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This Girl Snuck Into a Russian Military Rocket Factory

144 points| shahed | 14 years ago |lana-sator.livejournal.com | reply

51 comments

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[+] huhtenberg|14 years ago|reply
> This Girl Snuck Into a Russian Military Rocket Factory

It is neither military nor is it a factory. It is a rocket engine test facility. Interesting stuff nonetheless. Looks like a great source of grunge textures :)

[+] xxqs|14 years ago|reply
this is a testing ground for rocket engines. It's not abandoned, but simply the photos were made at night when nobody is around. They perform engine tests quite regularly there.

the girl is lucky that she didn't get poisoned.

the nasty thing is that it's in the middle of a populated area.

UPD: here's the illustration of an actual engine test http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/2/33213654.df/0_71e83_5dfd0bf...

[+] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
Translation into english: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&...

I was thinking the same thing (vis-a-vis the hoax) like the girl who rode through Chernobyl on her motorcycle which turned out to be a hoax.

Then I thought about places where thieves are stealing cable to the street lights to resell as scrap copper and it makes me wonder if this place would be picked apart like that.

[+] klausa|14 years ago|reply
I think I saw that Chernobyl one, how that turned out to be a hoax?

I was planning driving with friends there one summer, and whole idea of this trip was inspired by those photos.

[+] karolisd|14 years ago|reply
This looks familiar because it looks like a lot of video game levels.
[+] ecaroth|14 years ago|reply
For sure! I just just wondering if I could sneak in there w/ a bunch of my friends and play the world's most intense paintball game!
[+] gojomo|14 years ago|reply
I immediately thought of Half-Life 2.
[+] trobertson|14 years ago|reply
Specifically, STALKER. That's all I could think about when looking at those images. They look nearly identical.
[+] jes5199|14 years ago|reply
I love photos of crazy, giant machinery. It's easy to forget that mankind builds things that are way, way larger than human scale that you just don't see in your comfortable city life.
[+] powertower|14 years ago|reply
Today I learned that Moscow has a giant exhaust pipe sticking out of it that discharges combusted rocket fuel mixture ... which is then combined with water vapor, turned into a giant toxic fume cloud, and spread through-out the city.

I would love to know the reason for its placement there.

[+] njs12345|14 years ago|reply
From the website of the company that runs the facility (http://www.npoenergomash.ru/eng/) it would seem most of the tests are of engines which use a liquid oxygen/kerosene mixture - presumably not much more toxic than exhaust from cars..
[+] CapitalistCartr|14 years ago|reply
TIL == Today I learned? (Edit) I must be older than I thought. I take from the downvoting this is a well-known acronym I should know.
[+] xxqs|14 years ago|reply
it was built outside of the city several decades ago. But later the city has grown
[+] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
I love the images and it's a great story. But I'm cautious because of the "Russian Motorcycling girl sneaks into Chernobyl and takes photos" thing, which was part fake / hoax.
[+] silvertab|14 years ago|reply
I immediately thought of that story too! I still think it was an interesting read even after knowing it was part hoax! Here's the link for those (few?) who haven't read it yet: http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html
[+] nilchameleons|14 years ago|reply
To be fair, this is a lot harder to 'fake' - and even if it's not a missile factory specifically, it's clearly a dilapidated factory of some sort and she got some fantastic photos of it.
[+] sakopov|14 years ago|reply
This is not a hoax. It was on Russian national news network at about the same time when one of their satellites came down.
[+] carlsednaoui|14 years ago|reply
If these pics are real (and not a hoax), this is amazing!

Well, even if it's a hoax, this is amazing!

Im surprised she shows her face though...

[+] nilchameleons|14 years ago|reply
I'd love to see a translation of this. There's a few shots with her in them that seem like they'd be tough to do with a tripod & timer (though to be fair I am no photographer) so I'm curious who, if anyone, she went in there with and what brought them there in the first place.
[+] makhanko|14 years ago|reply
If this were an active military facility there would have been a portrait of Vladimir Putin hanging in every room. But obviously this factory has long been abandoned.
[+] fedd|14 years ago|reply
she states that the russian administrative code lets you visit the site if it is not surrounded by a fence (which had beed partially ruined before by someone).

i am not sure that that will help her against the prosecution, she must have revealed some secrets of a rocket engine factory.

check the wikileaks case, the guy published the information he didn't steal himself, he had the right to do so but it didn't help much.

[+] jcfrei|14 years ago|reply
wow - just a reminder of the vast machinery required to produce rockets with chemical based propellants
[+] myth_drannon|14 years ago|reply
And in this type of collapsing facility they test the engines that never reach the orbit.
[+] Tichy|14 years ago|reply
Alyx, is that you?
[+] ck2|14 years ago|reply
Even if it's abandoned, isn't she going to wind up in the Russian version of gitmo? (Siberia?)
[+] viraptor|14 years ago|reply
Not really. Of course meeting a guard would be a pretty stressful experience, but it's not like Russia is filled with slave camps. Unless you're a vocal activist, you should be ok ;)