As part of her job at NASA, David’s mom, Debbie, spent time at the first Soviet, then Russian, spaceport at Baikonur in central Asia. I can still remember the horrified look on her face as she told me about the primitive facilities: planks with holes that were called “toilets.”
In the past decade, a lot has changed and I don’t mean the toilets. (One can only hope.)
This article at MSNBC.com (H/T NRO’s “The Corner”) tells readers that
for almost half a century, Russian rockets and space travelers have assaulted the heavens from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the Soviet spaceport in Central Asia that was portrayed as the shining symbol of a communist future. Now one of the last sights for departi ng space crews is the shiny domes of a new Russian Orthodox church — where they have their own way of reaching toward heaven.
Baikonur
was originally named “Leninsk” in honor of the founder of the Soviet state, a champion of the official atheism under which priests were imprisoned and churches were burned. Cosmonauts in the Soviet era were often quoted as joking, “We have been to heaven, and didn’t see God there.”
Then
in a radical cultural revolution, the collapse of the Soviet regime in 1991 unleashed a long-underground religious impulse even among the elite of Soviet society, “rocket scientists” and the military hierarchy.
Today,
“Almost every cosmonaut brings with him into space his personal icons,” said Gennady Padalka, who commanded the 9th expedition aboard the international space station in 2004. In addition, a copy of the famous icon of “St. Mary of Kazan” is displayed on a panel in the Russian segment of the station. It was placed there in 2000 by the very first long-term crew.
And, clearly, Russians don’t spend a lot of time in the American blogospher because — get this! — they think that faith and intelligence go together
[Father Sergey] attributes the church’s success to the highly educated populace, most of whom work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome. “Nearly ninety percent of the population of Baikonur is comprised of people with a higher education,” he told the Ekspress K newspaper in June. “I am convinced that educated people are able to progress much faster on a spiritual ladder, and the Baikonur parish is a shining example of this.”
Time to take another look out that window.
