Alexey Rogozin spoke about the lost technologies of the Energia-Buran program

A project to be proud of

35 years ago, on November 15, 1988, the Soviet shuttle, the reusable spacecraft Buran, made its only flight. It launched with the help of a heavy space rocket “Energia” and landed in automatic mode “like an airplane.” Experts call that project epoch-making. Unfortunately, nothing of this scale has been implemented in our country in the field of rocket and space technology since then.

The former head of the Ilyushin company, active state adviser 3rd class Alexey Rogozin, told us which technologies of the Energia-Buran project we have lost.

More than 1,300 enterprises and an organization of more than a million specialists took part in the creation of the super-rocket and reusable spacecraft. Alexei Rogozin’s grandfather, Lieutenant General Oleg Konstantinovich Rogozin, as the first deputy head of the armaments service of the USSR Ministry of Defense, took part in the project and interacted with the general designer of the program, Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky.

Alexey Rogozin listed the technologies created during the implementation of the Energia-Buran program. The USSR created a super-heavy launch vehicle “Energia”, capable of launching cargo weighing 100 tons into low-Earth orbit. The plans included a Vulcan rocket with a lifting capacity of 200 tons. The technology for reusable spacecraft has been developed.

Created for Energia, the world’s most powerful oxygen-kerosene liquid rocket engine RD-170 was later used in Zenit rockets, and its modifications were used in the American Atlas-3 and Atlas-5 rockets, and the Russian Angara.

The Buran reusable aerospace aircraft could launch 30 tons of cargo into orbit and release 20 tons from orbit. It was the world’s first space drone, and this technology, Alexey Rogozin noted in his channel, has been lost in our country.

Under Energia-Buran, the only domestic universal stand-launch complex was built at Baikonur, allowing for ground fire tests and launches of super-heavy class launch vehicles. This technology has also been lost. The Energia launch complex is abandoned. In the hangar where the reserve Buran had been parked for a long time, the roof broke, practically destroying the spacecraft.

To transport the experimental Buran spacecraft to Baikonur, a unique technology was developed using the unique VM-T Atlant aircraft of Myasishchev Design Bureau and the Antonov Design Bureau An-225 Mriya super-heavy transport aircraft. This technology is also among those lost. At least, we don’t have such planes today.

The Energia-Buran project was closed. As noted by military expert, editor-in-chief of Arsenal of the Fatherland magazine, Viktor Murakhovsky, “such projects, even if they remain in history today, even years later evoke sincere pride.” “They also give faith in the new achievements of the country, its scientists and engineers,” he concluded.

Well, and, of course, in addition to a feeling of pride and faith in future achievements, the example of “Energia-Buran” cannot but evoke a feeling of great regret. We don’t keep what we have, we cry when we lose it…