Talk:Baikonur Cosmodrome

Old talk

During the Soviet period, the complex was operated almost exclusively by residents of Russia and created very little benefit for the Kazakh economy -- 1. People who operated the complex had to live there which effectively makes them residents of Kazakh SSR. 2. Back in Soviet times there was no such thing as a Kazakh, Russian, Latvian, etc. economy. So the second part of the sentence makes no sense either. I am removing it. Whoever wrote it in the first place, do you think it's an apparently NPOV way of saying Evil (ethnic) Russians came and built this polluting monster on Kazakh soil and no (ethnic) Kazakh ever benefitted from it? -- apoivre 15:46, 21 May 2004 (UTC)~

I second that, but for different reasons. (1) Where did you see cosmodromes contribute to economy? Ususlly they gobble nation's resources, probably making contractors rich. (2) While it was "operated" by Russians (who provided skilled labor) but someone else fed them, dressed them, delivered them fuel, machine parts (and pretty Kazakh girls), removed garbage, etc. In better times all this alone could have made the "placeholder" rich (And I have no slightest doubt that a couple of Kazakh "bais" did some black profit). Mikkalai 16:50, 21 May 2004 (UTC)

The Kvaleberg co-ordinates in the top right corner of the page, refer to Baikonur staff village and not the cosmodrome proper Paul venter 16:19, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I doubt that the coordinates of the launchsite are correct. I looked them up on google earth, and I found the launchpad of the N-1 rocket and the Energia rocket. The launchsite of Youri Gagarin, I think, is more to the east, 45°55'12.60"N, 63°20'36.01"E. It is still used today for the launch of the Soyuz space ship. If someone can confirm that, it can be changed in the article. Ckiki lwai 00:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 05:04, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

WIkiality

That dispute has prompted Russia to begin upgrading its own Plesetsk Cosmodrome in the Arkhangelsk Oblast of Northern Russia as a fallback option.

The above statement isn't sourced. It's 100% pure speculation. And most probably wholly untrue. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.149.140.187 (talk) 13:32, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Name

A lot of Russian historians (Gudilin for example) have said that "Baikonur" was chosen to misdirect the USA away from Tyura-Tam. The reference to the entire region being called Baikonur is a quote from an American astronaut. The comment about the town of Baikonur only being named in the 1990s is a confused reference to the renaming of Tyura-Tam to "Baikonur", not the name of the original town which was 350 km north of Tyura-Tam. This issue needs some fact checking, the validity of the section in this article is questionable. DonPMitchell (talk) 16:10, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

the worlds oldest

It's not the worlds oldest spaceport. Cape Canaveral Air Force Station had its first launch in 1950, Baikonur in 1955. Leuband (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

It wasn't the space launch in 1950, russians had the same launches in 1950 R-1 (missile) , but it's not enough to call it spaceport--80.66.69.228 (talk) 06:26, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

In the Kazakh language, Tyuratam means "broken arrow", which would seem obvious as a reason why it was not used as the public name of the launch site[citation needed].

Actually, Kazakh "Tyuratam" (correctly Tore Tam) means "Hose of Tore", Tore is a Kazakh tribe, anchestors of Genghis Khan.