Program funding and flight cost
All values on this page are in 1990 rubles unless specified otherwise. Values in USD were calculated using the official Central Bank of Russia historical exchange rate for January 1990; the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator was used to reach approximate inflation adjusted values as of January 2026. The USD values are not fully representative as the foreign exchange rate and the Soviet inflation rate was set artificially by the government, but they’re an interesting comparison.
INTRO
The total expenditure until 1990 is quoted at 15,600 million rubles. Of that amount, 11,500 million accounts for “experimental work” or R&D, which is defined as all work done in the design and development of the system, including hardware manufacturing and the cost of launching the two test flights. The remaining 4,100 million rubles is the capital expenditure.
Table 1. Program expenditure as of January 1991 in 1990 rubles (millions).
| Year | 1976–1989 (actual) | 1990 (provisional) | 1991–1995 (planned) | Total until 1995 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R&D spending | 11,500 | 800 | 5,400 | 17,700 |
| Cap Ex spending | 4,100 | 100 | 400 | 4,600 |
| Total spending | 15,600 | 900 | 5,800 | 22,300 |
The memoirs of Energia Chief Designer Boris Gubanov helpfully mention program spending during individual years, allowing us to fill in the missing values between 1990 and 1993, when the program shut down.
Table 2. Yearly R&D expenditure (actual) in 1990 rubles (millions).
| Year | 1976 | 1977 | 1978 | 1979 | 1980 | 1981 | 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spending (mln rub) | 54 | 91 | 209 | 315 | 482 | 675 | n/a | 1331 | 1370 | 1370 | 1340 | n/a | n/a | 1020 | 1030 | 875 | 192 | 62 |
According to Gubanov, the spending was 1,030 mln in 1990, 875 mln in 1991, 192 mln in 1992 and a measly 62 million rubles in 1993, for a total of 2,159 million rubles. These numbers refer to the R&D only, but even the planned capital expenditure until 1995 only amounted to an extra 500 million rubles, so with the program winding down the real value is certainly much lower — for simplicity I will not be including capital spending after 1989.
Table 3. Combined total spending (actual) in 1990 rubles (millions).
| Year | 1976–1989 (actual) | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R&D spending | 11,500 | 1,030 | 875 | 192 | 62 | 13,659 |
| Cap Ex spending | 4,100 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | >4,100 |
| Total spending | 15,600 | >1,030 | >875 | >192 | >62 | >17,759 |
Together, the program adds up to 13.7 billion rubles for R&D and at least 4.1 billion rubles for capital expenditure, for a total of at least 17.8 billion rubles in 1990 terms, or around 74 billion US dollars in 2026 money.
Values for 1982, 1987 and 1988 are missing from the book, but, comparing the 1976–1989 funding total from before with the data for that period in Gubanov’s book, these three years would account for approximately 3,240 million rubles, averaging 1,080 million rubles in each of the three years, which looks about right, if only a ballpark figure.
As could be expected, funding rose steadily from the program’s start until the 1984 and 1985 peak, followed by a decline as the program began preparing for the transition from active development to operations, and a sharp drop after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the West, the first public mentions of the program’s slowdown date to 1989, when suggestions that the flight-proven Buran would be retired from service in favor of the second and third flight-spec orbiters started popping up. By 1990, officials began openly admitting that the flights would progress at a slower rate than expected. As of 1990, however, Buran (orbiter 1K) still appeared in flight planning, with the orbiter returning to active service after two flights of the second orbiter and a healthy 800 million rubles in R&D and 100 million in capital spending projected for 1990.
Breaking down the spending by components of the program, R&D spending up to and including 1990 is further split into 5.4 billion rubles for the development of the Energia, 4.9 billion for the development of the Buran orbiter and a further 2 billion for the development of ground infrastructure.
Officially, the Energia-Buran system would enter operational service after completing a total of five test flights with the orbiter and one flight of the Energia in the cargo configuration (not counting the May 1987 Polyus launch, which was a non-standard payload configuration launched on a non-serial production rocket), which was scheduled to happen before 1996. In that period (1991–1995), 5,400 million rubles in R&D spending and 400 million in capital expenditure was the planned budget. Of that 5,400 million R&D budget, 1,215 million rubles would be spent on further developing the Energia.
All in all, the total spending required to bring the program to operational status by 1996 was calculated as 22.3 billion rubles in 1990 terms, or 92.5 billion US dollars in 2026 money.
Cost per flight The document also includes a summary of the cost breakdown of an Energia-Buran launch.
Just like with the Space Shuttle, Buran launch costs would be brought down if it launched at or near the maximum cadence, which was limited by the Energia processing facilities at Baikonur to six flights per year. For the maximum six flights, the amortised facilities cost was listed at 10 million rubles per flight vs 65 million per calendar year.
According to Gubanov, the cost of building the first Energia vehicle was reportedly 210 million rubles, dropping to 145–155 million for early-production vehicles, but a serial production unit is listed at 60 million. Refurbishment of the reusable Blok Ya launch table adapter is 0.2 million rubles per flight. Buran orbiter pre- and post-flight processing is 9 million rubles — compared to the 140 million ruble cost of building the first orbiter.
Together with 2.7 million rubles for propellants, 0.15 mln for transport to the launch pad and a 2.95 million “reserve”, the internal cost for one operational Energia-Buran flight adds up to 85 million rubles in 1990 terms or 353 million US dollars in 2026 money.
With no fixed costs, the marginal cost of an Energia-Buran flight is 75 million rubles in 1990 terms or around 311 million US dollars in 2026 money.
In 1990 terms, this marginal flight cost would be equal to 124 million US dollars, compared to approximately 44 million US dollars for the Shuttle as of 1993 (around 40 million in 1990 money).
The Shuttle comparison
The fixed costs in the Buran flight cost calculations only account for the maintenance and operation of the launch facilities, processing facilities and ground support equipment. For this reason, this number is not comparable to the Shuttle average launch cost used by NASA, which is “the total cost to operate the Space Shuttle on a recurring and sustained basis for a given year divided by the number of flights planned for that year”, meaning that it includes all yearly Shuttle program costs except for capital expenditure, manufacturing costs of reusable hardware and development/upgrade programs. In the numbers available for Buran, the capital expenditure for buildings and facilities are treated separately, but the cost to build reusable hardware (e.g. Buran orbiters) is included in R&D (operational) costs.
Taking this into account, a very rough approximation of the “average launch cost” equivalent for Buran test flights can be calculated with some assumptions and changes. In 1990 the planned Energia-Buran R&D (non-capital) expenditure for 1991 through 1995 was 5,400 million rubles, at an average of 1,080 mln per year. In the same period, four Buran flights and one cargo flight of the Energia were scheduled, which we can approximate at one Buran flight per year. With an additional five flights per year to reach the maximum flight rate, 375 million rubles in marginal flight costs can be added each year for a total of 1,455 million rubles per year. This yields a hypothetical average cost per flight of approx. 243 million rubles in 1990 terms or 400 million US dollars in 1990 money.
Using the same method, a broadly comparable number can be calculated for the Shuttle, using 1982 as the equivalent period in the flight test program (after the first mission) and adding the marginal cost for launches up to the maximum flight rate. The Shuttle’s cadence was limited by different factors, but nine flights per year seems like a realistic assumption, with twelve flights as the operational maximum.
With that, the Shuttle program expenditure excluding capital costs (counted in the same way as with Buran) in 1982 was 2,830 million US dollars adjusted to 1990 terms. With a hypothetical total of nine and twelve flights, the average cost per flight ends up at 265 and 341 million US dollars in 1990 terms, respectively. This is surprisingly close to the Buran numbers, even if the calculation is based on a pyramid of assumptions, mixing data from different years and crude back-of-the-napkin math.
By 1993, both the US and Soviet shuttle programs had spent around 30 billion US dollars in 1990 terms each (within 10% of one another), but while the Soviets flew their orbiter once (plus the Energia test flight carrying Polyus), the US had flown fifty seven missions.
Other estimates and data points Circling back to the final program cost, approx. 17.8 billion rubles in 1990 terms or 74 billion US dollars in 2026 money was spent on the program from its official start in 1976 to its indefinite suspension in 1993.
This number is similar to the figures quoted elsewhere. Zubok’s Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union uses 15 billion rubles in 1988 prices, but also claims that this would be equal to 40 billion US dollars in 2021, which by my calculations is about 18 billion too low. 1
One of the more frequently cited figures also comes from Boris Gubanov, which is 16.4 billion rubles of total spending by January 1991. This is consistent with the numbers in the Lukashevich documents, though it is important to note that at least 1.1 billion more was spent after January 1991 and the values for 1990 (900 million in combined R&D and capital costs) are projections instead of actual numbers — Gubanov himself notes 1,030 million rubles in R&D costs alone as the real number spent in 1990. 2
In Hendrickx’s and Vis’ excellent Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle, the total Buran program budget for 1989 is cited as 1.3 billion rubles. With Gubanov’s 1,020 million for the R&D costs for that year, this leaves approximately 300 million rubles for capital expenditure. The total spending as of the end of 1989 was cited as 14 billion rubles, which looks to be about one billion short, inflation adjusted. 3
As a final note, it was recently brought to my attention that the Google AI overview has recently started showing a whopping 110 billion US dollars in 2026 terms as the program cost. This would suggest that the 16 billion ruble cost was calculated sometime in the mid-60s, which seems unlikely.