Energia Buran by starbase1
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No AI - This artwork was created entirely by hand or with traditional digital tools.
Description
My current work in progress, and nearly done, (some texture tuning to go). The Soviet Shuttle and it's launcher, Energia Buran. As usual everything done in Lightwave 3d.

Comments (4)
Very Cool
WOW! Fantastic and detailed work on this model! I always found it interesting how the Russian shuttle looks almost exactly like NASA's Space Shuttle...
RodS - That was very much political. The Soviets saw the US shuttle as a military threat, and wanted one. Their engineers correctly predicted the US shuttle had no hope of coming close to the target operating costs, and were not that interested. So they came up with a system which looked similar but was rather different in operation. In particular, their shuttle was pure payload - this meant they could use the Energia rocket for other things as well, such as a general purpose heavy lift rocket. Or a lighter lifter with two booster, or a super heavy version with 8 boosters and an Energia M second stage called Vulkan. There were plans to add scissor wings to the boosters so they could fly back, and potentially to the core too. Fly back energia would be called "Uragan" (Hurricane). I hope to model most of these variants!
Looks amazing and good to see the Soviet version!