Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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."

1 of 307 comments (clear)

  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.