Word: baikonur
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Russians insist Mir is in good shape, but they cannot say the same for the workers at the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan. According to a report on Moscow TV, the workers' housing is deteriorating, crime is on the rise, and schools and hospitals are closing down. Under such conditions, observes James Oberg, an author and expert on the Russian space program, "skills get diluted, motivation disappears, attention wanders...
...Stuff will prevail. Says astronaut Robert ("Hoot") Gibson, who is scheduled to pilot the space shuttle Atlantis to a first ever rendezvous with Mir next May: "Conditions over there are more difficult than they were. But we're making it work, and we need to." Gibson will be visiting Baikonur beginning this week. It will be interesting to see if he feels the same way on his return...
...Eating the Borscht in Baikonur...
Moscow -- Baikonur, Moscow'S PRIME SPACE LAUNCH FACILITY, has been in chaos for the past two and a half years, with persistent theft of gold-plated electronic parts from space rockets and satellites. Now, say recent U.S. visitors to Baikonur, there are pilferers in the pantry. Cosmonauts complain that thieves have raided the supply of specialty foods prepared for their comrades on the orbiting Mir space station. Canned meats, bread, oranges and borscht have mysteriously -- but, in this land of privation, not surprisingly -- vanished from the rocket manifests...
There is yet one slim hope for a space station that plays a positive role in the universe. The special outside panel helping Clinton evaluate these plans recommended strongly that the space station go into a high-inclination orbit so that Russian spacecraft can visit from the Baikonur spaceport and perhaps perform rescue operations. Even that, however, might be too much for our partners. Launching at high inclinations reduces the shuttle's payload because the rockets get less of a boost from the earth's rotation; as a result, the Japanese and European modules may be too heavy...