Spaceship Junkyard

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Remember when Skylab fell? Can you imagine if you had to worry about space junk falling in your lap on a regular basis? Well, that actually is something that worries residents in Baikonur, Russia's biggest launching complex in Kazakhstan. At least, it was a frequent concern as recently as late 2003, which is when I saw a story about it in Orion Magazine (but their article is not available online). You see, Baikonur is land-locked, so Russian rockets do not make it to the ocean before crashing down. That means that these folks are living in a Spaceship Junkyard. Magnum Photos has excellent this series of photos, from which I post this sample image:

"You can't miss it. It's just past the Soyuz wreck near Leo's Farm."

Even though the Orion article is not available online, the above link shows the exact same set of photos that Orion published. Oh, and here is a brief article that also uses the same photo-set.