Until a couple of years ago, taking a shower or making an international phone call was unthinkable. Now those luxuries, plus satellite TV and a swimming pool, are here, thanks to the opening early this year of the first 120-room Western-style hotel in this city of 73,000. Starsem built it from scratch to host its international customers.

New, small airlines fly three times a week between here and Moscow, bringing a growing number of foreign engineers and potential investors who can use the brand new cellular phone network or connect to the internet.

It's quite a change from the Soviet era, when Baikonur, 1,560 miles southeast of Moscow, was one of the USSR's most secret military sites. Until recently, it was a closed city. A dusty and depressing town without private transportation, formerly known as Leninsk, it has been regulated simultaneously for the past few years by Russian and Kazakh authorities. Thousands of Russian technicians, whose monthly salaries run from $150 to $300, are transported every day to the cosmodrome by train.

The new foreign influences are clearly visible. "In less than a year, we saw a tremendous boost in living conditions here. The city is safer than any Western city. Little restaurants are opening up. Even popular discos like the Luna are full of young and nice people," says Jean-Claude Garreau, Starsem's operations manager in Baikonur.

In the post-Soviet economy, lack of money to fund space exploration programs in Russia had turned the largest cosmodrome in the world into a shambles. By the early '90s, space facilities were falling apart. Infectious diseases like hepatitis were epidemic. In 1994, riots among military personnel assigned to manage the rundown facility ended in the violent deaths of some soldiers.

Baikonur's population, which peaked at more than 100,000 in the 1980s, fell to a record low in the mid-90s -- a loss of 40% of its inhabitants. After declaring independence, Kazakhstan entered tense negotiations with Russia over the status of this Russian enclave in its territory. An agreement was signed in 1994 based on a yearly lease of $115 million that Moscow, credited against the Kazakh debt.

"Don't get confused by the desolation of some space facilities you see at the cosmodrome," notes Patrick Bonguet, vice president for Starsem operations. "When Russians don't use a facility because space activities have greatly decreased or changed since the Soviet era, they let it fall apart. But at the same time, they keep their operational facilities, like the Soyuz, in remarkable state."

Today, Starsem and ILS have been investing separately in new installations. The Paris-based Starsem, which has conducted five commercial launches so far this year (each one costs clients about $35-$40 million), tossed in $35 million to build state-of-the-art clean rooms to process Western satellites, fund upgrades of the Soyuz launch pads, and to open the new hotel. ILS, which also recently built a its own new clean room here, has already launched six Proton rockets, although it has announced that future launches are suspended pending the investigation into this week's launch failure.

The business created by Starsem, ILS and the coming launch of ISS is enriching the entire Baikonur community. "We see Indian and Pakistani businessmen coming to invest here," says Mayor Dmitrienko. "It's great. In the future we'd like even to promote Western industrial tourism."