The Buran space shuttle, once the pride of the Soviet space fleet, has been sedately floating down the river Rhine, making its way to its new home in a German museum.

The Buran was only ever flown once - an unmanned test flight in November 1988. Future flights were planned, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and economic hardship in Russia meant that the Buran programme was cancelled in 1993.

The last surviving Buran has been exhibited around the world - most notably at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney - and will now be on display at the Technik Museum Speyer, near Mannheim, Germany.

Apparently, the cost of transporting the Buran to Germany, and the construction of a new hall to house the shuttle, was over $15 million.

(Pictures with permission of: Torsten Dillenburg, Marc-Cologne, Walter Kraegeloh, eternaltedium, Joachim S Muller and Netream.

According to Gizmodo, NASA is to buy $19 million dollars worth of space toilets from Russia:

So apparently NASA has agreed to purchase toilet technology from the Russian company RSC Energia for the tidy sum of $19 million, to be delivered to the ISS in 2008 in preparation for a crew upsizing from three to six members. The previous system required that urine tanks be transfered to cargo ships and burned up in the Earth’s atmosphere, but the new toilets operate like a waste treatment center on Earth, collecting and reconstituting urine as drinking water — an unpleasant concept for a number of our readers, but a welcome relief for thirsty astronauts.

I think I shall let this story pass without further comment.

Notice the blur in the middle? I didn’t put it there - Google did. Click on this link to check for yourself.

Then scroll out a bit, using the controls of the left of the screen. Notice anything else?

Yep - the blurred out area is in the Russian Far East.

Anyone got any ideas about what’s been airbrushed out?

The latest reality show to hit British tv is Space Cadets. A group of contestants are to be conned into thinking they are going on a space mission.

Most people interested in space know that Russia is the home of space tourism. So, even though these people are being hand-picked for their own special brand of stupidity, there clearly needs to be an element (a very small element!) of reality in the show.

We think the show has to be done from Russia, because that was where genuine space tourists blast off from, but the first budget we do shows that this works out a lot more expensive than actually sending people into space. But then we have an idea. If we’re fooling the contestants that they’re going to space, wouldn’t it be possible to fool them into thinking they were in Russia? They could get in a plane, fly around for a few hours and then land back where they took off and be told it was a space centre. And as well as being cheaper, might that actually be funnier? And more impossible?

[…]The base’s barracks is converted into a Soviet-style training facility; Russian plugs, light switches and manhole covers are installed. There’s a picture of Putin in the office, and a Russian Monopoly board so our cadets have something to do on those long cold nights.

To be honest, sometimes I wish I was one of the stupid people - stupid people get to do the coolest things.

One of the joys of writing siberianlight.net is the random stuff I find while searching the net. Take this piece of Star Trek fan-fiction I found today on Technorati, for example, in which Capain Kirk takes a trip down memory lane and (almost) visits Siberia’s finest city:

“That is correct, Colonel. Our captain has been taken into custody by what appears to be a Soviet military unit.” Spock barely moved as he spoke. “If my suspicion is correct, they may believe Captain Kirk to be an American espionage agent. If this is so, then his life is in grave danger.”

Steve’s face grew somber. “That would be a pretty fair assumption. Where do you think he was captured?”

“About 67.3km Northeast of Irkutsk,” the Vulcan replied.

Steve’s brow furrowed. “There’s a secret military installation in that area. If your Captain was down there, you have a problem on your hands. What was he doing down there, anyway?”

“We were working on an experiment, there was an error, and Captain Kirk was part of the recovery party sent down to retrieve the experiment.” Spock was determined to give Steve as much information as he could without telling him anything.

Now, if I were a Star Trek fan-fiction writer (which I am not), or even Mr Spock (which I am also not) I’d be taking this opportunity to make the most of Ensign Pavel Chekov. He is, after all, a Russian and, presumably, speaks a little of the local lingo. But, does he appear in this story? Ummm, no.

Update: Goodness, I almost forgot to mention - the Steve mentioned above is Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. So, we have a Star Trek / Six Million Dollar Man / Soviet Union crossover. At least, I assume it’s the Six Million Dollar Steve Austin, and not the guy from WWF - because that would be just too wierd.

Last week I wrote about the disgraceful number of closed cities in Russia, another of those leftovers from an anarchic age that Russia remains addicted to, despite (or perhaps because of) the restrictions it places on the human rights of their 1.7 million residents.

In a rather timely decision, the BBC have just decided to publish a feature article about the Russian cosmodrome at Plesetsk. Now, Plesetsk isn’t a closed city, but Mirny, the town next door is. The BBC reporter managed to get a precious invitation to visit Mirny, and this is what he saw:

Home to about 80,000 military staff and their families, at first glance, it seems like any other town, save the austere apartment blocks and lack of road signs.

We are taken to the space museum in the town square, then the kindergarten, where children dressed in traditional clothes sing Russian songs.

Despite the presence of occasional teams of foreign engineers, most of the town remains off limits to visitors. They can walk around only a small central section and must not stray outside the designated area.

The town was never on the map and its inhabitants can still only be officially reached under a military field post number.

I’ve just been to see if I could find Mirny using both GoogleEarth (the satellite imaging programme) and Expedia maps. I tried every spelling of the name I could think of without any luck (although I did discover there is a village with the same name in Southern Russia). I think I’ll have to investigate further, to see whether any of the closed cities that the Russian government has admitted to (and Mirny isn’t one of them) are on any maps.

So far, the only other account I’ve been able to find about a visit to a closed city, is Tajikblog’s visit to Taboshar, the city where the uranium for the first Soviet nuclear bombs was mined. Taboshar - in Tajikistan, by the way, and not Russia - is no longer a closed city. But it certainly doesn’t seem a very welcoming place…

Either way, we just slowly begin to explore the town. It’s really quite a nice town with birch trees and huge stone houses lining the streets, aside from the fact that most of the buildings are empty and starting to fall apart. Soon enough, though, another set of suspicious men appears (with their wives and children in tow, not exactly an intimidating sight) and the confrontation begins.

The mayor (who prior to this had a good reputation among internationals) was at the center of the posse. I wanted to meet him anyway hoping for a tour, so this was as fine a time as any to say hello. I must have caught him at a bad time, though, as his mood was sour.

After the initial “hi I’m Peter XXX, photographer from New York” schtick, it was time for the inquisition.
Why are you here? Who guided you here? What do you know about this town? Etc. etc.
Nargiza steadfastly translates the questions and my answers, but suddenly his suspicion and temper rise.

One thing that set him off, I think was my knowledge of the town’s having a high-tech science lab. Stephanie told me about it as the mayor’s sad attempt to attract people to his town, to create a center for technology. Maybe something else is going on, because he certainly didn’t want to speak about it.

I’m going to keep searching for stories about Russian closed cities (and others around the Former Soviet Union if I can find them). If you have any links, or stories of your own, please feel free to share them here.

Following the loss of a European Space Agency satellite - Cryosat - that was designed to map polar ice, the Russian Space Agency has suspended all flights using the Rokot booster system.

The rocket’s second stage failed to separate following the launch and the Cryosat satellite fell into the Arctic Ocean, Russian and European officials said. The second stage did not separate apparently because a missing command from the onboard flight control system caused the main engine to continue to operate after it should have cut off, burning all the fuel on board, the European Space Agency said in a statement on its Web site.

Mosnews also reports the failure of another, experimental, Russian rocket system:

Demonstrator was launched on Oct. 7 from the nuclear-powered submarine Borisoglebsk in the northern Barents Sea. It was first reported that it had safely landed in the Kura test range on Russia’s Far East Kamchatka Peninsula but the Russian military were unable to determine the landing location and later said they had lost the vehicle.

This was the fourth test of Demonstrator, with the previous attempts also failing due to various problems in the launch stages or landing.

As Mosnews goes on to report, the failures are not doing much for the Russian space agency’s image around the world:

It also hurt the Russians, who have been aggressively trying to move into the commercial satellite launch business.

Although, having said that, just who is competing with Russia in the commercial satellite business these days?

One final piece of space news, while I’m rounding things up - RIA Novosti reports that Russia is to withdraw 2,800 troops from its launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan over the next couple of years.

“If [military] launches occur once in four-five months, we do not need so many people,” Ivanov said. “We have excessive troops there.”Plesetsk (the northern part of European Russia) will gradually become the main military launching site of the Russian Defense Ministry but will also see some civil launches, he added.

It’s not often you hear of Russia voluntarily withdrawing troops from Central Asia, and I’d imagine the Kazakh government are secretly thrilled by the announcement, even if it does indicate that Baikonur is no longer the cash cow it once was.

(For more on Plesetsk, by the way, see the next post. It’s located just a few miles from a closed city).

A couple of space related stories from Mosnews have caught my eye over the last couple of days, mainly because they show brilliantly the new face of Russian science - it’s all about the money. True, I guess that’s ultimately what most science is about - even space science from outfits like NASA - but you’ve got to admire the Russians for their complete lack of interest in portraying themselves as anything other than businessmen these days.

First up - or rather third up - is this story about the latest space tourist Gregory Olsen, himself a scientist turned businessman.

Olsen, who has advanced degrees in physics and material sciences, will carry out three medical experiments during his time on the station. He has rejected a description of himself as a “space tourist” — instead he calls himself a “space participant”.

“Tourism implies that anyone can just write a cheque and go up there. That’s not what happened,” Olsen said in an interview before the Soyuz TMA-7 carrying him and two professional astronauts — one American and one Russian — lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan.

“Space participant.” Kind of implies that Mr Olsen is up there for the scientific good he can do mankind, and not at all for the view, doesn’t it?

Almost simultaneously, we hear that the Roskosmos - the Russian Space Agency - is no longer prepared to ferry US astronauts to and from the International Space Station unless the NASA ponies up some cold hard cash.

“Russia has met all the engagements on transferring NASA employees to the ISS. Formally, we even do not have to return McArthur to the Earth,” Russia’s space agency Roskosmos senior official Alexey Krasnov said.

This could, however, pose a problem, as current US law prohibits NASA from paying Russia for this service:

The snag is that trade sanctions linked to U.S. fears that Russian technology and know-how could help Iran develop nuclear weapons mean NASA cannot pay Roskosmos.

Looks like Russia and the European Space Agency (ESA) could be working together to develop the Kliper (Clipper) space shuttle: 

It’s all but official—Russia and Europe will soon embark on a cooperative effort to build a next-generation manned space shuttle. Speaking at the Paris Air Show, in Le Bourget, France, in June, Russian space officials confirmed earlier reports from Moscow that their partners at the European Space Agency would join the Russian effort to build a new reusable orbiter, dubbed Kliper. After the cautious optimism they expressed at the beginning of 2005, Russians are now confident that their European partners will be on board for the largest, boldest Russian endeavor in spaceflight in more than a decade.

[…] Co-operation with Europe promises to give Russia unprecedented flexibility in its access to orbit. Bound by its geographic position, historically Russia has paid a heavy penalty in payload weight for launching its spacecraft from such sites as Baikonur or Plesetsk, both far from the equator. Today, RKK is seriously considering either launching Kliper on top of the existing Zenit rocket from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean or on upgrading the Soyuz rocket, which could fly from the equatorial site in Kourou, French Guiana.

The space geek in me thinks that this could be great news - especially at a time when NASA’s troubled space shuttle program seems to be holding back development in the US.  The Kliper (see here for a Wikipedia article about it) isn’t a comparable craft to the Shuttle in many ways, but it is certainly a step in the right direction. 

The Russian Space Agency seems to have a good eye for collaborative partnerships, and also for the exploitation of the business aspect of space travel, so I wouldn’t be all that surprised to see the Russian Space Agency also begin forging ties with some of the private companies that are beginning to make their first forays into space-travel.  A partnership with Scaled Composites, for example, who were the company behind Spaceship One, the first private craft to reach space (and make it back down to earth), would open up a wealth of possibilities.  When you consider the RSA’s ingenuity, their ability to bring in projects cheaply and far closer to budget than NASA, and their wealth of cheap, but highly skilled scientists and technicians, private companies may find it far more profitable to work with Russia than with anyone else in the space industry.

[Hat tip: A Fistful of Euros]

Mosnews - who else? - reports on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s barnstorming Darth Vader skit at the latest ASEAN conference party (yes, they really know how to party at these conferences):

Wearing a dark brown cape and hood (Darth Vader’s heavy breathing was difficult to create in the low-budget production), Lavrov brandished a lighted sword as he and his assistant argued about Asia to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar.

“ASEAN, Superstar” was the refrain. “Do you think you’re what they say you are? ASEAN, ASEAN! Why we accept whatever you have done?”

Lavrov then launched into a tirade against Asia: “We’d have managed better if we’d had it planned. Why’d we chose such a remote Aseanis land?”

His commodore replied: “You didn’t do your homework, it’s ASEAN way. You are too suspicious, their motives are good.”

The skit was peppered with one-liners by Lavrov, who asked why Australia was here and got the reply: “Probably the kangaroos like Asian grass.”

Behind him a Powerpoint display showed a world map with most of the globe’s countries, including the United States, labeled as East Asia.

Darth Vader left singing with the crowd: “ASEAN, Superstar. You are the best friend of Russia.”

Class.  Pure class.

If anyone has photos or, better yet, audio of the event, let me know and I’ll post them on siberianlight.

Update: At last, a photo! (via the BBC)  Sergey Lavrov, pictured, models a rather fetching pink Vader suit.

And RIA Novosti has more on the serious political purpose behind Lavrov’s singalong:

Lavrov said the theatrical antics focused on real ASEAN problems.

"The performance was cool, political, humorous, witty and topical," the minister said, adding that the audience recorded the best jokes.

Yeah, whatever.  The man was wearing a pink Darth Vader suit and singing to the tune of Jesus Christ Superstar.  This demands total respect.

The Guardian reports that Russia’s space agency has announced it is ready to take tourists not just into space, but to the moon (and back).  The cost?  A staggering $100 million.

Roskosmos leaked details of the project as Nasa’s space shuttle Discovery prepared for launch from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. A source at the Russian agency confirmed to the Guardian that the technology was in place for a flight to be launched within 18 months of a down payment.

The fortnight-long trip would include a week at the International Space Station (ISS) before blasting off to the moon and completing a full orbit 100 miles above its surface.

Note that you don’t get to actually land on the moon - this tour is strictly sightseeing only.  All the same I’m tempted.  What do you think - should I open a tip jar to fund my trip?  Don’t worry - your money wouldn’t be wasted - when I’ve raised the necessary cash I will, of course, use the opportunity to blog the moon.