About the title
The world's largest spaceport, Baikonur Cosmodrome, was built within a timeframe that still seems fantastical today. The first team of builders arrived in the Kazakh desert in the winter of 1955, and by May 1957 a ballistic missile was already standing on the launch pad. Honored builder Viktor Zhdanov tells of the price paid for this success, and of how the first trainloads of workers arrived here, in the barren desert. He remembers it all: the unbearable heat, the sandstorms, and how they had to clear dozens of square kilometers of rodents that carried bubonic plague. For its time, Baikonur became an unattainable masterpiece of engineering and construction. And viewers will be able to see this for themselves. For the first time, the filmmakers have captured a detailed panorama of the cosmodrome, whose sheer scale takes your breath away — spread out before us is a veritable city with dozens of launch pads, factories, airfields, its own railway, and other infrastructure.