The Buran did fly in space – just once, in November 1988, not long before the Soviet Union collapsed. Its lone mission was uncrewed. The Buran relied on an automated launch sequence, rode on an ...

it’s not quite right to say the Soviet version was stolen. Buran, and her incomplete sister ships were iterations on a design, arguably more capable, but mired in a political and economic ...

A structural test article of the Soviet Buran space shuttle, on display in Moscow in 2017. WHEN VICTOR ZABOLOTSKY, A TEST PILOT WHO ONCE TRAINED TO FLY the Soviet Buran space shuttle, thinks back ...

even as the Soviet Union’s prototype laser satellite (painted black) sat on the launch pad. Background: www.buran-energia.com; Foreground: Courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library It sounds ...

including heat-resistant alloys and ceramic tiles—technologies that foreshadowed those used on later spacecraft like the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle. Its propulsion in orbit relied on ...

MOSCOW, October 26. /TASS/. Vakhtang Vachnadze, a Soviet and Russian space engineer who headed the project to build the Buran space shuttle orbiter, has died at the age of 89, the Roscosmos state ...