Buran-Energia

Here are some pictures of the renovation of the OK-M shuttle at the Baikonur’s museum. Those pictures were taken during the begining of 2007.

After the collapse of the USSR the Russia suffered of a huge economic crise. To make easy money some design bureaus and research centers, now privates, sold some of their pieces to people. Unfortunatly, the Buran project was not a exception of the rule.

So, an hospital of the Moscow’s suburbs bought a cockpit of the Buran space shuttle, to transform it into a pressurized room. Unfortunatly, the new owners saw rapidly that work will be too enormous and then decided to re-sell it to a scrap merchant. But in that case too the price to move it was too important to make a good financial transaction, so they decided to put the cockpit on a pedestal to expose it like a monument, after having blocked up the trap (air lock to the payload bay) to avoid deterioration.

Thanks to the stainless alloy the cockpit doesn’t need any care and it is hard to believe that it has been here for years.

If you want to make a ride, it’s here.