buran ★ Silver Rockets

Lament for Buran

Posted by Danielle in Books & Literature, Perspectives, Picspam on March 22, 2011

Abandoned launch complex, Buran assembly facilities and launch fields

Last year I posted a selection of pictures from the abandoned Energiya-Buran assembly facilities and launch fields. I’ve long been fascinated by the Soviet space program — particularly Buran (“snow-storm” in Russian), which had such a vast scope, and yet had only one unmanned flight before cancellation. Now wild dogs live among the dead machinery, grasses slowly break up the concrete, and everything else is rusting in place. It makes me sad.

Sad enough to write a poem about it, in fact.

Lament for Buran
by Danielle Signor

A sleeping giant, left in place
Against the stark horizon stands,
Arms folded, longing to embrace
A rocketship with loving hands.
The future once was vast and near,
All gleaming steel and gantries high.
Such wondrous dreams that foundered here!
They wait, abandoned like the sky.

Now rust devours you — wild dogs pass,
Beneath your silent structures sleep.
The concrete causeway fades to grass,
Forsaken buildings, secrets keep.
Snow-storm, your energy was spent
Before you first drew breath — lament!

A wild dog plays beneath a launching/assembly platform.

Sign for launch complex

All photos © drugoi @ LiveJournal.

buran, poetry, soviet

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Buran

Posted by Danielle in Perspectives, Picspam on June 1, 2010

Buran test-mockup vehicle on display
All photos © drugoi @ LiveJournal.

For many years, I’ve been drawn to the Soviet space program, with its secrets, politically-creative explanations, and dreams as big as the motherland. The more that is declassified, researched, written about ~~and digested by me~~, the more fascinated I get. How could such ambitions and technical advances fall so short, or be abandoned so suddenly?

Needless to say, when I found this photographic tour of the Buran assembly facilities and launch fields, I was utterly engrossed. These images — I’ve selected but a few — are amazing in scale, in scope, and in the end, are so poignant and sad. It breaks my heart to see such large-scale efforts rusting, abandoned in place. (Why have two launch pads, when you can have four, or more?) And to know that the one Buran orbiter that touched space was destroyed, when the assembly facility’s roof collapsed in 2002.

Buran Assembly Building (roof collapsed in 2002, killing eight, destroying Buran spacecraft.)

The program is long-dead, but test-mockup Buran lives on (and is viewable, and tourable.) And thanks to the dedication of this photographer, one gets a small glimpse into the sheer scale, the magnitude, of sending an earthbound vessel into space. It takes a lot of hardware.

Launching/assembly platform for Energiya-Buran

I see these images, and my heart cries out, “such wondrous dreams were here!”

Buran launching facility

For full effect, you really need to see the rest here, and you can get a fairly decent translation through Babelfish (Buran means “snow-storm”, so if you see that in quotes a lot, that’s why.)

Detail of Buran launching facility