Measured against those daunting challenges, the work on the new plane is hardly a top priority from a humanitarian point of view. With the war still raging, the immense job of rebuilding Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of homes, hospitals, schools and bridges are blown up, still seems a distant prospect. The restoration of the plane, whose name in Ukrainian means The Dream, has begun. Piece by piece, workers are now dismantling the wreckage of the gigantic Mriya cargo plane, the heaviest airplane ever flown, with plans to build a new one with salvaged parts. So are the tailplane, flaps, hydraulic systems, fuel pumps and three of six engines of the plane, which was destroyed in fighting in the first days of the war. ET HOSTOMEL, Ukraine - The gigantic twin tail fins, once stretching as high as a six-story building, are gone. Restoring a Giant Plane: Ukrainian Resilience or Folly? Ukraine, with far more pressing needs, plans to rebuild the colossal Mriya cargo plane, a symbol of pride that was destroyed last year in a battle for its airfield. Center of gravity issues must have been slighty easier to handle (well, for the computers & FBW system) on Buran, with so much weight removed from the back. Hence Buran pair of turbojets weighed as much as 1*SSME, and the Shuttle had three of them. One SSME is 3200 kg, and the Shuttle had three of them in the back. Buran AL-31 were unreheated Su-27 engines, aproximately 1500 kg in weight. the AL-31 jet engines went flanking the vertical tail - where the Shuttle had its OMS pods instead - Note: before 1974 the Shuttle ferry jets (TF30s, then F401s) were to be hanged below the wing and TPS, in a removeable big pod. And this meant two things - Buran OMS went to the back end - where the Shuttle had its 3*SSME. It's interesting to compare the Shuttle and Buran three main propulsion systems - the main rocket engines - the two OMS - the planned jet engines (deleted in '74 for the Shuttle, kept to the very end on Buran but not flown) In a sense, Buran dropped its SSME-look-alike engines into its Energiya rocket carrier.
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