Most of the windows in rows of identical, gray five-story houses are bricked up. Nomads moved in and tore down the doors and windows to burn the wooden frames for warmth one bitter winter when broke town officials couldn't provide electricity or heating. A couple of five-star hotels were built here when Western space officials began to visit for launches under joint programs. Those freshly painted facades look out over neatly trimmed, sprinkled lawns and lines of trees. But across the road, Kazak children play soccer in the sand among rundown buildings and a few broken-down cars.
Old women sit on water pipes stretched across the yard, selling onions and fried sunflower seeds.
Under Baikonur's security regulations, the main jobs open to the Kazaks who make up about half of Baikonur's estimated 100,000 population are as janitors, plumbers or gardeners. But in a sign of the Russian space industry's decline, rows of assembly scaffolding fill the building like skeletons, with no space craft under construction.