Drone Me

Three drone stories from Defence Blog:

Israeli Aero-Sentinel drone being sold to Kazakhstan

V-BAT drone from Shield AI in India

US ULTRA autonomous drone transport vehicle

This drone business is just nuts. How nuts? Lets' ask Google:

How many military drones have been made each year since 2000?

The production of military drones has increased exponentially since 2000, evolving from limited, high-cost surveillance tools to hundreds of thousands of low-cost, AI-enabled systems annually by 2025. While precise, aggregate annual numbers for all countries are rarely disclosed, industry data indicates a shift from a few hundred units in the early 2000s to a market expected to see over 596,000 units produced in 2025. 

At this rate I except to see million drones to be produced this year.

URAL M62

URAL M62

Ural motorcycles are still being built. The company's headquarters are in a suburb of Seattle, the factory is in Kazakhstan. The company, Ural Motorcycles, has a history of the company along with some photos.

M-72 motorcycle engine (external view with cutout)

Ural Motorcycle Factories

Production started in Moscow in August 1941. A couple of months later the factory was moved east to Irbit. In the late 1950s, the factory was moved to west to Kiev. In 2022 the factory was moved again, this time to Kazakhastan.

Ural Motorcycles have been here before.

Deserts

Dune | Official Main Trailer
Warner Bros. Pictures

I watched the movie Dune this week. This is the first of the pair of recent movies. I've read the book and I've seen an earlier movie version, but I'm watching this movie and it's nothing like I remember. Oh, I remember some of the characters, but I remember this story being a science fiction thriller, and this movie wasn't that at all. This time the thing that struck me is that the Atreides family packs up their entire company, including their army and their families and all their associated baggage and moves to the most hostile planet in the universe. Okay, on an absolute scale it's not all that hostile, it's got gravity similar to Earth and breathable air, but when you look at it using a human scale, the place is inimical to human life. It's covered with sand. The sun will fry you, the sandstorms will strip the flesh from your bones, and if that's not enough there are giant worms that will swallow you whole. Hell might be a better name for this planet than Arrakis. You would have to be a very loyal follower of the Emperor to accept an appointment to Dune.

But you think about it for a minute and Dune really sounds a whole lot Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Very hot, unpleasant places covered with sand, governed by tyrants, but we still have people willing to pack up everything and move there, and the reason is the same: money. On Dune, it's the spice. In the Mideast, it's oil.

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

Today I came across a story about how Kazakstan is a world leader in the uranium mining business. Above we have a picture of one of their uranium mines. Looks like a nice place with lots of green. On the edge of a desert, but still pretty nice. Then I look on the map:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

and I see it's surrounded by a desert. Just how big is that desert? Big:

Baiken Uranium Mine in Kazakhstan

The area shown is about 900 miles across, so the mine is at the edge of the desert. The Caspian Sea is at the left hand side of the map and what used to be the Aral Sea is the greenish-white blob near the top center. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is about half way between the mine and the Aral Sea.

What I didn't find is whether the Kazatomprom (the Kazakhstan uranimum mining operation) is enriching uranium, which is what you need to do if you want to use the uranium for anything besides being dense. This led me to Wikipedia's page about Enriched uranium, which was a real eye-opener. Seems the whiz kids have busy cooking up any number of techniques for enriching uranium. There is gaseous diffusion that was used at Oak Ridge during WW2. Then we have second generation gaseous diffusion that uses high speed centrifuges that is many times more efficient. This is the one Iran was using when somebody (Israel?) hacked their centrifuges and caused them to speed up to the point where they destroyed themselves. And that's just the start. People are working on plethora of techniques involving chemistry, lasers and microstructures.

I've written several other posts about Dune over the years.

VIVANT

『VIVANT』キャスト最新ビジュアル公開！遂に､本当の冒険物語が幕を開ける―第3話 7/30(日)よる9時【TBS】
TBS公式 YouTuboo

VIVANT is a goofball action comedy. A Japanese corporation makes an error in transferring funds to the fictional country of Balka. Nogi, the salaryman who pressed the Enter key that activated the transfer, gets blamed for the error and is sent to Balka to retrieve the missing $90 million. Balka is somewhere in central Asia, between China, Russia, Mongolia and Kazakhstan. The scenery is spectacular. Nogi bumbles along and survives only because other people look out for him. Nogi's facial expressions are very entertaining. Nobody knows what VIVANT means, the best they have been to work out so far is that it might be a mispronunciation of the Japanese word for annex. 10 episodes, an hour and a half each. We've only watched the first one.

Two days later and we've watched 8 of the 10 episodes and they're mostly like 45 minutes long. I think only the first episode was extra long. Anyway, this show is a real smorgasbord. We've got heart warming scenes, that go on for so long I was beginning to think this was a soap opera. We have scenes of brutal violence, and deliberate cruelty. We have cynical conspiracy mongering or stunning expose of what is actually going on in the world, depending if you are wearing a tin foil hat or not. And then there's the day-to-day activities going on in civilian spaces where everyone is pretending to be nice people. My gawd, it's just like real life. Scary if you think about it.

Direct from Kazakhstan

Ayumi - Hey-La

Gakku TV

When I come across a music video in my internet surfing I will usually just add it to Watch Later and skip it. I don't visit my Watch Later list very often, but this morning I opened it up and scrolled down a ways and picked this one to start. What a happy surprise. Problem with the Watch Later list is there is no indication of when I added it or where I found it. So if you posted this tune, thank you.

Turbo An2

Turbo AN2M

A turbine powered biplane! What won't they think of next?

During 2013, Antonov announced that it had successfully flown for the first time a new version of the An-2, dubbed the An-2-100, which was fitted with a three-blade reversible propeller and a 1,100-kilowatt (1,500 shp) Motor Sich MS-14 turboprop running on kerosene rather than Avgas, which is no longer produced in CIS countries. That same year, the company stated that it had received orders for upgrading "hundreds" of the An-2 planes still in operation in Azerbaijan, Cuba and Russia to the An-2-100 upgrade version. - Wikipedia

There are still a bunch of An2's out there flying around. 

Antonov sees a considerable potential market for the An-2-100, as there are over 54 An-2s flying in Ukraine alone, with around 330 more still flying in Russia and up to another 1,200 grounded there. Antonov says another 290 An-2s are flying in Kazakhstan, 143 in Uzbekistan, 89 in Turkmenistan, 82 in Belarus, 63 in Azerbaijan, 30 in Kyrgyzstan, 13 in Moldova and 4 in Armenia. - FlightGlobal

Avgas is no longer being produced in CIS countries? Well, there's Avgas and there's Avgas. At least one Russian outfit is still producing 100LL.

 

Kazakhstan

Mayor's office on fire in Almaty, Kazakhstan - Valery Sharifulin/TASS

You may have heard about the riots in Kazakhstan and how they were promptly squashed. You may have thought, like I did, that it was entirely an internal matter. The price of fuel shot up when the president stopped subsidizing it. That might trigger a protest that could turn into a riot. But now we have a story from Pepe Escobar telling us that the unrest was fomented by outside forces, namely the Brits and Turkey. If the Brits are involved can the CIA be far behind? What baffles me is what they hope to achieve. I suppose they could be trying to gain some temporary advantage in the petroleum marketplace that would allow them to make a couple extra zillion dollars. That seems foolish since there seems to be an insatiable demand for fuel. Given the CIA's history of shit stirring all over the world, I wouldn't be surprised to find out they were involved. And I wouldn't be surprised if Biden didn't know anything about it. Then again I wouldn't be surprised to find that he engineered the whole thing. I mean the whole US opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is to make sure that transit fees keep being paid to Ukraine. Wretched vultures.

Kazakhstan has appeared here before, mostly because of the spaceship launch facility in Baikonur.

Via ZeroHedge

Pic of the Day

Hunting with an eagle in the Altai Mountains. Photograph by Tariq Zaidi

The Altai Mountains are found in Central and East Asia, where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan come together. - Wikipedia

Via daily timewaster

Chimneys

Dominik Sky - Human Flag on 360 meters (1181 feet) HD
I don't much care for videos of people engaging in foolish, dangerous actions. Plus they make my hands sweat. This guy is hanging off the top of the chimney at the Trbovlje Power Station in Slovenia, the tallest in Europe.

A high chimney was required for the site to ensure that emissions were removed from the deep, narrow valley under all weather conditions.

It's the tallest chimney in Europe, but not in the world. For that we have to go Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan.

Ekibastuz GRES-2 Power Station
Wikipedia link, photo is from Panarimo.

Kazakhstan is also home to the Baikonur Cosmodrome, site of all our manned space flight launches.

My only encounter with a tall chimney happened a couple of years ago. And then there's Fred.

Name	Height in Feet	Year Built
GRES-2 Power Station, Ekibastuz, Kazakhstan	1377	1987
Trbovlje Chimney	1181	1976
Anaconda Smelter Stack	585	1919
India Mill Chimney (Fred)	279	1867

Video via Jack.

Another Soyuz Preps for Launch

Expedition 49-50 Crew Prepares for Launch in Kazakhstan
The first six minutes are shots of the rocket and the spacecraft being prepared and moved to the launch site. That was pretty cool. After that they go to bloviating and they lost me.

At the 3:31 mark in the video there is a closeup of the spacecraft. You can see that the spacecraft has what look like four fold down platforms. They look like a bad idea. No attempt has made to fair them into the main body so they are going to be producing some aerodynamic drag during the trip through the atmosphere, and why would you need platforms to stand on anyway? Unless they are only there to facilitate preparations for launch, and they take them off prior to launch. But just saying that sounds dumb.

The Wikipedia article about the Soyuz, in the section about the Launch Escape System, mentions that "Four folding stabilizers were added to improve aerodynamic stability during descent." I suppose that's what they could be, but they really look tacked on. But maybe if you've got a rocket as powerful as the Soyuz, you can afford to have some tacked on gee-gaws sticking out in the slipstream.

Wiki Wander

144 Tall Fiberglass Pyramid in Russia built by Dr. Alexander Golod.

I'm not a great believer in the mystical properties some people, like Dr. Golod, attribute to pyramids, but having a positive mental outlook can help one overcome all kinds of difficulties, and if a pyramid can help you with that, well, then, I'm all for it.

Palace Of Peace And Reconciliation. Astana, Kazakhstan  2004 - 2006.

Looking for more pictures of Russian pyramids turned up the Palace Of Peace And Reconciliation in Astana, Kazakhstan. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster. Okay, who's that? Wikipedia tells us that he is one of Britain's most prolific architects of his generation. He grew up in Manchester, England:

Manchester was 'one of the workshops of the world' and 'the embodiment of a great city'; his father, Robert, worked at Metropolitan-Vickers at Trafford Park [a suburb of Manchester] which fuelled Foster's interest in engineering and design.

Metropolitan-Vickers? Vickers I have heard of, big British industrial outfit, widely known for their machine gun, but this branch made their own name, not that I had ever heard of it:

Metropolitan-Vickers, Metrovick, or Metrovicks, was a British heavy electrical engineering company of the early-to-mid 20th century formerly known as British Westinghouse. Highly diversified, they were particularly well known for their industrial electrical equipment such as generators, steam turbines, switchgear, transformers, electronics and railway traction equipment. Metrovick holds a place in history as the builders of the first commercial transistor computer, the Metrovick 950, and the first British axial-flow jet engine, the Metrovick F.2. Their factory in Trafford Park, Manchester, was for most of the 20th century one of the biggest and most important heavy engineering facilities in Britain and the world. - Wikipedia.

I've heard of Eniac, the world's first computer, but it was built with vacuum tubes. Vacuum tubes are great devices, but when you are using mass quantities their reliability begins to make life difficult. Using one tube means you need to keep one spare on hand. Using a zillion means you need to keep a bunch of spares on hand and you need to a small of army of technicians whose sole job is to run up and down the aisles of the computer (it's big) and replace burned out vacuum tubes. So making a computer out of transistors was a huge step up. Metrovick built 6 of the things and used them in their business for several years. Couldn't find
any pictures.
    A little farther on in the same article, I came across this:

On 15 November 1922 the BBC was registered and the BBC's Manchester station, 2ZY, was officially opened on 375 meters transmitting from the Metropolitan Vickers Electricity works in Old Trafford.

375 meters? What's that in Hertz? 800K. That put's it in the commercial AM broadcast band, meaning you can pick it up with your car radio.  800KHz is a "Clear Channel" frequency, which is whole 'nuther can of worms.
    I'm going to stop now as my wife is telling me I have chores to do.

Sharon got me started by sending me a link to an article about Dr. Golod.
Title from Tam.

More Rockets

Kazakhstan, Nov. 21, 2014. Russia's Soyuz-FG booster rocket with the space capsule Soyuz TMA-15M that will carry a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS), being prepared for launch at the pad in Russian leased Baikonur cosmodrome. Start of the new Soyuz mission is scheduled on Monday, Nov.24.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)

Lot's of rockets going up this week. We won't even mention Pakistan's.

Going Up

 Cape Canaveral, Florida, September 21, 2014. SpaceX's Falcon 9 lifts off early carrying the Dragon CRS4 to the International Space Station (ISS) (AFP Photo/Bruce Weaver)

Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Sept. 23, 2014. Russia's Soyuz-FG booster rocket with the space capsule Soyuz TMA-14M that will carry a new crew to the International Space Station (ISS) is transported from hangar to the launch pad. U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore, and Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova are the next crew scheduled to travel to the International Space Station on September 26. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin)

Hearing about all the excitement in places like the Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, and then seeing things like this make me wonder what our fearless leaders are thinking. Then again, maybe I should be wondering just who is pulling the strings. Compared to world wide oil production, all the space programs in the world don't amount to a hill of beans. So I guess we should be glad we are still on speaking terms with Putin. We are, aren't we?

Everything You Know Is Wrong

Russian Kobalt-M Spy Satellite

Some people spotted a fireball in the sky last week over the Southwestern USA. They put their heads together and concluded that it was a Russian spy satellite. Russia says no, their satellite came down safely in Kazakhstan a few hours earlier. Okay, so maybe it was part of the satellite that the Russians didn't care about, in which case both versions of the story could be sort of true. But that's not what's interesting.

Last Week's Fireball Observations

     The satellite came down safely. Who bothers to recover an unmanned satellite? That is a whole lot of effort and expense for something that isn't carrying any passengers. What could this satellite be carrying that would be worth that kind of effort? Would you believe film? Can you believe the Russians are still using spy satellites that use regular film cameras to record images? The USA used to do that back during the cold war, but we moved to digital imaging a long time ago. The Russians are still doing it, or at least they were last week. I guess they do have digital spy satellites now. They just put this one up to stand in for one of their digital ones that crapped out.

The part that bothers me about this is that a film based system has got to be a zillion times more expensive per image than a digital one, and here the whole world is crying about how broke we are and we haven't got enough money for teachers or schools or food or roads or just about anything and we need to raise taxes to pay for all this stuff, but we can't raise taxes because everyone is too broke to pay any more taxes. And here's Russia, broke as of a couple of years ago, blowing a kazillion dollars on an obsolete spy satellite.

So all those people who are in charge are a bunch of lying sacks of shit. On the other hand, maybe that's what it takes to keep the lid on things. Or maybe nobody has a better idea.

P.S. I first encountered the title phrase when I was around 20 years old, and it really resonated with me. The Vietnam War was in full swing and I had just started noticing that what was going on in the world did not quite jibe with what I had been taught in school. Now I've got kids of my own going through this same thing, which reminded me of this phrase, which prompted me to try and find out where it came from. Firesign Theater is the answer. Never cared much for their recordings, but this title really struck me.

More about the Kobalt-M spy satellite here.

Update March 2017 replaced dead links.

Kazakhstan's Kashagan Oil Field

 

When I first saw this, I wasn't sure what I was looking at. It's in Kazakhstan, which is over there on the other side of world along with Afghanistan and Pakistan and all the other 'stans. I mean it kind of looks like a desert, which wouldn't be out of place in that neighborhood.

Then I saw this picture and I realized that what I thought was desert sand in the first picture is actually ice. The first picture was taken in the winter and this one was taken in the summer.

This is an artificial island constructed in the Caspian sea as part of a project to exploit the Kashagan oil field that lies there. Posthip Scott send me a link to a good, concise video (that is not embeddable) that gives an good overview of this project, along with a link to a well written story about this project. The Wall Street Journal also has a short video about the problems this project is having.

Seems a consortium of oil companies has sunk $50 Billion into this project over the last 20 years. It is a challenging project even by oil company standards. I mean they are regularly drilling for oil in water that is a mile deep. A comment in one of videos mentions that the $50 billion that has been spent would be more than enough to send a man to the moon. It's also about half what the USA spends every year on our "war" in Afghanistan.

The world runs on oil, so I can understand why these guys would be willing to sink that much money into this project. After all, this is the biggest find since Prudhoe Bay in Alaska was discovered 40 years ago. The part that gets me is that all the oil they expect to reclaim from this field will only satisfy our civilization's thirst for oil for one steenking year. Oh, it will take much longer than that is suck it dry, but if you add it all up, it is just a drop in the metaphorical bucket. We need a new oil field discovery comparable to this one every year. We don't get them, of course, so we have guys scouring the world for whatever they can find. Makes me wonder why everyone doesn't have a job prospecting for oil, but let's try and stay on topic, shall we?

One of the biggest problems with the Kasagan (cash again) oil field is the presence of hydrogen sulfide gas, and it's not here in just the trace quantities that are enough to produce that familiar "rotten eggs smell" that comes with many oil wells. Here it is a sizeable fraction of what comes out of the well, and it's under high pressure: 12,000 PSI (pounds per square inch). That's a bunch. There are plenty of everyday industrial techniques that deal with high pressures, like Natural Gas pipelines, Oxy-Aceteline gas welding tanks, and the hydraulic systems you find on everything from garbage trucks to the power steering on your car. But all those everyday systems only operate on two or three thousand PSI, not twelve freaking thousand. I am not sure anyone even makes any kind of hose that will handle that pressure, which means that all the plumbing has to be done with pipe, and not just ordinary, extra-strength, high pressure, steel pipe. Oh, no, that would be too easy. Seems hydrogen sulfide gas is not just poisonous, but it is also corrosive, and at high pressures it is extremely corrosive. So you need special non-corrosive lining in your high-strength, extra high pressure capacity pipe.
     So they have spent all this money, built all this drilling and processing equipment, hauled it to the far side of world through the Don-Volga Canal, drilled the wells and laid the pipelines. But now we have another problem. I expect this is just the zillionth one this project has run into, but it's something that even non-engineers can understand, so let's make the most of it.
    The pipeline started leaking. It's bad enough that it's full of oil and it runs through an environmentally sensitive area (has anyone ever run a pipeline through an area that isn't "environmentally sensitive"?), but it's also full of this deadly poisonous, nasty, corrosive hydrogen sulfide gas. Surprisingly, they shut it down. From the way the oil industry is portrayed in the press, I would have expected them to charge on full steam ahead until the piles of dead Kazakhstani's were visible on Google Earth. But they didn't.
    One guy mentions the pipes were fine when they were delivered, but then they sat out in the desert for several years, unprotected, before they were finally connected up into the pipeline. Hard to imagine that a little ordinary weather could affect an anti-corrosion coating that is supposed to resist the devil incarnate (hydrogen sulfide), but maybe it's a matter of chemistry.
   Anyway, I'm kind of wondering how they protected the joints between two sections of pipe. Pipelines are normally welded, and the heat from welding is going to destroy any kind of coating on the inside of the pipe, so how are you going to reapply the protection to the inside of the joint after you are done welding? I suppose you could use something like a paintbrush on a 40 foot pole, and a video camera to check your work, but boy, would that be tedious. I can see how somebody might slip up occasionally, and that's all it would take.
    It looks like it will probably be cheaper to build a new pipeline than to try and reclaim the old one. Whoops, there goes another billion dollars.

Time lapse video of Today's Soyuz Rocket Launch

A rocket carrying the Olympic torch successfully blasted off from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan early on Thursday, ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games. The Russian rocket also carried three astronauts to the International Space Station. Later on Thursday, NASA reported a flawless docking with the space station about six hours after it left Kazakhstan. The unlit torch for the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi is to be taken on a spacewalk on Saturday, then return to Earth on Monday with three departing space station astronauts.
We are certainly getting blase about sending men into space, aren't we? The only thing amazing about this video is that I managed to catch it on the day it was released. The bit about the torch is a little silly, but harmless and probably catches the attention of a couple more percentage points of the viewing audience than it would otherwise. What would have been really amazing is if they took a lit torch on the space walk and it stayed lit. Well, maybe not, being rocket scientists they could provide it with its own oxygen supply.
    Did you notice the way the launch tower rotated on its base? Didn't know they could do that.

Waziristan

The headline reads US drone strike kills seven in North Waziristan. It should probably read "Pakistani intelligence officials say a US drone strike has killed five suspect [-ed terrorist] -s in the tribal region near the Afghan border". (The number changes depending on which link you follow.)

Is there really such a place as Waziristan? I thought I had a pretty good idea of extant of stan-ishness, I mean we've got:

• Afghanistan,
• Kazakhstan,
• Kyrgyzstan,
• Pakistan,
• Tajikistan,
• Turkmenistan and
• Uzbekistan

So where is this what-zis-stan, Waziristan? Turns out it's part of Pakistan, the same part of Pakistan where French special forces actors ran into trouble. It is not a separate country, at least not yet. 

Kyrgyzstan

Natural arch in Ala Arhca National Park in Kyrgyzstan

A couple of young women from OSPIRG came by this evening soliciting donations. One of them had a slight accent and when I asked her about it, she tells me she is from Kyrgyzstan. I was shocked six ways from Sunday. From her appearance and manner I would have guessed somewhere in Europe or Scandinavia. For another I don't think I've ever met anyone from any of the 'stans. I am aquainted with a couple of young men who have spent time in Afghanistan, but that's about it. I know a little bit about Kazakhstan, that's where our astronauts go to catch a ride to the space station, but I know virtually nothing of Kyrgystan, so I do a little looking and I find some interesting bits.

Brief geographical summary of Kyrgyzstan extracted from Wikipedia:

• Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country in Central Asia. 
• It is farther from an ocean than any other country in the world. 
• Issyk-Kul Lake is the largest lake and the second largest mountain lake in the world after Titicaca. 
• The highest peaks are in the Kakshaal-Too range, forming the Chinese border. 
• Jengish Chokusu, at 7,439 m (24,406 ft), is the highest peak .
• Due to the country's predominantly mountainous terrain, less than 8% of the land is cultivated.

From the US State Department:

• Kyrgyzstan's 2011 presidential election marked the first peaceful transfer of presidential power in post-Soviet Central Asia. 
• Kyrgyzstan hosts the Transit Center at Manas International Airport, an important logistical hub for the coalition effort in Afghanistan. 
• Kyrgyzstan benefits from a robust civil society and a relatively free media sector.
•  U.S. direct investment in Kyrgyzstan is concentrated in the hotel and telecommunications sectors, with increasing interest in construction and mining. 
• Kyrgyzstan has signed a bilateral investment treaty with the United States. 
• The treaty on double taxation (what the heck is that?) that was signed by the United States and the Soviet Union remains in effect between the United States and Kyrgyzstan. 

From the BBC:

It has some oil and gas and a developing gold mining sector, but relies on imports for most of its energy needs. Resentment at widespread poverty and ethnic divisions between north and south occasionally spill over into violence, and the country's first two post-Soviet presidents were swept from power by popular discontent.
...
After Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed in September 2012 to write off Kyrgyzstan's debt to his country, President Atambayev agreed to a 15-year extension to Moscow's lease on the Kant air base, but said that the lease on the US military base at Manas would not be renewed when it expires in 2014.

And yes, I made a donation.

Astana, Kazakhstan

Astana, Kazakhstan

This was a shock, especially after seeing the landscape around Baikonur. Who'd a thunk there would be a modern city in some out of the way desert country like Kazakhstan? National Geographic's Photo of the Day, via dutiful daughter. Astana is 500 miles Northeast of Baikonur.

Update January 2022 replaced missing picture.

Baikonur

I'm reading Starman - The Truth Behind the Legend of Yuri Gagarin, and they're talking about Baikonur, and I realized that this is where our astronauts are catching their rides to the ISS (International Space Station). Baikonur is in Kazakhstan, which isn't even part of the USSR anymore. The Russians lease the place. Desolate does not even begin to describe the landscape. I do a little Googling and I find this U2 photo of a launch pad from 1957 on Wikipedia.

I look the place up on Google Maps, and after a bit of poking around (the place it really big), I find the same launch pad, orientation is different, and there are more buildings, but it's the same place.


View Big Science in a larger map

I do some more Googling and come up with these pictures of the launch site, which give you a slightly different perspective.

And lastly, because I'm such a good guy, some pictures of a rocket. Okay, they aren't all of the very same rocket, just similar models.