BURAN - Foam shedding or not?

Pat Flannery wrote:
wrote:

I'am inclined to believe it is a resin ablator insulation, similar to
that used on the STS ET in the peak heating areas. If there is any kind
of SOFI-like insulation, it is very limited in use, which is probably
why the foam panel insulation was added for the cancelled 1992 Buran
mission. The Russians may have run into too many ice-shedding issues
during the second launch, and that may explain some of the heavy
pitting and tile-loss damage we see in the first Buran post-flight
photos.


To me that always looked like they had badly miscalculated the heating
the various parts of their shuttle were going to get, or that their
tiles were of inferior quality to ours- the areas where the damage
occurred (the rear fuselage sides in particular) didn't seem like the
ones where you'd think shedding ice would hit. Back when the CAIB was
investigating what exactly had happened during reentry, I sent them
links to those pictures of the Buran damage in case it might be of use
to them due to the similarity of the two vehicles TPS. In their reply,
they stated that if the Shuttle had ever returned looking like that NASA
would have had a heart attack. :-)
BTW, here are the webpages I found related to the Buran TPS if you are
interested:
http://www.buran.ru/htm/tersaf.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/tersaf4.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/raskroy.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/tersaf5.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/tersaf3.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/terlost.htm
http://www.buran.ru/htm/tersaf2.htm
A lot of their images are linked to other things so click on them them
to see other pages.

Thanks, but I'am already very familar with the Molniya site in all it's
glory. Actually knowing what happened to Soviet projects like Buran and
the ill-fated N-1/L3 is far beyond the wildest delusions of conspiracy
nuts. :-)
-Mike

wrote:


Thanks, but I'am already very familar with the Molniya site in all it's
glory. Actually knowing what happened to Soviet projects like Buran and
the ill-fated N-1/L3 is far beyond the wildest delusions of conspiracy
nuts. :-)



Their Moon program was a perfect example of how not to do things. I
still like the ICBM version of the N-1 booster.