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

Design [ | ]

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

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

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 OS Salyut and Mir, AGK TKS docked only with OS Salyut.

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

European (ESA) ATVs and Japanese HTVs have been developed and used to supply the International Space Station, and modernized Russian AGK Progress continues to be used. In addition, by order of NASA to supply the ISS, private companies have developed AGK

Space exploration 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 the Earth through a window. Since that time, man has been going exponentially. People's interest in everything cosmic is growing. And the Progress space truck family is no exception.

Deliver the cargo

Stations in orbit "Salyut" were operated for a short time. 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 Salyuts, it was decided to include a cargo element in the project of the Soyuz manned spacecraft, later called the Progress cargo spacecraft. The permanent developer of the entire Progress family still remains the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation named after Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, located in the city of Korolev, in the Moscow Region.

Story

The project has been developed 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 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 the following year - on a manned one. The tests were successful and justified the hopes of the designers. The first series of Progress cargo ships remained in operation until 1990. A total of 43 ships took off, including an unsuccessful launch called Kosmos-1669. Further modifications of the ship were developed. The cargo spacecraft Progress M carried out 67 takeoffs during 1989-2009. From 2000 to 2004, Progress M-1 made 11 takeoffs. And the Progress M-M cargo ship was launched 29 times until 2015. The latest modification of Progress MS is still relevant today.

How it all goes

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

How does it work

All modifications of the Progress cargo ship are generally of the same type. Differences in the filling and specific supporting systems are clear only to 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 goods. The refueling compartment is not sealed. It contains toxic fuel and it is the lack of tightness that protects the station in case of its leakage. 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. He made a docking with the Salyut-6 orbital station on January 22. Cosmonauts Georgy Grechko and Yuri Romanenko supervised the work of the spacecraft and supervised the process.

Latest

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

The crash of the ship "Progress MS-4"

On the eve of the new year, on December 1, 2016, the Soyuz-U launch vehicle launched from Baikonur, which carried the Progress MS-4 cargo ship into orbit. He was carrying New Year's gifts to the cosmonauts, the Lada-2 greenhouse, spacesuits for work in the open space mode Orlan-ISS and other cargo with a total weight of 2.5 tons for the cosmonauts of the International Space Station. But at 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 region of the mountainous and deserted territory of the Republic of Tyva. Various reasons have been proposed for the crash.

"Progress MS-5"

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

Future plans

The Rocket and Space Corporation Energia announced its plans to create a reusable manned transport spacecraft Federation, which will replace unmanned progress. The new "truck" will be more load-bearing, have more advanced on-board and navigation systems. But most importantly, 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 was it built at the end of the history of a great country? This and other interesting facts will be discussed in this review. Meet the An-225 Mriya.

The name of the Soviet transport jet aircraft An-225 "Mriya" means "dream" in Ukrainian. And I must say that such a name is the best match for this car. After all, it was and remains one of the largest and most lifting 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 appeared in connection with the development of the Buran space initiative. The country needed to establish an air transport system to transport this ship in its entirety. In addition to the space shuttle itself, Mriya was supposed to carry 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 goods by attaching them to the body (back) of the aircraft.

In such a cunning way, Mriya was supposed to transport spacecraft to the launch site, as well as deliver the shuttle back to the cosmodrome, in case it landed on one of the spare sites. The Dream made its first flight on December 21, 1988.

The plane was designed in the Ukrainian SSR, but it was built literally by the whole country. The project involved enterprises from different parts of the Soviet Union. So, in Ulyanovsk they made fuselage brackets and power frames. In Tashkent, they made the central parts of the wings of the Mriya. Aerobatic equipment was assembled in Moscow. Improved D-18T engines were brought from Zaporozhye. The chassis were made in Nizhny Novgorod. Many other companies were also involved. And although such cooperation is true for the production of almost all complex mechanisms, in the case of Mirea, 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 wingspan of the car is 88.4 meters. The length of the aircraft is 84 meters. Height - 18.2 meters. The mass of the aircraft without cargo is 250 thousand kg. The maximum takeoff weight reaches 640 thousand. At the same time, the normal mass of fuel is 300 thousand kg. The AN-225 has a 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 aircraft is operated by a crew of 6 people. Today the machine is serviceable and continues to work. It is operated by the Ukrainian company Antonov Airlines.

In continuation of the topic, a story about how in Russia.

Today, space flights do not belong to fantastic 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

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 descent vehicle 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 speedy conquest of space. It is clear why similar devices are not being built today. It is unlikely that someone 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 during the landing.

The first spaceship: the 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 were the first to design and launch an artificial satellite. They were also the first to invent the possibility of launching a living creature into space. The States are aware that the Union was the first to create an aircraft capable of going into space with a person. The father of rocket science is rightly called Korolev, 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 the contribution of the Queen 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 an aircraft, 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, 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 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 a familiar atmosphere for a person. Many boys see how they fly in space, forgetting about the very large overload of the astronaut at the start.

The largest space ship 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 development.
5. Shuttle - reusable structures for the delivery of the necessary cargo.
6. Stations are the largest spaceships. Today, not only Russians, but also French, Chinese and others are in outer space.

Buran - a spaceship that went down in history

Vostok was the first spacecraft to go into space. After the Federation of Rocket Science of the USSR, the production of Soyuz ships began. Much later, Clippers and Rus began to be produced. The federation places great hopes on all these manned projects.

In 1960, the Vostok spacecraft by its flight proved the possibility of man entering space. On April 12, 1961, Vostok 1 orbited the Earth. But the question of who flew on the ship Vostok 1, 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 ship in space. It was progress. And already in 1965 Voskhod 2 was able to go into outer space. The history of the Sunrise 2 ship was filmed.

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

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

Salyut is a series of interorbital space stations of the Soviet Union. Salyut 7 is known for having crashed.

The next spaceship, whose history is of interest, was Buran, by the way, I wonder where he is now. In 1988 he made his first and last flight. After repeated analysis and transportation, Buran's path of movement was lost. The last known location of the Buran spacecraft is in Sochi, work on it has been 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 was created inside the model of the Buran spacecraft at VDNKh.

Gemini - a series of ships of American designers. They replaced the Mercury project and were able to make a spiral in orbit.

American ships with the name Space Shuttle have become 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 a warden ship. Nibiru has already twice approached a 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 had also begun development work on the creation of a rover.

The first reusable station wagon 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.

A breakthrough is the possibility of using nuclear installations in space. 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 launched in 2016 with two astronauts to spend 33 days in space.

Spacecraft speed (km/h)

The minimum speed with which you can go into orbit around the Earth is 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 possible to break it. On the Apollo 10 spacecraft, three astronauts were returning home after orbiting the moon. 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 consider how fast a space station flies. As much as possible, it can develop up to 27,600 km / h.

Abandoned spaceships

Today, for spacecraft that have become unusable, a cemetery has been created in the Pacific Ocean, where dozens of abandoned spaceships can find their last refuge. spaceship disasters

Disasters happen in space, often taking lives. The most frequent, oddly enough, are accidents that occur due to collisions with space debris. On impact, the object's orbit is displaced and causes crash and damage, often resulting in 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 involve the conquest of space with the help of photonic engines. Russian scientists are planning to start testing a thermonuclear engine in the near future.

Spaceships of Russia and the USA

The rapid interest in space arose during the Cold War between the USSR and the USA. American scientists recognized worthy rivals in their Russian colleagues. Soviet rocket science continued to develop, and after the collapse of the state, Russia became its successor. Of course, the spacecraft that Russian cosmonauts fly are significantly different from the first ships. Moreover, today, thanks to the successful developments of American scientists, spacecraft have become reusable.

Spaceships of the future

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

Where are spaceships launched from?

To see with your own eyes the launch of a spacecraft 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 how the ship takes off. Given the fact that those watching the launch of a manned spacecraft must be far enough away, we can imagine that we are on the takeoff site.

Spaceship: what is it like inside?

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

What spaceships are flying now?

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

Until now, disputes have not subsided, but in general, was Buran needed? There are even opinions that the Soviet Union was ruined by two things - the war in Afghanistan and the exorbitant costs of Buran. Is this true? 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 Buran for our astronautics - a "dead-end branch" or a technical breakthrough that is far ahead of its time? Who created it and what is it could give to our country? Well, of course, the most important question is why it doesn’t 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 spacecraft that fly today, and not gone beyond the design drawing boards.

Vadim Lukashevich

Founder of Energia Valentin Glushko

"Father" of "Buran" Gleb Lozino-Lozinsky

This is how Buran could dock with the ISS

Estimated Buran payloads in the failed manned flight

Fifteen years ago, on November 15, 1988, the Soviet reusable Buran spacecraft made its flight, ending with a hitherto unrepeated automatic landing on the Baikonur runway. The largest, most expensive and longest project of the domestic cosmonautics was terminated after a triumphant single flight. In terms of the amount of material, technical and financial resources expended, human energy and intelligence, the Buran creation program surpasses all previous space programs of the USSR, not to mention today's Russia.

background

Despite the fact that for the first time the idea of ​​a spaceship-airplane was 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 excessively complex. Although for the first cosmonaut, along with the "Gagarin" "Vostok" OKB-256 Pavel Tsybin designed a winged spacecraft of the classical aerodynamic scheme - PKA (Planning Space Vehicle). The preliminary design approved in May 1957 provided for a trapezoidal wing and a normal tail unit. The PKA was supposed to start 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. A 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 cruise ship, on the other, caused the cessation of work on the PKA and determined the appearance of Soviet spacecraft for a long time.

Work on winged spaceships was launched only in response to the American challenge, with the active support of the military. For example, in the early 60s, work began in the United States on the creation of 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 - 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 booster aircraft and an orbital aircraft made according to the "carrying body" scheme, launched into space using a two-stage rocket stage. The work was completed with atmospheric flights of a manned aircraft-analogue of an orbital aircraft, called EPOS (Experimental Manned Orbital Aircraft). The Spiral project was far ahead of its time, and our story about it is yet to come.

Within the framework of the Spiral, already in fact at the stage of closing the project, for field tests, rocket launches into orbit of artificial Earth satellites and suborbital trajectories of the BOR (Unmanned Orbital Rocket Plane) vehicles were performed, which at first were reduced copies of EPOS (BOR- 4"), and then scale models of the spacecraft "Buran" ("BOR-5"). The fall 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 completely clear that the military confrontation would be transferred to space. There was a need for funds not only for the construction of orbital systems, but also for their maintenance, prevention, and restoration. This was especially true of orbital nuclear reactors, without which the combat systems of the future could not exist. Soviet designers leaned towards well-established disposable systems.

But on January 5, 1972, US President Richard Nixon approved a program to create a reusable space system (ISS) Space Shuttle, developed with the participation of the Pentagon. Interest in such systems automatically woke up 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 was held with the participation of chief designers. The general conclusions were as follows:

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

- there are 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 could threaten the country's security in the future. It was the uncertainty of the future tasks of the Shuttle, with the simultaneous understanding of its potential, that further determined the strategy of copying it to provide similar opportunities for an adequate response to the future challenges of a potential adversary.

What were the “future challenges”? Soviet scientists gave free rein to their imagination. Studies carried out at the Institute of Applied Mechanics of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Institute named after M.V. Keldysh) showed that the Space Shuttle makes it possible by performing a return maneuver from a semi-or single-turn orbit along the traditional route by that time, passing from the south over Moscow and Leningrad, having made some decrease (dive), drop a nuclear charge in their area and paralyze the combat 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 counteract such a “theft” it is enough to place a couple of kilograms of explosives on a space object did not work for some reason.

The 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 - based on the N-1 lunar rocket, the Proton launch vehicle, and on the Spiral base. "Spirals" did not enjoy the support of the first persons of the state who oversaw cosmonautics, and were actually 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 the new NPO Energia, and Valentin Glushko was appointed Director and General Designer, burning with the desire to put a winning point in the long-standing dispute with Korolev over the design of the "lunar" superrocket and take revenge, going down in history as the creator of the moon base.

Immediately after being approved in the position, 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 do with you, but I know exactly what we will NOT do. Let's not copy the American Shuttle!" Glushko rightly believed that work on a reusable spacecraft would close lunar programs (which later happened), slow down work on orbital stations and prevent the creation of his family of new heavy rockets. Three months later, on August 13, Glushko offers its own space program based on the development of a series of heavy rockets that received the RLA index (Rocket Aircraft), which were created by parallel connection of a different number of unified blocks with a diameter of 6 m. Each block was supposed to install a new powerful four-chamber oxygen-kerosene rocket engine with a thrust of more than 800 tf 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 carrying capacity of 250 tons (first stage - 8 blocks) for flights to Mars.

Volitional decision

However, the disgrace of reusable systems continued at Energia for less than a year. Under pressure from Dmitry Ustinov, the direction of the ISS reappeared. The work was started 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 landing a manned expedition to the Moon and building a lunar base. In an attempt to maintain 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 "Buran Reusable Space System".

From the very beginning, the program was torn apart by opposing demands: on the one hand, the developers were constantly under 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 tried hard to maintain his program of unified missiles.

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

The wingless ship variant consisted of a flight deck in the forward conical section, a cylindrical cargo compartment in the central section, and a conical tail section with a supply of fuel 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 soft landing engines. The problem of planning range was solved by giving a triangular (in cross section) shape to the ship's hull.

As a result of further research for the Buran, an aircraft layout with a horizontal landing was adopted as the most suitable for the requirements of the military. In general, for the rocket, they chose the option with a lateral location of the payload when placing unrescued sustainer engines on the central block of the second stage of the carrier. The main factors in choosing such an arrangement were the 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 ship, 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 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 decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR in February 1976. In 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 in the atmosphere and landing. The manufacture and assembly of the Buranov airframe was entrusted to the Tushino Machine-Building Plant. The 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 the “carrying hull” scheme with a smooth pairing of the wing with the fuselage based on the 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 "volitionally" finally approved the version of the ship with a horizontal landing - a monoplane with a cantilever low-wing double-swept wing and two air-jet engines in the tail section, which provided deep maneuvering during landing.

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