Buran News

Triumph and tragedy of “Energia” is a book about the most powerful launcher in the world: Energia. Written by Boris Ivanovich Gubanov, project manager, he tells the tragic history and the anecdotes of the elaboration of the launcher, as well as the vision of the Soviet’s space in the 2000s.

On May 15th, 1957 (50 years ago), the USSR proceeded to its first rocket fire, R7 (it exploded some minutes later). It is only October 4th of the same year that R7 put into orbit successfully the Sputnik, first artificial satellite of the Earth. This historic launch was going to open the gates of the space conquest. Conquest won at first by the tremendous leadership of the Soviets (first satellite, first man in the space, first woman in the space, first pedestrian spatial), but these last ones were overtake by the Americans and lost the race to the Moon.

At the end of the 70s the Soviets decided to come back on the front scene after the bitter echec of N1, they launch the Buran-Energia project, the heavy thrower Energia of which allows to put on low orbit 100 t of payload.

It is the May 15th, 1987 (20 years ago) the first launch of Energia took place. Initially planned with a fictitious payload (placed on the side of the thrower), the launch will be made finally with the Polyus system. But after a breakdown of the Polyus’s propulsion system it was not able to reach its working orbit and crashed in the Pacific Ocean.

In spite of this failure the Energia thrower carries out his mission (2 launches at all since this date) with success.

Regrettably, Energia was give up after the fall of the USSR by the Russian authorities, because the thrower is partially Ukrainian.

Addition of a video about putting into orbit a communication satellite. The load is placed on the side of Energia like Polyus. This animation was computed by the spatial simulation software Orbiter.