Baikonur
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Baikonur (formerly Leninsk) is a city in Kazakhstan administered by Russia. It was constructed to service the Baikonur Cosmodrome and was officially renamed Baikonur by Boris Yeltsin on December 20, 1995.
The original Baikonur is a mining town a few hundred kilometres northeast. The launch site was given this name to cause confusion and keep the location secret. The name Baikonur is Kazakh language for "wealthy brown", i.e. "fertile land with many herbs".
A former placename for the area was Tyuratam; however, that name is Kazakh for "broken arrow" and thus was held to be unsuitable for a space base.
- Common misunderstanding.
- Actually, Leninsk is the name of town were the personnel live (named, obviously, after V.I.Lenin), Turatam is the name of the railway station were the construction of the missile test range was started from on June 2, 1950, and Baikonur became the name of the 5-th State R&D Test Range of Ministry of Defense of the USSR and, later, the cosmodrome facility.
The fortunes of the city have varied according to those of the Soviet/Russian space program.
[edit]
