A spectacular success can sometimes spell disaster

Out of fear that the American Space Shuttle was about to grant the United States complete domination over near-earth-orbit space, the Soviets embarked on a mission to build their own space shuttle fleet. In so doing, they committed themselves to the design and construction of a new super-heavy-lift booster, high-output engines, and assembly, test, and launch facilities on an immense scale.

To the casual observer the final design appeared almost identical to the American solution. But it was not a copy so much as a practical realization --after all other conceivable alternatives had been ruled out-- that the Americans had gotten the basic idea right.

Yet having worked and re-worked the problem exhaustively, the Buran space plane and Energia booster combination was a considerable improvement over the American version. Systems were so completely automated that the Soviet space shuttle could fly into space, navigate a return to its home base on Earth and land precisely without a pilot on board. And while in space, it could carry a larger and heavier payload, stay in orbit longer and maneuver to a much higher altitude than any of the American shuttles.

It was hoped by many Soviet civilians that Buran and her unnamed fleet of sister orbiters might one day find a more noble use beyond the military's desire to counter perceived American space aggression ...perhaps to repair the ozone layer, or dispose of nuclear waste, or with giant mirrors illuminate near-polar cities in the winter, or help to colonize the Moon or even Mars.

Year after year passed. The Americans launched their shuttles one after the other -- until one of them blew up 71 seconds off the pad, and not many months after that the Americans decided to schedule no more military missions aboard their own fleet (or school teachers from New Hampshire for that matter). But institutional inertia being what it is, the Soviets persevered even without the old military threat.

Finally, on November 12, 1988 at 6 AM local time an unmanned test flight of the Buran space shuttle, itself weighing nearly 80 metric tones, left its launch pad roaring into the morning sky with a force equal to the power of the American Saturn 5 moon rocket. After having completed just two orbits, the Soviet shuttle reentered the atmosphere, flew across the central Asian steppe. and while accompanied by Igor Volk in a MiG-25 chase plane, touched down at 260 km/hr upon the Jubilee runway at Baikonur Cosmodrome in a 31 km/hr crosswind. Just 206 minutes after leaving the earth Buran rolled to a stop. The flight had been a complete and astounding success.

But there would be no more military plans for Buran, or hopes for environmental repair missions, or realistic thoughts of human-occupied Lunar and Martian bases as a result of this program. After having spent so much to defend themselves against real and imagined enemies, the Soviets had overspent and ruined their command economy. They could no longer afford to keep their country together much less support a hugely expensive space shuttle program.

Today, Buran and her two unnamed sister ships collect dust in a cold Baikonur hanger. The remaining Energia boosters lay like cordwood in nameless assembly bays, long ago their engines having been stripped and sold off to other rocket makers. And the huge test beds and launch facilities that once cost a king's ransom to construct now rot and crumble like the great ruins of past civilizations.

Even though the design phase produced a dramatic technical success, the project had over-reached, and in the end had become nothing more than a total financial disaster.