with the outward similarity between buran and the shuttle, they had an important difference. in principle, the shuttle is landed only manually in the last 4 minutes of the flight by astronauts, the risk of an accident is quite high, a person can become ill during overloads on a snowstorm, a unique automatic landing system was designed. he could make an unmanned flight himself take off to stay in space for the allotted time. and he will land on the airfield better than airplanes. how would the pilot land him, despite the fact that on that the day was very strong wind usually forbids people and fly. even 25 m/s. the order was on such a wind. he sat down very accurately, go rather rolled and stopped, turned off the system and finished the job, but the developers did not

want to completely rely on technology, so a detachment of testers appeared to check the real landing conditions and crew training, a flight analogue of buran was built, outwardly an exact copy of the space shuttle. only four engines were installed in the tail so that it could take off on its own on this machine testers are learning to land buran the military wants to launch buran as quickly as possible . the testers are dying one after another, and it takes too much time to prepare new ones. therefore, the tests are transferred to the baikon, but here the pilot is annoyed by an incomprehensible interference during landing. in zhukovsky they weren't there, it turned out that the bushes create interference, the tumbleweed equipment was just very sensitive, so now before each flight of the wolf pack, the soldiers walked around the steppe and

collected grass balls. this airfield was built at baikonur specifically for buran. perfect, smooth, like a mirror buran's chief designer gleb lozin. lozinsky personally took the strip. he put a glass of water on the hood of his volga. the car accelerated to 100 km / h. in the place where the water spilled concrete slabs were polished with diamond cutters. this was a forced measure . buran's speed during landing is higher than that of an aircraft on a normal runway, where there are joints between concrete slabs, the shuttle could roll over and shatter . trials nearing the end decided to send cosmos to the members of the wolf pack on ordinary soyuz ships, and after landing, conduct an experiment to put them in the pilot's seat and check if they can fly the plane? in

weightlessness, the muscles stop working, so under the conditions of gravity, it is difficult for the body to rebuild back. this experiment imitated buran's flight to orbit and landing in manual mode , the commander igor volk, as always, was supposed to be the first to go into space. the task was. it means to confirm that the pilot after the space flight does the same things as we did before the flight. so, immediately after the space flight, that some skills, so to speak, algorithms will not be violated, so, yes? in july 1984, igor volk launched into space together with commander vladimir dzhonibekov and flight engineer svetlana savitskaya on the soyuz t-12 spacecraft. wolf we flew to

the airfield, akhtubinsk, which is a testing institute, where we used to work and were waiting for the wolf, after landing on a spacecraft, to be brought by plane to us. after 12 days of flight, the soyuz t-12 crew returned to the ground, but with the exit of the cosmonauts of the emitted apparatus , there was a hitch; for some reason, they could not pull me out of the ship; for some reason, they could not turn away for a long time. this uh returnable compartment. that's why the delay has already begun with this, which means, yes, i had to climb out there myself . zhenibekov soviet rescuers carefully carried out of the ship in their arms, as it should be according to the instructions after the flight. it is difficult, not just to walk, but just to stand on your feet. nobody helps the wolf. he gets out of the hatch himself, this is also a

test condition, a wolf staggering with his gait approaches the helicopter, many hands do not obey, he literally crawls into the cockpit, but then it turns out that he will have to fly barefoot. the wolf was not brought his flying things. i’m on a plane without pants, you still want to do it. let's search. well, uh, they found the pants, but no shoes, so i had to be barefoot, but first by helicopter, you have to wait until 154, and then there, it means that the shoes have already arrived. first, igor volk controls a helicopter, mi-8, he sits at the helm barefoot in his socks, then he changes to a tu-154, his cockpit has been redone under the cabin of buran on the carcass, the wolf flies to akhtubinsk across the whole country, but the test is not over yet.

he is dressed in a high-altitude suit and a mig-25 supersonic fighter is landed on the mig, he returns to the baikon. this is still a few thousand kilometers the wolf feels there is a difference from his usual flights on airplanes, but this is not significant. he would be able to land iran some kind of delay, so yes, because, well, the muscles are a little different, and yet here are 12 days of weightlessness somehow. here, but in any case, for me it was not. noticeably the wolf landed normally and confirmed by the fact that the quality of the pilot is not lost. it was such a control check.

in december 1987, anatoly levchenko flew into space on the next soyuz spacecraft. the ship commander vladimir titov, engineer musa manarov, had to work in space for a year at the mir station. levchenko, together with the crew of the mir station, yury romanenko alexander alexandrov, returned from space. the landing turned out to be very difficult in the landing area, a strong wind blew, the strongest blizzard. romanenko also joked. well, the pilot of buran must land in buran. the snowstorm in the kazakh steppe ended for the soyuz spacecraft. the descent vehicle hit the ground hard, all the cosmonauts were bruised. on the ground, romanenko and alexandrov immediately fall into the hands of doctors, they are placed on a stretcher and taken to the nearest military hospital. anatoly levchenko needs

to carry out the experiments to the end right in the steppe immediately after landing, the doctors conduct an operational medical examination. levchenko is being examined , his blood pressure and pulse are being measured, his condition is unstable we recommend stopping the experiment. but anatoly levchenko insists on continuing the tests. i can land the plane. half an hour after landing, he sits at the helm of the tu-154, and then the mig-25 fighter passes the test successfully. levchenko manages to control and land the planes on the airfield, despite severe bruises and a week in weightlessness during this flight. anatoly levchenko receives in the kremlin from general secretary mikhail gorbachev a star to the hero of the soviet union, whether he was, as it were, a father, or something, it means some kind of caretakers like this. here it has always been people have always been ice to

work. he loved his turn. a very talented person, very smart. no one knows that the cosmonaut began to suffer from severe headaches to go to the pilot's doctors, the last thing, they will definitely write off then in space, they will have to forget, but the pain in the head is getting stronger day by day. it literally happened, uh. well, we usually always on these uh in the city held. there is always may 1 november, which means that there is a demonstration and we have always participated. and here he is just enough of it when he carried the flag there, of course. here it suddenly shoot head, so instant. levchenko, with the last of his strength, lasted until the end of the demonstration, drove himself home and only then asked his wife to call an ambulance before the flight. buran was only six months away. anatoly levchenko really hoped that he would have time to

recover. or a very, maybe a very patient person. you had feelings that arose in him, he endured them. even after the may holidays i became unbearable. the pain just had him. lord here, well no one to blame it is impossible, insidious is very painful. very energetic self, manifesting in different ways unconditionally. for every disease, there are some, by the way, medical moments in life. i do not think. this was due to the profession of his flight doctors discovered he had a brain tumor. it is still not clear how this disease could be missed several times a year levchenko underwent a medical examination in custody, doctors always wrote healthy for flights. the last time anatoly was sick was at school. computed tomography did not give anything, and when i i was talking to the head of the chief doctor, which means,

yes, he says, i say, well, i can’t lie in the brain if i don’t know where to go and for now, it means that the sixth clinic has not been done and that’s it. there was some kind of single installation there was a magnet, nuclear resonance, and then they only determined where. well, maybe it ’s too late on august 6, 1988, six months after the flight into space. anatoly levchenko died of a brain tumor. cosmonaut titov and the manars with whom he flew in the soyuz at that time were still in orbit . coming into contact with the earth, they always asked say hello to anatoly levchenko, and only in december, when they had already returned to earth, they were informed that their comrade had been dead for six months. why the disease divorced so quickly, the doctors

could not say. some believed that it was provoked by space flight. they sinned on the injuries that levchenko received after landing on the test pilots, they were sure that the flight had nothing to do with the cosmonauts experiencing much, greater overloads in training, and no one dies from this. special research can be carried out but i don't think spaceflight. uh, but because if that were the case, then it must not have been an isolated incident. there was even a rumor among the pilots that anatoly was the victim of an experiment conducted in space. it was said that in orbit he experienced the effects on the body of some new drugs, which turned out to be fatal under weightless conditions, but

no one officially confirms this version. the commemoration was celebrated in the same officer's club, where until recently no one had commemorated vladimir of turov. wrote, poems at the table, five empty plates and glasses, five testers of the buranovsky detachment died, and flight into space. everything is not involuntarily members of the wolf pack, look at each other in a new way who is next test pilots bypass, the damned detachment side. even skeptics begin to doubt that these deaths are just coincidences at the wake of the wolf, addressing the remaining members of the squad, he utters a fatal phrase. i didn't know that i'm calling you to death, guys, forgive me. when levchenko died there was nothing decided and everyone hoped that it would still fly. literally

a month later, in my opinion, they were very good. yes, even less. a month later. it's easier after death. he flew on sports in the toilet at the aviation festival zhukovsky aerobatic death. anatoly levchenko was very keenly worried by alexander shchukin. they were best friends, graduated from a one-year school, served in the same military unit, they always flew together. shchukin was the co-pilot and levchenko , they were supposed to fly into space together on a snowstorm. it seems to me that he, of course, was worried that there space has flown. i don't know so. i wanted to, for sure,

like everyone else there, sasha schukin was the most talented of us. handsome stately with humor with a very subtle feeling yura meloman loved music very subtle person very worried inside and sometimes it even distracted him somewhere. maybe, but still very much there. alexander shchukin himself organized levchenko's funeral at the cemetery. he somehow casually mentioned that he would like to lie close to his friend. then no one paid attention to these words, the comrades understood shchukin, now it’s harder than everyone right after the commemoration alexander schukin left for training. shchukin was going to perform at an air festival in honor of aviation day. he was preparing to show aerobatics.

august 18 was another training session. shchukin took off and began to perform the figures, but unforeseen situations arose. but as far as i'm told, it was an inverted corkscrew. then it seems like it went into a straight spin, inverted flat, so that, well, frenzied angular rotation, that is, of course, for you need to prepare for such flights, carefully for a long time, then there was a straight corkscrew. and already the lack of output on the output is the lack of height, that is, it seems, as it already came out, the plane. here is all that i know. tornado. shchukin was seen, many of his comrades gathered at the training that day, almost all the participants in the air show said

that no one could explain to schukin only 100 meters to bring the plane out of a spin. why did such an experienced pilot suddenly lose control? he was spinning, he was upside down , spinning like that. and if you turn it over on your back, when it spins like this, it is when you shade the rudders that it’s very hard to get it out with the rudders, because the torque moment is so much more like on a holo. here he is spinning. you can't stop. alexander shchukin died just 12 days after the death of his commander. anatoly legchenko. i had a feeling that i would not see them again and even such an event. it would seem exactly at 12:00 at night on the sixth on the seventh. we had a photo with sasha , whether so famous sometime in silly costumes. here, after surviving there after certain

survival training was taken by some heroes. there looks like just a noticed photo. she hung from the corridor for exactly hours , the glass exploded to smithereens at this stage, the broken frame, like a cracked mirror, is considered a bad omen, but the pilot does not believe his pure sign and, probably, in vain a day after the glass cracked in the photograph, another tester died from the buranovsky detachment. behind, the city of zhukovsky is a complete cemetery, of course, the saddest place in the city. and we were in the seventies and eighties, when we walked intensive tests, we lost 10-12 crews a year and always buried the whole city. uh, the tradition is that the teacher's student is accompanied by the student. so, when the spaghetti time was up, it was taken out of the house of culture of the city of zhukovsky. this is the most magnificent old, the village of the stalinist buildings

. and more recently, when uh the passage was making rimos in the italian provinces. triviz. another air show was planned. one of the test pilots of the buranovo detachment was supposed to perform there. was it was decided that sergei three secular would go to italy, but at the very last moment rimontas stankevich persuaded him to refuse the trip. i got thrown out on my fingers with him, which means that the next year he came and said that i would fly and even flew to my car 1427 was and now i had a feeling, i knew that i would not see him again. i saw him 5 days before his death, they flew to italy

three volts for a demonstration flight, and then we didn’t see him for the last time, but it was all a joke that i was a boy of 12 years old, they joked and flew away. and there there was a joke that before that i had such a gun and asked him not to bring cartridges for this gun to the child. she said yes, i will bring you a lot of cartridges, and then we will sit all evening and count. the wife persuaded the rimontas to abandon this trip a week before, she had a dream in which the plane crashed, but the rimontas did not believe in signs or in prophetic dreams. you're just tired. i'll be back in a week. you 'll see, he said. before that, my mother had

some kind of foreboding, because that after my mother died, we received a note that my father wrote to my mother and left on her desk. well, he flew, as when he flew away there was one sentence in the note. well, how is it that there is no difference to fly on one plane or on another. well , a few more words of some, but we do not understand. at an air show in italy, rimanta stankevich performed aerobatics in front of thousands of spectators, his plane went into a tailspin and crashed to the ground, rimontas the first and only lithuanian cosmonaut. died. yes, they were buried there. monument here they put it next to the guys. all right, now, if you go, you'll see, all the guys, the funeral is nearby. well, how would the memory of such a mass here , where the lungs are buried a little bit.

buran's first flight was scheduled for october 25, 1988. it was decided to send the ship without people in automatic mode. weather at baikonur , an excellent ship was installed on the launch pad. everything is ready to fly. hang up, reset all systems, and then they began to figure out what was the matter, it turned out that the aiming block did not go away on the carrier. failure

investigated, a special commission checked all the systems of the ship, but did not find any problems. the next launch was scheduled for november 15, 1988. on this day, there was a hurricane wind over baikonur, the weather was rubbish. snow wind wind up to 120 m/s gusts, a maximum of 15 so they sat and thought to let in and all the specialists came there. naturally, they let it all in there and let it take off. well, everyone was waiting.

she flies, so you understand, this is such an unknown. empty buran landed perfectly, he landed only 15 m further than planned designers for a huge five-kilometer airfield. it was a mere trifle, then no one thought that the first flight would be the only one. it seemed that, despite all the paracurses, the wolf pack would soon fly into space on their bird. igor volk insisted for the second flight. burana should be with the crew, the flight was scheduled for 1991. but the money for it was no longer found in may 1993, the director of the russian space agency, yuri koptev, signed an order to stop work on the buran program. engines

see this is the rudder, and there are engines main engines of general, uh, orbital maneuvering and engines that control uh, lateral and longitudinal components. many people think that this is the same device that flew into space, in fact, this is not a real buran, but just a mock-up, tests were carried out on it to check the strength of the ship's hull. in 1993, it was turned into an attraction for children, when it became clear that buran would not fly anywhere else. this ambulance is subject to no way could fly after because he was already late, a decision had already been made yet one buran, the same one on which the wolf pack trained, was sold to australia, the shuttle was dismantled for parts, they are still used by the australian airline. the buran program was closed, but

the raven's curse did not disappear tragic accidents with the pilots of the soviet shotle, the former buran pilot alexei boroday did not end there. he got a job at sheremetyevo to transport goods abroad. october 8th. he flies to italy on a cargo plane. ruslan over the airfield. most cloudy raining visibility almost zero for bearding these conditions do not seem extreme. he was used to landing buran almost blindly. during training flights and when flying on a simulator, in preparation for a flight on a snowstorm, we created conditions for ourselves very harsh conditions, then right up to landing, without being blindfolded at all, you even experiment like that, so this approach did not seem to me somehow super complicated. the plane crashed onto the runway, the first pilot died immediately, without regaining consciousness, the

fuselage crushed another pilot who came to look at the landing beard and pulled out from under the wreckage of the rescuers, he was alive, but unconscious and with broken legs. in the very first minute i realized that i did not have one leg further already. clear. there the situation did not develop according to plan. when, after the second operation, there was already a second amputation, there was no longer any talk of flying. there you just had to think the same way, but nothing is normal on june 5, 2001, yuri shefer died in his office at his desk, a blood clot stopped his heart. at work, it's instant.

a month and a half later, on july 25, 2001, test pilot yuri prikhodko buranovskoy died of cancer. team to advanced years only its commander, igor volk, survived. he seemed to be charmed for 40 years as a pilot, he did not have a single accident. his closest companions perished. it was the strongest blow, because how it is not how insulting it is sad, and i would even say somewhere strange, but the best and closest ones left, so it was very difficult. it was very stressful, because, naturally, they are all together. it's like a pole. support, huh? and when, one by one, they knock you out from under you, that is, naturally. one further everything is harder harder, especially when this team. volk left the flight

institute in 2002, he was written off for health reasons. volk was 65 years old at that time, but he still tried to regain the right to test aircraft. true, without result, with the departure and burner of the wolf pack, the detachment of the buranovsky cosmonauts ceased to exist and was not disbanded or reorganized. he just quietly disappeared and disappeared into the history of the detachment was gone in march 2002. may 12, 2002 baikonur cosmodrome 9:00 am on the concrete eight builders lift the roof of the assembly and testing building number 358 construction workers to fix a large leak builders got to the highest section of the roof, when it suddenly began to sag , only seven people fell down from a 60-meter height. there was a lot of snow. yes, it was a hanging winter

. and it accumulated on the roof, what does it do? no one survived, except for people under the concrete roof of the hull , the reusable spacecraft buran, the same one that in 1988 made the first and only flight into space under the energy program, died buran is the most powerful and most expensive soviet spacecraft. some kind of crew of mystic, but the fact is that after the death of the ship , not a single tester died.