111 – The Most Famous Spacecraft

Hello everyone, Daria here and welcome to episode number 111 of the slow Russian language podcast. I apologize uh for my voice. I am still recovering from my sickness. So, uh it might come as a little harsh today. Uh so, actually this episode was requested by one of my listeners. I'm terribly sorry. I cannot find who exactly asked me for it. But here I am fulfilling your requests. And we're going to talk about the Russian space program. not Russian like Soviet space uh exploration program and it's called Buran. Boran, you probably heard about it. Uh this time I divided the text in um several little chapters. So we read them at first, then we translate them and then I will read the whole text faster so you can check how much you understand after the translation. Here we go. Uh Grandma M. Space shuttle. Okay, a lot of international words here, so probably you understood quite a lot, but let's translate it. The first sentence, the Energia Buran program was a landmark project in the history of Soviet space exploration program Ban, the Energy Ban program. It is interesting that the word buran itself actually means the snowstorm. Uh for example in Siberia when the snow would be flying around and it's dark and the wind is crazy. I remember I would say as a kid like oo banan like there is a snowstorm outside. So this is uh the name of the program Ban and it became the symbolic project but also in English usually I hear landmark project meaning that it's very significant in Russian we would say and here we use instrumental case to become plus instrumental ending in the history of the Soviet space exploration. So the word I don't think in English you use the word cosmonautics in Russian we do. Remember we had a long time ago the episode about museum of cosmonautics. But basically comes from the word cosmos space and it means space exploration. Kasmanika. Okay. The next sentence. It was a reusable transport space system RTSS developed as a response to the American space shuttle program. Okay. And it is interesting you hear all the words here are foreign transport coming from the word cosmos space system and it was uh um developed as a response. A response in Russian

is so to respond and respond uh response to something would be here it was a response to American program. accusative case. Space shuttle. The next sentence ban was one of only two such systems ever implemented in the world. systems of such type in Russian is tip. Um interesting word is real because in English uh there is a temptation to use the word realize. Yeah, realiz. But in reality it means implemented uh kind of brought into reality that made real right implemented in the world. All right, moving on. The only flight of the Boron spacecraft took place on November 15, 1988 in a fully unmanned mode. Okay. a lot of interesting stuff happening here. Interesting word. Uh it means the only. Yeah. One and only. Uh so you can't say here means just one flight but no here we want to say that it was the only one in that case we need to say the only flight of Ban took place means to take place. For example, the game between two teams took place yesterday. It's a very official word, November 15. 1988. Remember in Russian we use numbers, 980 and 8 and we only change that last figure 1988. So the last eight we will change genative case. Okay. And it took um uh them Oh no no. It was in a fully unmanned mode. In Russian, we would say in pilotless regime if you say it directly regime without a pilot. Okay. The program was launched in 1974, but by 1993, work on the project was officially terminated. different difficult words but some of them you definitely know interesting. Instead of you probably know the verbat to start but here we use the verb start literally coming from the word start the start to begin to start. Okay. What is next? Uh the chief designers of the system were Yuri Pavlovich Simonov responsible for developing the boran and Boris Vanovich Gubanov who led the creation of the

inial launch vehicle. constru. Okay. Lots of words here. The main uh developers. Yeah. the chief designers. Glavn constructor. Constructor like a constructor but it means somebody who develops uh something who creates something. Constructor sometimes we can say a constructor. So it means Yuri Pavlovich is his patronymic. So Yuri son of Pavville Simon and he was responsible good word responsibility would be. So he was creating Ban and Iv made the rocket raetil. uh we call it uh like the rocket the carrier if you literally translate it. So it's basically uh the rocket uh that takes the ship into the space. You're probably familiar with the process. Yeah, there is the rocket with fuel to actually start the motion and to go through the atmosphere to actually deliver uh the ship there you would call it in Russian. Okay, moving to the next part. The program's cost was significant for the state budget of that time. It was 14 billion rubles. Uh so uh this expression is very useful to cost something um to be of some kind of cost. In Russian we say for example my vacation cost me I don't know 5,000 So in 14 billion I love the word billion in Russian it is millart. So we have million and after millart millart. Uh it's not as much in dollars. Let me actually uh calc I think it's like about $250 million. Not so much, but still for a single ship, it's a pretty significant. Um okay. Uh where I lost the text. Uh this estimate does not include additional expenses for constructing the buron spacecraft, the launch vehicle and the actual launch. Lunch in Russian is Zapuskap launch of the rocket zapus. Uh so this estimate does not include in Russian we would say literally that these expenses don't enter the sum. Interesting, right? Kind of makes sense logically. No, don't enter. You probably know the word entrance. You would see it on little plates, over the doors, everywhere. So means to enter. So here the expenses don't enter and it means that it doesn't include additional expenses. Okay. income. According to other estimates, the total cost reached 16. 5 billion.

of uh so in Russian we wouldn't say 16. 5 we usually say 16 with a half three with a half one with a half that's how we say it instrumental case with a half that's pretty much it for this super short text and what is interesting about it that uh these spaceships are on B can ban is uh the place usually you can't go there and if you heard of Balden Bankrupt the famous YouTuber who traveled all over Russia all over Ukraine now I think he's hanging out in China uh doing videos he was arrested uh in Russia because he was apparently doing something on that space thing so it's still a mystery what exactly happened to him and why he was banned from Russia from any future visits. So it is interesting. So this is where it happened where this uh buran is um still up until today it is all obviously nonfunctional and half of the equipment was stolen during the years but still also in Moscow there is the uh model and you can go inside there is the interactive museum for people on the V and it's called uh it's not too far from downtown Moscow. Very interesting place. If you travel to Moscow, I highly recommend going to uh space museums. They are absolutely incredible. So, that's pretty much it for this text. Let me quickly read it to you. It had a lot of difficult words, so hopefully you got something interesting out of it. Listen again. system. More space shuttle. Foreign speech. Foreign for constructor. Sorry. Fore! Foreign! of ruby. Very difficult text. Today we have I'm really glad if you stayed till the end and understood at least 20% of what I've been saying. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you very much for listening. Don't forget to check out the description box because there is the full text, the translation, and also the additional links. Don't forget that you can first of all buy the full PDF with all the episodes and MP3s. If you don't want to use the podcast apps or you want to just have it handy offline wherever you go, you can download the MP3s of the episodes. And on top of that, um I teach Russian obviously. I am a college uh professor and also I have an online Russian language course for beginners. So please go check out my website Russian from zero tofluency. com or simply check out the description and uh welcome to

the world of learning the Russian language. Thank you very much for listening and I hope to see you in the next episode of the slow Russian language podcast. Bye-bye.