Word: baikonur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan: The space-age version of knights in shining armor blasted off to the rescue of Mir today. Commander Anatoly Solovyov and flight engineer Pavel Vinogradov are racing to the troubled space station to perform vital repairs ? and they were never more needed. True to form, Mir's oxygen generators broke down this morning. TIME's Dick Thompson says this latest mishap is no cause for alarm: "To the Russians, this is just life as normal," he says. The two cosmonauts are expected to dock Thursday...
...first step either; that was taken in February when the space shuttle Discovery tested its maneuverability by approaching to within 37 ft. of Mir. In March U.S. astronaut Dr. Norman Thagard, fresh from two months of training at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, zoomed into space aboard a Soyuz capsule to begin a three-month stay on Mir--a record sojourn for an American, though nearly a year short of the Russian record. The current mission is, among other things, a ticket home for Thagard and his two Russian companions on Mir; in exchange, Solovyev and Budarin will stay...
Questions have also been raised about the Russians' ability to fulfill their part of the bargain. The Baikonur Cosmodrome is in Kazakhstan, once part of Soviet Central Asia, now an independent country. Although Russia has signed a 20-year lease for the Cosmodrome, overall relations between the two nations have been rocky...
...Russians have little money to repair or maintain Baikonur and are dependent on NASA payments--$400 million has been budgeted so far--for the use of their facilities. "The payment is not commensurate with Russian participation in the project," grumbles Grigori Khozin, director of the Center for Global Problems at the Russian Diplomatic Academy and an expert on his country's space program...
...NORMAN THAGARD HAD GONE into space four times before, but this mission was like none of his past adventures. Instead of preparing for launch on the balmy shores of Cape Canaveral, the Florida native faced the 18[degrees]F chill of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. When he chatted with crew mates, he spoke the language not of Neil Armstrong but of Yuri Gagarin. And when he tried to follow the American astronauts' ritual of eating a piece of cake before launch, the Russian flight doctors said nyet. Instead, Thagard and his fellow crew members, cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennady...