Buran-Energia

TV Roscosmos published a reporting about Buran-Energia with an complete interview of Oleg Baklanov, member of the CPSU Central Committee (1988-1991) responsible for issues of state defense. He was a strong supporter of this project and ask for the developing of such powerful launcher to continue the space exploration and increase the transportations conditions of cosmonauts.

Other reporting here.

Here is a reporting presented by Nicolas Hulot and filmed at the end of the 80′s or at the beginning of the 90′s where two Mig 25 are used to simulated the descent phase of the Buran shuttle.

Few months ago I visited the museum of the Peenemunde launch base, at the seaside of the Baltic sea in ex-GDR.

This museum is very interesting even if most of the former installations were destroyed.

Visit begins here.

This strange tower, belonging to the institute цнии ртк (Central Institute of Search and Experiments for Robotics and Cybernetics), always raised questions about its purpose. Some days ago a group of young people, living in the neighborhood, managed to get inside and see what it holds.

This is what they discovered, the Buran‘s remote manipulator system.

Source: tankist.

Today we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first Energia‘s flight on May 15, 1987.

It is at 21h30 (Moscow time) that the rocket was launched for the first time with the Polious space combat station as a payload. The launch went fine, despite a trouble during take off, but a malfunction in the orientation system didn’t allowed it to reach it’s orbit.

The second and last launch of Energia took place one year later with Buran on November 15, 1988.

Even if Energia was a versatile, adjustable, very powerful (100t in low earth orbit) and reliable (2 launch and 2 success) rocket, the lack of large scale projects and the collapse of the USSR buried it. Only its boosters made from Zenit launcher are still used today.

It is with a simple press release that the Russian press agency (RIA Novosti) announced the death of the test pilot Pyotr Ostapenko on April 8, 2012, at the age of 83.

Pyotr Ostapenko worked all his career (1958-1981) for the design bureau MiG as a test pilot. He flew more than 5000 hours, did more than 10000 landings, and held 8 world records of which some are not smashed.
Thus he worked during the 70s on the space program Spiral as a test pilot of EPOS 105-11 (analog plane of the space plane EPOS).

During his career he helped develop no less than 64 planes such as MiG-21, MiG-23, MiG-25, MiG-27, MiG-29 and the MiG-31. His contribution to the school of test pilots was very important.

He was awarded of :

• Order of the Red Star (1964)
• Order of the Red Banner (1966)
• Lenin’s Order (1971)
• Hero of the USSR (1971)
• Test Pilot of the USSR (1973)
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour (1974)
• Laureate of the state price of the USSR (1981)

Last week in Moscow, at the Gorky park, was a snowboard contest the Adrenalin Games 2012.

Some installations (stairs and quarters) were made for the competitor in front of the Buran OK-TVA whereas a giant screen was settled behind her. During the show animations were displayed on the shuttle and the screen giving a striking effect.

Pictures of the show:

And the video of the animations: