Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Baikonur!

by Paul Wells on Tuesday, May 26, 2009 9:52pm - 6 Comments

Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention. But I was amazed to hear tonight on the news that Robert Thirsk, who’s scheduled to lift off tomorrow morning for six months on the International Space Station, will be flying a Soyuz from Baikonur into orbit.

There must not be many places on earth that more vividly demonstrate how the world has changed since the Cold War ended than Baikonur. For decades the name had a kind of dark magic about it: a closely-guarded Soviet state secret at first, then the dimly-imagined, rumour-shrouded site of the technological triumphs with which the Soviets rocked the West: Sputnik, Gagarin, Valentina Tereshkova the first female cosmonaut. Kennedy launched the moon program because the scientists at Baikonur were making it hot for him. And tomorrow a Canadian will take off from its launch pad. The world really has moved on.

Tags: Baikonur, Robert Thirsk

More by Paul Wells

http://www.flacklife.com Bob LeDrew

Ask the Ottawa Citizen’s Tom Spears why HE thinks you don’t know about Thirsk: http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/darkmatter/archive/2009/05/11/space-news-the-final-frontier.aspx
Mike T.

Baikonur? Damn near killed her!
Stephen

Earlier this month, Stephen Harper was concerned about Russian behaviour on a number of fronts.

I guess this wasn’t one of them.
Brammer

mmmm bacon…..

In all seriousness – excellent news!
Canuckistanian

the end of history! borderless world! huzzah ;-)
Tom Hurka

Just watched, on DVD, a great BBC series about the space race, from 1945 (both sides trying to get von Braun) to the moon landing, with lots of detail about Soviet stuff that wasn’t known in the West at the time, both failures (big disasters kept secret) and the men behind the successes. One interesting point: how unenthusiastic both sides’ militaries were much of the time about all this space stuff. They just wanted rockets to send nuclear warheads against each other.