WOW! Cold War space race – abandoned space shuttles WOW (image heavy)

One aspect of the Cold War between the United States and USSR was the Space Race competition between both countries to see who could develop the bigger and better space exploration program featuring both artificial satellites and manned spacecraft. The Space Race was connected to the ongoing Cold War arms race between both countries as many of the developments made in space research were easily transferable to military research and vice versa.

As an example, reconnaissance satellites were developed by both nations well before the Space Race reached its climax. The Vostok spacecraft used by the Russians to put cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin into space, as an example, was developed from the Zenit spy satellites originally developed by the Soviet military.

The Space Race continued to the very end of the Cold War. A little-known chapter of the space race occurred in the 1980s when the Soviet Union attempted to replicate NASA’s Space Shuttle program. Their Buran vehicles successfully launched and tested an unmanned orbital test flight.

Despite its success, the program was scrapped amid Soviet budget cuts and the vehicles were left to rot in aircraft hangars. In 2002 one of the remaining shuttles was destroyed in a hangar collapse. Two survived intact and are pictured here in this stunning photo series.

Photographer Ralph Mirebs recently visited one of these dust-ridden graveyards and chronicled the journey on his LiveJournal blog, where you can see the full collection.