The location is very remote, and all of Baikonur remains a closed military zone leased to Russia. So unless the Russians themselves decide to strip it, nobody else can either.

https://goo.gl/maps/k34qZ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikonur_Cosmodrome#Russian_er...

I'd prefer to see them in museums.

Even unfinished spaceplanes are very interesting items.

Probably because scrapping it would've cost a small fortune and what's left over just wouldn't be worth it.

In the UK you only have to leave something on the pavement and scrap metal hunters will come by and take it ... seems like there has to be a net gain to scrapping this much metal - if it were a ship then salvage companies would have had it already.

I'm surprised that they didn't post a guard there with clean up duty to at least keep it all from rusting in to the ground.

Wonder how much it would be to buy and whether you could get enough visitors to the "secret Russian space base" to make it pay.

In many rust belt cities, any building that sits unprotected will be vandalized and stripped of any valuable metals. This is on a Russian military base so it's safe.

Scrap collectors on the street don't charge for their time. It would cost the Russian government more in wages and such to scrap the site than they would ever get back out of it.

That's why you would let some scrap collectors in and basically say to them: What would you pay me for this scrap if you have to haul it away yourself?

I would definitely visit a "secret Russian space base"! Especially if it was inside a mountain! ;)

If you let it get old enough, it will become more valuable as it is than as scrap.

Might be already. Probably not, but maybe.