Soviet "Buran" Space Shuttle (History)

Aerospaceweb.org ^ | 7 December 2003 | Jeff Scott

[r9etb]

The Shuttle must be manned to take off and land.

IIRC, the Shuttle can do both autonomously. (Indeed, it takes off autonomously every single launch.) Autoland capability exists as well. The astronauts, however, are naturally reticent to allow it.

[mym]

==It's practically a copy!==

The Soviet solution was to attempt to copy as much of the American Shuttle design as possible in order to insure the success of Buran. However, they modified the American approach, where necessary, to take advantage of Soviet strengths and eliminate technologies that were beyond their capabilities.

[DBrow]

I thought that there was some lever or mechanical linkage that had to be flipped over or toggled to enter land mode, and that this linkage was manual?

Sure it can take off by itself, but I never heard of any remote flying capability or of the ability to land on its own.

If it could be flown from the ground, then this mode would have been tested, and I never heard of such a test. Likewise remote landing- this to me would be a basic safety requirement that would have been tested at some point.

Both capabilities woud be quite useful.

[SJSAMPLE]

I was making a JOKE.

[KarlInOhio]

First flew in 1988? I thought for sure it flew before that and burned up over Australia.

The spacecraft that burned up over Australia was Skylab.

Skylab was launched on 14 May 1973. It fell from orbit on 11 July 1979.

[DBrow]

http://www.idlewords.com/2005/08/a_rocket_to_nowhere.htm

To further cut costs, and keep the weight from growing prohibitive, the Shuttle became the first manned spacecraft to fly without any kind of crew escape system, relying on certain components (solid rockets, wing tiles, landing gear) to function with complete reliability 3 . NASA also decided not to make the Shuttle capable of unmanned flight, so that the first test flight of the vehicle would have astronauts on board. This was a major departure for the traditionally conservative agency, which had relied on redundant systems wherever possible, and always tested unmanned prototypes of any new rocket. It showed how confident NASA had grown in its ability to correctly predict, simulate, and design for high reliability.


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The Soviet Shuttle, the Buran (snowstorm) was an aerodynamic clone of the American orbiter, but incorporated many original features that had been considered and rejected for the American program, such as all-liquid rocket boosters, jet engines, ejection seats and an unmanned flight capability. You know you're in trouble when the Russians are adding safety features to your design.

[Central Scrutiniser]

Buran was a very well built craft, along with its boosters.

Would have been better than the shuttle, but even the Soviets were smart enough to see that just because we had a shuttle they didn't need one. Too complex, too expensive, and unnecessary.

I love the fact that we are going back to capsules and, will be landing on solid earth like the Russians have done since the first flight.

[DBrow]

OK, I get it now. lol

[r9etb]

Your link is to an opinion piece, which automatically raises my suspicions as to its reliability.

The only real barrier to unmanned capability (if indeed there really is a barrier) would be in the ability of the Shuttle to accept commands from the ground, as opposed to Astronaut keypad inputs. I know that some commanding is (or can be) performed from the ground, without crew interaction. I also know that autoland capability does exist and has been simulated extensively, although it has never been used.

[DBrow]

Yes, an opinion piece. That was the first good hit that popped up. I once read an article that mentioned the linkage that had to be moved, I'll see if I can dig it up.

Googling the shutle and "unmanned flight" or "autonomous landing" yields no good hits, just references to the X34 or 37, which can do autonomous landings.

[SJSAMPLE]

I know, it was weak.
But the fact that they made a "successful" copy of our shuttle, with a very good automatic pilot, but couldn't capitalize upon their own strengths (environmental systems) in time for the maiden voyage is very amusing.

[r9etb]

Seach on shuttle autoland and you'll get your hits.

[Central Scrutiniser]

With all their experience in long-term space habitation, they couldn't copy the US life support system as well. Sad.

No, they never intended to fly the first few flighs with any life support on it. The Soviets were notorious for building several versions of craft, and extensively testing it. They realized that the Buran was a money pit, they did a flight of it to save face, and very wisely scrapped the program. They are geniuses for doing that. We are stuck with a costly crappy unnecessary shuttle flying up to an under built, costly, unnecessary space station. Cheap simple liquid fueled rockets to put men in space, big assed solid rockets to put cargo up, its the only way to do it.

[Central Scrutiniser]

I have a few Buran pins from when I visited Russia. I had the chance to see the Buran test article in Sydney, but the cost was very high, and it wasn't really the Buran, any more than the Enterprise is the Space Shuttle.

BTW, Enterprise (the shuttle test article) is now at the new Smithsonian Air and Space museum at Dulles airport.

[DBrow]

Well, here is one clue. Mission Control can call for an abort, but the crew has to push an ABORT button after turning an abort selector switch


http://www.space-shuttle.com/abortmain.htm

Which abort mode is selected depends on the cause and timing of the failure causing the abort and which mode is safest or improves mission success. If the problem is a space shuttle main engine failure, the flight crew and Mission Control Center select the best option available at the time a space shuttle main engine fails.

If the problem is a system failure that jeopardizes the vehicle, the fastest abort mode that results in the earliest vehicle landing is chosen. RTLS and TAL are the quickest options (35 minutes), whereas an AOA requires approximately 90 minutes. Which of these is selected depends on the time of the failure with three good space shuttle main engines.

The flight crew selects the abort mode by positioning an abort mode switch and depressing an abort push button.

[DBrow]

Here it is. Someone must manually deploy the landing gear. That's the lever or linkage I remembered. The linked article also discusses other aspects of "autonomous flight" (as compared to remote flight) and while some of the testimony is confident that it could be done, others mention major software and hardware changes.


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http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/science/hsy86869.000/hsy86869_0.htm

Q3b. What technical barriers, if any, need to be addressed to develop a fully autonomous Shuttle?

A3b. There are no technical barriers to such a development. The only significant modification necessary is to automate the landing gear deployment process, which today is manually controlled by the Shuttle pilot.

[r9etb]

I'm actually somewhat informed -- though a few years out of the loop -- on what has to happen in those situations. These are a means for selecting a guidance mode during launch anomalies. Aside from the presence of the hardware button itself, there is no intrinsic engineering difficulty with replacing same with a ground-command capability.

Once the button is pushed, however, the Shuttle response is essentially autonomous.

And none of these are "autoland" options per se.

[r9etb]

The linked article also discusses other aspects of "autonomous flight" (as compared to remote flight) and while some of the testimony is confident that it could be done, others mention major software and hardware changes.

Autonomous vs. remote-controlled is indeed a huge difference. Autoland is "autonomous," and (aside from the landing gear) is already there. I cannot imagine that it would take major S/W or H/W changes to change this to a ground commanded operation (it's the sort of stuff that's been done on satellites for decades). An autonomous release of the gear is likewise not that big a deal.

What you wouldn't want is to have a piloted landing with autonomous gear-down: that's asking for trouble.

[DBrow]

Right. So back to the main point, Buran was remote capable and had some autonomous capabilities off the shelf.

The Shuttles are not, and would require modifications to make them so.

I think thay should make the fleet remote/autonomous. After the "we really did fix the foam problem", wouldn't it have been nice to send the thing up unmanned, on a noncritical resupply mission or something, rather than staff it up and hope the thing worked.

And, hey, why not build an upgraded Buran- 120 tons of lift is a significant upgrade from what we've got.

Wonder how much the Russians would charge for a set of drawings?

[r9etb]

The Shuttles are not, and would require modifications to make them so.

The Shuttles have also flown 100 missions as-is, and there's really no particular need to do otherwise.

And, hey, why not build an upgraded Buran- 120 tons of lift is a significant upgrade from what we've got.

I think thay should make the fleet remote/autonomous. After the "we really did fix the foam problem", wouldn't it have been nice to send the thing up unmanned, on a noncritical resupply mission or something, rather than staff it up and hope the thing worked.

Nah. The point of the Shuttle is that it's manned. If you're gonna use it as an unmanned vehicle, it'd be lots easier and cheaper (not to mention increasing payload) to make an expendable to do the same tasks.