Slashdot Mirror
Kazakhstan's Spaceship Junkyard
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."
The junkers from Asimov's stories =)
Since these parts start on earth, you're not going to catch anything that the flight control team doesn't already have. Frankly, Skylab fell on the aussies, and nobody there caught any extraterrestrial bug that anybody outside Oz noticed.
Since the article is slashdotted, I hope they at least take care to plot where the villages are, before letting parts fall everywhere.
I wonder what Borat has to say about this?
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
4 comments as I view, and it's down.
How's this for the ultimate conundrum: the combination of "Nobody RTFA here" and "the Slashdot Effect" taking down sites?
Maybe some people actually DO RTFA besides myself?
(sigh
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
7 replies and photo essay is already slow as hell...
Ex-Soviet Russia is famous for *not* managing its nuclear waste (hundreds of nuclear submarines slowly rotting away in Barents Sea, pissing off Finns and Swedes) ; nuclear weapons out of hand or simply "missing" ; some famous fuckups (Tchernobyl; that bio-warfare incident about 20 years ago, when a lab leaked a killer virus over a village) ; etc...
So nobody should be surprised that they let booster rockets fall on populated areas...
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
I realize there are obvious answers (toxic fuel, fire, etc...) but I'm often surprised when asking these questions.
"Derp de derp."
I went to Almaty (aka "Alma Ata", the old capital of Kazakhstan) back in about 1994. I really enjoyed it and found the people to be very friendly and enthusiastic.
I did find the food to be somewhat unique. Breakfast was usually a kind of roll filled with either finely chopped vegetables and/or finely ground meat. I don't know what sort of meat it was and it wasn't even always clear which buns had meat as everything was so finely ground up. It was all tasty though.
Lunch was fairly straight forward but the dessert was a peculiar electric green sweet foam. I couldn't identify the flavor but it was also pretty good.
Supper was quite interesting as, although the menu had a variety of items, it turned out what was actually available was either steak or spaghetti. No worry though, both were quite good as was the company!
The architecture, furnishings, and decor of Almaty were very interesting. For me, it was like an instant trip to the 1950s but in a parallel universe where everything was slightly unfamiliar.
The name of the hotel I stayed at escapes me right now but it was something like "The Cosmo". I think it has been renamed "Kazakhstan Hotel" based on the pictures I can find. There was a very impressive and very large tapestry commemorating the Soviet space program in the lobby.
The main thing about my trip was my time in Kazakhstan was far too short. It took ~48 hours to get there, I had ~48 hours there, and then it was ~48 hours to come home. I wish I had time to visit Baikonur Cosmodrome (we were invited to visit by our hosts) but we didn't have time. I'll always regret that.
Anyway, if you get a chance to go to Kazakhstan, you really should take it.
A couple friends recently got engaged, and they had an artisan who specialized in jewelry design and make her engagement ring.
Of all the exotic materials they can make rings out of, one thing she would not do was make rings out of titanium. The reason? In case of certain medical emergencies (snagged in a machine, or crashed car, or whatever), they'd need to cut the ring off to free the finger (and ultimately the entire person). But no paramedic or even hospital ward is routinely equipped with tools to cut through titanium. If they encountered a titanium ring in a time-critical emergency, they could well be forced to cut the finger off instead.
Your both wrong.
Nasa would offer 20% of losses in exchange for a signature on a long contract that would make the typical NDA look like "Please don't tell anyone ok?"
They'd show up with MIBish lawyers that make it sound like if they don't sign they'll go to jail as trators.
Over time rummors will leak and a famaly will move in exclusively to get hit.
The Nasa MIB legal team shows up only to meet the famalys layer carrying a heavy lawsute.
The MIB quickly offer 200% of losses and forget the NDA. No go. They want emotional damages for the loss of guppy the gold fish famaly pet (for a whole 10 seconds even).
The MIB legal team is at a loss. They rely entirely on scaring the piss out of people with fake threats and this famaly is countering with REAL threats.
They plan and are ready to cast this famaly in the light of con artists when the news media already has the famalys version of the story.
Eventualy Nasa has to fork it over (but only to this one famaly and not to the others with REAL damages.)
Nasa is about to close it's doors forever when the fedral government comes it to save the day.
And that timmy is why Daddy has to pay most of his paycheck to the fedral government.
I don't actually exist.