Kazakhstan: Above and Beyond!

Forgive the (buried) reference to the weirdly-enjoyable-yet-cancelled Fox sci-fishow. No, the other one. Anyway, the buzz in space news these days is what, exactly, will happen to the Space Station when the U.S. Space Shuttle is retired in 2010? Right now, American relations are at something of an ebb with Russia, and NASA was going to rely on Russia’s space vehicles for transportation to and from the station.

It is an image right out of Aitmatov: the mixture of peasants and an advanced spaceflight center, all jumbled together in the middle of nowhere: Baikonur, Kazakhstan. The Boston Globe recently ran a stunning series of photographs of operations at the space center, from lift-off, to orbital maneuvers, to eventual recovery in the middle of the steppe, just to the southwest of my beloved Karaganda.

Of course, in order for the U.S. to maintain access to the Cosmodrome, it must maintain friendly relations with Moscow, for Baikonur is Russian territory. Then again, maybe the U.S. could just hop a ride with the Chinese—they’re now more fully developing their own manned spaceflight program. And one of their launch facilities is sort of almost in Chinese Turkestan.

Even still, it is entirely possible, even probable, that the U.S. and Russia will continue cooperating on space flight issues. But, seeing that we live in a world in which Ed McMahon makes rap videos for check-you-credit companies, I suppose, well… the sky’s the limit.