Buran-Energia

Here is some unsorted pictures of the Baikonur’s facility, production machines, Buran’s test chamber (oven to test the Buran’s heat chield), and a Buran’s period scheme.

Here are some pictures of the Energia’s first stage, in the Baikonur’s workshop:

I added them in the Energia’s pictures section.

I published a page about the Buran’s motor unit. It is constitued by the main engines, at the rear, and by the gas precision steering system.

I published a new page about the mechanism of the Buran’s onboard computer and a little introduction on the onboard computers on the soviets spaceships.

Last week, on Sunday December 24th, I had the pleasant surprise to see that the website (French and English parts merged) had exceeds the symbolic borderline of 10 000 uniques visitors since the launch, the September 10th 2006 for the French part, and on October 11th for the English part.

I hope that the content of this site please you, that it is organized well and that you find it pertinant, do not hesitate to post comments (it is made for that ;P) to send me your remarks.

I’m using this event to do a making-up of this personal project, I decided to put on-line all the informations and the documents which I was able to collect on the project Buran Energia, which I find passionant, and to make an Internet site in French and in English. At the beginning I planned to put only some pages and photos and finally I got hundred of pages by language. Even after some months of work I haven’t published all my documents, thus you can return regularly to see the evolutions. I have unseen videos to be added, numerous photos and different documents on the functioning of Buran.

I want to thank you, every readers, because I did not expected such a traffic at the beginning. Thank you and good reading.

I published some pages on the Soviets then Russians engines developped by the NPO Energomash company. I speak about the company and its history, then the various engines it designed for launchers. I also published a page on the rocket engine mechanism and the difference between the opened and closed cycle.

New photos on the Buran-Energia project, in the Buran’s pictures section:

• Carriage on the Energia’s top tank by the VM-T Atlante plane.
• Assembling of the first stage boosters.
• Tests on Buran and Energia on the launch pad, at this stage the shuttle is not finished yet.
• Carriage of Buran and Energia on the launch pad.
• Preparation for the flight.
• Storage of Buran 1.01 after its first flight.

I updated the chapter about Energia to add articles about Vulkan and Energia M, which are launchers of the Energia familly. I will add in the next days an article on the Zenit launcher too.

Update 2006-12-15: New pages about the Zenit launcher, which was also used for the A block of Energia.