The other is now an amusement ride on the banks of the Moscow River, in Gorky Park. Instead, his first flight on a reusable spacecraft was aboard the space shuttle Discovery in 1994. He was the first Russian cosmonaut to strap into an U.S. orbiter. Remember, some things do change in unpredictable ways. On the surface, Baikonur's sprawling facilities are abysmal.
Rocket launching detritus is strewn all over the hardscrabble plateau.
But behind some of the fading facades there is some evidence the Russians are spending money where it really counts. I guess the real proof of the pudding is the rollout. In the pre-dawn hours of Sunday, the Soyuz backed out of the horizontal assembly building precisely on schedule. It rolled down the tracks to Launch Pad No. 1 at a surprisingly fast clip. The 163-foot rocket was hydraulically hoisted toward the heavens and locked down little more than an hour after it rolled out.