Star City and the Baikonur Cosmodrome

First time accepted submitter zyborg writes "Here's 44 photographs of the Baikonour Cosmodrome used by the ISS program. The pictures range from training, launch vehicle transport and assembly, launch, touchdown, pictures from space, etc. From the article 'Earlier today, a Soyuz-FG rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying an International Space Station (ISS) crew into orbit. Baikonur, Russia's primary space launch facility since the 1950s, is the largest in the world, and supports multiple launches of both manned and unmanned rockets every year. With the U.S. manned space program currently on hold, Baikonur is now the sole launching point for trips to the ISS. Gathered here is a look at the facility, some of the cosmonaut training programs in Star City outside of Moscow, and a few recent launches and landings — plus a bonus: 3 spectacular long-exposure images of Earth from the ISS.'"

Comments

live launch tours from $5000 to $20000

[peter303]

I've seen various tours offered in Europe and from American science institutions. Here is an upcoming one. They let you get closer to the vehicles and the launch than does NASA.

Re:live launch tours from $5000 to $20000

[Anonymous Coward]

For a fee, you can even ride the spinning thingy that makes people puke.

Re:live launch tours from $5000 to $20000

[jtownatpunk.net]

They should charge extra to not go in the spinny/pukey thing.

Re:live launch tours from $5000 to $20000

[adavies42]

the one at the end of an arm shouldn't make you puke if it's set up properly and you know what you're doing. the spinning chair on the other hand....

Cold War

[darioushfaunk]

I'm still incredible impressed that Russia continues to support any type of Space industry, with infrastructure that looks like it hasn't changed much since the Cold War. I wonder how they afford it, and what their budget is for these projects...

Re:Cold War

[crazyjj]

And with a much better safety record than NASA, no less.

Re:Cold War

[h4rr4r]

Why fix what is not broken?
The Shuttle was a fix for something that was not broken and it took us more 20 years to ditch it.

Re:Cold War

[Anonymous Coward]

The safety record is arguable and controversial. Many mistakes were made in both space programs and many spacemen died in accidents. Let's not start any mudslinging and just enjoy the fact that both space programs are still being funded and functioning.

Re:Cold War

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it actually has been constructed during the Cold War it hasn't changed indeed since. Why would it? Do you believe they needed a major "freedom and capitalism" overhaul done after the collapse of the Soviet Union?

Re:Cold War

[tverbeek]

The Soviet/Russian space program's safety record isn't all that great either. They've also had two in-flight accidents that resulted in the loss of all hands (but with crews of only 1 and 3, so a smaller body count). Taken as a percentage of launches, this gives them about the same failure rate as NASA.

Re:Cold War

[Grishnakh]

I think you've already answered your own question. If you don't change your infrastructure much, there's not so much to afford, as it's already mostly paid for; you just have to pay for ongoing operational costs.

And selling pricey tours of everything probably helps with the budget too. The Russians are proving to be much better capitalists than the Americans.

Re:Cold War

[Grishnakh]

Yes, but IIRC the Russian mistakes were mostly farther in the past. Remember, the Soyuz has been flying since, what?, 1970? For a relatively simple craft (compared to the Shuttle), that's a long time to work out all the bugs. And no, both space programs are NOT being funded and functioning, only the Russian manned program is still functioning. The Americans have thrown in the towel on theirs because they'd rather spend money on wars in the middle east and handouts to mismanaged corporations. The American program still has unmanned missions, but the total expenditure is a small fraction of what it used to be.

Re:Cold War

[darioushfaunk]

Nope, just get minor enjoyment out of watching complicated equipment and machinery function for more than 10 years, which can definitely be against the business model of "freedom and capitalism."

Re:Cold War

[darioushfaunk]

That is an excellent point. My knowledge of Russian industrial development is pretty much nil, but maintaining that equipment and keeping it integrated with modern systems seems like it would be a fairly major undertaking. But the groundwork is the hardest part.

Re:Cold War

[shutdown -p now]

Unlike US, Russia didn't go full in on an expensive replacement program like the Shuttle. One problem with the latter was that it made all launches that much more expensive compared to the older but simpler Soyuz.

Re:Cold War

[TWX]

The shuttle as promised and the shuttle as delivered were not the same craft. The original idea was that it was a rocket-assist plane that could land and be turned around to fly again in a matter of days or weeks, and that shuttles would be constantly flying, likely more than one mission at a time.

There have also been discussions that American military/industrial/aerospace developments weren't really because we wanted to push the boundaries of what we could do, but that we wanted to get the Russians to try to do something that they couldn't afford. If you look at the idea of defensive platforms in space, coupled with the shuttle, the aerial laser, and other ideas, you have an extremely expensive set of tech to develop. Not so expensive that the US couldn't afford to expend resources in those directions, but that possibly the Russians couldn't but would try anyway, ultimately breaking their own economy in the process. Given the way the Soviet Union broke up, it arguably worked.

Re:Cold War

[Anonymous Coward]

I freely admit I'm not well read on the subject, but someone brought that up not too long ago, and I seem to remember the wiki said the US has put something like 3x's the number of people in space.

If that's accurate, I'd think it's probably fair to say the safety of spaceflight is hard to consider in a perfectly linear fashion. When you're putting a lot more people in space in an equal timeframe, in relatively complicated spacecraft designed to do a whole lot more, spreading your operating budget across lots of other projects, etc., it seems likely that the casualty rate might increase a bit. So maybe a simple, "that team is better" seems a little disingenuous.

Which is not to detract from the Russians' ability to put people in space safely, considering their ground facilities don't appear to have seen so-much-as a coat of paint in 30 years. It's impressive.

Re:Cold War

[TWX]

And, you could argue that the Soviet's space shuttle was superior to ours (USA). I remember watching a documentary on it and it's first flight was completely computer controlled.

And it also depressurized and had it been manned, the crew would have been killed.

It might have had some additional technology that ours lacked, but initially our shuttles all flew. Modifying from initial design parameters (ie, launching when too cold, removing the latex coating from the external fuel tank) is what killed our crews, and ultimately confidence in the program.

Re:Cold War

[osu-neko]

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) is a principle that applies to more than just computer programming. Russian engineers understand this principle, NASA often appears not to. Hence, Russia has an affordable space program, NASA, not so much...

Re:Cold War

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the Shuttle sold because it comported well with our vision of sci-fi space travel. It's a double-edged sword. No sci-fi, less inspiration for space travel. Unrealistic sci-fi inspiration, less practical craft.

We learned some valuable lessons the hard way. 1. Always wear your "engineer's hat" (Challenger). 2. Basic design safety calls for having the manned craft above the ice-shedding explosive-filled tank (Columbia). 3. Inspect re-entry systems in orbit and have a backup plan (Columbia).

Re:Cold War

[k6mfw]

Remember, the Soyuz has been flying since, what?, 1970?

1967 was first flight which ended in a fatality, Komarov flew Soyuz 1 almost got stuck in orbit but managed to deorbit but parachute malfunctioned. It is still hotly discussed as that flight was pushed ahead by Politburo, basically management wanted to go ahead while the engineers wanted more preparation time. Then a later flight (1970?) after highly successful space station visit, three cosmonauts died when Soyuz accidently depressurized during re-entry (or seperation from the Saylut), they were not wearing pressure suits. Bad start in its early days but Soyuz has done quite well in spite of couple launch vehicle aborts and a few ballistic entries. All things considered Soyuz outlived Apollo, Shuttle, and probably Orion as well.

Re:Cold War

[fusiongyro]

The Americans have thrown in the towel on theirs because they'd rather spend money on wars in the middle east and handouts to mismanaged corporations.

You must have missed the "Let's not start any mudslinging" portion of the parent post.

Re:Cold War

[Grishnakh]

No, I chose to ignore that because America deserves all the mudslinging it can get when it comes to the space program (and just about everything else in the way it's conducting itself these days).

Re:Cold War

[dbIII]

Given the way the Soviet Union broke up, it arguably worked.

That's the "tiger stone" argument. Ask a few people from the former USSR and you'll probably get the same impression I did - the place was going to fall apart on it's own no matter what was going on outside.

Re:Cold War

[fusiongyro]

I'm sure your anger and ranting has been a tremendous political boon to wherever it is you live. It seems to be working just as well over here.

Re:Cold War

[shutdown -p now]

My passport says "place of birth: USSR", though I was just a kid when it was gone.

Anyway, from what little I remember, and from what my parents told me, it didn't have to fall apart, but it did have to change. The economy was basically not working as it were, a huge centrally planned thing based on bogus data and producing bogus results. There were two ways to go from there: a gradual transformation to a market economy with broad government control to ensure that it still works in the interests of the state, or loose the reigns and let it take its own course altogether.

China under Deng Xiaoping did the former, USSR under Gorbachev did the latter (not that he wanted it, he just couldn't keep the reigns tight enough). In retrospect, it is not at all certain which approach was better. China is slowly democratizing, and when they eventually get there, in a decade or two more, they will, at least, have a prospering country rather than a ruin. Russia, on the other hand, briefly played with democracy - which quickly descended into the quagmire of corruption and crime - and went back to the "strong hand", but already after shedding most of the advantages of the soviet system (such as a working welfare safety net), running its economy into the ground, and taking a severe demographic hit.

Re:Cold War

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and that's why testing it with full computer control means it was superior to US shuttle. When those depressurize, they do kill the crew.

Re:Cold War

[Grishnakh]

Yes, because keeping quiet and going with the flow works so well in effecting change.

Re:Cold War

[fusiongyro]

They work equally well, but only one of them extends your life and reduces your stress level.

Re:Cold War

[rs79]

Oh good, somebody's in charge of other peoples stress levels. These shoes are killing me. Perhaps you can offer an opinion?

Re:Cold War

[rs79]

It's fucking space. It's gonna be hard and people are gonna die. That's why it's called "exploration" not "a vacation".

Look on the bright side. They both have a better safety record that Star Trek.

Re:Cold War

[Weatherlawyer]

This has to be the daftest post I have ever read on Slashdot.

What NASA does with its data is mind-boggling. I can't even get a weather forecast from my country until it is an hour out of date.

In contrast what is available from the Yanks is stupendous. Archives on almost everything and acres of images presented to all for free

There is so much data available that it would have needed the Internet to be invented if it wasn't already just to show a small proportion of it.

I am as surprised as any that the future of space travel is in the hands of the Russians especially after reading about the order to destroy the technology when the walls came down. And we can't just blame the chimpanzee or anyone else from the court of George the Thickth. Space vehicles NEED a rethink. Until we can come up with something reliable and cheap, it's best that things are in the slow lane.

Re:Cold War

[estestvoispytatel]

The modern Russia seems like a legit Soviet Union after some changes (like some Warsaw Pact countries *before* their velvet revolutions in 1990). They reused practically single-party parliamentary system (United Russia in place of the CPSU), a major presence of former elites in power circles, the General Secretary directly swapped with the President (even with the strange and embarrasing duality of the President and Premier Minister as in General Secretary and the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of old times), socially oriented economy with a huge amount of government presence, etc, etc, even leave many of major regalia in place or cosmetically modernized (like the state anthem and a body of Lenin). The old Soviet Union had a big troubles with the planned economy, which required constant manual fine tuning in almost every transaction inside economy. The amount of this kind of tuning grows with the complexity of production - so you can make some basic stuff like a bread, steel, coal, simple clothes, vodka, AK-47s very cheap and quick, but a hi-tech requires such a huge army of managers, they dwarfed the actual 'productive' workforce. A 'consumer-grade' goods were deemed not important enough and lacked oversight, therefore suffering from a bad quality, slow life cycle and shortages. The latter problem was solved in some Eastern-bloc countries with the elements of private property, allowed in a small-scale production, agriculture, construction, maintenance and so on. In the Soviet Union a similar measures were introduced with the Kosygin-Lieberman reforms of late 1960s, but they were stopped in their tracks as early as in 1971-1972, mainly due to a growing expenditures to a military and a fear of imminent political changes following the economical ones (cough.. Prague 1968 cough...) So, my idea is - you should count the modern days Russia not as a failed attempt to rebuild itself from scratch as a normal democratic country (played with a liberal values but rejected them), but rather as a core of the Soviet Union, slowly changing itself by the means of pre-1990 scenario of some Eastern-bloc countries and waiting for the own political velvet revolution.

Re:Cold War

[h4rr4r]

You forgot putting the people on the side of the rocket which means the ice and foam smack into it.

Re:Cold War

[crazyjj]

Russian engineers understand this principle, NASA often appears not to.

Which makes perfect sense if you realize that post-Apollo NASA is really just a jobs program/money funnel for politically-connected contractors.

Re:Cold War

[TWX]

I forgot nothing of the kind. I cited the removal of the latex coating from the external fuel tank. If you'd done your research, you'd know that this latex coating is what originally isolated the foam from the atmosphere as the tank flew through open air, and kept the foam from breaking off since it wouldn't condensate water from the air and wouldn't be directly subjected to such strong friction through the air.

Re:Cold War

[TWX]

Except we never had a true depressurization-only event. We had a failure at launch due to conditions that exceeded the design of a part that caused catastrophic destruction of the craft, and we had a re-entry failure due to damage to protective devices allowing the atmosphere to burn into a non-pressurized, structural part of the craft, which tore the craft to pieces due to friction.

Re:Cold War

[tehcyder]

The Americans have thrown in the towel on theirs because they'd rather spend money on wars in the middle east and handouts to mismanaged corporations.

You must have missed the "Let's not start any mudslinging" portion of the parent post.

And who put him in charge today?

Re:Cold War

[Grishnakh]

You're right, your post here is quite daft. You complain about NASA being slow, and then you praise "the Yanks", which presumably is NASA. What are you talking about?

We have something reliable and cheap: it's called "Soyuz". No, it's not as cheap as we'd like, but it's the cheapest we have, and it's quite reliable. You're probably more likely to be killed driving to work on your morning commute than you are on a Soyuz (esp. if you ignore the first few years of its history when they were still working the bugs out). Throwing away ALL manned craft because we don't have something "good enough" for you yet is just stupid.

Re:Cold War

[h4rr4r]

If the crew compartment was in the right location on the stack, the top, the latex would never have been needed. This method is how all other manned systems isolate the crew cabin from this particular failure mode.

Re:Cold War

[shutdown -p now]

socially oriented economy with a huge amount of government presence

I don't see that. There's certainly a huge amount of govt presence, but it's there to make life easier for big business (which itself is the government, by and large), not to make the economy "socially oriented". On the contrary, social services are being reduced every year.

So that's one big difference - it's state capitalism now, not state socialism as it was in the USSR.

you should count the modern days Russia not as a failed attempt to rebuild itself from scratch as a normal democratic country (played with a liberal values but rejected them)

But it did experiment with liberal values in the 90s and rejected them...

Walowitz

[tekrat]

Is this the launch that carried one of the cast of Big Bang Theory into orbit??? I could swear I watched this last week.

Re:Walowitz

[TWX]

Yes, but he was not sent up for a telescope. He was sent up to negotiate with some hyperintelligent mice to trade the Answer for some new matter-antimatter propulsion technology to enable mankind to travel across the Eighth Dimension and retrieve the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch.

Swear to god!

in soviet America... Yakov Smirnoff is funny

[Thud457]

little bureaucracy?
Wouldn't have thought I'd ever say that about Russia.

Re:in soviet America... Yakov Smirnoff is funny

[darioushfaunk]

Well, it is an International program. I'm wondering how much funding they *receive* as well from other countries to do the heavy lifting.

Space tourism

[Anonymous Coward]

I've long wanted to take a trip to Baikonur. Already visited the sites in California, Texas and Florida, and I live in Colorado (where they build the Atlas rockets).

How are they on visits?

Re:Space tourism

[crazyjj]

If you get the Science Channel, there was a recent episode of "An Idiot Abroad" where Karl went there. Available on iTunes too (it's the Trans-Siberian Express ep).

Re:Space tourism

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they on visits?

Here is some info.

Re:Space tourism

[fusiongyro]

Make sure to read "Travels in Siberia" first. If the thought of most of your travel expenses going towards bribes bothers you, reconsider it.

Re:Space tourism

[shutdown -p now]

That's BS - you certainly don't need to bribe people in Russia just to travel around the country. If you were to run a business, yeah, that'll be a major spending point. For a tourist, it shouldn't be a concern.

Re:Space tourism

[PPH]

Why not? The already sent one of their representatives over here for a visit.

A priest?

[Anonymous Coward]

All that science and technology and there's still a priest blessing Soyouz with a cross in his hand like he was facing the devil?

Re:A priest?

[osu-neko]

All that science and technology and there's still a priest blessing Soyouz with a cross in his hand like he was facing the devil?

"Godspeed, John Glenn."

(And let's not forget NASA astronauts reading the book of Genesis over the radio...)

Re:A priest?

[metallurge]

Obviously, the Russians don't see a dichotomy between science/technology and their Eastern Orthodox faith. And that despite several generations of official state-sanctioned atheism.

interesting pics

[k6mfw]

Little while ago I talked with someone who had opportunity to sit inside a Soyuz, he is a tall guy and barely fit in the entry seat. Someone else mentioned they sit in beanbags like in the 1960s as not sure orientation vehicle will hit the ground. On Dennis Tito's flight, retros fired close to ground (as they should) but capsule was more horizontal due to parachute swing (shouldn't be like that) so capsule hit ground in not so much of a soft landing (so I was told). Also heard they pack firearms (and cosmonaut training includes firearms training) as cannot guarentee they will land in a friendly country (and even in Russia there are areas of where bandits rule).

Other than that, interesting collection of pictures. I was thinking they could hire some people to clean up rusty scraps of metal scattered about (or maybe they are all broke and still a miracle Russia has a space program).

Re:interesting pics

[shutdown -p now]

Also heard they pack firearms (and cosmonaut training includes firearms training) as cannot guarentee they will land in a friendly country (and even in Russia there are areas of where bandits rule).

As usual, the reality is much more mundane. They pack firearms because they can land into miles and miles of wilderness, which on a lot of Russian territory means dangerous fauna such as wolves, boars and brown bears. Hence why the gun they've originally used - TP-82 - was a typical "survival gun": double-barreled small caliber shotgun combined with a single barrel 5.45x39; a lot like the American M6 survival carbine used by USAF for similar reasons.

Apparently, it was introduced after the Voskhod 2 messed-up landing - they missed their projected landing point by almost 400 km, ended up in taiga in the middle of Urals, and had to wait for a day before the rescue parties have located them and managed to get helicopters through bad weather. When Leonov got back, he complained that they could really use some decent firearms onboard for situations like that.

Re:interesting pics

[Berl]

I've sat in a Soyuz and talked to several people who have flown in them. The landing was described as "like being in a car crash", but much like NASCAR drivers, the combination of seat design and restraints keeps you safe. The seats are custom fit to each astronaut and ride on controlled crush shock/suspension system. They do have a pretty cool gun in the survival kit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82). I think the intent is that it be used against wild animals such as bears or wolves, and for hunting for food during if there was a long delay in being found after and off course landing. They also carry fishing gear for that purpose. Don't know about the bandits.

Obsolete Saturday, 04:55 EDT

[bill_mcgonigle]

There's not much that can drag my ass out of bed at 5AM on a Saturday, but the first launch of Space Age 2.0 rises to that level.

And taken as a percentage of total space presence?

[SmallFurryCreature]

The Shuttle only stayed up for a few days, the Russians had permanent presence for year after year.

Oh and launches? The Russians never stopped their and still going. The Americans are begging for rides.

Steve Jobs did not have a reality distortion field, he was just an American in America.

Re:And taken as a percentage of total space presen

[tverbeek]

The fact that NASA has discontinued manned space launches doesn't make their safety record any worse. How many people died because of it? Or were hurt? What kind of loopy argument is that? On the contrary, cancelling an entire launch system due to safety concerns (and other factors) demonstrates that they are being (perhaps overly) cautious.

Yes, it's certainly true that the Russians have logged a lot more time in space than Americans. But do you really want to get into a comparison of all the not-quite-fatal health-and-safety problems they also had during that time? Mir was an orbiting deathtrap near the end. You're like those statistically-inept people who point at big airline crashes as proof that commercial air travel is unsafe, while ignoring not only the fatalities among in less-spectacular automobile accidents, but also the injuries and toxicity that add up to a much more hazardous environment.

And please drop the dumb-ass nationalist pot-shots; they only make you look just as willfully blind as you accuse others of being. I am an American in America, but I won't hesitate for an instant to criticize its culture, its government. or its space program when it deserves criticism. And I'm not alone. So stop trying to prove what an ignorant, prejudiced dork you are.

SpaceX

[Anonymous Coward]

Baikonur is now the sole launching point for trips to the ISS

Not if Elon Musk has any say in it.
He could soon bring the same indubitable success he had with his Tesla Rotster, sorry I mean Roadster, to the man space flight arena.

Re:And taken as a percentage of total space presen

[Anonymous Coward]

I am also an American in America, and *your* grasp of statistics partly shows why USA is at this sad state in the space race.

Photo Number 9

[PPH]

What's all that rubble in the foreground? Was that as far as a previous Soyuz made it?

More photos of Baikonur

[Elrond, Duke of URL]

My gallery on my university/work machine has a great collection of albums documenting a trip to Baikonur and the Cosmodrome. They were taken by Chuck, a friend of mine and retired engineer, during his trip there for the launch of ECHO. This was an AmSat (amateur radio) relay satellite. He took a great deal of photos covering the flights, the locations, the integration and launch of the satellite, and some other interesting places in Baikonur.

ECHO Launch Campaign

I also had a satellite launched from the Cosmodrome. I worked on the University of Arizona's Cubesat Project and wrote all of the onboard code controlling the satellite. In the end we built four satellites, three of which were completely functional. There was RinconSat 1 and 2, AlcatelSat, and an engineering model. The cubesats are small 10cm cubic satellites with a control/computer board, power board, radio board, an array of 24 sensors, and an array of solar panels on the outside frame.

The hardware was quite simple, but we didn't need anything super fancy. The computer board had a PIC microcontroller and using the I2C bus could communicate with two 32 kB FRAM (ferromagnetic RAM) storage chips, a clock chip (which kept time in binary coded decimal), and the sensors. Unfortunately, at the time there were no FOSS PIC compilers so we had to use a Windows/DOS/command line compiler which was really lousy, but we managed to work around the bugs as we found them.

I was very happy with our final results. We did a great deal of testing on the ground and did radio testing by taking the satellite up to the top of a nearby mountain and then communicating with it from our groundstation. The onboard code supported one- and two-way communication and had several modes of operation. It had a default mode in case communication could not be established, a real-time mode that would broadcast a constant stream of sensor readings for a period of time while the satellite was overhead, and a regular mode that would collect readings based on a schedule and store them in the FRAM storage which you could then later command the satellite to transmit to you.

After many delays, we finally got a launch opportunity. We sent RinconSat 2 and AlcatelSat to CalPoly where they were integrated with other cubesats into the launch mechanism. They then sent them to the Baikonur Cosmodrome for the launch. At first, everything seemed to be going well, but we soon found out that it was far from well. The first stage of the rocket failed to separate and the rocket crashed 70 km downrange in a flaming crater, destroying all of the cubesats as well as the far more expensive primary payload (some sort of communications satellite). Sigh...

We don't have any sort of web site, sadly, but one of these days I need to gather up all the photos, documents, source code, and other random stuff I still have access to and make a nice web page for our late satellites.