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BOR-4 - Soviet Spacecraft Testing Buran Heat Shield Technologies
Seven BOR-4 spacecraft were built and flown from 1980 to 1987. Shared many characteristics with the MiG-105 Spiral, which also tested Soviet spaceplane technologies. Tested heat shield and carbon-carbon technologies for use in Buran.
via Buran-Energia and Wikipedia
And the Spiral/Mig-105 story still doesn't end there! The Mig-105 shape is actually still being actively developed - as Sierra Nevada Corporation's Dream Chaser, part of NASA's CCDev program. They have completed their first test article, and are planning on air drop tests later this year. SNC is kind of a dark horse in the commercial space world - you don't hear about them much, but they do good work. For example, their rocket engines were behind Space Ship Two's first successful powered flight earlier this year! I expect to see big things from Dream Chaser and SNC in the coming years.
I've talked about the short life and death of the Spiral program and the Mig-105, but in a surprising turn of events, the story did not end in on dusty airstrip outside Moscow in 1978!
NASA had done quite a bit of their own lifting-body research in between the mid-60s to mid-70s, and in the late 80s, they dusted off some of the old research - but oddly enough, when it came time to make the vehicle geometry decision in 1989, they picked the Mig-105 shape as their baseline, rather than something based on NASA's own HL-10 or X-24. Langley began large scale work in late 1989, and built the full-scale mockup HL-20 (pictured above) over the summer of 1990. Evaluations of the concept continued through 1992.
Starting in November of 1977, Mig-105.11's forward wheels were replaced with the intended retractable skids, and higher altitude tests were performed by dropping it from a TU-95K. Unfortunately, it suffered a hard landing during the 8th flight in September 1978, resulting in cracks to the frame. The vehicle was written off and retired.
The subsonic test article is currently on display at the Monino Air Museum outside of Moscow.
Although the Spiral program was effectively dead, flight testing of the single subsonic test article (the Mig-105.11) commenced in late 1976. Despite many diagrams on the internet showing folding wings, the test article's wings were fixed in the deployed position for low-speed flight.
The orbiter was intended to land on skids, but in order to allow the test article to take off from dirt runways, non-retractible wheels were installed for the first powered test flights. The Mig-105 was powered by a single Koliesov RD-36-35K 2,350kgf thrust turbojet that was fed from an intake at the base of the dorsal fin. With 500 kg of fuel, the aircraft was able to cruise for 10 minutes.
The landing gear deployment out the sides of the fuselage is highly unusual - the engineers were extremely concerned about heatshield integrity, and elected to design the landing gear in such a fashion as to not pierce the underside of the spaceplane.
Ah, the Mig-105. A truly fascinating piece of space history! I have a bunch of stuff queued up on it while I'm out on extended flight test this week.
Stay tuned!
