CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Los Angeles radio station's effort to auction off a Russian Buran space shuttle ended Wednesday with no sale.
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.
"We'll go away and lick our wounds," 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 just continue our search and marketing through the channels we were doing before," Whyte said.
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. Organizers said they had no plans to file charges.
Buran -- Russian for snowstorm -- is the name of the Russian shuttle that made one unmanned spaceflight in November 1988.
It circled Earth twice, landed automatically and since then has sat in storage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On May 12 the vehicle was damaged by falling debris when portions of the roof of the building the Buran was in collapsed.
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.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.
It was the Buran in Sydney that L.A. radio listeners were bidding on.
Although the auction is closed, the Buran still is available through First FX for $6 million, Whyte said.
"It's certainly still the asking price. Would that be a little soft? Maybe, I don't know, but $6 million is where we're at," Whyte said.
Interested parties can contact Whyte through the company's Web site at www.fxfirst.com..
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