The Wandering Scot

I was at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to watch the Soyuz TMA-20 launch.  It was spectacular.  I strongly recommend it.  (Tour Logistics.)  (More Baikonur photos.)

I found myself in a tour group of six: our guide told us we were all the tourists visiting the launch. There were also some press, and various Roscosmos/ESA/NASA guests, but it looked like there were still well under 200 observers in total. So it was a much more intimate event than a shuttle launch at Kennedy.

Before the launch we got to see lots of cool toys from the Soviet space program, including a lot of the machinery for the Energia/Buran shuttle. This included sitting in the pilot seats of a full-scale Buran mock-up, clambering over a giant Buran transporter vehicle and then waking around a launch pad. The transporter and launch pad felt like relics from some alien civilization: enormous, exotic, and standing mysteriously abandoned.

Our hosts still suffered from a little Cold War competitive spirit: we were vigorously assured that the N1 rocket was the most powerful launcher ever, and that Buran was much larger/better than the shuttle. (This is not quite how Western sources see it!)

They let our little group into the Soyuz assembly building, so we got to see some Soyuz boosters and then a complete Soyuz launch vehicle up close. A lady guard wagged an indulgent finger when I dared to reach over and touch an engine.

The TMA-20 launch itself was striking. On the pad, the Soyuz sits slightly below ground level, with about half of the first stage boosters below ground. So we couldn’t directly see the initial ignition, just a sudden out-pour of smoke and spreading fire across to one side, which for a fraction of a second made me fear an accident, but no, the craft started to rise and then abruptly there was an intensely bright flame, presumably as we could now see the engines directly for the first time, a dazzling bright fireball, rising very quickly into the sky. Then a few second later a very loud rumbling sound arrived. After we first saw the engines, I never saw the craft itself – the engines were far, far too bright.

It was spectacular. Much more striking than the STS-129 shuttle launch I saw, probably both because we were so much closer (0.9 miles versus 6 miles) and because this was a night launch.

They let us visit close to the launch pad (which was the original Gagarin pad!) about an hour after the launch. So we could see the re-assembled launch gantries and the launch pad itself up close. But they wouldn’t let us into the flame pit, so we couldn’t actually feel the residual launch heat. Drat.

If you are a space buff, I highly recommend this tour.  I’ve posted a page on Baikonur Logistics to provide more information on entry formalities, flights, tour companies, etc.

Astana takes pride in being Kazakhstan’s visionary new capital. But in the older parts of town there are also many traces of the Soviet past.

Astana Cosmonauts

My favorite of these is a fine Soviet era mosaic outside the train station, showing a spectacled engineer and a waving cosmonaut.  A nice reminder of Kazakstan’s broader role in the USSR.

Welcome to the Land of the Cosmonauts!

For the Scots among you: Yes that does look like a Saltire on the foreground figure. I’m not quite sure what’s intended there: The Russian navy also uses a St Andrew’s cross, but they normally use a blue cross on a white background. Hmm.

Astana is Kazakhstan’s new post-Soviet capital, in the Northern steppes.  The faces on the streets seem mostly Central Asian, so it seems to have succeeded in attracting a large ethnic Kazakh population into what was formerly an ethnic-Russian part of the country.  That may not have been President Nazarbayev’s sole goal, but it has certainly helped to cement a Kazakh identity in the North.

I hiked around the large, dazzling, new government area.  This is like a Pudong on the Steppes, struggling on a smaller scale to represent a bold new City of the Future.  I love it.  While the buildings are individually smaller than the giants of Dubai or Pudong, the overall architectural style is even more aggressive, bold and dashing.  And yes, genuinely futuristic.

Baiterek Tower 105 meters tall and purely for fun.

Presidential Palace A rather bland Presidential Palace, which is ably defended by two giant Golden Daleks, and backed up by a giant pyramid.

"Palace Of Peace and Concord" + Independence Column Nominally intended for meetings of world religious leaders, it doubles as a conference center and has a large concert hall in the basement.

"Transport Tower" 32 stories tall. Locally nicknamed the “Cigarette Lighter”.

Inside the Peace pyramid, looking up at the apex.

Astana Circus A flying saucer, unconvincingly pretending to be a circus.

With only a few exceptions, the former Soviet Republics inherited a mix of either very bland 1930s style official buildings or mostly very dull “modern” concrete boxes. So it’s good to see an outbreak of genuinely creative architecture. I do wonder how well some of these buildings, with their bright metallic sheathings, will age. They look like they will require significant maintenance, which is often harder to find money for than the first brash conception. But all the same, I’m happy to see them! Hurrah!