Recycle your rockets, people

Another reason for re-usability.

Russian media estimates that over 2,500 tons of space debris have rained down on the region since launches began in the 1950s, some segments as large as 10 meters in length. During the Soviet era, the USSR took great pains to recover Baikonur booster rockets, partially due to concerns about leaking secrets related to the space program. However, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, these pieces of space debris have increasingly been left to rust in the grasslands of Kazakhstan and the Altai mountains.

It’s dangerous work for the scrap dealers. Rocket parts are frequently still burning when they arrive, leaching noxious vapours and setting off wildfires in the dry steppes. Nevertheless, the precarious economic reality of the region means that the extra source of income is indispensable. Here, a whole industry has sprung up around the waste of the world’s richest nations as it rains periodically from the sky.

Residents’ tendency to bring parts of the rockets back to their villages poses serious dangers, though. Rocket fuel, especially of the kind used by Russian and Chinese rockets, contains highly toxic components, and discarded rocket sections can have as much as 10 percent of their fuel remaining when they tumble back down to Earth. Of these, the most feared is heptyl, which is extremely toxic, and has been linked to cancers and birth defects. In 2008, a farmer in the Altai region filed for compensation when four of his horses died after toxic substances from rocket debris allegedly leached into the soil of their grazing lands.

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