Translated material
Round Dates: "Energy - Buran" and ISS
The end of this fall is marked by two round dates, important for everyone who is happy for the domestic and world cosmonautics.
On November 15, 1988, with the help of a super-heavy energy launch vehicle, Energia was launched into space into its only flight of the Buran orbital aircraft, and on November 20, 1998, Proton-K pH, the first module of the international space station-the functional-loading block “Zarya”, which laid the foundation and exploitation of the largest out-of-air building in humanity.
Both events are full of pride and tragedy for Russians. The Energy -Buran system was created by the time of sunset of the Soviet Union, when successes in the astronautics were contrasted with empty regiments in stores and the beginning of radical political and economic reforms. Very quickly, the work of more than a million scientists, engineers and workers became nobody needs. The time of change depreciated the fact that in the late 1980s we were more close to the space dreams of the sixties. The ultra -hungry missile "Energy" opened the way to the Moon and Mars. Its more lifting volcano modification could provide manned expeditions to Mars and the construction of a inhabited base on the moon at the beginning of the 21st century. The Energy NGO has worked out the possibility of international cooperation on these projects (and then understood the inability to implement such plans for the forces of one country).
The whirlpool of history, economic and political miscalculations of the country's leadership did not allow these bold dreams to realize. Work on the Energy-Buran transport system was stopped in the early 1990s, and they never returned to them again. Cooperation scattered in many former Soviet republics was very quickly destroyed, hundreds of thousands of experts lost their jobs, the history of the American Apollo program repeated. We only remained the memoirs of the participants of that space program, say, the memoirs of the chief designer of the Energy Captain Boris Ivanovich Gubanov “Triumph and the tragedy of“ Energy ” 1 .
Let the main objectives of the development of a super-heavy rocket and “Buran” were not fulfilled, but some results and the material base still allowed to lay the foundations of the Russian cosmonautics of the first decades. Factory machines purchased with funds allocated to Buran were useful for the production of the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft to supply the Mir and ISS orbital stations; The “Side” RN “Energia” (the first step, the “Zenit” pH) served as the basis for the program for the removal of commercial satellites from the equator in the Pacific Ocean (“Sea Start”), the building of the Buran flight control center in TsNIIMASH was re -profiled for the Central Executive Committee under the ISS program, etc.
Elements of the Buran program were also useful to create an international space station. For our orbital aircraft, a docking system was developed based on the Soyuz-Apollo program (APAP-Androgyno-Perifer's unit of the docking), with its help it was supposed to joke to the Mir orbital station, and then MIR-2 (was not created). As a result, APA was used to dock American shuttle first to the Mir station, and then to the ISS for conducting assembly operations, for the delivery of goods and crews.
The agreement on the joint construction of the ISS between Russia and the United States was signed in 1993, and on November 20, 1998 its first element launched - the FGB Zarya, and on December 7, Shattl Endeavour delivered and attached to the “dawn” the American junction unity module. On December 10, 1998, Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalyov and astronaut Robert Kaban opened the hatches between the first modules of the station.
Now, looking back, it is possible to say with a fairly high degree of confidence that if it were not for this agreement, the United States and their partners would not have had an orbital station for a very long time, and Russia would no longer have a manned program in space.
The correct solution was to duplicate functions at the level of partners. When the COLUMBIA shuttle died during the landing in 2003, only the presence of progress cargo ships and manned unions made it possible to save the station and continue flights into space. This helped in 2011, when the shuttles stood on the "eternal joke" in museums. Until now, the new American manned ships Dragon V2 and Starliner are not yet ready, all people are delivered to the ISS on Russian Union.
Unfortunately, we approached the twentieth anniversary of the station with an unfinished Russian segment: so, almost ready-made multifunctional laboratory module “Nauka” and the nodal module-still on Earth, and the scientific and energy module was still not built, although according to the federal space program of 2016–2025 he was supposed to start to the ISS in 2019. An equally sad part of reality is the realization that Russia has actually forgot how to build large orbital modules that were previously made at the State Customs Service of them. M.V. Khrunichev in Moscow. The enterprise hung the threat of development of 80% of the territory with residential and office complexes as part of the reform of the enterprise with Roscosmos. But this year, the demolition process of production workshops by decision of the President of the country is temporarily frozen.
In conclusion, I would like to say that, despite all these sad memories, life continues and requires our efforts, for example, that the history of the Energia -Buran program is preserved properly and finds its application in the future so that the example of cooperation between different countries in the ISS project is a lesson for politicians.
The theme of the international space station is so extensive and interesting that we will return to it on the pages of the TRV-hunger, in order to give readers a more detailed idea of this project, its goals, objectives and difficulties.
Alexander Khokhlov,
Cosmonautics popularizer,
Member of the North-West Organization of the Cosmonautics Federation of the Russian Federation
Photo: Roscosmos