#1
Posted: 1/20/2011 15:47:23
Modified: 1/21/2011 13:13:11
The Buran (which means snowstorm or blizzard in
Russian) spacecraft was the Soviet version of the U.S. Space Shuttle. Its only
flight was an unmanned flight into Earth’s orbit in 1988. After two circles of
the Earth it returned to a runway at the Baikanour Cosmosdrome, where it was
launched. The project was canceled in 1993, and the Buran was crushed in a
hangar collapse in 2002. We discovered a series of photographs of the now
crumbling Buran launch facility that show the monolithic grandeur of the Soviet
and Russian space programs.
View the photos
(Note: this is a Russian language site - we think the photos speak for themselves, but, not being Russian speakers, we can't guarantee that the commentary and other content is family-friendly.)
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Afterburner Al - Station Manager-Emeritus, EAA Radio -
http://www.eaaradio.net
#2
Posted: 1/22/2011 18:01:13
Modified: 1/22/2011 18:11:23
Obama has effectively killed the US manned space program. How long will it be until LC 39, the VAB, and the SPF look like this? Not long, I suspect. Just do a Google search on LC 34. Sad!
#3
Posted: 1/22/2011 20:29:49
Joseph Baier wrote:
Obama has effectively killed the US manned space program.
About 25 years too late, IMHO. How far would aviation had gotten if no one but the government had built an airplane since 1903, and you were only allowed to fly one at two places in the country?
Manned space travel is being pushed into private industry, where it belongs. It's a lot cheaper, and a lot more efficient, for the government to rent a car than it is to smelt iron ore and build one.
I don't know if you've ever been to Vandenberg or Kennedy, but abandoned launch complexes are nothing new. For the most part, they get adapted to something else.
Ron Wanttaja
#4
Posted: 1/25/2011 11:53:57
You can use www.freetranslation.com to get Russian-to-English translations of the photo captions. It's kind of clumsy, having to copy/paste the caption and click "translate" each time, and the computer-generated translation is far from perfect, but it is kind of interesting to be able to read, and gives you a fair idea of what it says.
#5
Posted: 1/25/2011 11:57:14
There is an English version of this site but we must warn you the language used by some of the commenters is not family-friendly.
Thank You for listening to EAA Radio.
Afterburner Al - Station Manager-Emeritus, EAA Radio -
http://www.eaaradio.net
#6
Posted: 1/25/2011 16:47:39
beautiful artist photos! What an astounding amount of work and dedication to just be cast off so quickly. I used Google Translate on the Russian, I read most of it and though not all, the ending paragraph was quite opinionated.
Thanks for sharing the photos.
If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.
#7
Posted: 1/25/2011 19:16:49
Reminds me of the Space Launch Complex 6 at Vandenberg which cost us almost 3 billion and was never used by the Shuttle.
#8
Posted: 1/25/2011 21:00:47
The photos are interesting. The commentary by the posters at the end is also very interesting. The computer translation programs make an attempt to translate but they are in some idiomatic constructions very poor translations or as they say in the Russian Federation - - очень бедный перевод
#9
Posted: 1/26/2011 10:11:56
Use this link here:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdrugoi.livejournal.com%2F3259344.html&sl=ru&tl=en&hl=&ie=UTF-8
for inline Google translation of the page. It lets you see the captions in English and photos all on one page.