Such was the scene on October 11th, 2013 when photographer and Flickr user Aleksander Markin walked right up to the mock-up, camera in hand, and proceeded to take about a dozen shots documenting the sad state of an important historical relic, inside and out.
Markin doesn’t say how long he spent photographing the mock-up that day: no security measures of any type were in place to hinder him. That’s quite a contrast from the early years of the Buran program when no doubt the KGB kept a tight lid on anything remotely concerning the USSR’s space shuttle.
As far gone as the wooden space shuttle mock-up appears to be after almost 30 years of neglect, one would expect this rare remnant of one of the Soviet Union’s more ambitious space programs to at least be stored somewhere out of the elements pending preservation, if not full restoration. Those expectations have been dashed: according to Markin, “It no longer exists. Destroyed.”


