Russian shepherd in space trash row
Published 16 March, 2008, 11:53
A shepherd in Siberia is demanding more than $US 40,000 from the Federal Space Agency after a rocket fragment landed right beside his house. The man lives in the Russian republic of Altay, not far from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Used rocket parts have been falling on the republic's territory for more than 40 years now.
The republic has a contract with the Russian Space Agency and in theory burnout stages of rockets should fall in specially designated non-populated areas.
In practice, however, they can fall anywhere.
One cold night in February shepherd Boris Urmatov from a village in the Republic of Altay in Siberia was woken by what seemed like a cry from the skies!
“There came a noise, then there was a crash, I got scared and ran away from the house,” Urmatov recalls.
And there it was – a 3-metre long piece of polished steel lying just by his fence.
Local ecologists recognised the object at once, and they say it has nothing to do with divine powers.
“This is a fragment of the oxidizer tank and by the look of it it comes from a rocket carrier Proton-M,” ecologist Roman Aivazov said.
For holding a piece in this space-themed jigsaw puzzle the Urmatovs want an astronomic – by local standards – amount of money, more than $US 40 thousands.
The Space Agency representatives say they will discuss suitable compensation for the shepherd's family even though the damage was only moral.
The problem of falling rocket parts is not new to the Republic of Altay, as most of the launch trajectories from the nearby Baikonur cosmodrome cross the republic's territory.
The republic's authorities link the growing number of cancer cases in the region with high-poisonous rocket fuel left on the falling rocket parts.
Space Agency experts however say they have done all the analysis and found nothing dangerous.
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