Humanity’s unlikely gateway to space

In the documentary about his record-breaking stay aboard the ISS, A Year in Space, Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly described Baikonur as a kind of halfway house to space: “In some ways, it makes a little bit of sense to me to come to a place like this first, that is already isolated from what is normal to you, because it seems more like it’s a stepping stone to someplace that’s further isolated. You know, one remote place to a more remote place.”

In his book, Beyond: The Astonishing Story of the First Human to Leave Our Planet and Journey into Space, Stephen Walker wrote that control of space was both an ideological quest and a military matter. Rockets were first developed to fly into space, but government minds quickly realised their potential to carry ballistic missiles that could drop bombs on faraway enemy territory. Satellites orbiting Earth could also provide an astronomical view into foreign lands that human spies would have trouble reaching.

While in the early 1960s, the United States tried to save face on its publicly stalled attempts to get a person into space, Soviet secrecy benefitted the USSR’s programme. If tragedy were to strike during a US launch, it would happen on live TV, in front of the press and the nation. For the Soviets, secrecy offered freedom to take bigger risks and to move faster and with more urgency.

“The Soviets were protecting their missile site, protecting their technology – the R7 missile, which Gagarin flew in, was the biggest intercontinental ballistic missile in the world at the time. And its secrets needed to be protected. People were terrified that the Americans would get hold of this technology, which in fact, they did, ultimately,” Walker told me.

With the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, Kazakhstan gained independence and suddenly Russia’s most important space base was on foreign soil. In 1994, the Russians signed an agreement with Kazakhstan to lease Baikonur at an expense of approximately 7 billion rubles (£82.5 million) a year.

A growing number of tourists now visit Baikonur to watch launches, especially crewed missions to the ISS, but the sense of secrecy remains today. The town is essentially a Russian exclave surrounded by Kazakhstan, and the cosmodrome is a restricted facility operated by Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Travellers must be on a guided tour arranged through an operator that is certified to apply for a pile of entry permits.