US Space Junk Dumped on Siberia
by Lisa Tracy

Russia - When the Lykovy family moved to the rugged Siberian wilderness of Khakasia in the 1920s, they wanted to raise their children in isolation from civilization. But 60 years later, civilization - and the Space Age - arrived at the Lykovy's doorstep in an unexpected form - falling rocket parts.

When Russia's Space Agency launches its rockets from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome, they fly east directly over the Lykovy cabin. As the rockets pass over the Khakasia, Altai and Tuva Republics, they jettison their booster stages, which plummet back to Earth like blazing meteors.

US booster rockets launched from bases in Florida and California plunge into the ocean but Russia's cosmodromes are located deep inland. The cast-off stages are aimed at the Lykovy's neighborhood because, according to the Russian government, the region is uninhabited. Rocket stages from more than 600 launches now litter the wilderness regions of Khakasia, Altai and Tuva with more than 1,400 tons of "space junk."

On July 5, 1997, villagers from Altai's Tretyakovskii District jammed phone lines with reports of a blazing UFO. It turned out to be an errant rocket stage from a supply mission to the Mir Space Station. The booster slammed to earth outside its wilderness target area, demolishing several barns and some powerlines.

About half of the rocket stages have plunged into the 2.5-million-acre Altai Nature Reserve, a pristine mountainous area boasting some of Russia's greatest biodiversity, including the endangered snow leopard. This is a violation of Russia's Law on Specially Protected Territories, which forbids any human activity in protected nature reserves.

It's Raining Rocket Fuel!

Falling rocket parts often cause forest fires in Siberia. However, the toxic impacts are even more disturbing. Many Russian rockets - including the Proton, Russia's most powerful commercial satellite-launcher - burn a liquid fuel, dimethyl hydrazine, also known as heptyl. Heptyl is one of the most toxic chemicals made. It is several times more deadly than phosgene gas (a chemical weapon) and hydrocyanic acid.

Sometimes falling boosters burst into flame on impact, converting the remaining heptyl into new chemical compounds that may be up to ten times as toxic as heptyl itself. More than 50 million acres in Russia, and 200 million acres in Kazakhstan, now are thought to be polluted by chemical fallout from rockets launched from Baikonur and other Russian cosmodromes.

Dr. Vladimir Lupandin, a medical specialist who has studied the impacts of rocket fuel on human health, is concerned by evidence that hyptyl exposure can cause chronic hepatitis, immune system problems, cancer, blood disease, mental disorders and even death. Many Altai villagers can name local people who have died or become severely ill after contact with rocket debris.

"This is an insult to the Siberian wilderness and people," asserts Mikhail Shishin, president of the Fund for 21st Century Altai and the leading voice in the anti-rockets movement. "The Russian government is treating the Altai peoples like experimental rabbits. While the Space Agency has warned villagers of impending launches, it has failed to disclose the toxic dangers."

The Globalization of Space

In the past, launches from Baikonur were reserved for the Russian military. Now, launches from Baikonur - and all other global launchpads - are more often commercial launches driven by the rapidly expanding global telecommunications industry. Today the rockets filling the sky with noise and fallout (and burning chemical holes in the Earth's ozone layer) carry communications satellites owned by US-based multinationals.

In order to supply three-dollar-per-minute satellite phone service from any point on Earth, the US-based Irridium (a consortium of Motorola, Lockheed-Martin and others) is racing to launch 67 satellites by the end of 1998 - 27 of them from Baikonur.

In 1996, only about 50 working satellites circled the Earth. But recently, Microsoft's Bill Gates announced plans to launch at least 200 new satellites for his newly established company, Teledesic. Gates' proclaimed goal is to create an "Internet in the Sky."

Rockets can be sent from Baikonur for about half the cost of launches elsewhere. Paving the way to further expand Baikonur's world share is International Launch Services (ILS), a Russian-American joint venture comprising Lockheed-Martin and two Russian companies.

ILS markets Baikonur launches to foreign satellite companies. In 1997, ILS won contracts for six launches. In 1995, the US government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation awarded $33,480 to ILS to insure its private operations and to support a proposed expansion of Baikonur.

On May 26, 1997, indigenous Altai people mounted a demonstration in Gorno-Altaisk to draw attention to a May 24 launch of a US satellite. "Leaders of foreign companies connected with commercial rocket launches from Baikonur...close their eyes to all the negative impacts of space-rocket activity," the demonstrators proclaimed. "They are directly responsible for the sharp worsening of the environment on our land...They get the profit, and we get only dangerous waste that pollutes everything around us."

The Russian government charges foreign corporations $80 million per launch on the Proton rocket. Anti-rocket activists argue that part of that fee should be spent on ecological solutions and clean-up, as well as compensation to local villages.

Alternatives for the Altai

Most solid-based rocket fuels are less toxic than heptyl, but they inject enormous amounts of hydrochloric acid - which depletes the ozone layer - into the atmosphere. Liquid fuels are better alternatives, but existing rockets were designed to be powered by heptyl. Using safer fuels would require the space industry to retool or abandon rocket designs representing investments of hundreds of millions of dollars. However, if we want the space industry to stop poisoning the earth, the seas and indigenous lands in Russia, we have no other choice.

Merely reducing the number of commercial rocket launches from Kazakhstan and Russia may not produce any net benefits. "As long as the international community fails to regulate the use of space," says Shishin, "the telecommunications industry's answer to diminished Russian rocket access will be to rush to the world's other launchpads. This will just shift toxic rocket pollution from one land or sea to another, and it will not reduce the amount of space junk flying around the globe."

"The solution," argues Shishin, "is to force all rocket makers to develop alternative fuels. And to finally set a quota for the international use of space."

What You Can Do: Letters requesting international limits on the commercial use of space and environmental compensation to victims of space debris may be sent to Nandasiri Jasentuliyana, Director, UN Office for Outer Space Affairs, Vienna International Center, PO Box 500, A-1400 Vienna, Austria (431) 21345-4950, fax: (431) 21345-5830), and to Norman Augustine, CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., 6801 Rockledge Dr., Bethesda, MD 20817 USA

Lisa Tracy is the director of the Siberia Office of the Pacific Environment and Resources Center [1055 Fort Cronkhite, Sausalito, CA 94965, (415) 332-8200, fax (415) 332-8167, perc@igc.apc.org]. Research for this article was provided by PERC research assistant Rory Cox