Which spaceship was cargo and unmanned. Unmanned ship

Good evening, dear readers of the Sprint-Answer website. Today is Saturday, which means that the weekly intellectual TV game "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Is on the air of Channel One. with presenter Dmitry Dibrov. In the article you can find out all the questions and answers in the game "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" for June 24, 2017 (June 24, 2017).

So, at the gaming table are the players: Olga Pogodina and Alexey Pimanov. Participants of the TV game "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" on June 24, 2017, they chose a fireproof amount of 200,000 rubles.

1. How does the proverb end: "And the wolves are fed ..."?

  • and grandfather Mazai is glad
  • and prizes were deprived
  • and the shepherds were fired
  • and the sheep are safe

2. Who came to his father in Mayakovsky's poem "What is good and what is bad"?

  • baby son
  • little Raccoon
  • smesharik Krosh
  • Little havroshechka

3. What will the superstitious hunter answer to the question of where he is going?

  • to hell
  • on kudykin mountain
  • to the distant kingdom
  • to the seventh heaven

4. What was the name of Tarapunka's colleague in the popular Soviet pop duet?

  • Switch
  • The wire
  • Plug
  • Connector

5. How to end the line of the song: "The world is not simple, it is not at all simple, I am not afraid ..."?

  • no laughter, no tears
  • no bullets and no roses
  • no storms and no thunderstorms
  • no dreams and no dreams

6. Under what pseudonym did Igor Lotarev write his poetry?

  • Siberian
  • Polar explorer
  • Northerner
  • Snowman

7. What is the name of the oldest botanical garden in Russia run by Moscow State University?

  • "Hospital garden"
  • "Pharmaceutical garden"
  • "Hospital vegetable garden"
  • "Sanitary garden"

8. What is the name of one of the heroes of Gorky's play "At the Bottom"?

  • Prince
  • Baron
  • Prince

9. In what year did Switzerland become a member of the UN?

  • 2002

10. How do the heroes of the film "Window to Paris" return to St. Petersburg?

  • through the magic window
  • breakthrough tunnel
  • hijacking a plane
  • by contacting the embassy

Unfortunately, the players answered this question incorrectly and won 0 rubles. Their places in the chairs of the players were taken by other participants in the game "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" June 24, 2017: Natalie and Mitya Fomin. The players chose the standard fireproof amount of 200,000 rubles.

1. What are souvenir magnets usually attached to?

  • to the iron
  • to the car
  • to the pan
  • to the refrigerator

2. What happened to a computer program that did not respond to keystrokes?

  • fell asleep
  • hung
  • stuck
  • flew

3. Where is chamber music played most often?

  • in prison
  • in the photo studio
  • at the conservatory
  • in the storage room

4. Who uses Planck's constant in the calculations?

  • carpenters
  • physics
  • tailors
  • high jumpers

5. Who was begging: "Apply for houses for homeless pigs!"?

  • Piglet
  • Piggy
  • Funtik
  • Peppa Pig

6. Which site markings use only straight lines?

  • basketball
  • handball
  • volleyball
  • hockey

7. Which Soviet spaceship was cargo and unmanned?

  • "East"
  • "Sunrise"
  • "Union"
  • "Progress"

8. Which of the actors does not have the title of martial artist?

  • Jackie Chan
  • Steven Seagal
  • Bruce Willis
  • Jean-Claude Van Damme

9. What city is located in the Belgorod region?

  • Stary Oskol
  • Old Kupavna
  • Staraya Russa
  • Old lady

10. To whom do we owe the appearance of the phraseologism "tutel to tutel"?

Unmanned ship

Unmanned spacecraft - a spacecraft that carries out its flight in automatic mode. On August 19, 1960, the first successful launch of an unmanned vehicle was carried out. On board were experimental dogs Belka and Strelka, mice, insects and other biological objects. The ship's descent vehicle has successfully returned to Earth. On March 9, 1961, the ZKA spacecraft was launched, which was developed for human flight. The flight was completed successfully, and experimental animals and a human dummy returned to Earth. In the mid-1970s. in the Soviet Union began a project to develop a reusable spacecraft. On November 15, 1988, the Buran spacecraft, launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome, made its first and only unmanned flight. During the flight, he made three orbits and landed near the launch pad. In many ways, the Soviet ship was similar to the American version of the Space Shuttle, but had some differences that can be considered fundamental. Instead of solid propellant boosters, the Soviet ship used four powerful liquid-propellant rocket engines. The engines were located at the bottom of the external fuel tank. The orbital ship only housed the engines of the maneuvering system. The flight was the only one, as the project was closed due to lack of funding. In Japan in the 80s. XX century The National Space Research Agency was working on an experimental orbital plane "HOPE", initially it was planned to use it as an unmanned cargo ship.

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (BO) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (CO) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (LI) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (PA) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (ST) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (TR) of the author TSB

From the book Great Soviet Encyclopedia (FL) of the author TSB

From the book All the masterpieces of world literature in a summary. Plots and characters. Russian literature of the XX century author Novikov VI

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From the book All About New York author Chernetsky Yuri Alexandrovich

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From the book of 100 famous inventions author Pristinsky Vladislav Leonidovich

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Spacecraft Spacecraft is a spacecraft used for flights in near-earth orbit, including manned spacecraft. All spacecraft can be divided into two classes: manned and launched in surface control mode

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SHIP OF FOOLS Petersburg group of the late 60's, in which the future leader of ST. PETERSBURG Vladimir Rekshan acquired his first musical experience, SHIP OF FOOLS was created at the history faculty of the University in September 1967 by three first-year students, although

Today, space travel is not a fantasy story, but, unfortunately, the modern spacecraft is still very different from those shown in films.

This article is for people over 18 years old

Have you already turned 18?

Spaceships of Russia and

Spaceships of the future

Spaceship: what is it

On

Spaceship, how does it work?

The mass of modern spacecraft is directly related to how high they fly. The main task of manned spacecraft is safety.

The SOYUZ lander became the first space series of the Soviet Union. During this period, an arms race was going on between the USSR and the USA. If we compare the size and approach to the issue of construction, then the leadership of the USSR did everything for the speediest conquest of space. It is clear why similar devices are not being built today. Hardly anyone will undertake to build according to a scheme in which there is no personal space for astronauts. Modern spacecraft are equipped with both crew rest rooms and a descent capsule, the main task of which is to make it as soft as possible at the time of landing.

The first spaceship: the history of creation

Tsiolkovsky is rightly considered the father of cosmonautics. Based on his teachings, Goddrad built a rocket engine.

Scientists who worked in the Soviet Union were the first to design and launch an artificial satellite. They also became the first to invent the possibility of launching a living creature into space. The United States realizes that the Union was the first to create an aircraft capable of going into space with a person. The Queen is rightly called the father of rocket science, who went down in history as the one who figured out how to overcome gravity and was able to create the first manned spacecraft. Today, even kids know in what year the first ship with a person on board was launched, but few remember the Queen's contribution to this process.

Crew and safety during the flight

The main task today is the safety of the crew, because they spend a lot of time at flight altitude. When constructing an aircraft, it is important what metal it is made of. The following types of metals are used in rocketry:

  1. Aluminum - allows you to significantly increase the size of the spacecraft, as it is lightweight.
  2. Iron - perfectly copes with all the loads on the ship's hull.
  3. Copper - has a high thermal conductivity.
  4. Silver - Reliably bonds copper and steel.
  5. Tanks for liquid oxygen and hydrogen are made of titanium alloys.

The modern life support system allows you to create a familiar atmosphere for a person. Many boys see them flying in space, forgetting about the very large overload of the astronaut at the start.

The largest spaceship in the world

Among combat ships, fighters and interceptors are very popular. A modern cargo ship has the following classification:

  1. The Probe is a research ship.
  2. A capsule is a cargo hold for delivery or crew rescue operations.
  3. Module - launched into orbit by an unmanned vehicle. Modern modules are divided into 3 categories.
  4. Rocket. The prototype for the creation was military development.
  5. Shuttle - reusable structures for the delivery of the required cargo.
  6. Stations are the largest spaceships. Today, not only Russians are in open space, but also French, Chinese and others.

Buran - a spaceship that went down in history

The first spacecraft to enter space was Vostok. After the Federation of Rocket Engineering of the USSR began production of Soyuz ships. Much later, Clippers and Russia began to be produced. The federation has high hopes for all these manned projects.

In 1960, the Vostok spacecraft by its flight proved the possibility of manned spacewalk. On April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 made a revolution around the Earth. But the question of who flew on the Vostok 1 ship for some reason causes difficulty. Maybe the fact is that we simply do not know that Gagarin made his first flight on this ship? In the same year, the Vostok 2 spacecraft entered orbit for the first time, in which there were two cosmonauts at once, one of whom went beyond the spacecraft. It was progress. And already in 1965 Voskhod 2 was able to go into outer space. The story of the ship Sunrise 2 was filmed.

Vostok 3 has set a new world record for the time a spacecraft spends in space. The last ship in the series was Vostok 6.

The American Apollo series shuttle has opened new horizons. Indeed, in 1968 Apollo 11 was the first to land on the moon. Today there are several projects to develop spaceplanes of the future, such as Hermes and Columbus.

Salute is a series of interorbital space stations of the Soviet Union. Salute 7 is known for being wrecked.

The next spacecraft, the history of which is of interest, was Buran, by the way, I wonder where it is now. In 1988, he made his first and last flight. After repeated analysis and transportation, Buran's path of movement was lost. The known last location of the Buranv Sochi spacecraft, work on it is mothballed. However, the storm around this project has not yet subsided, and the further fate of the abandoned Buran project is of interest to many. And in Moscow, an interactive museum complex has been created inside the model of the Buran spacecraft at VDNKh.

Gemini is a series of ships of American designers. Replaced the project Mercury and were able to make a spiral in orbit.

American ships called Space Shuttle became a kind of shuttles, making more than 100 flights between objects. The second Space Shuttle was the Challenger.

One cannot but be interested in the history of the planet Nibiru, which is recognized as an overseer ship. Nibiru has already twice approached the dangerous distance to Earth, but both times the collision was avoided.

Dragon is a spacecraft that was supposed to fly to the planet Mars in 2018. In 2014, the federation, citing the technical characteristics and condition of the Dragon ship, postponed the launch. Not so long ago, another event happened: the Boeing company made a statement that it also began development on the creation of a Mars rover.

The first ever reusable station wagon was supposed to be an apparatus called Zarya. Zarya is the first development of a reusable transport ship, on which the federation had very high hopes.

The possibility of using nuclear installations in space is considered a breakthrough. For these purposes, work began on the transport and energy module. In parallel, developments are underway on the Prometheus project - a compact nuclear reactor for rockets and spacecraft.

China's Shenzhou 11 spacecraft launched in 2016 with two astronauts who were to spend 33 days in space.

Spaceship speed (km / h)

The minimum speed at which you can enter orbit around the Earth is considered to be 8 km / s. Today there is no need to develop the fastest ship in the world, since we are at the very beginning of outer space. After all, the maximum altitude that we could reach in space is only 500 km. The record for the fastest movement in space was set in 1969, and so far it has not been possible to break it. On the Apollo 10 spacecraft, the three cosmonauts, having been in the orbit of the moon, returned home. The capsule, which was supposed to deliver them from the flight, managed to reach a speed of 39.897 km / h. For comparison, let's look at how fast a space station is flying. Maximum it can develop up to 27,600 km / h.

Abandoned spaceships

Today, for the spaceships that have fallen into disrepair, a cemetery has been created in a quiet ocean, where dozens of abandoned spaceships can find their last refuge. Spaceship crashes

In space, catastrophes occur, often taking lives. The most common, oddly enough, are accidents that occur due to collisions with space debris. Upon collision, the object's orbit is displaced and causes crash and damage, often causing an explosion. The most famous disaster is the death of the manned American spacecraft Challenger.

Nuclear engine for spaceships 2017

Today scientists are working on projects to create an atomic electric motor. These developments imply the conquest of space using photon engines. Russian scientists are planning to start testing a thermonuclear engine in the near future.

Spaceships of Russia and the USA

Rapid interest in space arose during the Cold War between the USSR and the United States. American scientists recognized their Russian colleagues as worthy rivals. Soviet rocketry continued to develop, and after the collapse of the state, Russia became its successor. Of course, the spacecraft that Russian cosmonauts fly on differ significantly from the first spacecraft. Moreover, today, thanks to the successful developments of American scientists, spacecraft have become reusable.

Spaceships of the future

Today, there is more and more interest in projects that will enable humanity to make longer journeys. Modern developments are already preparing ships for interstellar expeditions.

Place where spaceships are launched

To see with your own eyes the launch of a spaceship at the start is the dream of many. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the first launch does not always lead to the desired result. But thanks to the Internet, we can see the ship take off. Given the fact that observers of the launch of a manned spacecraft must be far enough away, we can imagine that we are on the take-off site.

Spaceship: what is it like inside?

Today, thanks to museum exhibits, we can personally see the device of such ships as the Union. Of course, from the inside, the first ships were very simple. The interior of the more modern options is designed in soothing colors. The device of any spacecraft necessarily scares us with a multitude of levers and buttons. And this adds pride to those who were able to remember how the ship works, and, moreover, learned how to operate it.

What spaceships do they fly now?

New spaceships with their appearance confirm that fantasy has become reality. Today, you will no longer be surprised by the fact that the docking of spaceships is a reality. And few people remember that the world's first such docking took place back in 1967 ...

Exploration of outer space and penetration into its space is the eternal goal of scientific and technological progress and a completely logical stage of progress. The era, which is commonly called the space era, was opened on October 4, 1957, at the time of the launch of the first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union. Just three years later, Yuri Gagarin was looking at Earth through the window. Since that time, people have been going exponentially. People's interest in everything cosmic is growing. And the Progress family of space trucks is no exception.

Deliver cargo

The stations in the Salyut orbit were not operated for long. And the reasons for this were the need to deliver fuel, life support elements, consumables and repair equipment to them in case of breakdowns. For the third generation of "Salyut" it was decided to include in the project of manned spacecraft "Soyuz" and the cargo element, later called the cargo spacecraft "Progress". The undisputed developer of the entire Progress family today is the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, located in the city of Korolyov, in the Moscow Region.

History

The development of the project was carried out under the code 7K-TG since 1973. On the base manned spacecraft of the Soyuz type, it was decided to provide for the design of an automatic transport spacecraft, which will deliver up to 2.5 tons of cargo to the orbital station. The Progress cargo spacecraft went for a test launch in 1966, and the next year for a manned one. The tests were successful and met the expectations of the designers. The first series of Progress cargo ships was in operation until 1990. A total of 43 spacecraft took off, including an unsuccessful launch called Kosmos-1669. Further modifications of the ship were developed. Cargo space "Progress M" carried out 67 take-offs during 1989-2009. From 2000 to 2004, Progress M-1 made 11 takeoffs. And the Progress M-M cargo ship was launched 29 times before 2015. The latest modification of Progress MC is still relevant today.

How it goes

The Progress cargo spacecraft is an automatic unmanned vehicle that is launched into orbit, then turns on the engines and approaches. After 48 hours, it should dock and unload. After that, it is filled with what is no longer needed at the station: garbage, waste equipment, waste. From that moment on, it is already an object clogging up near-earth space. It is undocked, with the help of engines it moves away from the station, slows down, enters the Earth's atmosphere, where the Progress cargo ship burns out. This happens at a given point over the Pacific Ocean.

How does it work

All modifications of the Progress cargo vehicle are generally arranged in the same manner. Differences in the filling and specific support systems are understandable only for specialists and are not the subject of the article. In the structure of any modification, several significantly different compartments are distinguished:

  • cargo;
  • refueling;
  • instrument.

The cargo compartment is sealed and has a docking unit. Its purpose is to deliver the cargo. The refueling compartment is not sealed. It contains toxic fuel and it is the lack of tightness that protects the station in the event of a leak. Aggregate or instrument compartment allows control of the ship.

The very first

The Progress-1 cargo spacecraft took off into space in 1978. Checking the operation of control systems, rendezvous and docking equipment showed the possibility of rendezvous with the station. He docked with the Salyut-6 orbital station on January 22. Cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Yuri Romanenko supervised the work of the spacecraft.

Latest

The latest modification "Progress MS" has a number of significant differences that have improved the functionality and increased reliability of the cargo ship. In addition, it is equipped with more powerful protection against meteorites and space debris, and has redundant electric motors in the docking vehicle. It is equipped with a modern command-telemetry system "Luch", which maintains communication at any point in the orbit. The launches are carried out using Soyuz carrier rockets from the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Disaster of the Progress MS-4 spacecraft

On New Year's Eve, on December 1, 2016, the Soyuz-U launch vehicle launched from Baikonur, which was carrying the Progress MS-4 cargo vehicle into orbit. He was carrying New Year's gifts to the cosmonauts, the Lada-2 greenhouse, the Orlan-ISS spacesuits for work in open space and other cargo with a total mass of 2.5 tons for the cosmonauts of the International Space Station. But at 232 seconds of flight, the ship disappeared. Later it turned out that the rocket exploded and the ship did not reach orbit. The wreckage of the ship fell in the region of the mountainous and deserted territory of the Tyva Republic. Various reasons for the crash were proposed.

"Progress MS-5"

This disaster did not affect further space work. On February 24, 2017, the Progress MS-5 cargo vehicle entered orbit, which carried part of the equipment that was lost in the previous disaster. And on July 21, he was disconnected from and safely sunk in that part of the Pacific Ocean, which is called the "cemetery of spaceships."

Plans for the future

The Rocket and Space Corporation Energia announced its plans - the creation of the reusable manned transport vehicle Federation, which will replace unmanned progress. The new "truck" will have a more lifting capacity, have more advanced on-board and navigation systems. But most importantly, he will be able to return to Earth.

Disputes still do not subside, but in general, was Buran needed "? There are even opinions that the Soviet Union was destroyed by two things - the war in Afghanistan and the exorbitant spending on Buran. Is this so? Why and why was Buran created? , and who needed it? Why is it so similar to the overseas Shuttle? How was it arranged? What is the Buran for our astronautics - a "dead-end branch" or a technical breakthrough that was much ahead of its time? Who created it and what is it could give our country? And of course, the most important question - why does not it fly? We are opening a section in our magazine, in which we will try to answer these questions. In addition to Buran, we will also talk about other reusable spaceships, like those flying today, and did not go further than the design drawers.

Vadim Lukashevich



The creator of "Energy" Valentin Glushko


"Father" "Burana" Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky



This is how Buran could dock with the ISS


Estimated payloads of "Buran" in a failed manned flight

Fifteen years ago, on November 15, 1988, the Soviet reusable spacecraft "Buran" made its flight, which ended with an unrepeated automatic landing on the Baikonur landing strip. The most ambitious, most expensive and longest-lasting project of Russian cosmonautics was terminated after a triumphant single flight. In terms of the amount of material, technical and financial resources, human energy and intelligence, the Buran program surpasses all the previous space programs of the USSR, not to mention today's Russia.

Background

Despite the fact that the idea of \u200b\u200ban airplane spacecraft was first suggested by the Russian engineer Friedrich Zander in 1921, the idea of \u200b\u200bwinged reusable spaceships did not arouse much enthusiasm among domestic designers - the solution turned out to be overly complicated. Although for the first cosmonaut, along with the "Gagarin" "Vostok", OKB-256 of Pavel Tsybin designed a winged spacecraft of the classical aerodynamic design - PKA (Planning Spacecraft). The preliminary design, approved in May 1957, provided for a trapezoidal wing and normal tail assembly. The PKA was supposed to start on the royal rocket R-7. The device had a length of 9.4 m, a wingspan of 5.5 m, a fuselage width of 3 m, a launch weight of 4.7 tons, a landing weight of 2.6 tons and was designed for 27 hours of flight. The crew consisted of one cosmonaut, who had to eject before landing. A feature of the project was the folding of the wing into the aerodynamic "shadow" of the fuselage in the area of \u200b\u200bintense braking in the atmosphere. The successful tests of the Vostok, on the one hand, and the unresolved technical problems with the winged ship, on the other, caused the termination of work on the spacecraft and for a long time determined the appearance of Soviet spacecraft.

Work on winged spacecraft was only developed in response to an American challenge, with the active support of the military. For example, in the early 60s in the United States, work began on the creation of a small single-seat return rocket plane Dyna-Soar (Dynamic Soaring). The Soviet response was the deployment of work on the creation of domestic orbital and aerospace aircraft in aviation design bureaus. The Chelomey Design Bureau developed projects for the R-1 and R-2 rocket planes, and the Tupolev Design Bureau - Tu-130 and Tu-136.

But the greatest success of all aviation firms was achieved by OKB-155 Mikoyan, in which in the second half of the 60s, under the leadership of Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky, work was launched on the Spiral project, which became the forerunner of Buran.

The project envisaged the creation of a two-stage aerospace system, consisting of a hypersonic accelerator aircraft and an orbital aircraft made according to the "load-carrying body" scheme, launched into space using a two-stage rocket stage. The work was completed by atmospheric flights of a manned aircraft analogous to the orbital aircraft, called EPOS (Experimental Manned Orbital Aircraft). The Spiral project was far ahead of its time, and our story about it is still ahead.

As part of "Spiral", already at the stage of closing the project, for full-scale tests, rocket launches into orbit of artificial earth satellites and suborbital trajectories of the "BOR" spacecraft (Unmanned Orbital Rocket Rocket) were performed, which at first were reduced copies of the EPOS ( 4 "), and then large-scale models of the" Buran "spacecraft (" BOR-5 "). The decline in American interest in space rocket planes led to the actual cessation of work on this topic in the USSR.

Fear of the unknown

By the 70s, it became finally clear that the military confrontation would be transferred into space. There was a need for funds not only for the construction of orbital systems, but also for their maintenance, prevention, recovery. This was especially true of orbital nuclear reactors, without which the combat systems of the future could not exist. Soviet designers tended to favor well-proven disposable systems.

But on January 5, 1972, US President Richard Nixon approved the Space Shuttle program to create a reusable space system (ISS), developed with the participation of the Pentagon. Interest in such systems was automatically awakened in the Soviet Union - already in March 1972, the discussion of the ISS took place at the Commission of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues (MIC). At the end of April of the same year, an extended discussion of this topic took place with the participation of chief designers. The general conclusions were as follows:

- The ISS is not effective for launching payloads into orbit and is significantly inferior in cost to one-time launch vehicles;

- no serious tasks requiring the return of cargo from orbit;

- The ISS created by the Americans does not pose a military threat.

It became obvious that the United States was creating a system that did not pose an immediate threat, but that could threaten the country's security in the future. It was precisely the uncertainty of the future tasks of the Shuttle with a simultaneous understanding of its potential that determined in the future the strategy of copying it to provide similar opportunities for an adequate response to future challenges of a potential adversary.

What were the “future challenges”? Soviet scientists gave free rein to their imaginations. Research carried out at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (now the Keldysh Institute) showed that the Space Shuttle makes it possible, by performing a maneuver to return from a semi- or single-orbit orbit along a route that was traditional at that time, passing from Moscow and Leningrad, having made a certain decline (diving), in their area to drop a nuclear charge and paralyze the combat command and control system of the Soviet Union. Other researchers, analyzing the size of the shuttle's transport bay, came to the conclusion that the shuttle can "steal" entire Soviet space stations from orbit, just like in the James Bond films. Simple arguments that to counteract such a “theft” it is enough to place a couple of kilograms of explosives on a space object, for some reason did not work.

Fear of the unknown turned out to be stronger than real fears: on December 27, 1973, the military-industrial complex decided to develop technical proposals for the ISS in three versions - on the basis of the N-1 lunar rocket, the Proton launch vehicle and the Spirala base. "Spirals" did not enjoy the support of the top officials of the state in charge of astronautics, and in fact were curtailed by 1976. The same fate befell the N-1 rocket.

Rocket aircraft

In May 1974, the former royal design bureaus and factories were merged into a new NPO Energia, and Valentin Glushko was appointed Director and General Designer, eager to put a victory point in a long-standing dispute with Korolev over the design of a "lunar" super-rocket and take revenge by going down in history as the creator of the lunar base.

Immediately after his approval in office, Glushko suspends the activities of the ISS department - he was a principled opponent of the "reusable" topic! They even say that immediately after arriving in Podlipki, Glushko spoke specifically: “I don’t know yet what we will be doing, but I know exactly what we will NOT do. We will not copy the American Shuttle! "Glushko reasonably believed that work on the reusable spacecraft would close the lunar programs (which later happened), slow down the work on orbital stations and prevent the creation of his family of new heavy rockets. Three months later, on August 13, Glushko proposes its space program based on the development of a series of heavy rockets that received the RLA (Rocket Aircraft) index, which were created by parallel connection of various numbers of unified blocks with a diameter of 6 m.On each block it was planned to install a new powerful four-chamber oxygen-kerosene rocket engine with a thrust of more than 800 tf The missiles differed from each other in the number of identical blocks in the first stage: RLA-120 with a carrying capacity of 30 tons in orbit (the first stage - 2 blocks) to solve military problems and create a permanent orbital station; RLA-135 with a carrying capacity of 100 tons (the first stage - 4 blocks) to create a lunar base; RLA-1 50 with a carrying capacity of 250 tons (first stage - 8 blocks) for flights to Mars.

Strong-willed decision

However, the opal of reusable systems lasted less than a year at Energia. Under pressure from Dmitry Ustinov, the direction of the ISS reappeared. The work began as part of the preparation of the "Integrated rocket and space program", which provided for the creation of a unified series of rocket aircraft for the landing of a manned expedition to the moon and the construction of a lunar base. Trying to preserve his program of creating heavy missiles, Glushko proposed using the future RLA-135 rocket as a carrier for a reusable ship. The new volume of the program - 1B - was called “Buran reusable space system”.

From the very beginning, the program was torn apart by opposite requirements: on the one hand, the developers were constantly under severe pressure from “above” aimed at copying the Shuttle in order to reduce technical risk, development time and cost, on the other, Glushko was trying hard to preserve his unified missile program.

In the formation of the Buran's appearance at the initial stage, two options were considered: the first - an aircraft layout with a horizontal landing and the location of the second-stage main engines in the tail section (analogue of the Shuttle); the second is a wingless vertical landing scheme. The main expected advantage of the second option is a reduction in development time due to the use of experience from the Soyuz spacecraft.

The wingless variant of the ship consisted of a crew cabin in the front conical part, a cylindrical cargo compartment in the central part and a conical tail compartment with a fuel supply and a propulsion system for maneuvering in orbit. It was assumed that after launch (the spacecraft was located on top of the rocket) and work in orbit, the spacecraft enters the dense layers of the atmosphere and makes a controlled descent and parachute landing on skis using soft-landing powder engines. The gliding range problem was solved by giving a triangular (in section) shape to the ship's hull.

As a result of further research, an aircraft layout with a horizontal landing was adopted for the "Buran" as the most appropriate to the requirements of the military. In general, for the rocket, the option with a lateral payload was chosen with the placement of non-salvage propulsion engines on the central block of the second stage of the carrier. The main factors in choosing such a layout were uncertainty about the possibility of developing a reusable hydrogen rocket engine in a short time and the desire to preserve a full-fledged universal launch vehicle capable of independently launching into space not only a reusable orbital vehicle, but also other payloads of large masses and dimensions. Looking ahead, we note that such a decision justified itself: Energia ensured the launch into space of spacecraft weighing five times more than the Proton launch vehicle, and three times more than the Space Shuttle.

Work

Large-scale work unfolded after the release of a secret resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1976. At the Ministry of Aviation Industry, NPO Molniya was organized under the leadership of Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky to create a spacecraft with the development of all means of descent and landing. The manufacture and assembly of the "Buranov" airframe was entrusted to the Tushino machine-building plant. Aviation workers were also responsible for the construction of the landing complex with the necessary equipment.

Based on his experience, Lozino-Lozinsky, together with TsAGI, proposed to use a "load-bearing hull" scheme for the ship with a smooth wing-fuselage coupling based on an enlarged "Spiral" orbital aircraft. And although this option had obvious layout advantages, they decided not to risk it - on June 11, 1976, the Council of Chief Designers "by willed order" finally approved the version of the ship with a horizontal landing - a monoplane with a cantilever low-lying double swept wing and two air-jet engines in the tail section, which provided deep landing maneuvering.

The characters have been determined. It only remained to make a ship and a carrier.

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