Making Francis Scott Key proud: the United States' answer to Sputnik, "Vanguard", a.k.a., "flopnik", was a disaster. Despite this failure, the perceived successes of Baikonur was such that the United States continued to fling itself headfirst into the Space Race. Click on the image to see footage of the disaster on YouTube.

Editor’s note: This is the third part in “Astrostan”, a series of posts on the historical and social importance of the Space Program in Kazakhstan.

This post will strive to address the real and imagined effects of the Soviet Space Program and Baikonur’s presence on the country of Kazakhstan.  There are a couple questions I will present, not all of which are intuitive for a Western audience.

Do Baikonur and its launches damage the atmosphere?  Do they create holes of any kind as they pass through our atmosphere?  Is Baikonur bad for the local climate in southern Kazakhstan?  Does Baikonur act as a kind of weather machine?  What are the positive roles of Baikonur?  What about Kazakhstan’s own space ambitions?

Holes in the atmosphere?

Ask someone on the street in Shymkent or Kyzylorda whether or not rockets are bad for the environment, and you’re likely to receive the same answer I did.  Ие, yeah, they make holes, тесiктер.  Holes, you ask?  I also heard the same story in the grassy streets of Almaty, but there it was mixed with some scientific explanations about the different parts of the atmosphere, and the effect of the rocket on the ozone layer, etc.  Needless to say, a lot of rockets that go up are fueled with some very nasty chemicals, and I don’t doubt that they have an effect on the atmosphere, but holes?

From the standpoint of Physics, that’s just silly.  You throw rocks in the water, and it doesn’t take gravity that long to cover the rock with water.  100 miles up is no different – the thin air is quickly pulled back, and the rocket passes through the atmosphere without a scar.  So, the idea of physical holes is right out.

As for the Ozone layer and its “hole,” it’s important to understand that this isn’t a ‘hole,’ so much as a lack of O3.  Still plenty of air up there, but the O3 that helps block the nasty parts of the sun’s radiation is being split up, oxidizing other elements in the heavens.

However, a lot of the rockets fired in the states are actually Hydrogen fueled, meaning the only thing coming out the back end is really, really hot water.  As for solid fuel rockets, you can find the science here.  You’ll see that they agree – yes, it effects the ozone layer, but the effect is minimal.  And isn’t getting into space a little more worthwhile than spray paint and hairspray, the much bigger culprits in this issue?  This story from the LA Times, for example, assumes that solid-fuel rockets will be the primary space vehicle in its prediction of rockets becoming a primary influence on the ozone layer by 2050.  That’s quite a stretch, and can be chalked up to media-driven speculation.

Weather machine?

Other visitors to the south of Kazakhstan know that strange weather phenomena are often blamed on Baikonur.  The culture generally finds it easier to explain strange events on the distant space center than to simply say, “Huh, I don’t know what caused that.”  I’d rather not cast a judgment call on that attitude, as my friends and family in southern Kazakhstan are merely reacting in the most natural way.  And who knows the entire effect Baikonur has had on the environment?  However harmless I find this opinion, I still regard it as pretty far from science.

Others from Kazakhstan and the former Soviet Union might have heard similar stories, like the following:

• Cactuses [Cactii?] absorb harmful radiation from computer monitors
• Earthquakes are caused by emotional energy generated by ethnic tensions
• Diseases and infertility are caused by inbalances in body temperature

I’m not printing these to embarrass anyone, but instead to show how a lack of critical thinking can lead to masses of people believing what they read and hear without questioning it.

Kazakhstan’s first satellite (and the US’s own ‘flopnik’)

Let me end this chapter, then, with a word of encouragement for the citizens of Kazakhstan.  The first satellite of Kazakhstan did not accomplish its mission, failing early in its career in space.  However, let’s compare Kazakhstan with the Soviet Union and the United States.  It’s not known how many Sputniks blew up on the launch pad before the successful launch, but one assumes that it took more than one try to get Sputnik in space.  And as for the United States, Oh, What a Flopnik! I think the moral of this story is Don’t Give Up, Kazakhstan!  Keep reaching for the stars!

I’ll end the Astrostan series with the next post, a look at President Nazarbaev’s bold image of the Future — Kazakhstan 2030!