Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
mfwright@batnet.com
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.