Baikonur Cosmodrome

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The Soviet missile test range and launch complex built from 1955 in the steppe of what is now southern Kazakhstan, near Tyuratam, and given the name of a town some hundreds of kilometres away as a deliberate misdirection. It was built for the R-7, and its remoteness is functional: an intercontinental missile test needs a very long overland range with impact areas clear of population, and a launch site far from any border. Sputnik 1 left from here in October 1957 and Yuri Gagarin in April 1961, from a pad still in use decades later. Its Cold War meaning is that it was the place where the two purposes of the same technology were indistinguishable — the site was a weapons test range whose products were announced to the world as scientific firsts. After 1991 the complex found itself in an independent Kazakhstan and has been operated by Russia under lease.