OK-GLI
Encyclopedia
The OK-GLI was a test vehicle ("Buran aerodynamic analogue") in the Buran program. It was constructed in 1984, and was used for 25 test flights between 1985 and 1988 before being retired. It is now an exhibition at the Technikmuseum Speyer in Germany
.
program. The construction of the orbiters began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale Buran was rolled out. The first suborbital test flight of a scale-model took place as early as July 1983. As the project progressed, five additional scale-model flights were performed.
The OK-GLI (Buran Analog BST-02) test vehicle ("Buran aerodynamic analogue") was constructed in 1984. It was fitted with four AL-31
jet engines mounted at the rear (the fuel tank for the engines occupied a quarter of the cargo bay). This Buran could take off under its own power for flight tests, in contrast to the American Enterprise
test vehicle, which was entirely unpowered and relied on an air launch.
The jets were used to take off from a normal landing strip, and once it reached a designated point, the engines were cut and OK-GLI glided back to land. This provided invaluable information about the handling characteristics of the Buran design, and significantly differed from the carrier plane/air drop method used by the USA and the Enterprise test craft.
.
, where it was displayed during the annual MAKS air show. In 2000, Analog Buran was sold to an Australian company called the Buran Space Corporation (BSC), owned by Australian astronaut Paul Scully-Power. It was disassembled and transported by ship to Sydney
, Australia
via Gothenburg
, Sweden
— arriving on February 9, 2000 and appeared as a static tourist attraction under a large temporary structure in Darling Harbour for a few years.
Upon reassembly, OK-GLI was put on display in a temporary enclosure for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.
Visitors could walk around and inside the vehicle (a walkway was built along the cargo bay), and plans were in place for a tour of various cities in Australia
and Asia
. The owners, however, went into bankruptcy after the Olympics, and the vehicle was moved into the open air and stored for a year, in a fenced-in parking lot and protected by nothing more than a large tarp, where it suffered deterioration and repeated vandalism.
The OK-GLI test vehicle was then offered for sale, including by a radio auction on Los Angeles
' News 980 KFWB-AM
with a starting price of $6 million, however it did not receive any genuine bids. In September 2004 a German
team of journalists found the OK-GLI test vehicle in Bahrain
. It was then bought by the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum
, to be transported to Germany
in 2005. Due to legal issues, it remained in Bahrain
for five years, pending settlement of an international court settlement over fees.
On 4 March 2008 the OK-GLI started her journey by sea to the Technikmuseum Speyer where it has been refurbished and serves as walk-in exhibition.
The journey got off to an inauspicious start when, during the transfer from the storage barge
to the ship
, there was a failure of the aft
spreader (part of the lifting mechanism) and the tail of the vehicle dropped from just above deck
height to the bottom of the hold
. Fortunately, no-one was hurt and both the ship and vehicle seemed to suffer only minor damage.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Construction
The development of the Buran began in the late 1970s as a response to the U.S. Space ShuttleSpace Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons...
program. The construction of the orbiters began in 1980, and by 1984 the first full-scale Buran was rolled out. The first suborbital test flight of a scale-model took place as early as July 1983. As the project progressed, five additional scale-model flights were performed.
The OK-GLI (Buran Analog BST-02) test vehicle ("Buran aerodynamic analogue") was constructed in 1984. It was fitted with four AL-31
Lyulka AL-31
-See also:-External links:* - AL-31 F aircraft turbofan engine* *...
jet engines mounted at the rear (the fuel tank for the engines occupied a quarter of the cargo bay). This Buran could take off under its own power for flight tests, in contrast to the American Enterprise
Space Shuttle Enterprise
The Space Shuttle Enterprise was the first Space Shuttle orbiter. It was built for NASA as part of the Space Shuttle program to perform test flights in the atmosphere. It was constructed without engines or a functional heat shield, and was therefore not capable of spaceflight...
test vehicle, which was entirely unpowered and relied on an air launch.
The jets were used to take off from a normal landing strip, and once it reached a designated point, the engines were cut and OK-GLI glided back to land. This provided invaluable information about the handling characteristics of the Buran design, and significantly differed from the carrier plane/air drop method used by the USA and the Enterprise test craft.
Test flights
Nine taxi tests and twenty-five test flights of OK-GLI were performed , after which the vehicle was "worn out". All tests and flights were carried out at BaikonurBaikonur
Baikonur , formerly known as Leninsk, is a city in Kyzylorda Province of Kazakhstan, rented and administered by the Russian Federation. It was constructed to service the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was officially renamed Baikonur by Russian president Boris Yeltsin on December 20, 1995.The shape of the...
.
| Date | Description | Maximum speed | Maximum altitude | Time | Crew / Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 December 1984 | Taxi test 1 | 45 km/h | 5 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius Rimantas Stankevičius Rimantas Antanas Stankevičius was a Lithuanian cosmonaut who test flew Soviet space shuttle Buran and its test vehicles. He was killed in a crash of his Su-27 fighter plane during an airshow in Salgareda.- Biography :In 1966 he has graduated from Chernigov Higher Aviation School... , Igor Volk Igor Volk Igor Petrovich Volk was a cosmonaut and test pilot in the Soviet Union. He is married and has two children.Igor Volk was selected as a cosmonaut on July 30, 1980, flew as Research Cosmonaut on Soyuz T-12, the 7th expedition to Salyut 7... |
|
| 2 August 1985 | Taxi test 2 | 200 km/h | 14 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | |
| 5 October 1985 | Taxi test 3 | 270 km/h | 12 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | |
| 15 October 1985 | Taxi test 4 | 300 km/h | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 10 November 1985 | Flight 1 | 480 km/h | 1500 m | 12 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 15 November 1985 | Taxi test 5 | 170 km/h | 12 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | |
| 3 January 1986 | Flight 2 | 520 km/h | 3000 m | 36 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 6 April 1986 | Taxi test 6 | 14 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko Anatoli Levchenko Anatoli Semyonovich Levchenko was a Soviet cosmonaut.... , Shchukin |
||
| 27 May 1986 | Flight 3 | 540 km/h | 4000 m | 23 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 11 June 1986 | Flight 4 | 530 km/h | 4000 m | 22 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 20 June 1986 | Flight 5 | 600 km/h | 4500 m | 25 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin |
| 28 June 1986 | Flight 6 | 650 km/h | 5000 m | 23 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin |
| 10 December 1986 | Flight 7 | 700 km/h | 4000 m | 24 minutes | First automatic landing Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 23 December 1986 | Flight 8 | 750 km/h | 6000 m | 17 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk |
| 29 December 1986 | Flight 9 | 17 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin | ||
| 16 February 1987 | Flight 10 | 28 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 25 February 1987 | Flight 11 | 19 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 29 March 1987 | Taxi test 7 | 2 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin | ||
| 30 March 1987 | Taxi test 8 | 25 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin | ||
| 21 May 1987 | Flight 12 | 20 minutes | Anatoli Levchenko, Shchukin | ||
| 25 June 1987 | Flight 13 | 19 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 5 October 1987 | Flight 14 | 21 minutes | Automatic landing Shchukin, Igor Volk | ||
| 15 October 1987 | Flight 15 | 19 minutes | Bachurin, Borodai | ||
| 16 January 1988 | Flight 16 | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | |||
| 24 January 1988 | Flight 17 | Bachurin, Borodai | |||
| 23 February 1988 | Flight 18 | 22 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 4 March 1988 | Flight 19 | 32 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 12 March 1988 | Flight 20 | Bachurin, Borodai | |||
| 23 March 1988 | Flight 21 | Bachurin, Borodai | |||
| 28 March 1988 | Flight 22 | Bachurin, Borodai | |||
| 2 April 1988 | Flight 23 | 20 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 8 April 1988 | Flight 24 | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | |||
| 15 April 1988 | Flight 25 | 19 minutes | Rimantas Stankevičius, Igor Volk | ||
| 29 December 1989 | Taxi test 9 | Rimantas Stankevičius, Zabolotski |
Post-retirement
After the program was cancelled, OK-GLI was stored at Zhukovsky Air Base, near MoscowMoscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, where it was displayed during the annual MAKS air show. In 2000, Analog Buran was sold to an Australian company called the Buran Space Corporation (BSC), owned by Australian astronaut Paul Scully-Power. It was disassembled and transported by ship to Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
via Gothenburg
Gothenburg
Gothenburg is the second-largest city in Sweden and the fifth-largest in the Nordic countries. Situated on the west coast of Sweden, the city proper has a population of 519,399, with 549,839 in the urban area and total of 937,015 inhabitants in the metropolitan area...
, Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
— arriving on February 9, 2000 and appeared as a static tourist attraction under a large temporary structure in Darling Harbour for a few years.
Visitors could walk around and inside the vehicle (a walkway was built along the cargo bay), and plans were in place for a tour of various cities in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
. The owners, however, went into bankruptcy after the Olympics, and the vehicle was moved into the open air and stored for a year, in a fenced-in parking lot and protected by nothing more than a large tarp, where it suffered deterioration and repeated vandalism.
The OK-GLI test vehicle was then offered for sale, including by a radio auction on Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
' News 980 KFWB-AM
KFWB (AM)
KFWB is a Los Angeles, California AM radio station operating on 980 kHz with 5,000 watts of power from a transmitter site near Lincoln Park . The station had a mostly all-news format from 1968 until September 8, 2009, after which it converted to a news-talk format...
with a starting price of $6 million, however it did not receive any genuine bids. In September 2004 a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
team of journalists found the OK-GLI test vehicle in Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...
. It was then bought by the Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum
Sinsheim Auto & Technik Museum
The Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim is a technology museum in Sinsheim, Germany. Opened in 1981, it is run by a registered association called "Auto & Technik Museum Sinsheim e.V." which also runs the Technik Museum Speyer. , it has more than 3,000 exhibits and an exhibition area of more than 50,000 m²...
, to be transported to Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
in 2005. Due to legal issues, it remained in Bahrain
Bahrain
' , officially the Kingdom of Bahrain , is a small island state near the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It is ruled by the Al Khalifa royal family. The population in 2010 stood at 1,214,705, including 235,108 non-nationals. Formerly an emirate, Bahrain was declared a kingdom in 2002.Bahrain is...
for five years, pending settlement of an international court settlement over fees.
On 4 March 2008 the OK-GLI started her journey by sea to the Technikmuseum Speyer where it has been refurbished and serves as walk-in exhibition.
The journey got off to an inauspicious start when, during the transfer from the storage barge
Barge
A barge is a flat-bottomed boat, built mainly for river and canal transport of heavy goods. Some barges are not self-propelled and need to be towed by tugboats or pushed by towboats...
to the ship
Ship
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...
, there was a failure of the aft
Aft
Aft, in naval terminology, is an adjective or adverb meaning, towards the stern of the ship, when the frame of reference is within the ship. Example: "Able Seaman Smith; lay aft!". Or; "What's happening aft?"...
spreader (part of the lifting mechanism) and the tail of the vehicle dropped from just above deck
Deck (ship)
A deck is a permanent covering over a compartment or a hull of a ship. On a boat or ship, the primary deck is the horizontal structure which forms the 'roof' for the hull, which both strengthens the hull and serves as the primary working surface...
height to the bottom of the hold
Hold (ship)
thumb|right|120px|View of the hold of a container shipA ship's hold is a space for carrying cargo. Cargo in holds may be either packaged in crates, bales, etc., or unpackaged . Access to holds is by a large hatch at the top...
. Fortunately, no-one was hurt and both the ship and vehicle seemed to suffer only minor damage.
Further reading
- Heinz Elser, Margrit Elser-Haft, Vladim Lukashevich: Buran - History and Transportation of the Russian Space shuttle OK-GLI to the Technik Museum Speyer, two Languages: German and Englisch, 2008, ISBN 3-9809437-7-1
External links
- OK-GLI Pictures and videos
- Buran Analog entry at Encyclopedia AstronauticaEncyclopedia AstronauticaThe Encyclopedia Astronautica is a reference web site on space travel. A comprehensive catalog of vehicles, technology, astronauts, and flights, it includes information from most countries that have had an active rocket research program, from Robert Goddard to the NASA Space shuttle to the Soviet...
- Official website by the NPO "Molniya", makers of the Buran
- Energia - all about the HLLV. Includes information about the Buran.
- Homepage of Technikmuseum Speyer, Exhibition of OK-GLI
- Transport of OK-GLI to Germany