A city researcher admires the last remaining Soviet space shuttle in the hangar of the Baikonur launch site (Kazakhstan)
In the dusty hangar in the steppes of Kazakhstan, one of the last remnants of the Cold War space race rests - the Soviet space shuttle. For the USA and the USSR, space became a field of tough competition, as both countries tried to get ahead of each other with the help of innovative missions and new technologies.
The remnants of this rivalry are still lurking at the Baikonur cosmodrome (Kazakhstan), which was previously the starting point of the space launches of the USSR and Russia until the creation of a new Vostochny cosmodrome. The first Soviet space shuttle made only one unmanned flight and crashed to the ground. However, the second shuttle and the test mock-up are still intact, as if frozen in time, being the proud achievement of a country that no longer exists.
Space Shuttle
Soviet shuttle development began in 1976 after Leonid Brezhnev learned that the United States was creating the first reusable space shuttle. Military leaders viewed American technology as military, so they called the model a “space bomber”.
Shuttle with test model
The Soviet shuttle was called the Buran. When he appeared, he was like an American colleague. There is nothing surprising in this, because it was created on the basis of the schemes of the United States, mined by the KGB.
But the USA was in the lead when in 1981 they launched the first space shuttle. After 7 years of the USSR launches Buran in an unmanned flight, sending it into orbit in remote control. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the project moved to a new Russian federal space agency, which effectively halted the program.
Rear View
The second Soviet space shuttle was called “The Tempest”, which was left orphaned at the Baikonur cosmodrome. One of the test models became a tourist attraction in Moscow and was demonstrated in a pair of Gorky for two decades, until it moved to the VDNH park. Another test model is located in the Speyer Museum (Germany).
