A touch of outer space in the Kazakh steppe

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan, May 24 (Reuters) Not many things are less challenging than staring at the Kazakh steppe all day. Such was our distraction on our drive to the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Forest became grassland, grassland turned into desert and desert reverted to grassland. A river flashed by and a shepherd on horseback turned to watch our car speed past. It felt a bit like being in outer space.

Then, in the midst of this barren, monotonous expanse, rose Baikonur, the world's oldest space launch facility and a storied vestige of the rivalries of the Cold War.

The vast complex, itself the size of a small country, found itself adrift in Kazakhstan with the break-up of the Soviet Union. It is now technically part of Russia, which pays rent on it under a lease that runs until 2050.

Just 200 km east of the Aral Sea and 10 times that far from Moscow, Baikonur is surrounded by a big fence and administered by a Russian mayor, a stocky man with straightforward manners.

We had gone there for the launch on April 7 of the Soyuz TMA-10 spaceship, bound for the International Space Station with two Russian cosmonauts and American space tourist Charles Simonyi.

Simonyi, one of the founders of Microsoft, paid 25 million for his two-week trip, which made him the first billionaire in space.

The event was another first for Baikonur, set up by the Soviet Union in the mid-1950s initially as a secret long-range missile test facility.

It was the venue for the launch in 1957 of Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite, then in 1961 for the historic flight that made Yuri Gagarin the first man in space.

CAPTURING THE COSMOS In many ways Baikonur has changed little since it was set up.

The town that caters to the cosmodrome, now also called Baikonur but known as Leninsk until 1995, is a collection of quiet, orderly streets lined with buildings that look older than they should for their age.

A poster in one shop shows a rocket in flight, leaving a trail of fire.

It reads ''Cosmos''.

''Cosmos is inside you,'' said one journalist, a phrase repeated by Baikonur residents inexplicably often.

The place still has a feel of the Soviet Union about it, tinged with an air of the wild frontier. But these days it is accompanied by a touch of the surreal.

We checked into the Central Hotel on Lenin Square, where guests register on the ground floor, pay on the second and receive the keys on the fourth.

Then there was Martha Stewart, the American queen of sophisticated domestic styles for the masses, who showed up to see off her friend Simonyi.

Stewart, who had selected the menu for a special dinner for Simonyi and the crew of the International Space Station, wore the same charming smile each time she made a public appearance.

''Baikonur is beautiful,'' she would say.

One day a camel appeared at a ceremony in her heavily guarded hotel.

''Very lovable,'' Stewart said.

Simonyi and the two Russian cosmonauts he flew with had to go into quarantine before their flight.

When they emerged from their quarantine zone, they were greeted by journalists wearing surgical masks and white coats who flashed their cameras and thrust microphones at them.

They felt excited, they felt great, they were really looking forward to it. They had nothing much else to say. We took down every word.

Pretending not to notice us, the cosmonauts played table tennis and pool. They ate vegetables, pork and a muffin for lunch.

Then they were gone in the dead of night, propelled into space by a rocket that puffed and exhaled a cloud of smoke, roared skywards, turned into a bright dot and disappeared from sight.

Reuters AE VV1024