Baikonur
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| State : |
 Kazakhstan
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| Founded : | 1955 | ||
| Coordinates : | 45 ° 38 ′ N , 63 ° 19 ′ E | ||
| Height : | 100 m | ||
| Area : | 54.98 km² | ||
| Residents : | 39,108 (Jan 1, 2019) | ||
| Population density : | 711 inhabitants per km² | ||
| Time zone : | WKST ( UTC + 5 ) | ||
| Telephone code : | (+7) 33622, 73622 | ||
| Postal code : | 46832x, 710501 | ||
| License plate : | 94RUS | ||
| Community type: | City with special status (Russian lease area) | ||
| Äkim ( Mayor ) : | Konstantin Bussygin | ||
| Website : | |||
| Location in Kazakhstan | |||
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Baikonur ( Kazakh Байқоңыр / Bayqoñır ; Russian Байконур / Baikonur , until 1995 Leninsk ) is a city in southern Kazakhstan , about 200 kilometers east of the Northern Aral Sea on the north bank of the Syrdarja River .
The city is known all over the world for the Baikonur cosmodrome , located approx. 20 km to the north , from which Soviet and Russian space missions have started since 1957 . The city of Baikonur has been leased by Russia since the end of 1994 , is under Russian administration and therefore forms an independent district ( Байқоңыр қаласы / Baiqongyr qalasy ) within Kazakhstan.
history
In 1955, the Soviet Union began near the small settlement Tjuratam the construction of a test site for its first intercontinental ballistic missiles . For this purpose, Tyuratam was conveniently located on the banks of the Syrdarya River and on the Moscow - Tashkent railway line ( Trans-Aral Railway ). It was founded on February 2, 1955. The main designers of the spaceport included the Russian engineers Sergei Koroljow , Nikolai Piljugin and Vladimir Barmin .
Names and cover names
The name of the test site was "Research and Test Site # 5", or NIIP-5 for short. It was given the name Baikonur to mislead the Western powers . The Tyuratam site was on the one hand subject to the strictest secrecy, on the other hand the Soviet government wanted to boast of its successes and, after Yuri Gagarin's space flight in 1961, also name a rocket launch site in the public announcements. So then Baikonur in the Karaganda area , which had no connection to the space program and is about 320 km northeast of Tyuratam, was named as the location of the Soviet spaceport. The public name of NIIP-5 was henceforth the "Baikonur Cosmodrome". The geographical coordinates of the town Baikonur area Karaganda are 47 ° 49 '30 " N , 66 ° 2' 40" O .
The settlement, which rapidly developed by the Soviet cosmodrome in Tjuratam received by names like Zarya , Swesdograd , Tashkent-90 and Leninski with the city charter in 1966, finally, the name Leninsk . The station is still called Tjuratam . On December 20, 1995, Leninsk was finally renamed Baikonur . The official name of the space center is now “5. State Experimental Cosmodrome of the Russian Federation ”.
1957-1990
Driven by the Cold War , the cosmodrome was expanded very quickly. Khrushchev in particular pushed for ever new and impressive records in the prestigious space race . Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite in space (1957), Laika , the first (terrestrial) living being in space (1957), Belka and Strelka , the first living beings to return alive (1960), Yuri Gagarin , the first person in Space (1961), Valentina Tereshkova , the first woman in space (1963), Lunochod 1, the first remote-controlled lunar vehicle (1970), Salyut 1 , the first space station (1971) and Mir , the first permanently manned space station (1986) all launched from Baikonur.
However, the enormous time pressure also led to numerous accidents. On October 24, 1960, the worst accident in the history of rocket technology, the Nedelin disaster, occurred in Baikonur . The explosion of an intercontinental ballistic missile of the type R-16 in spite of obvious defects of Moscow arranged launch preparations cost 126 people their lives, including Mitrofan Nedelin , chief of the Strategic Missile Forces. The Central Committee of the CPSU only issued a brief note that said Marshal Nedelin had died in a plane crash. The disaster did not become public until 1989, and the official list of fatalities was not released until President Yeltsin . The preparations for launching the next R-16 rocket continued on January 4, 1961.
The French President Charles de Gaulle was the first person from the West to visit Baikonur on June 20, 1966. The first NASA team was shown parts of the cosmodrome on April 28, 1975 as part of the joint Soyuz-Apollo docking mission. During such visits, the Soviet Union tried to disguise the military character of the site. All military personnel who could get into sight of the foreign visitors were instructed to wear civilian clothes.
Even though Baikonur was best known in the world for its manned space flights, the main purpose of the facility from the beginning until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was to test liquid-propelled long-range missiles.
In the mid-1980s, according to official figures, the forbidden city of Leninsk had 100,000 inhabitants, 356 apartment blocks, 9 schools, 31 kindergartens, 18 hotels, its own TV station, several cinemas, a stadium, a beverage factory and two concrete plants.
1991: crisis
The collapse of the Soviet Union and Kazakhstan's independence in 1991 plunged Baikonur and Leninsk into a serious crisis. By far the most important cosmodrome in the Soviet Union was now in Kazakhstan. The launch sites on Russian territory were only suitable to a limited extent to replace Baikonur. Kazakhstan and Russia agreed to work together very early on; How this should look in concrete terms was the subject of long negotiations. Already battered by the difficult economic situation in both countries, Baikonur threatened to collapse under the tricky legal situation.
Salaries and pensions were no longer paid. Water and energy supplies frequently collapsed, residents plundered the facility, stole cars, and tore cables from technical systems in order to sell them as valuable metal. In January 1992, the launch of a supply ship to Mir was at risk because the unpaid military workers revolted on the ground. About 40% of the population left the area.
According to official information, the last nuclear warheads left Baikonur in 1993.
On March 28, 1994, Russia finally leased the land from Kazakhstan for $ 115 million a year. In December 1994 final details were agreed and the city of Leninsk was placed under Russian administration. The contract period was initially 20 years, but was extended on January 9, 2004 until 2050.
Russian city administration
On January 4, 1995, the Russian city administration appointed by the presidents of Kazakhstan and Russia began its work in the Kazakh city. Since then, both Russian and Kazakh law have been in force on the site, which means, for example, that children with Russian nationality get something to eat at school, whereas children with Kazakh nationality do not. The situation in Baikonur is historically and legally unprecedented. "Many lawyers will write their doctoral theses on this," said the mayor of Baikonurs in 2002.
In 1996 the budget of the Russian Federation earmarked 761 billion rubles for Baikonur, of which only 296 billion reached the city due to financial problems.
Despite the difficulties, Baikonur was improving slightly. With the increase in commercial orders and international cooperation such as the International Space Station ISS , money flowed back into the city. The possibility of granting tax breaks led to the apparent relocation of the headquarters of numerous large Russian companies, including Yukos and Lukoil , to Baikonur. The large tax losses caused Russia to replace the mayor in May 2002 and to appoint the Russian Aleksei Malkow, ex-governor of the Leningrad Oblast , to be responsible for the city administration.
Baikonur had about 70,000 inhabitants in 2002, 70% of them Kazakhs.
Baikonur Cosmodrome
Baikonur is the largest rocket launch site in the world. According to official information, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in 2004 covers an area of 6,717 square kilometers, 75 kilometers from north to south and 90 kilometers from west to east (see web links). Then there are the landing areas.
The ground infrastructure includes 9 launch complexes with 15 launch devices, 4 launch facilities for researching long-range intercontinental missiles, 11 assembly and test complexes, two filling stations, two airfields, a measurement complex, a 600-megawatt thermal power station , 470 kilometers of railway tracks, 1,281 kilometers of roads and 6,610 kilometers of electrical lines.
With the collapse of the USSR, the property went to Kazakhstan, and since then Russia has been paying the equivalent of around 200 million euros annually in lease in order to be able to continue using the site. With the Vostochny Cosmodrome , a new spaceport was therefore built in the Amur region in Russia's far east. It has been in operation since 2016, but is little used. About 70% of all Russian space missions continue to start from Baikonur and most of the rest from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the northwest.
Web links
- Baikonur on the Russian Space Web
- Description and map of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Encyclopedia Astronautica (English) (English)
- Zhulduz Baizakova: The Baikonur Space Center: Cooperation and Conflicts between Russia and Kazakhstan. In: Central Asia Analyzes, No. 75, April 4, 2014, pp. 2–6
Individual evidence
- ↑ Численность населения Республики Казахстан по областям, городам и районам на 1 января 2019 года. (RAR; 132 KB) stat.gov.kz, accessed on August 4, 2019 (Russian).
- ^ Günter Paul: 50 years of Baikonur. Where Moscow's dreams came true. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 2, 2005
- ↑ Putin and Nazarbayev want to sign agreements on Baikonur. January 9, 2004, archived from the original on February 8, 2016 ; Retrieved February 1, 2012 .
- ↑ RIA: The 100th birth anniversary of Vladimir Barmin
- ↑ Didar Kassymova, Zhanat Kundakbaeva, Ustina Markus: Historical Dictionary of Kazakhstan . Scarecrow Press , Plymouth 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-6782-6 , pp. 43 .
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