Posted on 09/27/2004 3:23:20 AM PDT by rotstan
German journalists made a strange find at Persian Gulf: an obviously genuine Russian space shuttle. It could concern one of the test versions of the "Buran" spaceship, which completed 1988 its first - and only - flight.
weird
A GIANT Russian spacecraft is lying in pieces in a Bahrain yard - while two foreign companies argue over who owns it. The shuttle craft Buran was brought here in June 2002 as one of the Bahrain Summer Festival attractions.
Visitors were able to climb inside the spacecraft, once the pride of the Soviet space programme, as it stood on land at the Manama seafront.
Once the festival was over it should have been dismantled and shipped to Thailand as a tourist attraction.
But it is still in the Sitra storage yard of Bahrain company Pico, which brought it here for the festival.
"NPO Molniya, the company which we negotiated with to bring the spacecraft and another Russian company both claim ownership of Buran," Pico chairman Khalid Juman told the GDN.
First, a case was filed by a Bahrain-based foreign company at Bahrain's civil courts in October 2002, to order NPO Molniya to remove the craft from the Manama dock area.
NPO had allegedly delayed meeting the terms of a contract with the foreign company to dismantle the spacecraft and ship it to Thailand, where it was set to go on display later that month.
Early last year it was dismantled into four pieces - the hull, two wings and the tail section - and moved to Pico's storage area.
Mr Juman said a ruling was still pending in the case over the ownership of the craft, also being dealt with in Bahrain's courts.
The German daily newspaper Bild recently reported that an offer had been made by a German businessman to purchase the spacecraft for approximately $1 million (BD378,000).
Before coming to Bahrain, Buran was shipped to Australia in 2000 to become a tourist attraction, but failed to earn enough money to keep it open.
The Buran flew only once, in 1988, as an unmanned mission.
Buran, Bahrain - some sort of translation problem in the navigation computer, I guess.
I'll bet the Sultan of Bahrain ordered it surplus out of the Sovietski catalog. I know how he feels; I've long wanted one of those Soviet Typhoon submarine clocks.
So, they can't keep track of where they left a prototype space shuttle, but we're suppose to believe them when they assure us that all nuclear warheads and materiel have been accounted for.
Haven't these folks ever heard of E-BAY????........
I bought one of these clocks in Moscow back in 1996 and gave it to my brother as a gift. Darn thing was the heaviest thing in my luggage.
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