Right now, there are only two places in the world that can launch people into space on
a rocket. There's the Jiuquan space center in the Gobi Desert of China, but it's not
the world's most-used space center to launch people into space. Guess where that one is.
Russia? The United States? No, it is the Baikonur Cosmodrome... in Kazakhstan. So, how did
that happen? Okay, so this basically starts in 1955 when Kazakhstan did not exist as a
country. It was part of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Kazakhstan
was a region of that country known as the Kazakh SSR. So, the Soviet Union built a missile
range at Baikonur in 1955, and it soon became the most important space center of the Soviet
space program. In 1957, it launched Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to enter Earth
orbit. And in 1961, it launched Yuri Gagarin into space, the first human being to ever
go into space. So, the Soviet Union was using Baikonur Cosmodrome to win some early victories
in the Space Race. Of course, the Soviet Union had a few problems. At the end of the 1980s,
a bunch of communist governments in eastern Europe were falling. And in 1991, when the
Soviet Union collapsed, a bunch of the SSR's that made up the Soviet Union became independent
countries. The biggest country to come out of the Soviet Union was Russia. The second-biggest
was Kazakhstan. And Moscow was no longer the capital city of the Soviet Union; it was now
the capital city of Russia–a still enormous country, but not as enormous as the Soviet
Union. So the new Russian space agency, Roscosmos, was formed. But they were without a space
center now that Baikonur was located in Kazakhstan. Eventually in 1994, Russia and Kazakhstan
came to an agreement where Russia would basically rent the Baikonur Cosmodrome from Kazakhstan
for an annual fee. So right now Russia is leasing control of Baikonur from Kazakhstan
for 115 million dollars a year, until the year 2050. But it's a little weird when your
national space center isn't even in your country. So in 2007, the Russian government approved
plans to build a new cosmodrome in, you know, Russia. This new cosmodrome is called Vostochny,
which basically means "eastern". It's located in far eastern Russia in the "oblast", or
province, of Amur–located right next to the Chinese border. Now, part of the reason
for this location is that when the rocket is launched, it kinda goes in an eastern direction,
and right east of this site is the Pacific Ocean. So most likely, the pieces that fall
from the rocket won't hit anyone, 'cause no one lives in the ocean. And that's also what
made Baikonur such a good location, because very few people live in this vast grassland
where Baikonur is so people are less likely to get hit by falling debris. And Vostochny
might have its very first manned launch as soon as the 2020s. It used to be called Svobodny,
and it was this old missile base that Russia wasn't really using at the time, so they decided
to convert it into the Vostochny Cosmodrome. And this place had its very first rocket launch
in 2016, this year, and they intend to launch a manned mission to the Moon from Vostochny
sometime maybe in 2018 or maybe the 2020s. But until then, Russia still has to pay Kazakhstan
115 million dollars a year to keep using the Baikonur Cosmodrome. And not only that, the
United States of America ended its Space Shuttle program in 2011. So to get to the International
Space Station, NASA astronauts now have to hitch a ride on Russian spacecraft, which
have to launch now from Kazakhstan. So, like, two enormous space power countries–Russia
and the United States–are stuck using a Kazakh space center. And that is amazing.
So, that is why most countries in the world have to send their astronauts to Kazakhstan
first to go to space. Thanks for watching, everyone. Do svidaniya. "Right now, there
are only two places in the world that can LUNCH people into space." I actually typed
"lunch people". Okay... that's not accurate I don't think.