Tim Furniss/LONDON
DESPITE TIGHT BUDGETS, and with a little US help, Russia is bringing the parts of the Baikonur Cosmodrome which it leases from Kazakhstan for $115 million a year up to a standard which will be acceptable to Western customers, to NASA and to contractor staff working on spacecraft to be launched to the International Space Station.
Western technicians, engineers and visitors from Lockheed Martin, Hughes and other companies are now making regular visits to, or are stationed temporarily at, the sprawling base 1,900km (1,200 miles) south-east of Moscow, to prepare communications satellites for launches aboard the Proton booster.
Such activity would have been unthinkable in the Cold War days of Sputnik, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and the "space race", or even a decade ago, when Russia was part of the "Evil Empire", as former US president Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union when he launched the "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative.
Spartan conditions
Western visitors are still greeted, however, with a Baikonur largely in a time warp. Conditions are spartan by Western standards. Visitors stay at the modest Kometa and Polyot hotels in Area 95 in Baikonur town (formerly called Leninsk). Boiled drinking water is delivered daily to hotel rooms. Using water from unapproved sources is dangerous and water-purification systems have been installed at the hotel. Visitors are also provided with a stove and fridge if they want to prepare their own meals. The once-dry town now has two bars. Visitors have to be driven by authorised personnel and walking into unapproved areas or taking pictures is an arrestable offence.
Baikonur town was taken over by Kazakh nomads after the departure of more than 15,000 Russian military staff, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The population has dropped by 50,000 since the early 1990s, when the Energia heavy-lift launcher and Buran space-shuttle programmes were cancelled. Poor living conditions and a serious crime problem are being overcome slowly. It is regarded as unsafe to walk around the town at night. The main problem is that it was regarded as neither Russian nor Kazakh, just part of the Cosmodrome, until the town came under Russian control in 1995. Overall, the impression is of poor appearance, but pure functionality. The climate is extreme: summer temperatures can reach 50°C and, in winter, can plunge to -40°C .
Kazakhstan's name for the Baikonur Cosmodrome is Tyuratam, which is its real location, close to a town of the same name built around a crossing point on the Moscow to Tashkent railway, 250km east of the Aral Sea, near the Smyrna river. According to local tradition, the town is named after the burial place of Tyura, a son of the infamous Ghengis Khan, who was killed by the Russians. The Soviet Union, and now Russia, however, named the space base Baikonur - although the original town of that name is 370km away - following the pattern of secrecy established to "hide" the location of the country's intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch range and pad No 1, site of the launch of the Sputnik 1 and of Gagarin in 1957 and 1961, respectively. US reconnaissance-satellite and Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance-aircraft photographs had revealed the real location as early as 1960.
In 1955, a 28km-long spur from the railway was built, heading northwards towards open-cast mines in the steppeland. The line stopped at one pit, upon which was built launch pad No 1, to be used for the R-7 ICBM, developed by the "chief designer", who was named posthumously in 1966 as Sergei Korolev. Korolev and his engineers first lived in tents and caravans.
The main active launch areas at Baikonur are for the Proton (which has four fully independent launch pads, two of which will be used for commercial launches and on which Russia is hoping to spend 400 billion roubles ($80.3 million) in refurbishment), the Soyuz, the Zenit 2 and the Tsyklon M. The remnants of the Energia and Buran programmes are being used for space-station support and for commercial-payload processing. Some Zenit support buildings will be used to help proposed Soyuz commercial flights to low-Earth orbit (LEO). Soyuz pad No 1 and a sister pad No 31 are 35km apart.
Such is the vastness of the Cosmodrome that Western journalists attending the launch of a French cosmonaut on a Soyuz booster in 1988 were unaware that, at the time of their visit, a much larger Zenit 2 had also been launched, carrying a military spacecraft.
The focus of commercial attention at Baikonur is the Proton booster and its supporting buildings, which include ground-support-equipment building 76, spacecraft-support- equipment building 250, and the main, three-floor building 40, which processes the spacecraft, the Proton fourth stage, adaptor system and payload fairing.
The 187ft (57m)-tall, 690t Proton K, designated the SL-12 in the West, can place a maximum of 4,800kg into geostationary-transfer orbit (GTO), or, more usually, 2,600kg payloads directly into geostationary orbit (GEO), using its restartable DM fourth stage. Characteristics of Western communications-satellite payloads reduce the GEO capability to 2,100kg. A three-stage version is called the SL-13 and has been used primarily to launch modules to the Mir 1 space station.
Unusual stage
The four-stage vehicle is powered by an unusually configured first stage. The single NPO Energomash RD-253 hypergolic nitrogen-tetroxide/unsymmetrical demethyl-hydrazine (UDMH) engine is fed by nitrogen tetroxide from a tank in the core stage and by UDMH from six cylindrical tanks on its side.
The second stage is powered by a version of the engine which was to have powered the manned Zond circumlunar missions in the late 1960s, had they not been cancelled. This Khrunichev/KB Salyut RD-0210 engine also burns nitrogen tetroxide and UDMH. Stage three is equipped with another similarly powered engine, called the RD473, a smaller version of the RD-0210. The DM stage uses liquid oxygen and kerosene. The first Proton K was launched on 10 March, 1967, and the type has since had a launch record of 181 successes, plus nine launches in which the payload failed to reach the correct orbit, and ten failures. All its payloads except for one have been Soviet or Russian communications, planetary and navigation spacecraft. The recent exception was the Proton's first commercial payload, the Astra 1F communications satellite built by Hughes for Luxembourg's Societe Europeenne des Satellites (SES). This launch, on 8 April, was managed by the ILS International Launch Services group of Lockheed Martin and Russia's Khrunichev and Energia companies, the main contractors for the manufacture of the vehicle. A Proton launch costs about $50 million.
Launch contract
Before that, the former Soviet Union - through Glavcosmos - at tempted to market the Proton first in 1985, making approaches to Inmarsat to launch a communications satellite. The contract went to Russian company KB Salyut for $36 million. Salyut is now part of Khrunichev.
Inmarsat is now an ILS client and its 3F3 satellite awaits launch from Baikonur this summer. Other secured commercial launches are of the Echostar, PanAmSat 5, MCI, Asiasat 3, Tempo 1 and Telstar 5, in 1997; and the PAS 8, Astra 1G and Eutelsat's Sesat in 1998. Domestic launches so far due this year are of one Gorizont, one Express satellite and the Mars 96 probe, with two Expresses and one Gorizont following in 1997.
A contract for seven launches of three Iridium satellites, each into LEO, has also been secured for the Proton. Another GEO contract, for the Lockheed Martin-built Garuda spacecraft is expected to be confirmed soon. There are also two outstanding reservations by Space Systems/Loral, while Hughes has a reservation for an indefinite number of launches and SES has options to launch further Astra satellites.
An uprated Proton M with improved first-stage engines and new KVD-1 cryogenic fourth stage was planned, with the aim of a first launch in 1997, but has been delayed until at least 2000. The Proton M will carry 4,500kg to GEO. In the interim, another upper stage, the Breeze M (derived from the Breeze K on the Rokot LEO launcher) could increase GEO insertion capability to 3,200kg.
Proton launches from Plesetsk are also planned and ILS is considering new launch sites at Alcantara, Brazil; Darwin, Australia and Cape Canaveral, to improve GEO insertion capability as they are closer to the equator. An Alcantara launch, for example, could place 7,400kg into GTO with a standard Proton.
Source: Flight International
