The Final Frontier

And as he looked up, he saw right in front of him, far out on the steppe in the direction of the Sarozek cosmodrome, something rise up into the air, literally flaming, with a growing, fiery, fountain-like trail behind it. He was struck dumb by the sight. It was a great rocket rising into space. He had never seen anything like it before.

--from The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years by Chingiz Aitmatov (1980)

At its core, Chingiz Aitmatov’s novel, The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years, is about a man named Burranyi Yedigei on a quest, with his legendary camel, to bury his best friend according to the traditional Muslim rituals of the Kazakhs. But interspersed in Yedigei’s journey toward the Ana-Beiit cemetery is a fantastical space opera involving a Soviet-American space station called Parity and the discovery of extraterrestrial life.

The launch which Yedigei observes (described above) is unscheduled, and made without fanfare. It’s an emergency launch. The two cosmonauts who had been stationed on Parity – one Soviet, one American – had suddenly disappeared.

Aimatov, in the book’s preface, comments that “this cosmological tale has been dreamed up with one intention only – to draw attention to in a paradoxical hyperbolic fashion, to a situation full of potential danger for people on earth.” While the bulk of the book is focused on the small story of one man burying his friend, the reality of some of the pieces of his intermittent space opera have solidified over the years.

While Aitmatov’s Sarozek cosmodrome is fictional, a very real cosmodrome was established on the Kazakh steppe in 1955. Originally planned as a testing site for the world’s first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM), the site was expanded for space launches, and in 1957 sent Sputnik into orbit. The Baikonur cosmodrome (named after a city nearly 200 miles away as a ploy to confuse spies) began life as a missile testing center and gained fame for its role in the start of the space race. Since the closure of NASA’s space shuttle program in 2011, the Soviet-era Soyuz rocket blasting off from Baikonur has been the only way for American astronauts – all astronauts, really – to reach the ISS.

The ISS program is complex array of diplomatic agreements between 15 nations, which govern ownership, use, responsibilities, and other facets of cooperation. The five space agencies involved – Russia’s Roscosmos, the United States’ NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, Japan’s JAXA, and the European Space Agency (representing 11 states: Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) – agreed in a 1998 treaty to establish a framework for cooperation “on the basis of genuine partnership, for the detailed design, development, operation, and utilization of a permanently inhabited civil international Space Station for peaceful purposes, in accordance with international law.”

It is remarkable that cooperation surrounding the ISS has remained relatively stable through the turbulence of international relations. Aitmatov, in 1980, envisioned Parity in space and ISS largely fulfills that role. But nothing is forever. The future of Baikonur is challenged on many sides. Built in a state that no longer exists, hosted by a young state with ambitions of its own, and used by a West increasingly at odds with its Russian operators, Baikonur is caught in the crush of history.

In a recent article in the Telegraph highlighting the first British astronaut’s journey to Kazakhstan and then to space, Roland Oliphant interviewed Viktor Kulepyotov in Baikonur. The 68-year-old grew up in the shadow of the cosmodrome. Kulepyotov was the son of a Soviet military engineer and was 14 when Yuri Gagarin rode a rocket into space. He went on to work as a test engineer himself. Kulepyotov told Oliphant that “Gorbachev said, ‘Baikonur will live long, it will live forever.’ But we have to admit we don’t really have that feeling now.”

Kazakhstan was the last constituent part of the Soviet Union to declare independence. It did so on December 16, 1991, four days after Russia. Independence, for Kazakhstan, came with an unprecedented burden: the world’s fourth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site, and the Baikonur cosmodrome. Ownership of the cosmodrome was settled first. In 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev agreed to a 10-year lease for the city and the launch site. In the words of Oliphant, “the deal effectively makes Baikonur an island of Russia inside Kazakhstan.”

In 2004, Kazakhstan and Russia agreed to extend the lease to 2050. The arrangement has largely worked, spawning a community that uses both the Kazakh tenge and Russian ruble, has parallel Russian and Kazakh school systems, parallel registry offices for Russian and Kazakh marriages, and is overseen by a mayor appointed by Moscow and approved by Astana. The spaceport is busy, with numerous commercial, scientific, and military launches each year.

Tensions do exist between Kazakhstan and Russia regarding the site, particularly around issues of pollution. In May 2015, a Proton-M rocket intended to carry a satellite into orbit failed eight minutes after launch and crashed into the steppe amid a rain of toxic fuel and debris. In 2013, another Proton-M rocket flipped over seconds after launch and smashed to earth in a massive fireball. An estimated 10 percent of Proton-M launches fail. As with nuclear testing sites, Baikonur has been linked – though not conclusively – to health problems in nearby communities and the mass die-off of wildlife on the steppe.

It is almost inevitable that in 2050 the cosmodrome will revert to Kazakh control, an eventuality Russia has begun to plan for. In Russia’s Far East, however, the development of the Vostochny cosmodrome has been stalled by corruption and strikes, unpaid workers and unclear plans. Its planned 2025 completion is likely to be pushed back.

Beyond Baikonur’s role in Kazakh-Russian relations, its place in Russian-U.S. relations has been remarkably unique. Cooperation with regard to space has continued, largely uninterrupted, between Moscow and Washington, despite strains on other parts of the bilateral relationship. But as Russia has increasingly found itself at odds with the West, the stability of the present arrangement – through which NASA is directly dependent on Moscow to carry American astronauts to ISS – has come under doubt.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and subsequent Western sanctions threatened to implode space cooperation between the Washington and Moscow. In May 2014, Russia said it would reject U.S. requests to prolong the ISS project beyond 2020. A year later, however, Roscosmos and NASA agreed to both extend the ISS mission to 2024, as the U.S. wanted, and collaborate on the next version.

Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov said, "We have agreed that Roscosmos and NASA will be working together on the program of a future space station."

There are still engine troubles in the space-relations of the U.S. and Russia, literally. The Russian-made RD-180 engine is used in Lockheed Martin’s Atlas III launch vehicle, and can also be found in the Atlas V, a successor developed by the Boeing-Lockheed joint venture United Launch Alliance (ULA). The Atlas V was in competition with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which does not use the Russian engine, for a lucrative contract with the U.S. Department of Defense to launch military satellites. But in November 2015, ULA dropped out of the race, pointing to contract requirements and Congressional limitations on the use of the RD-180 engines.

For the time being, the Baikonur cosmodrome stands as a unique facet of both Russia’s relations with Kazakhstan and also with the United States. Change is coming, but how it will play out is unclear. By 2050, Russia is likely to move out of Baikonur and into a launch facility on Russian soil. If the U.S. hasn’t reimagined its shuttle program by then, it’s not clear how Americans will get into space. The nature of space flight is changing too – away from state-sponsored programs and into the commercial sphere, as pioneered by SpaceX.

Aitmatov, who saw the birth of the space age, was a keen observer of both politics and humanity. His comments in the preface (and indeed, throughout) The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years stand the test of time:

“It must be the most tragic contradiction of the late twentieth century that although Man’s genius is unlimited, it is constrained on all sides by political, ideological, and racial barriers arising out of imperialism.”