Fwd: Buran - November 15, 1988

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: November 15, 2013 4:33:12 PM CST
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Buran - November 15, 1988

 

 

Dear employees and veterans of the Corporation, colleagues, friends!
November 15, 2013

A quarter of a century ago, on November 15, 1988, the reusable orbiter Buran was launched from the Baikonur launch site into a low-Earth orbit using the launch vehicleEnergia. The orbiter demonstrated the extremely high level of the technological and scientific potential of our country by successfully completing its maiden flight having made a couple of orbits around the planet in unmanned automatic mode. This event became a significant milestone in the history of the domestic and world space flight. For the first time in history a fully automatic landing on an airstrip under adverse weather conditions was accomplished by a heavy winged spacecraft with a mass exceeding 80 metric tons! Since then, no spacefaring nation in the world has managed to emulate the feat of landing a spacecraft that heavy in unmanned mode. 
We congratulate you on the 25th anniversary of the successful flight of the Buran orbiter of the reusable space transportation system Energia-Buran!We wish the employees and veterans of RSC Energia, our colleagues and friends good health, new creative ideas in developing rocket and space technology for the 21st century, happiness, prosperity and confidence that thanks to your professionalism and dedicated labor Russia will keep its leading position in space! 

 

 

 

 

 

November 15, 2013

Dear employees and veterans of the Corporation, colleagues, friends!

A quarter of a century ago, on November 15, 1988, the reusable orbiter Buran was launched from the Baikonur launch site into a low-Earth orbit using the launch vehicleEnergia. The orbiter demonstrated the extremely high level of the technological and scientific potential of our country by successfully completing its maiden flight having made a couple of orbits around the planet in unmanned automatic mode. This event became a significant milestone in the history of the domestic and world space flight. For the first time in history a fully automatic landing on an airstrip under adverse weather conditions was accomplished by a heavy winged spacecraft with a mass exceeding 80 metric tons! Since then, no spacefaring nation in the world has managed to emulate the feat of landing a spacecraft that heavy in unmanned mode.

For the Energia launch vehicle that was the second launch, after its first launch on May 15, 1987. The two launches of the rocket and the first mission of Buran demonstrated to the world that our country and the team of our company, the leader in space industry, working together with numerous domestic subcontractors, are capable of developing space technologies surpassing the world's state of the art. The birth of this multipurpose space transportation system laid a serious claim to achieving new breakthroughs in space in the interests of science, defense and social development.

The Energia-Buran system is a unique achievement of our country's space science, the result of 12 years of intense, painstaking, dedicated labor of work teams of more than 1200 companies and organizations throughout our country, of more than 1 million 200 thousand of their employees. The prime contractor which bore the primary responsibility for the implementation of each phase and the entire project was NPO Energia, our team. The scientists from the Academy of Science, industry, universities, top managers, specialist in the industry and the Ministry of Defense, engineers, technicians, workers - all the best human resources were involved in the development, manufacturing and tests of the new system, its components and supporting infrastructure. In the course of this work, hundreds of advanced technologies have been developed, many of which were introduced to various areas of our national economy. The missions of the launch vehicles and the orbiter made it possible to resolve a political problem of greatest importance to the human civilization: they moved to a new stage the negotiations between the USSR and the USA on the strategic arms limitation - international documents were signed. They also outlined new prospects for the Solar System exploration.

The road into space opened up in the mid-20th century by the Special Design Bureau 1 under direction of Chief Designer S.P. Korolev still continues. And today Energia is one of the leading participants in the biggest projects of our time: the International Space Station, the space launch systems Sea Launch and Land Launch. The company develops an advanced manned transportation system with a new-generation manned transportation spacecraft, multifunctional and specialized unmanned spacecraft, new, more efficient launch vehicles. Studies are conducted into the development of an interplanetary expedition system, projects of near-Earth, circumlunar and lunar infrastructures, technologies for efficient travel in space. Each of these will no doubt use the experience, technologies and knowledge accumulated in the work under the Energia-Buran project.

We are deeply grateful to the employees of the Corporation and the plant, to all who took part in preparation and implementation of this truly historic feat of science and technology. We express our profound respect and admiration for the results of the absolutely titanic labor to develop advanced space technologies within the framework of the Buran project. We are proud of the unique scientific achievements of our country, outstanding inventions and discoveries, which have significantly raised the level of the scientific and technological potential not only of our company, but of our country's space industry as a whole, became a stepping stone to achieving new heights in space exploration and research.

We congratulate you on the 25th anniversary of the successful flight of the Buran orbiter of the reusable space transportation system Energia-Buran!We wish the employees and veterans of RSC Energia, our colleagues and friends good health, new creative ideas in developing rocket and space technology for the 21st century, happiness, prosperity and confidence that thanks to your professionalism and dedicated labor Russia will keep its leading position in space!

 

© 2000 - 2013  S.P. Korolev RSC "Energia"

 

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