The general director of the Kazakhstan JSC "Rocket and Space Company "Baikonur" Dauren Musa said that his company owns the second flight model of the Soviet "Buran". The businessman assured that the company does not plan to transfer it to Russia, TASS reports.
Musa said on his Facebook page that the courts of Kazakhstan of the first and second instance refused to return the spacecraft to the state. "Yes, there are legal proceedings, but these are internal affairs of an independent state," he said, adding that the courts over the possible transfer of the Soviet shuttle to the state ownership of Kazakhstan have been going on for the third year, but so far it is still owned by his company.
"They want to take it not to a museum, but to a laboratory for the NGO Molniya for further work under the Energia-Buran program? They want to take it away, but who will give it to them?" — he reacted to the news that they wanted to return the ship to Russia.
Earlier it was reported that specialists of the Molniya scientific and production association are preparing to return the Buran spacecraft to Russia. Representatives of the company that developed the spacecraft visited the Baikonur cosmodrome to inspect the infrastructure and the orbiter itself.
It is known that the second flight copy of the Buran orbiter was prepared for flight in 1992, but due to insufficient funding, the flight did not take place. By the time the Reusable Transport and Space System program was closed in 1993, the readiness of the second Buran exceeded 90 percent.
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Varvara Koshechkina