![]() It was supposed to come in three variants: the MAKS-OS-P, a spaceplane capable of carrying a crew of two and 7 tons of cargo, coupled with a disposable fuel tank attached to the nose of the aircraft the MAKS-T, a robotic variant with a payload capacity of 14 tons, and the MAKS-M, a fully-reusable variant without the disposable fuel tank. The space plane was a direct descendant of the Spiral project and its many designs, but included all the advancements made while developing the Buran. (Image: ) Big promisesīy 1988, the conceptual design phase of the MAKS was complete, and the Mriya – which performed its maiden flight the same year – was ready. The only requirement was to include a possibility to detach those loads mid-flight. Energia already had a candidate for that: the An-225, which – under development at Antonov at the time – was already adapted for carrying heavy loads on its back. So, something less ambitious would have to be used. Due to the lack of hypersonic engines at the time, the first real candidate to aerially launch the Spiral was the Sukhoi T-4 supersonic bomber, but it too never materialized, which – in part – contributed to the failure of the Spiral program. As soon as the Buran was finished, the Molniya design bureau started working on its small sibling.Īlready in the 60s, when thinking of their answer to the X-20, Soviet scientists decided that launching spaceplanes with hypersonic reusable aircraft would be a lot more efficient than using conventional rockets. But the idea to have a smaller, more flexible space plane never went away. They paved the way for the Buran though, and in the 70s the Spiral was canceled in its favor. ![]() Project Spiral followed, mainly run by the Molnia design bureau.Ī lot of research was conducted and several prototypes were constructed, but none of the numerous tests were very successful. Spaceplanes had a lot of military potential, as they allowed not only rapid deployment and retrieval of satellites, but could function as genuine orbital bombers. The Soviet space plane building efforts were kick-started in the early 1960s, after their intelligence revealed the American plans to build the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar, which would have become the first reusable space vehicle. It was developed under the project called Multipurpose Aerospace System (MAKS), and if its designers could really do everything they promised, it had somewhat of a potential to revolutionize space travel. The spaceplane intended for it often gets undeservedly overlooked. It could also act as an aerial launch platform. But that was not the only space-related function the behemoth of the skies was intended to perform. Many know about its primary purpose – the airplane was originally designed to transport the Buran, the Soviet space shuttle. Everybody knows and loves the Antonov An-225 Mriya, the world’s heaviest and arguably largest aircraft.
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