SoylentNews

frojack [soylentnews.org] writes:

ArsTechnica [arstechnica.com] has a story about the abandoned Soviet era Space Shuttle project.

When the project was canceled, (along with the USSR), like so many other things in the Soviet Union at that time, the workers were sent home, the doors locked, and the entire project lies abandoned.

No attempt seems to have been made to fill museums, or salvage any of the shuttles for historical purposes.

The photos are from Ralph Mirebs from the Baikonur Cosmodrome [livejournal.com] who's page has many more. The Page is in Russian but the Google Translate version [google.com] renders the descriptions to passable English.

Similar photo essays for other abandoned Soviet era projects Ekranoplan [businessinsider.com], a missile carrying ground effect vehicle designed for dash attack on naval targets [wikipedia.org] or shore installations. (don't miss paging arrows at side of images).

Original Submission