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Kazakhstan's Spaceship Junkyard

Posted by Zonk on from the mos-eisley dept.

Richard W.M. Jones writes "What happens to the booster stages of rockets? They fall back to earth, and in most cases into the oceans. But not in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where the first stages fall over populated farmland. The locals have become rich dealing in the titanium-rich scrap metal as this article and this remarkable photo essay show. So far the only casualties seem to have been a few dead cows."

5 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Wow.. by Renraku · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These farmers, rather than demand restitution from the government got off their asses and turned lemons into lemonade.

    Of course, a certain government might turn their lemonade into military action when they decide they want a piece of the pie.

    If spent stages from a US rocket hit some home in the US, it would be removed overnight, the family would be given a check for 20% of the value of what they lost, forced to sign an NDA, and no one would ever hear about it again.

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    Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
    1. Re:Wow.. by iammaxus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's ridiculous. A much more stereotypical response in the US would be for NASA to pay the family 200% of the value of what they lost, and the scrupulous family would still insist on suing for additional millions for the "emotional damage" resultant from the loss of their goldfish. The subsequent increase in insurance costs would push commercialization of space back a decade or two.

    2. Re:Wow.. by learn+fast · · Score: 3, Insightful

      NASA also wouldn't dump boosters into populated areas in the first place.

  2. Re:Slashdot posts this... by jtogel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Kids growing up in areas damaged by radiation from the plant have a higher IQ and faster reaction times, say Russian doctors." Note: say Russian doctors, says The Sun! Do the two layers on untrustworthyness somehow cancel each other out, so as to make the statement trustworthy?

  3. Re:Server going down? by cluening · · Score: 4, Insightful

    After seven years of the same "the server is going to do something vaguely related to the story!" comments, you would think people would stop rating them as 'funny'...

    (apologies to the original poster; yours just happened to be the one showing up as such right now)

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    Posted from the wireless couch.