Baikonur Cosmodrome
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The Baikonur Cosmodrome (Kazakh: Байқоңыр ғарыш айлағы, Bayqoñır ğarış aylağı; Russian: Космодром Байконур, Kosmodrom Baykonur), also called Tyuratam, is the world's oldest and largest operational space launch facility. It is located in Kazakhstan, about 200 kilometers (~125 mi) east of the Aral Sea, on the north bank of the Syr Darya, near the town of Tyuratam. It is leased by the Kazakh government to Russia (until 2050) and managed by the Russian Federal Space Agency. It was originally built by the Soviet Union as the base of operations for its ambitious space program from the late 1950s to the 1980s. One of the launch pads is at , this is so called "Gagarin's Start" (Russian: «Гагаринский старт»), the pad, from which Vostok 1 was launched. The administrative offices are positioned at .
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[edit] Name
It was sometimes assumed the name Baikonur was chosen to intentionally mislead the West as to the actual location of the site by suggesting that the site was near Baikonur, a mining town about 320 kilometers (199 mi) northeast of the space centre in the desert area near Dzhezkazgan. Others assert Baikonur also refers to the entire region.[1]
[edit] History
[edit] Soviet era
Baikonur was founded on June 2, 1955. It was originally built as a long-range-missile centre and later expanded to include space flight facilities. Sergei Korolev the Chief Designer of the Soviet R-7 Semyorka ICBM selected the site as the radio control system of the rocket required a ground station several hundred kilometers down range of the launch pads. The expense of constructing the launch facilities and the several hundred kilometers of new road and train lines made the Cosmodrome one of the most costly infrastructure projects the Soviets undertook. A supporting town was built around the facility to provide apartments, schools and support for workers. It was raised to city status in 1966 and named Leninsk.
Many historic flights lifted off from Baikonur: the first operational ICBM, the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, the first manned orbital flight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961 and the flight of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963. The first astronauts of many other nations, such as Czechoslovakia, France, Germany and Brazil, started their historical journeys from here as well. In 1960 a prototype ICBM exploded before launch, killing over 100 people.
[edit] Russian era
Following the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 the Russian space program continued to operate from Baikonur under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States. In 1995 the city surrounding the spaceport was renamed Baikonur. On June 8, 2005 the Russian Federation Council ratified an agreement between Russia and Kazakhstan extending Russia’s rent term of the spaceport until 2050. The rent price - which is fixed at 115 million US dollars per year - is the source of a long-running dispute between the two countries. That dispute has prompted Russia to begin upgrading its own Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Northern Russia as a fallback option.
[edit] Features
Baikonur is fully equipped with facilities for launching both manned and unmanned space vehicles. It supports several generations of Russian spacecraft: Soyuz, Proton, Tsyklon, Dnepr and Zenit. During the temporary lapse of the United States' Space Shuttle program after the Columbia Disaster in 2003 it has played an essential role in the resupply and deployment of the International Space Station.
[edit] Future projects
On December 22, 2004, Kazakhstan and Russia signed a contract establishing the "Russia-Kazakhstan Baiterek JV" joint venture, in which each country holds a 50-percent stake. The goal of the project is the construction of the Baiterek (poplar tree) space launch complex, to facilitate operations of the Russian Angara rocket launcher. The site is scheduled to be completed in 2009. [2] This will allow launches with a payload of 26 tons to low earth orbit, compared to 20 tons using the Proton system. An additional benefit will be that the Angara uses a mixture of kerosene and oxygen as fuel, which is less hazardous to the environment than the toxic fuels used by older boosters. The total expenditure on the Kazakh side will be $223 million over 19 years.[3]
[edit] Popular culture
In the world of Star Trek the Baikonur Cosmodrome launched the SS Mariposa (NAR-7678) on November 27, 2123 and the К. Э. Циолковский (English: SS Tsiolkovsky) (NCC-53911) circa 2363.
In the computer game Command & Conquer: Generals, the Global Liberation Army terrorist faction arms a Soyuz rocket with anthrax and launches it from the base at a nondescript city. In the expansion pack, Zero Hour, a second rocket is launched at an American base in Europe, and a third launch is in progress until the Baikonur launch pad is annihilated in a counter-strike by the USA.
Winter Hawk by Craig Thomas heavily features Baikonur Cosmodrome during the Soviet period.
The short story Red Star, Winter Orbit, written by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, (reprinted in Gibson's story collection Burning Chrome) makes several references to Baikonur Cosmodrome.
Almost the entire first half of the anime Blue Gender covers the several thousand km journey of Yuji Kaido and Marlene Angel from Korea all the way to Baikonur to escape the Blue infested Earth.
[edit] References
- ^ The Partnership: A History of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. NASA.
- ^ “Baiterek” Space Launch Complex. Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center. Retrieved on May 10, 2006.
- ^ Kazakh President Signs Law Re Baiterek Rocket Center. Interfax (2005-10-24). Retrieved on May 10, 2006.
[edit] External links
