Kazakhstan's Spaceship Junkyard

Richard W.M. Jones writes "What happens to the booster stages of rockets? They fall back to earth, and in most cases into the oceans. But not in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where the first stages fall over populated farmland. The locals have become rich dealing in the titanium-rich scrap metal as this article and this remarkable photo essay show. So far the only casualties seem to have been a few dead cows."

Wow..

[Renraku]

These farmers, rather than demand restitution from the government got off their asses and turned lemons into lemonade.

Of course, a certain government might turn their lemonade into military action when they decide they want a piece of the pie.

If spent stages from a US rocket hit some home in the US, it would be removed overnight, the family would be given a check for 20% of the value of what they lost, forced to sign an NDA, and no one would ever hear about it again.

Re:Slashdot posts this...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's from The Sun.

They probabably wouldn't post an Elvis sighting story either.

Re:Wow..

[iammaxus]

That's ridiculous. A much more stereotypical response in the US would be for NASA to pay the family 200% of the value of what they lost, and the scrupulous family would still insist on suing for additional millions for the "emotional damage" resultant from the loss of their goldfish. The subsequent increase in insurance costs would push commercialization of space back a decade or two.

Re:Wow..

[dj245]

So you're saying ex-soviet Russia is more capitolistic than the US, or they have more Freedom?

And by Freedom I mean the common definition of freedom as applied to countries; a lack of government involvement in people's day-to-day affairs.

Re:Server going down?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's actually a myth that servers overheat & melt down - the most that can happen is they get so overwhelmed with request they end up timing out far after an original request for page has occured, and are unable to serve current requests. That gives the illusion (an incorrect one) that the server has "died"

Re:Slashdot posts this...

[jtogel]

"Kids growing up in areas damaged by radiation from the plant have a higher IQ and faster reaction times, say Russian doctors." Note: say Russian doctors, says The Sun! Do the two layers on untrustworthyness somehow cancel each other out, so as to make the statement trustworthy?

Re:Wow..

[idontgno]

I don't know... how much titanium is there in a human body?

Hmmm...I dunno. In this situation, I'd guess several pounds, post mortem.

Re:Server going down?

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit.

Re:Wow..

[learn fast]

NASA also wouldn't dump boosters into populated areas in the first place.

Re:Wow..

[drsmithy]

A much more stereotypical response in the US would be for NASA to pay the family 200% of the value of what they lost, and the scrupulous family would still insist on suing for additional millions for the "emotional damage" resultant from the loss of their goldfish.

And then somehow manage to be back in the poorhouse within two years...

Re:Server going down?

[cluening]

After seven years of the same "the server is going to do something vaguely related to the story!" comments, you would think people would stop rating them as 'funny'...

(apologies to the original poster; yours just happened to be the one showing up as such right now)

Re:cow tipping

[lordofthechia]

Only a machine could not determine the difference between an I or a 1 with a line through it! Hmm... Maybe they need to add a question for each post instead of the images:

"Which of the following would you prefer: a puppy, a flower from your sweetie, or a large, properly formatted data disk."

Wow - the photos are VERY nice

[plampione]

I am VERY impressed by the photos - certainly better, artistically, of what Reuters/ANSA or the like usually produces!

As for the dead cows, I bet they ate grass contaminated with rocket fuel - it can be very poisonous. I am not sure what they use, but hydrazine, for instance, is very poisonous.

Re:cow tipping

[richie2000]

"Which of the following would you prefer: a puppy, a flower from your sweetie, or a large, properly formatted data disk."

This is Slashdot. Exactly how do you propose that question would help? We have no use for puppies unless accompanied by large amounts of duct tape and we have never seen a "sweetie" in real life unless a Mars bar counts so gimme that disk and let me post, dammit!

A large disssk, my preciousss.