Urban Explorer Reveals Haunting Images Of Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttle Program
If you happen to be over the age of 30, there’s a reasonable chance that you remember when the former Soviet Union had a space shuttle program. The program is long gone, but the physical remnants of the program remain. Russian urban explorer and photographer Ralph Mirebs recently visited the area. His photographs reveal a haunting artifact from a bygone era. Some have even gone so far as to describe the images as being something out of a science fiction movie.
Regardless of how you feel about the images, one thing is going to be perfectly clear to you: These visuals are going to stay with you.
Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttle Program
The Soviet Space Shuttle Program had big dreams. It wanted to do everything to emphasize the power and glory of the Soviet Union. It wanted to surpass the United States space program in every possible regard. Unfortunately, things didn’t quite go that way. The program ran from 1974 to 1993. Only two orbital flights ever made it out of the gate. When the Soviet Union collapsed, funding for the program naturally dried up. The program was officially abandoned in 1993. The Baikonur Cosmodrome facility in the Kazakhstan desert was left intact. As one can imagine, such a facility would naturally begin to fall to decay and slow ruin. The photographs recently snapped by Mirebs certainly point to that reality.
Mirebs took dozens of photos the facility. Perhaps the most notable are shots of the exterior of the building, and photographs of the shuttle that was left behind in the hanger after 1993. It is easy to imagine that this facility was one the height of modern technology. The same thought can be applied to the shuttle itself. Several photos of the interior of the shuttle are available, as well. Everything points to a desire to take to the stars, and a desire to be a world superpower that could extend its reach to the galaxy. Despite the two flights that did make it out of the hanger, nothing of note was ultimately achieved.
No one is sure how Mirebs made into the 203-feet tall facility. One thing is for sure, our connections to the rapidly disintegrating past are now stronger for what he has done, as well as for the pictures he took of his time at the hanger. These pictures provide an almost ghostly look into something that was meant to be so much more than what it was.
