But for some that is all part of the mystique.

Dotted with camels and the paraphernalia of half a century of space travel, the Baikonur cosmodrome on the arid plains of Kazakhstan has already been used to launch space tourists to the International Space Station (ISS) for as much as 30 million dollars (21 million euros) per person.

Now this once top secret installation is expecting its own tourist boom.

Ahead of a rocket launch on Wednesday, a group of visiting Britons, all male and laden with camera gear, appreciated the sight of soldiers with automatic weapons, full combat gear and visors guarding the astronauts' send-off.

It added to the atmosphere, they said.

"We actually like that," said one middle-aged tourist from the English town of Hyde, referring to the soldiers.

The next day they were more than content with the enormous bang they got for their buck when a fire-spewing rocket carrying astronauts from Malaysia, Russia and the United States streaked into the sky.

At 1,500 dollars per person for a four-day stay and with discounts for groups, Baikonur seems reasonably priced, but has yet to gain mass appeal.

About 100 foreign tourists currently visit annually, according to tour organiser Turservis.

It is also a far cry from attractions like the US launch pad at Cape Canaveral, as may become clear flying in from Moscow.

On one recent flight, the backs of several vacant seats, many scrawled with graffiti, flipped forward upon landing, a feature of Russian planes built with a dual military use, including wartime evacuations.

Once in Baikonur, where the temperature can plunge to minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in winter and reach plus 45 Celsius in summer, tourists may find their hotel is less than space age, featuring refurbished rooms but telephones that do not work and temperamental heating and wiring.

Potential hazards of this dusty town include taxis without seatbelts and pot-holed, unlit streets.

Among the attractions, tourists can visit a life-size mock up of the Buran spacecraft, a version of the US space shuttle that was abandoned as it proved uneconomical.

Tourists can also visit the cottage once occupied by Sergei Korolyov, the man behind the first ever satellite and the launch of the first man in space, Yury Gagarin.

Korolyov's features beam down from murals around the town.

Then there are the nuts and bolts of the launch. Russian space agency Roskosmos provides a close-up view of the final rocket assembly and visitors can attend the ritual rolling out of the rocket at dawn -- this week notable for a fox that darted among the wheels of the locomotive pulling the rocket.

As the United States phases out its shuttle programme, Baikonur is due to become the main launch pad for reaching the ISS and the number of launches is to rise.

The Kazakh authorities, who rent Baikonur to Russia, are keen to take advantage and work is planned on new tourism infrastructure.

President Nursultan Nazarbayev's representative in Baikonur, Adilbek Basekeyev, says it is just a matter of building on his country's traditions of hospitality.

"I always tell people that in 1955 when the Soviet people came here the first people to greet them were Kazakhs. It was winter, January 12, and they offered them warmth, bread and tea. It was my relatives, my grand parents," he told AFP.

But it may prove more difficult to entice tourists to the other end of the process, when the Soyuz capsule brings its passengers literally slamming back down to Earth on the Kazakh steppe beyond Baikonur.

A seasoned press photographer who has covered those landings describes accommodation at Arkalyk, the nearest town, as primitive.

"It makes this place look five star," he observed dryly.

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