I had the chance to visit Baikonur a few months ago. The place (which is in Kazakhstan) feels utterly remote and the surrounding landscape is amazingly big and empty to a European like me.
It was very impressive to get within a few 10m of a Proton rocket before launch. They had some fascinating museums too. The rest of the place had a very sad feeling. There are lots of abandoned launch sites and buildings dotted around, with many miles of bumpy tracks and railways connecting them. You could see the collapsed building where a Buran shuttle and Energia rocket were destroyed when the roof fell in. There's a huge complex you can visit for launching the Energia rocket, the programme of which was dropped at the fall of the Soviet Union.
We were actually there to see our X-ray telescope, eROSITA, being launched on the Spektr-RG space observatory. Unfortunately the launch was delayed by a month and we didn't get to see the launch that time, but we got to see the rocket on the launch pad before fuelling. We went to some museums instead and had a tour around. It was successfully launched a month later and we're currently looking at the first data. I was there for two nights.
I can't comment on the travel agencies, as ours was an official delegation. We went via Moscow from a special terminal on a Tuplov plane. We got to walk around Baikonur city, around the launch pad (not too close to the rocket), and inside the museums. We were taken around on a bus by the Roskosmos guides who would interpret things.
As for the museums, we got to walk around the Energia complex inside for an hour or two. They have lots of old terminals and control computers for the fuelling, blast doors and that kind of thing. They have a another main spaceflight museum they went to, which anything you could think of to do with Soviet/Russian spaceflight in it. They had lots of rocket motors, medals, space suits, displays on Gagarin, Laika, Sputnik, a Soyuz capsule, space food... They have a Buran shuttle outside you can go inside, though I'm not sure the interior was that complete. We had a few hours there. They also have Gagarin's house, where every cosmonaut is supposed to stay in before launch. We also went to the place where they decide to give permission for Soyuz launches. I saw the Buran building from afar as we were being driven around.
> They have a Buran shuttle outside you can go inside, though I'm not sure the interior was that complete
The one exposed in Baikonur museum is a full-scale model used for pre-launch procedures' tests, not the actual ship. The second Buran ship which was ready for launch rots in a fuel-and-maintenance complex alongside another full-scale model.
Hypergolics are bad. Lots of the high ISP chemicals are things you just don't want to be around. The foam they spray to treat fire risk when things go boom (PFOA) is fat absorbed. We have a huge emerging problem in Australia in land near airports, from the runoff contamination of years of "set a plane alight and practice putting it out" behaviuors.
This virgin-steppe has now been rained on, semi continuously by rockets for years. Sure, at one level we're all aware of radiation hormesis and a small amount of what may kill you is no big deal. I suspect a 50+ year window of scavenging left over propellant tanks, shedding insulation, odd metals, bits, stuff, has not done anyone any favours. In aggregate this will be lost in noise. In point-problem terms in the specific areas, This is basically industrial contamination.
In the west, you probably wouldn't be allowed to build on it un-remediated, and I don't mean because "heavy metal things fall out of the sky on you" -The land itself is now not really a green field any more.
(btw, the lifetime of atlantic coal steam power has left a sea bottom chemtrail which is awesome)
The Russians are replacing the hypergolic fueled Proton with a new kerolox fueled launcher called Angara. Hypergolics are still used in upper stages and in things like RCS thrusters etc.,but the amounts are of course much smaller than in the first stage.
WRT firefighting foams, there are apparently some green (sugar-based IIRC) alternatives that are almost as good as the fluorine based surfactants used today.
For rocket launches the spraying you see is plain water, and it's done for sound suppression, not to get a head start on putting out the fire in case the rocket blows up.
I'm no expert. The pfoa risk to humans is plastics in food prep and storage mainly. Most reports say the traces from pfas foams at airports is an unquantified risk right now. Farms are finding they can't sell produce.
Soviet dacha owners often used long range interceptor fuel tanks for shower water tanks. People in the west don't understand: for most of their history, and in the remote regions, they didn't have ali-baba and ebay to order water tanks for their country house.
I visited Irkutsk in the early 90's. The scientists working at the Lake Baikal Freshwater Institute had assembled a truly impressive ~35' boat, complete with sleeping quarters & a full galley, mostly out of salvaged scrap from a plane crash of a few years earlier. The engine was from an old GAZ truck, the electrics from who knows.
It was a fascinating visit, and the degree to which people made the best they could with what they had made a strong impression.
That was an interesting read. It would seem that Roscosmos has more incentive to re-use booster stages than Tesla does, both from a cost savings and a future cleanup problem savings.
For some reason I find the idea of a chicken coop with a (possibly) titanium metal roof fairly amusing.
The Russians haven’t yet shed their Soviet ways -in many respects and consciousness with respect to the environment is one of them. It’s not a big concern. They don’t care much about it.
The aftermath of hypersonic rocket/missile accident in the Arctic is a good example of their disregard in that area.
About 20 years ago in the early days of the web I used to browse websites about nuclear accidents and the like. Needless to say lots of these have disappeared or changed since, and I think some interesting material is probably lost. One of the stories I read concerned two Russian sailors attempting to steal expensive metals from a nuclear device (which thankfully had had the physics package removed). As I recall the story the device was resistant to their attempts at deconstruction, which led to them escalating to employment of a hammer, which led to rapid atomisation of the sailors after the high explosive trigger was activated.
Well yes but the Soviets developed and created their own belief system/philosophy around manufacturing modernity and a new human being that would serve the comintern ideals.
Actually, the biggest incentive for SpaceX to reuse the parts was to bring down the costs to compete with the incumbents on pricing after factoring in their R&D costs. The older launch vehicles and their payloads are pretty much standardized. The have little incentive to improve.
Damn, just when you think you know what strange is, you read something like this. Can't imagine being one of these simple village folks and seeing a burning spent rocket tumbling down from space and exploding in your yard. Kind of reminds me of ancient astronauts where they always claim myths and fables were inspired by ancient spacefarers.
What is strange about these images is that i can't interpret them as real. I have seen so much scifi stuff like this that i just assume it can't possibly be real.
Published during the cold war, so unlikely to be based on the real thing. (Also the spacecraft in this are re-entering rather than falling to ground during launch.)
Reminds me of last year, when images emerged of a "long march" rocket crashing a couple of hundrer meters from a village, releasing a decidedly not-healthy-looking red smoke cloud (after the initial fireball).
It's for sure not healthy - the old Long March rockets, like the one in question, use hypergolic propellants, which while having the nice features of igniting on contact & being room temperature storeable in liquid form, are unfortunately highly toxic and carcinogenic.
It was very impressive to get within a few 10m of a Proton rocket before launch. They had some fascinating museums too. The rest of the place had a very sad feeling. There are lots of abandoned launch sites and buildings dotted around, with many miles of bumpy tracks and railways connecting them. You could see the collapsed building where a Buran shuttle and Energia rocket were destroyed when the roof fell in. There's a huge complex you can visit for launching the Energia rocket, the programme of which was dropped at the fall of the Soviet Union.