The Buran: The Soviet Union's Suspiciously Familiar-Looking Space Shuttle

this video is brought to you by squarespace whether it's your new profession or just a lifelong passion start your journey to website glory with squarespace check out their amazing all-in-one platform through the link in the description below more on them in a bit [Music] this is a story about space travel cold war espionage at a soviet shuttle that looked remarkably similar to what nasa produced maybe it was just an extraordinary coincidence that maybe the soviet union was a deeply misunderstood socialist state that cared profoundly about its people and didn't cause millions of deaths over its 69-year history maybe we're not going to tell you what to believe but this tale has a lot more to it than meets the eye the soviet boran spacecraft the only reusable spacecraft to ever appear out of the soviet union looked about as identical to the nasa space shuttle as you could possibly get they both shared the same kind of design they were both black and white and they both shared roughly the same kind of mission profile getting things into space and then bringing them back down again put them side by side and you'd see some minor differences but in a blind tasting or a blind shuttle picking game if you will surely only the most eagle-eyed would be able to tell one from the other so was the buran spacecraft one giant soviet ripoff well what kind of megaprojects video would this be if we didn't leave you on tenderhooks for just the time being you may already have a stance on this subject if you know the background but this may well be coloured by political and national ideology the buran which means snowstorm or blizzard in russian arrived just as the soviet union was beginning to unravel and came with plenty of propaganda trumpeted from both sides so how unique and good was this soviet space shuttle well let's take a look before we do i'll just mention just cause random plug for something completely random the uh the the show on apple tv uh for all mankind it's what they they feature this space shuttle and stuff is so cool it's such a good show just go watch that no i'm kidding please watch this video and then watch that [Music] if the collapse of the soviet union isn't your particular forte well lucky for you we recently done a video all about it the dissolution of the ussr that is so if you want to learn more about that check out that video after this one and after watching the entirety of for all mankind i suppose but in a nutshell the soviet union's attempt to keeping up with the u.s between the 1960s and the mid-1980s caused the ussr all kinds of problems while the nuclear weapons program and space program received bountiful budgets the standard of living across the state stagnated then began to decline in the hopelessly out of touch words of marie antoinette let them eat cake or as would probably have been the case in the soviet union let them eat black sea caviar while lines for basic commodities began growing in the soviet union its leaders knew that they had to keep up with the joneses or at least appear to be able to match the us in whatever they were doing the problem was that the u.s economy was absolutely thundering along and had grown to twice the size of their superpower rivals the americans were throwing money around like there was no tomorrow but at least they could afford to in 1981 the space race went up in gear with the appearance of nasa's space shuttle another topic we've already covered here omega projects in case you're interested you probably are this video is pretty similar in fact you've probably seen that previous one if you have thank you on april 12 1981 the world watched as the space shuttle colombia blasted off from the kennedy launch center to become the first reusable spacecraft into space while this certainly was a historic occasion i'm willing to bet that the soviet authorities didn't quite share in that enthusiasm in truth the soviet space program had been slipping further and further behind the americans since well since the heavy days of sputnik and yuri garin when information regarding the american space shuttle program reached soviet leaders either through the media or kgb activities it was met with irritation and plenty of suspicions what exactly were the americans going to do with a reusable spacecraft that could carry 30 tons of equipment up into space at a rate of 50 times per year now we know that the space shuttles never got anywhere near that kind of frequency but that was the original plan or at least what people in moscow were paranoid about with social problems ballooning across the soviet units leaders thought it was best to feed its citizens before amping up the space race to levels that they had little hope of maintaining just joking of course the ussr prioritized upping the space program and it implemented the most extensive and expensive project in the history of soviet space exploration which became the buran program [Music] all right let's begin with what the soviet authorities envisioned with the buren program as i mentioned this was started as a way of keeping up with the americans and their space shuttles which the ussr were sure would sooner or later be used to carry nuclear weapons up into space and then be used to destroy the ussr from above just to be clear as far as we know nasa's space shuttles were never designed to carry weapons and never did but the soviet union was certainly paranoid that that was the case with that in mind while the buran program was vaguely disguised as a civilian vehicle its distant goals were almost certainly military russian cosmonaut oleg kotov later told you science magazine we had no civilian tasks for buran and the military ones were no longer needed it was originally designed as a military system for weapon delivery maybe even nuclear weapons development of the buran program began in the 1970s in parallel or rather just slightly behind the u.s space shuttle this was a rocky time in the soviet union it's fair to say that not everybody thought the massive outlay of money was what was best for the ussr but it appeared as if hardline military hottest managed to convince soviet leader leonid brezhnev that once the u.s shuttles were finished it was only going to be a matter of time before they began attacking moscow in february 976 a secretive decree was signed and the buren program along with the energy of rockets that would carry them up formally came into being now if you're ready for your dream website to finally appear then it's time to visit our friends over at squarespace we've still got a few minutes of summer left which means you guys are still laying around the pool in the park daydreaming about what that next project you want to start is fortunately squarespace gives you every possible tool you might want to fashion your next project whether it's a small business a sports blog a creative portfolio or just a page at the dankest of means it does not matter if you can 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free trial and when you're ready to launch your new site go to squarespace.com forward slash mega projects and you'll save ten percent of your first purchase of a website or a domain and now let's get back to that space shuttle comrades [Music] so this brings us to the remarkably similar design that the buren spacecraft shared with its yankee rival did the kgb perform one of the 20th century's greatest rip-offs well yes and no as i'll come to later in today's video there are certainly enough differences between the buran and the space shuttle but most of these are inside so what about the outer design the soviet union almost certainly had detailed plans of how the space shuttle was being designed i mean this was the cold war after all but where they certainly had a leg up was by essentially hacking into internal databases at universities and facilities across the united states which were researching potential space shuttle designs these included caltech mit brooklyn poly princeton stanford kansas penn state and ohio state the soviet military industrial complex the bpk basically harvested all of the background work that the americans had done in the build up to their final space shuttle design so case closed i hear you cry however between 1974 and 1980 these ideas were poured over by soviet scientists and engineers who began running their own tests and after extensive wind tunnel testing they found that the americans had indeed designed the optimal shape for a reusable space vehicle the word is that the engineers loathed the idea of building the buran with the same kind of design as the space shuttle but their little choice either you went with the same outer design or you just built something worse construction officially began on the buren prototype in 1980 and four years later the first soviet space shuttle finally appeared [Music] as we've already established the buren shares plenty of external characteristics with the american space shuttle but certainly has plenty of uniqueness to make it its own spacecraft at 36.37 meters in length it was 20 meters shorter than the space shuttle both shared a delta wing design but the brand was again smaller than the shuttle with a wingspan of 23.92 meters just over 10 meters less than nurse's vehicle in terms of weight the space shuttle was significantly heavier at 82.5 tons compared to the buren 62 tons so that's a pretty noticeable amount which brings us nicely to one of the major differences between the two reusable spacecraft while the space shuttle's three engines were located within the shuttle itself buran's four engines could be found on a separate rocket stage the energia rocket which the buran would straddle during takeoff this section wasn't reusable which meant that the energy a rocket would detach after takeoff but included its own guidance navigation and control system while the space shuttle used two boosters with solid propellant the energia rocket had four liquid-propelled boosters and this was one area where the soviet union was generally considered to be superior the energia rocket didn't have the same kind of segments and o-rings that caused the challenge a disaster nor did it use foam which was partially responsible for the columbia disaster now sinister burn program didn't get very far it's impossible to say for sure that it wouldn't have had its own issues but well those are just the facts that we have the exterior of the buran came with 38 600 heat shielding tiles designed to withstand 100 re-entries similar to what was included on the shuttle inside the cabin consisted of three decks the command module located on the upper deck housed the workspace for the crew and served to accommodate the commander pilot engineer and mission specialist seat below that the mid-deck had the life support auxiliary equipment and enough room to seat six crew members during launch and re-entry finally the lower deck was where the power systems were located the buran had a spherical compartment docking system with a diameter of 2.67 meters and a cylindrical tunnel leading to the androgynous peripheral docking unit similar to the one on the shuttle but could be extended further than the american version both buran and the shuttles used hydrogen fuel cells to produce electricity and burned hydrazine to power onboard hydraulic systems another key difference between the two and the one that gave the buran a definite edge was that it was designed for both piloted and fully autonomous flight whereas the shuttle needed to be piloted at all times the space shuttle was later fitted with automated landing capability but this came long after the biran had faded into obscurity so yeah these two rocket spacecraft do look curiously alike from the outside but they had so many differences that it's really impossible to just simply call the buran a nasa ripoff [Music] in retrospect we know that the buran only flew into space once but at the time certainly everybody involved must have thought it was to be the first of many between november 1985 and april 1988 a full-scale brand mock-up with four turbofan engines took part in no less than 24 atmospheric flights as testing progressed as far as we can tell things went relatively smoothly and as the end of 1988 neared the soviets readied themselves to the brand's maiden flight into space this would be an unmanned flight departing from the baikonur cosmodrome in what is present-day kazakhstan on the 15th of december 1988 after an aborted takeoff due to a mechanical failure the engines on the energia rocket roared into life if there had been any issues in the buildup the flight itself went entirely as planned with the mighty rocket detaching shortly after liftoff before the iburan orbited the earth twice traveling 83 707 kilometers in 3 hours and 25 minutes after successfully re-entering the atmosphere the iran came in for its first landing as heavy cross winds began battering the spacecraft no doubt those on the ground held their breath as the virgin spacecraft faced its first major challenge but again it performed exactly as it had been designed to do the automated system onboard calculated the risk and quickly aborted the landing before bringing the brand around for a second attempt which saw the spacecraft touchdown just 10 meters from its designated targeted landing spot it became the first spacecraft to perform an unmanned flight and that included landing in fully automatic mode [Music] the buren's first flight had become a huge success and further flights were soon planned the petitgo 1.02 mission was slated for sometime in 1991 with the second also in the same year the first manned flight was scheduled for 1994 with a further floor planned across 1994 and 1995. it appeared the stage was set for the age of buran to commence but as we now know momentous change was afoot with the soviet union imploding it seems the last thing on anybody's mind was a costly space program sadly the buran never flew again while the program was only officially suspended to begin with the economic downturn which followed the dissolution of the ussr at the end of 1991 was a hammer blow and in 1993 russian president boris yeltsin formally canceled the program the enormous project spanned just shy of 20 years and cost the soviet union around 20 billion rubles which worked out to about 34 billion dollars back then and roughly 76 billion dollars today which makes that single figure not only the most expensive of all time but a figure that is going to be really hard to ever eclipse things got even worse for the buran when in 2003 the roof of the hangar it was housing at the baikonur cosmodrome collapsed killing eight people inside and destroying the very buran that had once left our planet the tale of the ill-fated and ill-timed spacecraft built to compete with the space shuttle had finally come to its tragic end [Music] compared to the stella well mostly anyway career of the us-based shuttles the buran had a most inauspicious life and a sad death its legacy is complex some vehemently label it a flagrant rip-off and there's certainly plenty to back up that claim but we need to place some boundaries on those accusations yeah the soviets hacked into u.s databases and harvested technical day to run an almost wikileaks style level which no doubt saved them billions in the process but you can't base your entire judgment of the buran space shuttle on just this the space shuttle and the buran look almost identical because they were designed to primarily do the exact same thing in terms of aerodynamics this is the design for a reusable spacecraft had the soviets not gathered up all the american research and actually did the hard work themselves the designs would probably come out fairly similar now those people who can't get past the external similarities are probably not going to like what we're saying next because there are strong arguments that several aspects of the buran were actually superior to the space shuttle not least its automated system and boosters as i said earlier it's impossible to fully compare the two because the space shuttles flew 135 missions and lebron flew just one but to blindly call it a rip-off does disservice to an excellent piece of engineering that unfortunately was just born at the wrong time so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do smash that like button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 373,812

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Id: qSIdbKM4adk

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021