. And I thought: the main thing is that Oleg had a king in his head.
The rest turned out to be more difficult. Of the 500 pilots who applied for the Buran, only nine passed the medical examination. Moreover, some of the applicants were generally written off from flight work after it. Therefore, experienced testers were not very eager to pass the commission - they could have lost what they had.
And the second reason: the guys did not understand when the Buran would fly, they were afraid that they would be removed from testing other types of aircraft.
But you persuaded to join the group of two more aces - Stankevichius and Shchukin …
- Rimantas Stankevicius was a combat pilot, participated in the military conflict with Israel - he flew on Arab planes. He was also very musical in nature - he played the saxophone, accordion and clarinet. Alexander Shchukin was a kind of original. He was fond of the frequency of sound. He had such a rumor that he heard any false note.
The first five of Buranov's testers both in the eyes and behind the eyes began to be called the "Wolf Pack".
Igor Volk headed a detachment of test pilots who tested Buran. Photo: Alexander MOKLETSOV / RIA Novosti.
We left one by one
- Oleg Kononenko was the first to die. 1980 year. He practiced the takeoff of an aircraft with an increased load from an aircraft carrier. The plane was supposed to take off not vertically, but with a takeoff. At some point, the engine nozzle had to turn in order for the plane to gain altitude. The nozzle did not deploy. The plane fell into the sea. Oleg could have ejected, but he didn't - until the very last moment he tried to save the car, - Wolf told me.
Anatoly Levchenko flew to the Mir station in 1987. This flight was important primarily for doctors: it was necessary to understand whether the pilot, after working in zero gravity, would be able to adequately pilot the Buran (although the systems were automatic, it was assumed that the shuttle could be operated manually). It is clear that the doctors examined the examiner very meticulously. But five months after returning from space, Levchenko developed a brain tumor, the pilot quickly burned out.
Alexander Shchukin died 12 days after Levchenko's death. He performed a training flight in a sports Su-26. The plane entered an almost flat spin and did not come out.
And in 1990, Rimantas Stankevicius crashed near Venice. It was a demonstration flight of the new Su-27 for the Italians. At first, another pilot had to perform it. But he could not fly. Rimantas was urgently summoned. He entered Nesterov's loop at a low altitude, and it was not enough to take the plane out.
Only one of the "pack" was left …
PS According to the plans of that time, after several more test flights in 1994, the first launch of "Buran" with cosmonauts on board was to take place. The ship was planned to dock with the Mir station. Igor Volk was supposed to pilot it.
But in 1992 the Russian Space Agency decided to terminate all work on the program. Another shuttle docked with Mir. In 1995, the US shuttle Atlantis docked at the Russian Mir station.
SIGHT
They were knocked down by the undercover struggle
- Igor Petrovich, pilots, like cosmonauts, are superstitious people. How would you explain such a sudden departure of almost all the testers of the first set? - twice in different years I asked the Wolf.
- In principle, we had to be removed from the LII. We had too different conditions with other pilots of the institute. Uniforms, food, vacation travel at the expense of the state. LII's testers were also well paid. Still, the gap was noticeable. And this, of course, caused both envy and resentment. At some point, an attack was launched on us - they were not allowed to fly. The then head of the Cosmonaut Training Center, Shatalov, believed that we did not need to fly on test flights, we were getting it so well. But we saw that the Buran case was being pushed further and further. And without the sky, we did not want to remain.
In general, a covert struggle began. On "Buran" we were involved less and less, and there were almost no other flights. Just that you were snapped up, and now you are out of the yard in your LII. We felt unnecessary. Such is the mood. And how to fly with such a mood? I think this is one of the reasons why Shchukin and Stankevicius died.
Our country has always been famous for talented and extraordinary people. Some of them were destined to become the engines and souls of their era. Tsiolkovsky, Kibalchich, Sikorsky, Korolev - each of us knows these surnames from school. “Great Minds of Russia” is a series of the Komsomolskaya Pravda Publishing House, which acquaints the reader with the fate of our compatriots who changed scientific thought, who made a revolution at different stages in various fields of scientific knowledge - from mathematics to astronautics.
ALEXANDER MILKUS
