# Baikonur Cosmodrome Baikonur Cosmodrome is the world's first and largest space launch facility, located in the steppe of southern [[Kazakhstan]] (not, as its name suggests, near the city of Baikonur — the name was a Soviet-era deception to conceal the facility's actual location near the town of Tyuratam, 320 km away). It is the site from which [[Sputnik]], [[Yuri Gagarin]], and every Soviet/Russian crewed mission has launched, and it remains Russia's primary launch facility — despite being located in a foreign country. ## Geopolitical significance When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Baikonur became a geopolitical anomaly: Russia's most strategically important space facility was suddenly on Kazakh sovereign territory. Russia has leased the cosmodrome from Kazakhstan since 1994, currently paying approximately $115 million per year under a lease extended to 2050. The arrangement creates a structural dependency: Russia cannot launch crew to the [[International Space Station]] without Kazakhstan's cooperation, and any deterioration in the Russia-Kazakhstan relationship could jeopardize Russian crewed spaceflight capability. Russia has attempted to reduce this dependency by developing the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East (operational for unmanned launches since 2016), but Vostochny has been plagued by corruption scandals, construction delays, and the fundamental limitation that it cannot yet support crewed launches. For the foreseeable future, Russian cosmonauts launch from foreign soil. ## KB significance Baikonur matters for the vault as a case study in post-Soviet geopolitical entanglement and infrastructure dependency. The cosmodrome's situation — a nation's most critical strategic facility located in another country, maintained through a lease that could theoretically be revoked — illustrates the kind of structural vulnerability that the vault tracks across other domains. The corruption at Vostochny (multiple officials convicted of embezzlement during construction) also connects to the vault's coverage of how institutional decay manifests in authoritarian systems. ## See Also - [[Sputnik]] — first launch from Baikonur - [[Yuri Gagarin]] — launched from Baikonur on Vostok 1 - [[Soyuz]] — the crew vehicle that launches from Baikonur - [[International Space Station]] — dependent on Baikonur for Russian crew access - [[Buran]] — launched from and destroyed at Baikonur