
Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs Lining the walls of the hangar are ramps that former workers used to reach different levels of the building. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs Mirebs took this epic shot of both shuttles from a viewing platform at one end of the hangar. The only shuttle that reached space was destroyed in 2002 when the roof of the hangar it was stored in collapsed. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs Stored in this hangar are two shuttles that never flew. It took place in 1988 and lasted a total of 206 minutes, during which time the spacecraft successfully launched, orbited Earth twice, and landed. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs The shuttles were designed to carry cosmonauts into space but never did. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs Buran is Russian for “snowstorm” or “blizzard.” The Russians built only few prototypes of these shuttles, and only one of them actually flew. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs Near the top of this photo are beams attached with cranes that could lift up to 400 tons. Ralph Mirebs Ralph Mirebs The abandoned hangar is 433 feet long and 203 feet high with giant doors on either end, shown below, that slid open to release the shuttles. The abandoned hangar is located on a site that belong to Russia’s space launch facility, called Baikonur Cosmodrome, where rockets are still launched today.
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Photographer Ralph Mirebs recently visited one of these dust-ridden graveyards and chronicled the journey on his LiveJournal blog, where you can see the full collection. The sites where the shuttles were laid to rest have since been completely abandoned. The Soviets invested anywhere from tens of millions to billions on the project, which was terminated in 1993.

The stars of the project, called the Buran program, were its space shuttles, which were built in secret from designs the Soviet secret police stole from NASA.

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