Buran News

A BAHRAINI court yesterday ordered that a space shuttle (OK-GLI), which has been stranded in Bahrain for over four years, be returned to its Russian owners. The Buran has been stranded in Bahrain since mid-2002 due to a court dispute over who it belongs to.

Russian company NPO Molniya originally sold it to Singapore-based Space Shuttle World Tour, but later filed a case in the Bahrain courts claiming the latter failed to make all the payments.

The High Criminal Court ruled in NPO Molniya’s favour on October 31 last year and ordered for the sale contract to be terminated.

However, the Singaporean company appealed against the verdict in the Supreme Civil Appeal Court, which upheld the original verdict yesterday.

Under the terms of sale, the Singaporean company agreed to buy the Buran for $320,000 (BD120,960).

It was supposed to pay the amount in two equal instalments and coughed up $160,000 (BD60,480) in April 2002.

However, it failed to meet a condition that said it should pay the second instalment within a month.

The shuttle was brought to Bahrain by Pico in July 2002 and was a feature of the Bahrain Summer festival.

Pico had negotiated with Space Shuttle World Tour to bring it here, but a case was filed in Bahrain by NPO in 2002 to prevent the shuttle from being sent to Thailand as a tourist attraction - claiming the sale was null and void because Space Shuttle World Tour had breached the contract.

Bahrain’s Supreme Civil Appeal Court also ruled yesterday that Pico, or any other party, had any right to the spacecraft.

Bahrain’s Cassation Court has previously overruled a High Civil Court decision that the dispute fell outside Bahraini jurisdiction.

Before coming to Bahrain, Buran was shipped to Australia in 2000 to become a tourist attraction, but failed to earn enough money to stay open.

The GDN reported last September that labourers had been sleeping inside the shuttle after getting through a hole in its structure.

Here is a page on the Tsniimash institut of Moscow. It is this institut which lead the mechanical stress tests on Buran and Energia since 1983. This article contains original pictures shoot at that time.

On Tuesday, 20 March on the russian channel one was telecasted a show about the SPIRAL project. This project aimed to put into orbit a small space plane launch by a high altitude plane carrier. This project was a forerunner of Buran.

The video (in russian) is available on download in the Gallery part.

This is 2 videos on Buran, the first speaks about the Buran-Energia project, the second is about the OK-GLI disembarking in february 2000 at Sydney.

The Antonov 225 landed today at the Vatry airport (150km at the East of Paris) to carriage freight: 203 tons of pillow blocks (for ships), for the emirats.

Here is some pictures of the launch pad 110 and 250 shot in 2006. To remind you, the 110 area was used to launch Buran in November 15, 1988, whereas the 250 area was used to launch Polyus in May 17, 1987.

Those 2 areas haven’t been used since then and are in a bad shape now.

Area 110:

Area 250:

New videos about the Antonov Mriya, with an interesting montage showing pictures of the assembling and first flights on the Mriya:

I updated the shop part of the website with a new framework, it will allow me to add new products more easily. It took me lot of time for making it and now it’s operational I will have more time to add articles to the site.