> Climb inside to experience rickety-looking Soviet computer panels and monitors. It takes guts to fly into space with these...

Eh. It takes guts to fly into space tout court, of course, but I don't think those look rickety. Solid, proven, dependable, as used by dozens of spacecraft and kosmonauts!

Yeah, I think "over built" would be a more applicable critique, if you're trying to find one.

Those are some very substantial looking instrument panels.

I like my spacecraft overbuilt, you insensitive clod ;-)

The Soviet shuttle had some definite advantages over the American design. It had no engines of its own, it could carry a larger payload. Another nice touch was that it could be mounted on top of the booster instead of its side, preventing Columbia-like accidents. And it was fully automated - the only time it flew, was unmanned.

Truly a great piece of equipment. Very impressive.

This was perhaps the most amazing feat for me, too (esp for it's time)

Exactly. Every picture of space shuttle control panels "look" old, but are (most likely) state of the art technology. It must be the beige toned cases that immediately make us think "rickety looking". They are created to work, by NASA... not make by Apple, in order to look sharp.

Actually, the computers used for mission-critical systems are very old. Generally to keep the electronics big enough that an alpha particle hitting the box does not give off enough energy to flip a bit and corrupt the program.

Like the iBridge on the new USS Enterprise ;-)

At least Russian space-flight only requires guts, American space-flight also requires a good life insurance.

Love the leather seats!

And why fly unmanned missions? Its often said "You couln't find anyone willing to fly that thing" but of course for the priviledge of flying into history, any number of volunteers could always be found. Imagine the inspiring example, the publicity! Even with an occasional spectacular failure, folks will line up for that. Modern institutions quash this impulse for adventure and glory. A nation that used to revel in riding-a-barrel-over-Niagara now makes it illegal. Is it a strange twist of modern psychology/PC?

Well of course they make it illegal, it's certain death over the American Falls, and there's immigration issues as the actual good falls to go over a wholly Canadian territory.

Very interesting. Strangely, no mention of the hangar collapse that destroyed the Buran. At least that's what happened if Wikipedia and this picture from buran.ru can be trusted:

http://www.buran.ru/images/jpg/bbur89.jpg

There were 5 production and 8 mock-up vehicles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_program#Current_status

many more here:

http://worldmysteries9.blogspot.com/2009/02/abandoned-space-...

Actually looking at them side-by-side I think that's the original page, the posted link a very nice re-working with a bunch of new material.

The posted link's dated 2007 and yours is dated 2009, though, unless I'm mistaken.

Was the development of the a225 overkill? How come a 747 is sufficient for the shuttle?

It was probably necessary, the only other options would have been to continue with the VM-T which the soviets were using for the same task on smaller space parts, or the An-124. The VM-T would have been underpowered for the Buran, it was really used to carrying smaller parts and only had a payload of 50,000Kg (1/5 of the An-225, and only slightly higher than the 42,000Kg of the Buran orbiter).

The An-124 on the other hand was too short, even though it had adequate payload capacity. So the An-124 would have been needed to be extensively modified to carry the Buran anyway. They may have over-engineered it somewhat, but then better to over-engineer than under-engineer and end up with an embarassing accident.

The 747-100 that Nasa chose to use for the SCA didn't need quite as much modification to make it usable, and had a fairly high payload rating anyway (around 170,000Kg), and was long enough to carry the shuttle.

I've read a pilot's account of flying the 747 carrier with the Shuttle on top. (USAF officer, former SR-71 driver, got to fly the shuttle carrier loaded as a special treat.) His description of the loaded 747/shuttle stack's handling was hair-raising -- it used nearly the entire 12,000 foot runway to get airborn, and once flying it had a tendency to want to topple over sideways whenever he banked (very gently!).

The 747 can carry the shuttle, but it's pretty marginal -- in hot weather, with full fuel tanks, it's a bit of a beast.

The An-225 wasn't developed solely to carry Buran -- it's got a massive load capacity (bigger even than the freighter version of the A-380) and can carry external loads up to 200 tons (compare that to the 186 ton empty weight of a 747-400!). The flying An-225 is in constant demand for special lift missions and Antonov were/are working on finishing the second airframe (while using the first as a development platform for future heavy lift designs).

> Was the development of the a225 overkill?

Nope. They went for the awesomeness factor.

Soviet infrastructure never fails to amaze. Simply colossal.

Awesome.

But the sad fact of its abandonment remains.

That picture of an abandonment remains could be used as an epilogue to entire soviet era.

Almost everything was spoiled and ruined in past 20 years.