The Betamax of reusable spacecraft? (Image: RIA Novosti/SPL)

On 15 November 1988, the Soviet Union stunned western observers by launching Buran, its clone of the NASA space shuttle, into low Earth orbit. After circling the globe twice, the uncrewed spacecraft – its name means “blizzard” – flew to an impressive precision runway landing in Baikonur, Kazahkstan. Much was expected of the spacecraft but it never flew again. Despite pressure from the cosmonaut corps itself the craft was not developed into a human-carrying craft and was scrapped.

But what if it had not been? As the US shuttle faces its last mission, we asked veteran cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, who has spent 359 days on the International Space Station in two missions, what happened to Buran – and how it may have improved on the US design.

New Scientist: After the cold war, why didn’t Russia maintain its shuttle programme?

Oleg Kotov: 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. The American shuttle also has military uses.


The idea was to drop weapons from orbit?

Yes, absolutely. A shuttle is particularly useful for this because it can change its orbit and trajectory – so an attack from it is almost impossible to protect against. But the need for such military applications ended.

Even so, could Buran not have helped Russia build its Mir space station and later the ISS?

Our approach is different: we didn’t want to deliver huge objects like space station modules into space because, historically, Russian space modules are self-powered and guided by their own navigation systems. They use their own thrusters to get to the station and dock there. The American concept is different: they use the space shuttle to deliver unpowered modules that are then fitted to the ISS using the power of the robot arm, for instance. That’s just not the way we do it.

Why was Buran’s first flight uncrewed?

The idea was to test new systems so that it could fly if necessary in a completely automatic mode. Later on the same technology was transferred for use in our commercial aeroplanes; for auto-landing in bad weather, for instance.

If it had been extended to a crewed system, in what ways would Buran have differed from NASA’s shuttle orbiter?

In terms of escape systems it would have allowed all of a crew to escape at any stage of the flight; even on the launch pad there was an escape pod. The NASA shuttle crew does not have this opportunity. Buran had ejector seats for all crew members. And that includes those sitting in the mid-deck, who had seats that ejected sideways.

As it was clearly based on the US shuttle, would Buran have suffered from dangerous external tank foam loss as the shuttle Columbia did?

No. The shape of the spacecraft might have been the same but the operational idea for Buran was absolutely different. This was because we had no external tank: the Buran orbiter was attached to an Energia rocket, not a tank. And that rocket needed no foam on its surface.

Why was that the case?

The NASA shuttle uses an external tank to feed cryogenic liquid hydrogen and oxygen to the main engines on the orbiter. But the Buran orbiter had no main launch engines of its own: they were below the Energia rocket, which could also have up to four solid rocket boosters strapped to it. Only a small part of the Energia rocket needed foam insulation – but we put that on the inside, so it was always safely inside the structure.

Is NASA right to retire the space shuttle?

Yes. It’s a very good decision to end shuttle flights and to focus instead on developing their new space vehicles. The shuttle programme is pretty expensive to run. And in between, while Soyuz is indeed old, it is at least a reliable vehicle.

Oleg Kotov, an aviation medic turned pilot and space-flight engineer, graduated from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre the year Buran flew. He spent April to October 2007 and December 2009 to June 2010 on the ISS – and now awaits his next mission. He has spacewalked for a total of 11 hours 47 minutes. He was in London to open a Yuri Gagarin photographic exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall, organised by Russian news agency RIA Novosti and the Science Photo Library.