![]() ![]() But he does have a lot confidence in his source for the hardware. No one associated with the auction in the United States is sure exactly which Buran it is that the potential winning bidder will take possession of, said Willie Whyte, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based First FX, Inc., a company that helps people manage online trading on the Foreign Exchange.Īdmitting he wouldn't know one space shuttle from another, Whyte said all he knows is that the Buran to be auctioned has never flown in space. Of those, one Buran was turned into a space-themed restaurant at Gorky Park in Moscow and another was given a fresh coat of paint before going on display for more than a year in Sydney, Australia during the time of the 2001 Summer Olympic Games. It circled Earth twice, landed automatically and since then has more or less sat in storage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan - along with at least one other fully-built shuttle that has been called Ptichka, which means "little bird." "We're looking at it like it probably won't, but it's just a lot of fun and people will have a good time with it," said Pam Baker, director of marketing and sales for KFWB-AM's web site. EDT (2200 GMT).Īnd though there are certainly people in the Southern California area who might be able to afford their own spaceplane - Tom Cruise has been suggested in particular - auction organizers are not really expecting it to sell. News 980 KFWB-AM will start accepting bids for the used ship on the station's web site at 11 a.m. A Los Angeles radio station is planning to auction off a Russian Buran space shuttle and the minimum asking price is $6 million. Interested parties can contact Whyte through the company's Web site at The preceding article was reprinted with permission of, where it first appeared. ![]() Would that be a little soft? Maybe, I don't know, but $6 million is where we're at," Whyte said. radio listeners were bidding on.Īlthough the auction is closed, the Buran still is available through First FX for $6 million, Whyte said. Of those, one Buran was turned into a space-themed restaurant at Gorky Park in Moscow and another was given a fresh coat of paint before going on display for more than a year in Sydney, Australia during the time of the 2000 Summer Olympic Games. Several other copies of the Russian shuttle were built as part of a test program and through the years have all become known by the name Buran. On May 12 the vehicle was damaged by falling debris when portions of the roof of the building the Buran was in collapsed. ![]() It circled Earth twice, landed automatically and since then has sat in storage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Organizers said they had no plans to file charges.īuran - Russian for snowstorm - is the name of the Russian shuttle that made one unmanned spaceflight in November 1988. Several bids were submitted in the hours following the auction's start on May 10, but a quick check of credentials proved all to be pranks. "We'll just continue our search and marketing through the channels we were doing before," Whyte said. Whyte's firm is acting as an agent for NPO Molniya, the Russian organization that owns a pair of Buran shuttles, and will collect an unspecified commission if they are able to broker a deal to sell the shuttle. "We'll go away and lick our wounds," Whyte said. The asking price of $6 million proved too much for any legitimate bidders, said Willie Whyte, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based First FX, Inc., a company that helps people manage online trading on the Foreign Exchange. A Los Angeles radio station's effort to auction off a Russian Buran space shuttle ended Wednesday with no sale. ![]()
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