Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttles Captured on Drone Footage

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

Just Plain Mean
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While it is certainly good to know that drone technology is moving forward in the wine business when you just have to have "that" one bottle of wine for dinner, I think it is much more impressive when we get to see a real-life recon mission. And not only did that get some great shots with the drone, they actually broke in and got inside the never-launched Shuttles. Surely worth the watch.

Check out the video.

And you have to wonder if these guys are going to get visit very soon from the Russians, Russians, Russians!
 
They'll be fine provided they spent their youths preparing in the simulator. (known as Rush n Attack)
 
Before they get caught they need to go through Chernobyl!

I've seen pictures of the place before, but the angles they got are really cool.
 
Can someone explain to me exactly why stuff like this is just abandoned and nothing is ever done about it? I would feel that just for scrap that place is worth tearing down...right?

Why just let it all sit and rot?
 
Maybe it's like one of those front yards where there's an old rusty muscle-car up on blocks with the grass grown up around it. The owner was "always going to get around to doing something really cool with it" but never did. Maybe Russia is just too distracted with other things, meanwhile the grass grows...
 
Mut1ny said:
Can someone explain to me exactly why stuff like this is just abandoned and nothing is ever done about it? I would feel that just for scrap that place is worth tearing down...right?

Why just let it all sit and rot?
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Because the USSR went bankrupt and didn't have the money to do anything with it. It would cost more to clean it up than leave it there; plus with the dissolution of the USSR all the "confidential" items didn't really matter anymore since the whole government basically went away.

Same as of today, don't want to spend money to clean up something that isn't affecting anything.
 
Xrave said:
Because the USSR went bankrupt and didn't have the money to do anything with it. It would cost more to clean it up than leave it there; plus with the dissolution of the USSR all the "confidential" items didn't really matter anymore since the whole government basically went away.

Same as of today, don't want to spend money to clean up something that isn't affecting anything.
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Then they should clean it up a bit and turn it into a museum or tourist attraction. I'd buy a ticket.
 
Given the complexities of the US Space Shuttle, the Russian concept of not having launch engines on the vehicle was probably a better design decision.
 
kju1 said:
Its strange how it looks just like our shuttle....
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Canadians probably leaked parts of the designs. :p

Kidding. For some context though I remember seeing the shuttle Imax film as a kid, and remember seeing the Canadian maple leaf on several parts of the shuttle.
 
scojer said:
Then they should clean it up a bit and turn it into a museum or tourist attraction. I'd buy a ticket.
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That's thinking like an American, not a Russian.

American thinking: Make sure the thing is completely safe, reliable, and gets job done, cost and complexity be damned.
Russian thinking: Make sure it gets the job done in the simplest way, reliably, and at lowest price, safety be damned.

This means machinery for them is expendable. They don't give a damn if it sits and rusts since it has no use today. They aren't going to spend money on making it a museum. Being the largest country in the world, they also aren't worried about losing any real estate. They are already on the next thing.

You and I may look at the Space Shuttle as this great piece of equipment and a piece of history that needs to be remembered. For them, The Buran might as well be another tool in their shed. When the USSR went tits up, they simply closed the doors on the storage facility and abandoned it.


J3RK said:
Canadians probably leaked parts of the designs. :p

Kidding. For some context though I remember seeing the shuttle Imax film as a kid, and remember seeing the Canadian maple leaf on several parts of the shuttle.
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Canadian robotics firms were instrumental in designing and manufacturing the robotic arm (Canadarm) used to offload cargo on the Shuttle. Seeing as that piece of tech was absolutely essential for the Shuttle to do its job, the Canadians most definitely deserve to have their flag all over it.
 
It is actually sitting in Kazakhstan so they probably have even less money to do something with it than the Russians do.

It is interesting though that the first one that actually did fly in 1988 was destroyed in 2002 when the hanger it was in collapsed due to lack of maintenance. I guess they figured out shuttles were a money sink much faster than we did and just dropped the idea.
 
I thought they *did* give tours of the Cosmodrome??
Why the sneaking?
Maybe these youtube guys just wanted the publicity for their channel.

Headline: Putin's hangar hacked!!
 
jedijeb13 said:
It is actually sitting in Kazakhstan so they probably have even less money to do something with it than the Russians do.

It is interesting though that the first one that actually did fly in 1988 was destroyed in 2002 when the hanger it was in collapsed due to lack of maintenance. I guess they figured out shuttles were a money sink much faster than we did and just dropped the idea.
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well when your government collapses and leaves the country in the state of bankruptcy it was in you're obviously going to drop things that took 8 years just to get a single unmanned test flight.
 
Something you actually CAN blame the Russians for. Our lack of space travel since the 70's. There was no financial or practical benefit to go to space.....it was simply American exceptionalism that made it happen. The rest of world cried uncle and America went back to being sensible.....which meant not going to space.

Had the Russians stayed on our ass, we would probably have people on Mars now and we all would have jerked off to space porn at least once by now.

Thanks Russia....for nothing!
 
This is new, but I've seen photos of the shuttles before, though I don't think they went inside the shuttle in that case. Still pretty cool.
 
muz_j said:
The Buran was launched and used once, as a test - unmanned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft)#Orbital_flight
The only orbital launch of a Buran-class orbiter occurred at 03:00:02 UTC on 15 November 1988 from Baikonur Cosmodrome launch pad 110/37.[3][4] Buran was lifted into space, on an unmanned mission, by the specially designed Energia rocket
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That was actually a big deal that it was able to do it unmanned. In many ways their version was more advanced as I remember reading we didn't have the ability to do something like that with the US shuttle at the time.

Mut1ny said:
Can someone explain to me exactly why stuff like this is just abandoned and nothing is ever done about it? I would feel that just for scrap that place is worth tearing down...right?

Why just let it all sit and rot?
Click to expand...

Happens everywhere. You should see some of the abandoned stuff around US military bases. You had neighborhoods of houses out west that were left to rot on one base. It was actually used for filming a bunch of stuff. You had myth busters that used what amounted to abandoned navy hangers too.

The interesting thing is that it was said only a few of these were made(like 3 or 4). One got destroyed, the second was found in an airfield and bought. Looks like they were in the process of making a lot more. This is actually sad as the tech seemed to be good from the one that got sold .

The bad thing is that the Russians have always been kinda hidden with their space tech. WIth a few models like that they should have tried to sell a few off and used the proceeds to restore some for their own museums. I know I'd love to see one in the air and space museum here next to ours to compare. I mean how freaking cool would that be?

A few years ago some pictures were released of the Russian lunar lander that they had been designing(it was almost finished, the rocket wasn't). Their design was cool as while it only allowed 2 people total it was one ship. They didn't have an orbiter and a lander. I find it sad as we have some good documentaries talking about our progress, I wish more came out of the Russians as you have to admire their tech at the time.
 
This was the coolest thing I've ever seen filmed with a Mavic.
 
umeng2002 said:
Given the complexities of the US Space Shuttle, the Russian concept of not having launch engines on the vehicle was probably a better design decision.
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If you dont mind blowing up like 10% of the time...
 
scojer said:
I'm sure if they were to entertain that idea, they'd find some funds to clean it up a bit.
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No they literally had no money... none.

Now it's in a state of disrepair, if you wanted to renovate that to a full blown tourist attraction it would be 200-500 million. What is the breakeven on that at 5 bucks a ticket?

FYI, in 2015 disney had 11.5 million visitors. So 50 years break even with disney world numbers... No... just No.
 
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