The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105, part of the Spiral program, was a crewed test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing. It was a visible result of a

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

project to create an orbital

spaceplane A spaceplane is a vehicle that can fly and glide like an aircraft in Earth's atmosphere and maneuver like a spacecraft in outer space. To do so, spaceplanes must incorporate features of both aircraft and spacecraft. Orbital spaceplanes ten ...

. The MiG 105 was nicknamed "Lapot" (russian: лапоть, or

bast shoe Bast shoes are shoes made primarily from bast — fiber taken from the bark of trees such as linden. They are a kind of basket, woven and fitted to the shape of a foot. Bast shoes are a traditional footwear of the forest areas of Northern ...

(the word is also used as a slang for "

shoe A shoe is an item of footwear intended to protect and comfort the human foot. They are often worn with a sock. Shoes are also used as an item of decoration and fashion. The design of shoes has varied enormously through time and from culture t ...

")), for the shape of its nose.

Development

The program was also known as the Experimental Passenger Orbital Aircraft (EPOS). Work on this project began in 1965, with the project being halted in 1969, only to be restarted in 1974 in response to the U.S.

Space Shuttle Program The Space Shuttle program was the fourth human spaceflight program carried out by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which accomplished routine transportation for Earth-to-orbit crew and cargo from 1981 to 2011. Its ...

. The test vehicle made its first subsonic free-flight test in 1976, taking off under its own power from an old airstrip near Moscow. Flight tests, totaling eight in all, continued sporadically until 1978. The actual space plane project was cancelled when the decision was made to instead proceed with the Buran project. The MiG test vehicle itself still exists and is currently on display at the Monino Air Force Museum in Russia.

Spiral concept

* Soviet engineers opted for a midair launch scheme for Spiral. Known as "50 / 50", the idea was that the spaceplane and a liquid fuel booster stage would be launched at high altitude from the back of a custom-built

hypersonic In aerodynamics, a hypersonic speed is one that exceeds 5 times the speed of sound, often stated as starting at speeds of Mach 5 and above. The precise Mach number at which a craft can be said to be flying at hypersonic speed varies, since in ...

jet. The mothership was to have been built by the Tupolev Design Bureau (OKB-156) and utilize many of the same technologies developed for the

Tu-144 The Tupolev Tu-144 (russian: Tyполев Ту-144; NATO reporting name: Charger) is a Soviet supersonic airliner, supersonic passenger airliner designed by Tupolev in operation from 1968 to 1999. The Tu-144 was the world's first commercial sup ...

supersonic transport and the Sukhoi T-4 Mach 3 bomber. It was never built. * Spiral was a conventional

delta wing A delta wing is a wing shaped in the form of a triangle. It is named for its similarity in shape to the Greek uppercase letter delta (Δ). Although long studied, it did not find significant applications until the Jet Age, when it proved suitabl ...

that featured innovative variable- dihedral wings. During launch and reentry, these were folded upward at 60 degrees. After dropping to subsonic speeds post-reentry, the pilot lowered the wings into the horizontal position, giving the spaceplane better re-entry and flight characteristics. * Spiral was built to allow for a powered landing and go-around maneuver in case of a missed landing approach. An air intake for a single Kolesov turbojet was mounted beneath the central vertical stabilizer. This was protected during launch and re-entry by a clamshell door which opened at subsonic speeds. * Spiral was to have been protected by what Soviet engineers termed "scale-plate armour": niobium alloy VN5AP and molybdenum disilicide plated steel plates mounted on articulated ceramic bearings to allow for

thermal expansion Thermal expansion is the tendency of matter to change its shape, area, volume, and density in response to a change in temperature, usually not including phase transitions. Temperature is a monotonic function of the average molecular kinetic ...

during reentry. Several BOR (Russian acronym for Unpiloted Orbital Rocketplane) craft were flown to test this concept. * In the event of a booster explosion or in-flight emergency, the crew compartment of Spiral was designed to separate from the rest of the vehicle and parachute to earth like a conventional ballistic capsule; this could be done at any point in the flight. * Spiral was intended to carry only its pilot. * Spiral was designed to land on skids, which deployed from a set of doors on the sides of the fuselage just above and ahead of the wings.

BOR reentry test vehicles

The ''БОР'' (russian: Беспилотный Орбитальный Ракетоплан, , "Unpiloted Orbital Rocketplane"). Another spacecraft to use the Spiral design was the BOR series, uncrewed sub-scale reentry test vehicles. American analogs X-23 PRIME and

ASSET In financial accountancy, financial accounting, an asset is any resource owned or controlled by a business or an economic entity. It is anything (tangible or intangible) that can be used to produce positive economic value. Assets represent value ...

. Several of these craft have been preserved in aerospace museums around the world.

Specifications (MiG 105-11)

References

External links

Predecessor of Shuttle and Buran: Spiral Orbital Aircraft Programme

Spiral and EPOS project

Spiral, MIG 105, Uragan
{{Spaceplanes 1970s Soviet experimental aircraft

MiG-105 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105, part of the Spiral program, was a crewed test vehicle to explore low-speed handling and landing. It was a visible result of a Soviet project to create an orbital spaceplane. The MiG 105 was nicknamed "Lapot" (russi ...