As NASA starts retiring its space shuttle fleet to museums, photos of the Soviet shuttle counterpart show a strange and improbable endgame to a once grand space race.

Unfinished pieces of the mostly obscure Soviet shuttle program could recently be found in the courtyard of a random hospital, and the entire fuselage of another model was spotted behind a warehouse under a tarp, as shown in the photos above.

The Buran orbital vehicle was the Soviet answer to the U.S. space shuttle, but ended up being a Zune to America's iPod. For half a century, the two great powers battled for supremacy in space, and the advantage traded back and forth. The Soviets surged ahead when Yuri Gagarin took flight 50 years ago Tuesday, but never matched the United States when it came to reusable space ships.

Only one Buran was ever completed and sent into orbit, completing just a single, unmanned mission in 1988. The program ended in 1993, and its lone space veteran was stored in a hangar at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The hangar collapsed in 2002. The accident claimed the lives of eight workers and destroyed most of the shuttle.

Amateur Russian photographers have documented what they describe as a Buran that was left unfinished after the program shut down. A private collector has reportedly purchased the abandoned carcass shown in the photos posted here, and is planning to move it to a still undisclosed location.

As of the last pass made by Google’s satellites, however, it was still languishing in an overgrown industrial yard in Moscow. The cockpit of another was reportedly purchased by a hospital for use as a hyperbaric chamber. But it never worked, so it ended up as a lawn ornament.

Another set of photos posted in 2006 shows a shuttle that is still intact. It remains at the Baikonur cosmodrome.

The company that created the Buran still exists. It's now a private concern that draws on the technology of the Buran and other reusable space vehicles of the Soviet era. Through its efforts the achievements of the Soviet shuttle program may live on, even though its inventory has been scattered across the country.

Photos courtesy rus_military.