FAILURE TO LAUNCH
Inside eerie warehouse where £189million Russian space rockets that never made it into orbit left to rot for decades
Watch the incredible video of the abandoned space shuttles
A ROTTING pair of Russian space rockets have been left gathering dust for 30 years inside an eerie abandoned warehouse.
The giant £189million shuttles failed to ever make it into orbit leaving the Soviet Union labelling them worthless as they sat untouched and falling apart for decades.
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Urban explorer Greg Abandoned spotted the Soviet air shuttles while adventuring through the steppe of Kazakhstan - a vast grassland - with a friend.
The adventurous Brit was trying to track down a mammoth space shuttle called Ptichka - meaning "little bird" in Russian - as he also stumbled across a second rocket.
The USSR pumped huge sums of cash into their space program as they raced against the US to achieve success in the cosmos.
Incredible images shot on Greg's Sony camera show the 105-tonne carcass of the Ptichka covered in dust after being deserted in the huge hangar.
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After a failed mission decades ago, the complex £189million craft had been left to rot in the remote warehouse.
A second huge shuttle was also found with Greg saying it was marked as a test rocket and was never meant to fly.
They are kept in a hangar called “MZK,” which stands for “Assembly and Fuelling Building", reports.
The exact location of the abandoned warehouse has been kept under wraps for decades in order to protect the incredible discoveries, says Greg.
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Reports say they are located in the steppe of Kazakhstan with the content creator saying his trip across uncertain terrain "seemed like going to hell and back".
"But it was all worth it in the end," he boasted to his 113,000 Instagram followers after the trip.
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Opposite the warehouse sits an even creepier building filled with endless souvenirs from botched space missions.
Inside there is a Soviet-designed 193ft tall Energia rocket - dubbed Buran - that was abandoned after a failed test run.
The specially designed rocket only managed one successful journey to space during an uncrewed mission back in November 1988.
It completed two orbits around the Earth before descending back to its launch site and landing horizontally on a runway - just over three hours after being deployed.
Despite the short time in transit, it was the first space plane to perform an uncrewed flight as it also landed automatically back on the ground.
I must say that the scale of this rocket is enormous. Standing there at the bottom and looking up at this monster was a remarkable experience
Greg Abandoned
Greg found the Buran and told his viewers: "I must say that the scale of this rocket is enormous.
"Standing there at the bottom and looking up at this monster was a remarkable experience.
"I first found out about the shuttles in an article I came across online and I could not comprehend that the shuttles that had cost millions of dollars were just rusting away.
"There is something about space that has always fascinated me. This was the ultimate place for me to travel to, it is every explorer's dream to see this for themselves."
The design of the Buran is remarkably similar to the NASA's famed shuttles.
The US version was essentially a giant space truck, designed to haul large cargo into orbit at the request of the Pentagon.
It was often used to deploy military satellites as part of plans to dominate any potential space wars.
The USSR reportedly wanted a clone with the same ability, according to Soviet space historian.
He told : “The decision to build Buran was a response to the perceived military threat posed by the space shuttle.
"If the Americans hadn’t developed the shuttle, the Russians wouldn’t have developed Buran.
"To them it was just another part of the arms race."
An Energia rocket was also found in the abandoned hangar.
The Soviet space programme was later suspended due to a lack of funds after just the first Buran flight.
It was officially terminated in June 1993 by President Boris Yeltsin who left the wasted structures to rot.
Greg added: "At the time of its cancellation, 20 billion rubles (£189million) had been spent on the Buran programme.
"Launched in the early 1970s and formally suspended in 1993 the Russian Buran programme delivered a shuttle which orbited the Earth on November 15, 1988.
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"Since then, in the middle of the desert in Baikonur, Russia sits and rusts away the "Holy Grail of Urbex" - two shuttles and the space rocket."
The spacecrafts remain marooned in the hangar, providing a stark symbol of the decline of Russia's space programme.
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