In Russia’s Space Graveyard, Locals Scavenge Fallen Spacecraft (2018) | Hacker News Reader

In Russia’s Space Graveyard, Locals Scavenge Fallen Spacecraft (2018)

blogs.discovermagazine.com

109 pointsjustincormack37 comments

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.

Given how cool/potentially useful Buran/Energia were, it's a shame we didn't have crowdfunding back then.

Are we crowdfunding billions these days?

Very interesting! This is on my list of want-to-see's. How free were you to walk around on your own? How much time did you spend on site?

I've seen there are some travel agencies that offer different packages (x days, x+1 days, ....) - did you use any of those?

Could you go to the Buran shuttle, or "just" see the building from afar?

Very much appreciate any info and experiences you share.

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.

Edit: some photos- https://photos.app.goo.gl/W8tkAdjkeZsP3Sqh6 (just from my phone - my camera photos are not online)

> 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.

Thanks - that probably explained why it felt a bit fake!

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)

Babushka used to have one head, now has two...

How does those contaminants spread? Eg, airborne or via ground water, ...? How far from an airport is it risky, if you know?

What I read says water dispersion. For example

https://www.ivl.se/download/18.343dc99d14e8bb0f58b4ff0/14431...

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.

> we're all aware of radiation hormesis

And many other crackpot theories.

The intercept did a long series of articles about the PFAS issue: https://theintercept.com/collections/bad-chemistry/

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.

> Visitors to the region have reported seeing the roofs of chicken coops and sheds built with rocket parts still showing the original Proton insignia.

As Gibson said: The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.

Reminds me somewhat of Elon's approach to building Starship: out in a field with welding gear.

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.

That "Soviet way" is there for many centuries already..

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.

Ah, don't listen to what people say, just look at what do they do and how do they live.

I can confirm (I live in Russia for part of the year).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

They have so much land - perhaps it gives a different perspective.

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.

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.

Want a uniquely Russian take on something like this? Check out "Roadside Picnic" by the Strugatsky brothers.

It actually reminds me a bit of this old sci fi story: https://abitofscififromthepast.wordpress.com/2018/04/29/the-...

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.)

That story is included in J. G. Ballard's 1988 book, Memories of the Space Age >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memories_of_the_Space_Age

"Roadside Picnic" is a uniquely haunting, very Russian view of the universe.

"What if the aliens came, and not only were we too insignificant to realize we existed, they shit on our planet".

The images are great. The first one with the salvagers surrounded by butterflies is surreal

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/files/2018/06/NYC3770...

And the photo of the guy taking a walk in his village next to a crashed Soyuz looks straight out of a post apocalypse RPG.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/files/2018/06/NYC3770...

The images are very similar to Simon Stålenhag paintings.

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.

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).

http://spaceflight101.com/chinese-villagers-capture-falling-...

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.

> Even farm tools and sledges for children have been built out of the fragments of rocket hulls.

These children literally played with space rockets.

Jawas and moisture farmers!

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