On reading up, "finding" isn't quite accurate, as the locations of these two shuttles were perfectly well known. They're OK-1K2 and OK-4M on Wikipedia's list below, located in MZK building 80, area 112a, Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan:
However, obviously sneaking in to take pictures is not an everyday occurrence, it's still a Russian military base and parts of the site remain in active use for the Russian space program.
He not only managed to sneak inside the base, he apparently made it into the shuttle itself. If the last photo is a picture of him, he's dressed in military clothing, so maybe he just blended in and no one bothered to check him.
It's perfectly possible the photographer had no idea of what he would find. Not everyone knows where the Soviet shuttles are. It's still a find, if not a discovery. No pun intended.
I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way. Not that it's always the right call, but to be able to avoid the 'sunk cost fallacy'[1] on this scale is something that large governments/companies seem rarely capable of. That said, in this case, maybe they just didn't have a choice and ran out of money...
I worked for General Dynamics on the A-12 Avenger II program[1] that was cancelled by Dick Cheney. Even when the Navy threatened to cancel the project, a lot of people thought they would never do it because so much money had been spent on it. However, the end of the Cold War, some technical problems, and the need to rebuild political capital after the Gulf War all contributed to it being cancelled.
Robert Gates killed a couple of large-budget defense projects while Secretary of Defense. The airborne laser which had "16 years of development and a cost of over $5 billion"[1] was cancelled in 2010 under his watch.
> I think being able to walk away from a project like this is actually quite commendable, in a way.
Oddly enough, this is much easier to do without a democracy. It was not what happened there (it was the Soviet Union's collapse that did it) but the reasoning stands.
I agreed. I have thought the same thing about the Superconducting Super Collider. Imagine the thoughts on the people that had to walk away from these projects.
History spirals. This is an objective process, repeated over and over again. You can regret for the lost time and to mourn about the past greatness, but the facts remain above this - Russia is rapidly losing its status as a leading space power. For more than twenty years, the country does not produce anything new in principle, continuing to exploit the legacy of the Soviet Union. Only lead the modernization of the old backlog, but otherwise everything is just words on paper and projects. Sure, notable past will allow to stay afloat even a decade or two in the role of a space cab, but only as long as the Chinese missiles are not overstep its proper boundary changes and hurl prices on the conclusion of cargo into orbit. From Space romance gone, leaving her only dry figures of financial statistics. Why spend billions on the space, if it does not bring profit for the foreseeable future? In times of confrontation of political systems, the race between the two superpowers has a beneficial effect on the scientific and technical progress. The possible use of military and ideological gave rise to dozens of various projects. Yes, most of them did not go beyond the drawings and models, but the ones that leaked through the sieve test and commissions received unlimited support. The future of the Soviet reusable orbiters not been predetermined even before birth. Despite the huge financial loss ratio of such starts, they can hold out for long on the world stage, giving the vector for future horizons. And to finish my article I want to play on the title and epigraph. Rise My God! From ashes rise! Awake, my God! Rise from the ashes!
Fun fact: Buran was the first fully automated space shuttle. It did a complete flight cycle without human intervention. I believe our space shuttle could that that too eventually but not at the time.
Even funner fact: There is a remnant of software that powered that shuttle still around. In the form of a visual programming language DRAKON (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON)
The STS was purposely designed not to do that due to political reasons, pilots didnt want to feel like they were passangers, emergency restrictions, etc. Eventually those restrictions were lifted and was fully autonomous at a certain point, I don't remember which models have the full autonomy suite, but the capabilities varied as these things were built out.
Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, its still fair to call it an experimental and a failed project. The STS was doing all these things and more. Its an interesting bit of Soviet trivia, but all the attention it gets on the internet is fairly amusing for whats essentially the poster-boy in mismanaging a spacecraft project and what essentially became a Soviet "make work" jobs program, as the higher-ups knew early on that this thing would never be put into production due to a variety of factors including cost and technical issues.
I find it interesting that these things haven't been turned into scrap yet. There's something to be said about how overly prideful and nostalgic Russians are about the USSR. I think Putin put one of the Burans indoors after it was discovered to be sitting out amongst the elements. Most governments would just recycle failed capital projects. Unless they're bringing this thing back, it seems weird to have it sitting around in various corners of their launch complex.
I approve of DRAKON's sample lunch-eating algorithm. [0] Now, if someone catches me at the local burger joint slamming down dozens of burgers, I can just say that my programming allows for it.
The beauty of these pictures reminded me of urban decay photography and Wabi-Sabi. Also made me think of bit rot. I thought that if those spaceships were Software, maybe they would still be flying around, rot and decay included.
The telecommunications deficiency is a particularly serious
problem for the Soviets. The USSR lacks the type of extensive,
serviceable, open-access, civil telecommunications infrastructure
has proved to be an essential ingredient in the U.S. software
industry's capability to support the needs of software uses an
all sectors of the U.S. economy technologies critical to the U.S.
Industries lead include wide area networks such as INTERNET,
TYMNET and TELENET accessible to most software developers in the
United States; equally important are the local area networks used
to connect software development teams distributed in different
locations within large buildings or among several facilities
within a large industrial park.
This is a fascinating insight into the projected future, although of the three, it was the INTERNET that hang around and turned the world on its head!
"It was the first space shuttle to perform an unmanned flight, including landing in fully automatic mode."
"[...] despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), it landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark."
The STS could land on its own too, but due to political and safety concerns this functionality was disabled by default. In scenarios where a damaged shuttle was in space, the crew would board the ISS and turn on this functionality via a cable that connected the computer to the landing gear. Once that was set, NASA could fly it home remotely.
The Buran never carried a person into space and Soviet space management never had to make the decision to enable this while pilots sat in the cockpit. I think they would have been under the same pressure as NASA and allowed them to fly and not use full automation outside of emergencies.
This is cool, but if you compare the landing footage from STS-1 and Buran, the Buran landing looks decidedly squirrelly, I'm not sure I would want to be on that ride. On the other hand, John Young waxed the first STS landing.
Actually, the Russians developed a completely different programming language Prolog and Prol2 that had nothing to do with the French Prolog. It just happened to have the same name.
My only thought is if this is a decommissioned facility, imagine all the steel that could be recycled and reused! With such a shortage of some metals around the world, I see places like this and wonder why nobody does a better job of reusing old steel like this.
The location is very remote, and all of Baikonur remains a closed military zone leased to Russia. So unless the Russians themselves decide to strip it, nobody else can either.
This is actually much better than I expected. I thought all Burans were thought destroyed, with the last being that one that a building fell onto. It seems that one was the one that actually made a test flight, but there are other incomplete or test vehicles surviving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Fleet_status_a...
How abandoned is the hangar? There are some other people in the photos, and no matter how isolated the area is, surely the nearest town or two has wandered into the giant complex up the road a few times.
Still, it's amazing that this is the sort of thing people can just potentially wander into. Really makes you want to go explore the world.
Pretty damned abandoned.
I've driven through Baikonour.
For background, it's literally a circle of land, 100km in diameter, in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan.
There is one road in, and one road out. From this road, the only trace of 'Baikonour' that you see is a small enclave bearing the same name on the side of the road.
We actually drove past it - it's that small.
Inside this enclave (and it is - it's got huge concrete walls around it) - are the famous sputnik hotel, and various bits and pieces. But it's first and foremost a small town for people who live and support the program.
There are armed guards at the entrance - who don't let anyone in that's not a local, or doesn't have permission from ROSMOS.
North of this, is the actual launch / test zone.
It's desert. From the road, you see nothing.
The advantage of this being: if something blows up, you just try again elsewhere. There are many abandoned launch pads / facilities in this zone.
The actual 'creeping in' - there are no physical fences keeping you out of the zone. If you've bothered to make the effort to get there, getting into the zone and the hangar itself wouldn't be too difficult at all.
And yes - go and explore the world.
Kazakhstan is an amazing place. You wanna find desolation, you can find it there.
By the way, if you go through Baikonour, don't stop in the next town. The cops enjoy extorting cash :D
So, I just went back and played "Where's Waldo." Either I lost or you are mistaken. the only photos with people in them that I find are the 2 old photos from when the program was still active and the last one with the person who I assume is the photog.
I've seen a Buran up close - a few years ago (I think in the early 2000s?) one of them was toured around as a static display. Quite impressive - they let you walk right through it. I believe it was the sub-orbital testing craft.
Great photos. Does anyone have details why soviets thought a carbon copy of the botched shuttle design was a good idea in the first place? Where the economics of the vehicle not so obvious back then?
According to the book "Energiya-Buran, the Soviet Space Shuttle" by Bart Hendrickx and Bert Vis, they correctly noted that the stated reasons for the US space shuttle did not make any sense, so they assumed there must be some secret rational reason for building it:
> As TsNIIMash [Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building] director Yuriy Mozzhorin later said: "[The Space Shuttle] was introduced as a national program, aimed at 60 launches per year ... All this was very unusual: the mass they had been putting into orbit with their expendable rockets hadn't even reached 150 tons per year, and now they were planning to launch 1,770 tons per year. Nothing was being returned from space, and now they were planning to bring down 820 tons per year. This was not simple a program to develop some space system ... to lower transportation costs (they promised they would lower those costs tenfold, but the studies done at our institute showed that in actual fact there would be no cost savings at all). It clearly had a focused military goal".
As for what the secret military goal be, apparently the Soviet speculations was that either it might be part of some nuclear fractional-orbit bombardment system, or it might be part of a plan to launch lots of laser weapons into orbit. In any case, we can't have a space shuttle gap, so:
> [Central Committe Secretary for Defense Matters, Dmitri] Ustinov had made the following argument: if our scientists and engineers do not see and specific use of this technology now, we should not forget that the Americans are very pragmatic and very smart. Since they have invested a tremendous amount of money in such a project, they can obviously see some useful scenario which is still unseen from Soviet eyes. The Soviet Union should therefore develop such a technology so that it won't be taken by suprise in the future.
Let's build it now, and see what it is good for later! :D
"Botched shuttle design"? You don't know much about the orbiter, I take it. Shuttle was meticulously - even lovingly - maintained, a hairy complex scrupulously documented piece of kit, well built and designed if not well conceived.
I'll guess your crack is motivated by shuttle's mission, which was misguided (to say the least). Hampered by its LEO envelope, the Air Force should never have contemplated launching satellites on a man-rated platform at all.
But the orbiter itself... a thing of beauty. I've said here before that I'd like to have seen shuttle reattempted, this time with 21st century technologies. (So long as someone else is paying the expense!)
According to Wikipedia, because they were concerned about military applications of the space shuttle and wanted to match the US's capabilities. Large payload capacity for launching orbital anti-missile lasers or diving to drop bombs.
This might be in the same vein as "New Coke" was a genius marketing idea, but what if the "botched system" did exactly what is was supposed to, and helped economically bleed the USSR out of existence?
Well then I guess we would have stopped flying last century.
These are great! Being an American who wasn't taught anything about the Soviet space program I hadn't ever heard of Baikonur until I read about it in Seveneves.
No, it does not. It is clear that the Soviet Union, for all its flaws, was one of the foremost nations (or collection of such) when it comes to scientific endeavours. Where they failed was in the translation of scientific data to 'products', but that is another story.
Modern Russia still has its share of eminent scientists, but they lack the s(t)olid backing of a nation which felt like it had something to prove.
They need to get rid of the extortion, fraud, and payoffs. They need to get rid of Putin! As a kid, my father was harassing a Russian neighbor. He said if your country was so great--why do you your comrades want to buy Levi jeans, and they were getting $100 at the time used. He looked at my father, and said, 'Russian has its problems, but if went there today you couldn't find a homeless person.' My father didn't have anything left to say. (Actually, back then they were ignorantly called bums.)
Okay, there has to be someone capable of taking care of the orbiters around? How much would just a minimum amount of maintenance really cost? I think this a real world manifestation of state secrecy and its a shame.
On a similar note, I was very happy to see that parts of both Columbia and Challenger will be on display for the public.
[+] [-] jpatokal|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Buran-class_sp...
However, obviously sneaking in to take pictures is not an everyday occurrence, it's still a Russian military base and parts of the site remain in active use for the Russian space program.
[+] [-] Paul_S|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seany|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osmium|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment
[+] [-] cicero|10 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_A-12_Avenger...
[+] [-] clarkmoody|10 years ago|reply
Quoting from Wikipedia, sorry:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
Oddly enough, this is much easier to do without a democracy. It was not what happened there (it was the Soviet Union's collapse that did it) but the reasoning stands.
[+] [-] ricardonunez|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rbryan71|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdtsc|10 years ago|reply
Even funner fact: There is a remnant of software that powered that shuttle still around. In the form of a visual programming language DRAKON (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAKON)
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
Considering the Buran has never put a person into space, its still fair to call it an experimental and a failed project. The STS was doing all these things and more. Its an interesting bit of Soviet trivia, but all the attention it gets on the internet is fairly amusing for whats essentially the poster-boy in mismanaging a spacecraft project and what essentially became a Soviet "make work" jobs program, as the higher-ups knew early on that this thing would never be put into production due to a variety of factors including cost and technical issues.
I find it interesting that these things haven't been turned into scrap yet. There's something to be said about how overly prideful and nostalgic Russians are about the USSR. I think Putin put one of the Burans indoors after it was discovered to be sitting out amongst the elements. Most governments would just recycle failed capital projects. Unless they're bringing this thing back, it seems weird to have it sitting around in various corners of their launch complex.
[+] [-] yellowapple|10 years ago|reply
[0]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/19/Lunch_DR...
[+] [-] emmanueloga_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agounaris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] junto|10 years ago|reply
Notably, it also stated:
This is a fascinating insight into the projected future, although of the three, it was the INTERNET that hang around and turned the world on its head!TYMNET by the way is noted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet
[+] [-] locokoko|10 years ago|reply
"[...] despite a lateral wind speed of 61.2 kilometres per hour (38.0 mph), it landed only 3 metres (9.8 ft) laterally and 10 metres (33 ft) longitudinally from the target mark."
That sounds pretty impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_%28spacecraft%29
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|10 years ago|reply
The Buran never carried a person into space and Soviet space management never had to make the decision to enable this while pilots sat in the cockpit. I think they would have been under the same pressure as NASA and allowed them to fly and not use full automation outside of emergencies.
[+] [-] tdy721|10 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnnTFJ1BcHw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPexsehcMhw
They do say there was a bad crosswind, but really I think a spaceplane should be able to avoid bad weather.
[+] [-] impeachgod|10 years ago|reply
Source: http://forum.oberoncore.ru/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=4111
[+] [-] vhffm|10 years ago|reply
http://speyer.technik-museum.de/en/spaceshuttle-buran
[+] [-] ourmandave|10 years ago|reply
The argument to keep building it was they'd already invested billions and it would cost millions of dollars to stop building it.
I guess that cost would have been from contract guarantees to the builders or something.
Looks like when the Soviets stop building something they just walk away.
[+] [-] jpatokal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at-fates-hands|10 years ago|reply
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-russian-abandoned-s...
http://www.popsci.com/why-soviet-space-shuttle-was-left-rot
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/17/buran-soviet-space-...
My only thought is if this is a decommissioned facility, imagine all the steel that could be recycled and reused! With such a shortage of some metals around the world, I see places like this and wonder why nobody does a better job of reusing old steel like this.
[+] [-] nnain|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrmondo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jpatokal|10 years ago|reply
https://goo.gl/maps/k34qZ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome#Russian_er...
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
Even unfinished spaceplanes are very interesting items.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Crito|10 years ago|reply
Might be already. Probably not, but maybe.
[+] [-] Crito|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] outworlder|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisacree|10 years ago|reply
Still, it's amazing that this is the sort of thing people can just potentially wander into. Really makes you want to go explore the world.
[+] [-] kweks|10 years ago|reply
For background, it's literally a circle of land, 100km in diameter, in the middle of nowhere in Kazakhstan.
There is one road in, and one road out. From this road, the only trace of 'Baikonour' that you see is a small enclave bearing the same name on the side of the road.
We actually drove past it - it's that small. Inside this enclave (and it is - it's got huge concrete walls around it) - are the famous sputnik hotel, and various bits and pieces. But it's first and foremost a small town for people who live and support the program.
There are armed guards at the entrance - who don't let anyone in that's not a local, or doesn't have permission from ROSMOS.
North of this, is the actual launch / test zone. It's desert. From the road, you see nothing.
The advantage of this being: if something blows up, you just try again elsewhere. There are many abandoned launch pads / facilities in this zone.
The actual 'creeping in' - there are no physical fences keeping you out of the zone. If you've bothered to make the effort to get there, getting into the zone and the hangar itself wouldn't be too difficult at all.
And yes - go and explore the world. Kazakhstan is an amazing place. You wanna find desolation, you can find it there.
By the way, if you go through Baikonour, don't stop in the next town. The cops enjoy extorting cash :D
[+] [-] lsaferite|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fsloth|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vilhelm_s|10 years ago|reply
> As TsNIIMash [Central Scientific Research Institute of Machine Building] director Yuriy Mozzhorin later said: "[The Space Shuttle] was introduced as a national program, aimed at 60 launches per year ... All this was very unusual: the mass they had been putting into orbit with their expendable rockets hadn't even reached 150 tons per year, and now they were planning to launch 1,770 tons per year. Nothing was being returned from space, and now they were planning to bring down 820 tons per year. This was not simple a program to develop some space system ... to lower transportation costs (they promised they would lower those costs tenfold, but the studies done at our institute showed that in actual fact there would be no cost savings at all). It clearly had a focused military goal".
As for what the secret military goal be, apparently the Soviet speculations was that either it might be part of some nuclear fractional-orbit bombardment system, or it might be part of a plan to launch lots of laser weapons into orbit. In any case, we can't have a space shuttle gap, so:
> [Central Committe Secretary for Defense Matters, Dmitri] Ustinov had made the following argument: if our scientists and engineers do not see and specific use of this technology now, we should not forget that the Americans are very pragmatic and very smart. Since they have invested a tremendous amount of money in such a project, they can obviously see some useful scenario which is still unseen from Soviet eyes. The Soviet Union should therefore develop such a technology so that it won't be taken by suprise in the future.
Let's build it now, and see what it is good for later! :D
[+] [-] dandrews|10 years ago|reply
I'll guess your crack is motivated by shuttle's mission, which was misguided (to say the least). Hampered by its LEO envelope, the Air Force should never have contemplated launching satellites on a man-rated platform at all.
But the orbiter itself... a thing of beauty. I've said here before that I'd like to have seen shuttle reattempted, this time with 21st century technologies. (So long as someone else is paying the expense!)
[+] [-] wlesieutre|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_programme#Programme_deve...
[+] [-] tdy721|10 years ago|reply
Well then I guess we would have stopped flying last century.
[+] [-] sanoli|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikRogneby|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yellowapple|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dharma1|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Yetanfou|10 years ago|reply
Modern Russia still has its share of eminent scientists, but they lack the s(t)olid backing of a nation which felt like it had something to prove.
[+] [-] marincounty|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tdy721|10 years ago|reply
On a similar note, I was very happy to see that parts of both Columbia and Challenger will be on display for the public.
[+] [-] cdnsteve|10 years ago|reply