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Name edit
Let's be careful about creating new history. Russian sources claim that Tyuratam was called Baikonur to misdirect the USA. On the basis of a comment by a US astronaut, this has been refuted on a few wiki pages, but the facts are not clear. DonPMitchell (talk) 16:44, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
- a) How come a US astronaut knows about what the soviets intended when naming it? Come on, that's not very reliable.
- b) Also this sentence: "While many reporters thought that the Soviets were calling it Baykonur to hide its true location, it turned out that the confusion arises from the fact that there is another city called Baykonur"
- If I wanted to hide the location and cause confusion, what better than to choose a name that already exists elsewhere? What other logical explanation is there for giving the location a new name, which already existed elsewhere?
- Can't really think of another one. Also, it is known from other sources that the soviets were trying to be very secretive even when it was useless (such as announcing launches at a time when everyone already knew etc). Hoemaco (talk) 09:12, 10 May 2021 (UTC)
Suggestion: change English and generally latin-letters name of the place from russian to kazakh, not Tyratam, but Töretam; there's been evidence that as it means Töre's grave, most correct might be Töre-Tam. In wikipedia first and then all over the world. Like, writing about Estonian town Pärnu, one writes in English text Pärnu, not Pjarnu, as used to be russian-based spelling. ;) BirgittaMTh (talk) 19:55, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
Töretam and Baikonur are two towns right next to each other. Baikonur is walled off and high security, you can only enter with a permit. Töretam is ostensibly open, and is where the local Kazakh support staff live in slum-like conditions - but if you try to visit you'll find yourself chased off by armed FSB officers, they don't want anyone seeing that side of things. The actual launch complex is about 10km (not 100, not 1000) to the north of the residential area - although officials in Baikonur town will still try to tell you it's a thousand kilometers away. Source - I've been there. --MAdaXe (talk) 15:41, 27 March 2016 (UTC)
Incorrect entry edit
I deleted the incorrect claim that Francis G. Powers was "looking for" Tyuratam on his ill-fated GRAND SLAM mission on 1 May 1960. In fact the site was first imaged during the SOFT TOUCH missions, on 5 Aug 1957, and re-imaged several times later. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Baikonur_CIA_U-2.gif for one of the images from these later flights. The main objective of the ill-advised Powers mission was to find or disprove the existence of operational SS-6 sites. Will O'Neil (talk) 04:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
