Unmanned cargo spacecraft(automatic cargo ship, AGK) - an unmanned spacecraft designed to supply a manned orbital station (OS) with fuel, scientific equipment and materials, products, air, water and other things, docking with it.

Design [ | ]

There are variants of such ships only for cargo delivery, as well as for both delivery and return of cargo, having in the latter case one or more lander. In addition, with the help of AGK engines, the OS orbit is corrected. Non-returnable AGK and non-returnable compartments of returnable AGK are used to free the operating system from waste materials and debris.

As a rule, ASCs are either developed on the basis of a manned spacecraft, or, conversely, become the basis for modification development in such a spacecraft.

Story [ | ]

The first AGKs were Soviet non-returnable ships of the Progress series and multifunctional ships of the TKS series, which had returnable vehicles. AGK "Progress" supplied the OS "Salyut" and "Mir", AGK TKS were docked only with the OS "Salyut".

The United States did not use AGK in its national space program.

European (ESA) ATV ships and Japanese HTV ships have been developed and are used to supply the International Space Station, and modernized Russian Progress AGKs also continue to be used. In addition, at the request of NASA, private firms developed AGK to supply the ISS

Space exploration and penetration into its space is an eternal goal scientific and technical progress and a completely logical stage of progress. The era, which is commonly called the space era, was opened on October 4, 1957, with the launch of the first artificial satellite by the Soviet Union. Just three years later, Yuri Gagarin looked at the Earth through the window. Since then, human development has been happening exponentially. People's interest in everything cosmic is growing. And the Progress family of space “trucks” is no exception.

Deliver the goods

The stations in Salyut orbit were not in operation for long. And the reasons for this were the need to deliver fuel, life support elements, consumables and repair equipment in case of breakdowns. For the third generation of Salyuts, it was decided to include in the Soyuz manned spacecraft project a cargo element, which was later called the Progress cargo spacecraft. The permanent developer of the entire Progress family remains today the Energia rocket and space corporation named after Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, located in the city of Korolev, in the Moscow region.

Story

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 design an automatic transport spacecraft that would deliver up to 2.5 tons of cargo to the orbital station. The Progress cargo spacecraft went on a test launch in 1966, and in next year- in manned. The tests were successful and met the hopes of the designers. The first series of Progress cargo ships remained in operation until 1990. A total of 43 spacecraft took off, including a failed launch called Cosmos 1669. Further modifications of the ship were developed. The Progress M cargo spacecraft carried out 67 takeoffs during 1989-2009. From 2000 to 2004, Progress M-1 made 11 takeoffs. A cargo ship Progress M-M"was launched 29 times before 2015. The latest modification of Progress MS is still relevant today.

How it all happens

The Progress cargo ship is an automatic unmanned vehicle that is launched into orbit, then turns on its engines and approaches. After 48 hours, it must dock and unload. After that, it contains what is no longer needed at the station: garbage, used equipment, waste. From this moment on, it is already an object littering the 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 up. This happens at a given point over the Pacific Ocean.

How it works

All modifications of the Progress cargo ship are generally arranged in the same way. Differences in the filling and specific supporting systems are understandable only to specialists and are not the topic of the article. In the structure of any modification there are several significantly different compartments:

• cargo;
• refueling;
• instrument.

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

The very first

The Progress 1 cargo spacecraft soared into space in 1978. Checking the operation of control systems, rendezvous and docking equipment showed the possibility of rendezvous with the station. It docked with the Salyut 6 orbital station on January 22. The work of the spacecraft was supervised and the process was supervised by cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Yuri Romanenko.

Most recent

The latest modification of “Progress MS” has rad significant differences, which improved the functionality and reliability of the cargo ship. In addition, it is equipped with more powerful protection from meteorites and space debris, has duplicate electric motors in the docking apparatus. It is equipped with a modern command and telemetry system “Luch”, which supports communication at any point in orbit. Launches are carried out using Soyuz launch vehicles from the Baikonur cosmodrome.

Disaster of the Progress MS-4 ship

On New Year's Eve, December 1, 2016, the Soyuz-U launch vehicle launched from Baikonur, carrying the Progress MS-4 cargo ship into orbit. He carried the astronauts New Year's gifts, the Lada-2 greenhouse, spacesuits for working in open space mode "Orlan-ISS" and other cargo total mass 2.5 tons for the astronauts of the International Space Station. But 232 seconds into the 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 mountainous and deserted territory of the Republic of Tyva. Various reasons have been proposed for the crash.

"Progress MS-5"

This disaster did not affect further space work. On February 24, 2017, the Progress MS-5 cargo ship entered orbit, carrying some of the equipment that was lost in the previous disaster. And on July 21, it was disconnected from and safely flooded in that part Pacific Ocean, which is called the “spaceship graveyard.”

Future plans

The Energia Rocket and Space Corporation announced its plans to create a reusable manned transport ship "Federation", which will replace unmanned progress. The new “truck” will have more load-carrying capacity and will have more advanced on-board and navigation systems. But the most important thing is that he will be able to return to Earth.

Why did the Soviet Union create one of the largest aircraft in the world, which is capable of lifting a spaceship on its “shoulders”? What fate befell it, and how it was built at the end of history great country? About this and others interesting facts will be discussed in this review. Meet the An-225 Mriya.

The name of the Soviet heavy-duty transport jet An-225 “Mriya” means “dream” in Ukrainian. And I must say that this name suits this car perfectly. After all, it was and remains one of the largest and most heavy-duty aircraft on the planet. The machine was designed at the Kiev Mechanical Plant, which today is known as the Antonov State Enterprise, in 1984. The project manager was Viktor Ilyich Tolmachev.

The need to create such a gigantic aircraft in the USSR arose in connection with the development of the Buran space initiative. The country needed to establish an air transport system to transport this entire ship. In addition to the space shuttle itself, Mriya was supposed to transport blocks of the Energia launch vehicle. However, both the blocks and the Buran itself were still much larger than the cargo compartment of the AN-225. For this reason, when developing the AN-225, they took into account the possibility of transporting cargo by attaching it to the body (back) of the aircraft.

In this cunning way, Mriya was supposed to transport spaceships to the launch site, as well as deliver the shuttle back to the cosmodrome in case it landed at one of the alternate sites. “Dream” made its first flight on December 21, 1988.

The plane was designed in the Ukrainian SSR, but it was built literally by the entire country. Enterprises from different parts of the world were involved in the project. Soviet Union. Thus, fuselage brackets and power frames were made in Ulyanovsk. The central parts of the wings of the Mriya were made in Tashkent. Flight equipment was assembled in Moscow. Improved D-18T engines were brought from Zaporozhye. The chassis were made in Nizhny Novgorod. There were many more companies involved. And although such cooperation is true for the production of almost all complex mechanisms, in the case of Mireya, the scale of cooperation between factories was incredibly high. Only the best was selected for the project.

So what are the characteristics of the AN-225? The wing span of the car is 88.4 meters. The length of the aircraft is 84 meters. Height – 18.2 meters. The weight of the aircraft without cargo is 250 thousand kg. The maximum take-off weight reaches 640 thousand. At the same time, the normal fuel mass is 300 thousand kg. The AN-225 has a flight range of 15,400 km, with a cruising speed of 850 km/h. The practical range (with maximum load) is 4 thousand km. At the same time, Mriya can rise to a height of up to 12 km. The plane is flown by a crew of 6 people. Today the machine is in good working order and continues to work. It is operated by the Ukrainian company Antonov Airlines.

Continuing the topic, a story about how in Russia.

Today, space flights are not considered science fiction stories, but, unfortunately, a modern spaceship is still very different from those shown in films.

This article is intended for persons over 18 years of age

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Russian spaceships and

Spaceships of the future

Spaceship: what is it like?

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, there was an arms race between the USSR and the USA. If we compare the size and approach to the issue of construction, the leadership of the USSR did everything for the speedy conquest of space. It is clear why similar devices are not being built today. It is unlikely that anyone will undertake to build according to a scheme in which there is no personal space for the astronauts. Modern spaceships are equipped with crew rest rooms and a descent capsule, main task which is at the moment the landing is carried out, make it as soft as possible.

The first spaceship: history of creation

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

Scientists who worked in the Soviet Union became the first to design and be able to launch an artificial satellite. They were also the first to invent the possibility of launching a living creature into space. The States realize that the Union was the first to create an aircraft capable of going into space with a man. Korolev 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 people remember Korolev’s contribution to this process.

The crew and their 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 building a flying device, it is important what metal it is made of. The following types of metals are used in rocket science:

1. Aluminum allows you to significantly increase the size of the spacecraft, since it is lightweight.
2. Iron copes remarkably well with all loads on the ship’s hull.
3. Copper has high thermal conductivity.
4. Silver reliably binds copper and steel.
5. Tanks for liquid oxygen and hydrogen are made from titanium alloys.

A modern life support system allows you to create an atmosphere familiar to a person. Many boys see themselves flying in space, forgetting about the very large overload of the astronaut at launch.

The largest spaceship in the world

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

1. The probe is a research ship.
2. Capsule - cargo compartment for delivery or rescue operations of the crew.
3. The module is launched into orbit by an unmanned carrier. Modern modules are divided into 3 categories.
4. Rocket. The prototype for the creation was military developments.
5. Shuttle - reusable structures for delivering the necessary cargo.
6. Stations are the largest spaceships. Today, not only Russians are in outer space, but also French, Chinese and others.

Buran - a spaceship that went down in history

The first spacecraft to go into space was Vostok. Afterwards, the USSR Rocket Science Federation began producing Soyuz spacecraft. Much later, Clippers and Russ began to be produced. The federation has great hopes for all these manned projects.

In 1960, the Vostok spacecraft proved the possibility of manned space travel. On April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 orbited 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 don’t know that Gagarin made his first flight on this ship? In the same year, the Vostok 2 spacecraft went into orbit for the first time, carrying two cosmonauts at once, one of whom went beyond the ship in space. It was progress. And already in 1965, Voskhod 2 was able to go into outer space. The story of the ship Voskhod 2 was filmed.

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

The American Apollo series shuttle opened new horizons. After all, 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.

Salyut is a series of interorbital space stations of the Soviet Union. Salyut 7 is famous for being a wreck.

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

Gemini is a series of ships designed by American designers. They replaced the Mercury project 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 Challenger.

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

Dragon is a spacecraft that was supposed to fly to the planet Mars in 2018. In 2014, the federation, citing technical specifications and the condition of the Dragon ship, delayed the launch. Not long ago, another event occurred: the Boeing company made a statement that it had also begun development of a Mars rover.

The first universal reusable spacecraft in history was 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 has begun on a transport and energy module. In parallel, development is underway on the Prometheus project, a compact nuclear reactor for rockets and spacecraft.

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

Spacecraft speed (km/h)

The minimum speed with which one 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 height 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 broken. On the Apollo 10 spacecraft, three astronauts, having orbited the Moon, were returning home. The capsule that 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 the space station is traveling. It can reach a maximum speed of 27,600 km/h.

Abandoned spaceships

Today, for spaceships that have fallen into disrepair, a cemetery has been created in the Pacific Ocean, where dozens of abandoned spaceships can find their final resting place. Spaceship disasters

Disasters happen in space, often taking lives. The most common, oddly enough, are accidents that occur due to collisions with space debris. When a collision occurs, the object's orbit shifts and causes crash and damage, often resulting in an explosion. Most famous disaster is the death of the American manned spacecraft Challenger.

Nuclear propulsion for spacecraft 2017

Today, scientists are working on projects to create a nuclear electric motor. These developments involve the conquest of space using photonic engines. Russian scientists plan to begin testing a thermonuclear engine in the near future.

Spaceships of Russia and the USA

Rapid interest in space arose during the years Cold War between the USSR and the USA. 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 are significantly different from the first ships. Moreover, today, thanks to the successful developments of American scientists, spaceships have become reusable.

Spaceships of the future

Today, projects that will allow humanity to travel longer are of increasing interest. Modern developments are already preparing ships for interstellar expeditions.

The place from which spaceships are launched

Seeing the launch of a spacecraft with your own eyes is the dream of many. This may be due to the fact that the first launch does not always lead to desired result. But thanks to the Internet, we can see the ship take off. Given the fact that those watching the launch of a manned spacecraft should be quite far away, we can imagine that we are on the take-off platform.

Spaceship: what is it like inside?

Today, thanks to museum exhibits, we can see with our own eyes the structure of ships such as the Soyuz. Of course, the first ships were very simple from the inside. Interior more modern options designed in calm colors. The structure of any spaceship necessarily frightens us with many levers and buttons. And this adds pride to those who were able to remember how the ship works, and, moreover, learned to control it.

What spaceships are they flying on now?

New spaceships appearance confirm that fiction has become reality. Today, no one will be surprised by the fact that spacecraft docking is a reality. And few people remember that the world’s first such docking took place back in 1967...

Disputes are still raging as to whether Buran was needed at all? There are even opinions that the Soviet Union was destroyed by two things - the war in Afghanistan and the exorbitant costs of Buran. Is this true? Why and for what purpose was Buran created? , and who needed it? Why is it so similar to the overseas Shuttle? How was it designed? What is Buran for our astronautics - a “dead-end branch” or a technical breakthrough, far ahead of its time? Who created it and what was it? could give to our country? And of course, the most important question is why it doesn’t fly? We are opening a column in our magazine in which we will try to answer these questions. In addition to Buran, we will also talk about other reusable ones. spaceships, both flying today and those that have not gone beyond the design drawing boards.

Vadim Lukashevich

Creator of "Energy" Valentin Glushko

“Father” of “Buran” Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky

This is how Buran could dock with the ISS

Suggested Buran payloads in the failed manned flight

Fifteen years ago, on November 15, 1988, the Soviet reusable spacecraft Buran made its flight, which ended with a never-repeated automatic landing on the Baikonur landing strip. The largest, most expensive and longest-lasting Russian cosmonautics project was terminated after a triumphant single flight. In terms of the amount of material, technical and financial resources spent, human energy and intelligence, the Buran program surpasses all previous space programs of the USSR, not to mention today's Russia.

Background

Despite the fact that the idea of ​​a spaceship-airplane was first expressed by the Russian engineer Friedrich Zander in 1921, the idea of ​​winged reusable spacecraft did not arouse much enthusiasm among domestic designers - the solution turned out to be overly complicated. Although for the first cosmonaut, along with Gagarin’s Vostok, Pavel Tsybin’s OKB-256 designed a winged spacecraft of a classical aerodynamic design - PKA (Planning Space Apparatus). Approved May 1957 preliminary design provided a trapezoidal wing and a normal tail unit. The PKA was supposed to launch on the royal R-7 launch vehicle. 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 the device. A special feature of the project was the folding of the wing into the aerodynamic “shadow” of the fuselage in the area of ​​intense braking in the atmosphere. Successful tests of the Vostok, on the one hand, and unresolved technical problems with the winged ship, on the other, caused the cessation of work on the spacecraft and determined the appearance of Soviet spacecraft for a long time.

Work on winged spacecraft began only in response to the American challenge, with the active support of the military. For example, in the early 60s in the USA, work began on creating a small single-seat returnable 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 developed the Tu-130 and Tu-136.

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

The project envisaged the creation of a two-stage aerospace system, consisting of a hypersonic booster aircraft and an orbital aircraft, made according to the “load-bearing body” scheme, launched into space using a two-stage rocket stage. The work culminated in atmospheric flights of a manned aircraft analogous to an orbital aircraft, called EPOS (Experimental Manned Orbital Aircraft). The Spiral project was significantly ahead of its time, and our story about it is yet to come.

Within the framework of "Spiral", already at the stage of closing the project, for full-scale testing, rocket launches were carried out into orbit of artificial Earth satellites and suborbital trajectories of the "BOR" (Unmanned Orbital Rocket Plane) devices, which at first were reduced copies of EPOS ("BOR- 4"), and then large-scale models of the Buran spacecraft ("BOR-5"). The decline in American interest in space rocket planes led to the virtual cessation of work on this topic in the USSR.

Fear of the unknown

By the 70s, it became completely clear that the military confrontation would move into space. There was a need for funds not only for building orbital systems, but also for their maintenance, prevention, and restoration. This was especially true for orbital nuclear reactors, without which the combat systems of the future could not exist. Soviet designers leaned towards well-proven disposable systems.

But on January 5, 1972, US President Richard Nixon approved the program to create a reusable space system (ISS) Space Shuttle, developed with the participation of the Pentagon. Interest in such systems automatically arose in the Soviet Union - already in March 1972, the ISS was discussed at the Commission of the Presidium of the USSR Council of Ministers 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 the 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 disposable launch vehicles;

— there are no serious tasks requiring the return of cargo from orbit;

— the ISS being 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 could threaten the country's security in the future. It was the uncertainty of the Shuttle’s future tasks with the simultaneous understanding of its potential that determined the future strategy for copying it to provide similar capabilities for an adequate response to the future challenges of a potential enemy.

What were the “future challenges”? Soviet scientists gave free rein to their imagination. Research conducted at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the M.V. Keldysh Institute) showed that the Space Shuttle provides the opportunity, carrying out a return maneuver from a half- or single-orbital orbit along the traditional route at that time, passing from the south over Moscow and Leningrad, having made some descent (dive), dropped a nuclear charge in their area and paralyzed the combat command and control system of the Soviet Union. Other researchers, analyzing the size of the shuttle's transport compartment, came to the conclusion that the shuttle could “steal” entire Soviet space stations from orbit, just like in the James Bond films. Simple arguments that to counter such a “theft” it is enough to place a couple of kilograms of explosives on a space object, for some reason did not work.

The fear of the unknown turned out to be stronger than real fears: on December 27, 1973, a decision was made by the military-industrial complex, which ordered the development of technical proposals for the ISS in three versions - based on the N-1 lunar rocket, the Proton launch vehicle and on the Spira base. “Spirals” did not enjoy the support of the top officials of the state who oversaw the cosmonautics, and were actually canceled 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 the new NPO Energia, and Valentin Glushko was appointed Director and General Designer, eager to put a winning end to the long-standing dispute with Korolev over the design of the “lunar” super rocket and take revenge, making history as the creator of the lunar base.

Immediately after being confirmed in the position, Glushko suspended the activities of the ISS department - he was a principled opponent of “reusable” topics! They even say that immediately after arriving in Podlipki, Glushko spoke specifically: “I don’t know yet what you and I will do, but I know exactly what we will NOT do. Let's not copy the American Shuttle!" Glushko, not unreasonably, believed that work on a reusable spacecraft would close lunar programs(which subsequently happened) will slow down work on orbital stations and interfere with the creation of his family of new heavy rockets. Three months later, on August 13, Glushko proposed his space program, based on the development of a series of heavy rockets, designated RLA (Rocket Flying Vehicles), which were created by connecting in parallel a different number of standardized blocks with a diameter of 6 m. Each block was supposed to be equipped with a new powerful four-chamber oxygen-kerosene liquid-propellant rocket engine with a thrust of more than 800 tf in a vacuum. The rockets differed from each other in the number of identical blocks in the first stage: RLA-120 with a payload capacity of 30 tons in orbit (first stage - 2 blocks) for solving military problems and creating a permanent orbital station; RLA-135 with a payload capacity of 100 tons (first stage - 4 blocks) to create a lunar base; RLA-150 with a payload capacity of 250 tons (first stage - 8 blocks) for flights to Mars.

Volitional decision

However, the fall from grace of reusable systems lasted at Energia for less than a year. Under pressure from Dmitry Ustinov, the direction of the ISS reappeared. The work began as part of the preparation of the “Comprehensive Rocket and Space Program”, which provided for the creation of a unified range of rocket aircraft for landing a manned expedition to the Moon and building a lunar base. Trying to preserve his heavy rocket program, Glushko proposed using the future RLA-135 rocket as a carrier for a reusable spacecraft. The new volume of the program - 1B - was called “Reusable space system “Buran”.

From the very beginning, the program was torn apart by opposing demands: on the one hand, the developers constantly experienced severe pressure “from above” aimed at copying the Shuttle in order to reduce technical risk, time and cost of development, on the other hand, Glushko rigidly tried to preserve his unified rocket program.

When forming the appearance of “Buran” on initial stage two options were considered: the first - an aircraft design with a horizontal landing and the location of the second stage propulsion engines in the tail section (analogous to the Shuttle); the second is a wingless design with a vertical landing. 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 version 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 ship was located on top of the rocket) and work in orbit, the ship enters the dense layers of the atmosphere and makes a controlled descent and parachute landing on skis using powder engines soft landing. The problem of gliding range was solved by giving the ship's hull a triangular (in cross-section) shape.

As a result of further research, an aircraft design with a horizontal landing was adopted for the Buran as the one that best met the requirements of the military. In general, for the rocket they chose the option with a lateral arrangement of the payload when placing non-rescueable propulsion engines on central block second stage of the carrier. The main factors in choosing this arrangement were uncertainty about the possibility of developing a reusable hydrogen rocket engine in a short time and the desire to maintain 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 this decision justified itself: “Energia” ensured the launch into space of vehicles weighing five times more than the Proton launch vehicle, and three times more than the Space Shuttle.

Works

Large-scale work began after the release of a secret resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers in February 1976. The Ministry of Aviation Industry organized NPO Molniya under the leadership of Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky to create a spacecraft with the development of all means of descent into the atmosphere and landing. The production and assembly of the Buranov airframe were entrusted to the Tushinsky 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 for the ship to use a “load-bearing hull” design with a smooth coupling of the wing to the fuselage based on the enlarged Spira 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 willful order” finally approved the version of the ship with a horizontal landing - a monoplane with a cantilever low-mounted double-swept wing and two air-breathing engines in the tail section, providing deep maneuvering during landing.

The characters have been determined. All that remained was to make the ship and the carrier.