Inside Russia's Sacred Baikonur Cosmodrome, One of the World's Most Popular Spaceports

I knew I could only be in Kazakhstan when I saw the priests. Two of them—half-bears, half-men—walked up to the Soyuz on its pad at the fabled Baikonur Cosmodrome, their robes blowing in the desert wind. Then they sang at the rocket and bowed at the rocket and finally threw holy water at the rocket, and then they came over to us, the assembled reporters, and they threw holy water at us, too, because we probably looked like we could use it. I'm not a religious man, but I accepted my soaking under a boundless blue sky and thought what I suspect most of the people on the pad were thinking: Can't hurt.

The entire Russian space program seems built on the guiding principle of can't hurt. I was there for Esquire to report "Away," a story about the future, about Scott Kelly, the first American who will spend a year in space, one more stepping-stone on our long journey to Mars. But in Kazakhstan, it felt more as though I were visiting the past, returning to a time when romance and witchcraft hadn't yet made way for science. Over nearly 50 years of manned flight—every last one of those launches, from Yuri Gagarin on, having sprung from the same slab of cracked concrete—the Russians have acquired layers and layers of ritual, all of it either silly or sacred depending on how magical your thinking.

The Soyuz is always drawn out of its massive assembly building at exactly 7 o'clock in the morning, pulled along by a locomotive with one of its headlights mysteriously put out. The cosmonauts spend one of their last nights on Earth at their hotel in town and watch a pretty bad movie, White Sun of the Desert, and they always walk out to the bus that will take them to the pad to the same song, by a band called Earthlings. Later, they all climb out of that bus and piss on one of its tires because Gagarin allegedly did so; female cosmonauts and astronauts pour out a pre-filled cup.

And then, with a far better success record than the Americans could ever claim, they strap into their rocket, ancient and blessed, and launch into space.

I made the pilgrimage to Florida to watch three shuttle launches. I saw only one actually happen, because of faulty heaters and rain. (The one successful launch I did see was moving and spectacular. When something that big departs the earth, you can feel its leaving noises in your guts.) On NASA's charter flight from Moscow to Baikonur, I worried aloud that we'd booked our return the day after the Soyuz's scheduled launch. What if it was delayed? Rob Navias, the voice of the agency, smiled and shook his head at me. He had attended nearly 70 Soyuz launches. Every last one had taken off when scheduled. The Soyuz is never scrubbed, and it is never late. Even blizzards don't stop it.

Is that because bearded men douse it with holy water? Of course not. If that locomotive's second headlight were lit, it wouldn't have any effect on anything that happened after, the way a ballplayer eating chicken before a game won't change its outcome. The Soyuz works because it's a simple and reliable machine, well tested and beautifully designed. It's because the Russians are expert at building it and they resist changing anything about it that doesn't need changing. It's because humans are capable of care and wisdom and competence and resilience. It's because lighting a fire under a missile usually means that missile will end up going somewhere.

And yet since Baikonur, since my time spent in that colony of ghosts, I've caught myself wondering about the value of reverence, the worth of superstition.

For us that's a derisive word, but doesn't it just mean doing things the way we did them when our dreams came true before? That is almost purely rational. We should learn from our past, stand on the shoulders of those who came before us. That's how success breeds success. The great lure and challenge of Mars is that we haven't done anything like it before. Right now, it's beyond us, which means we have to be especially mathematical and mindful about it. We have to go a day, a month, a year into space, until we cover the miles by the millions. Our most complicated machines run almost entirely on experience.

While we're at it, though, maybe throwing a little holy water into the mix can't hurt.

READ THE REST OF "AWAY"—THE INCREDIBLE NEW STORY BY CHRIS JONES—RIGHT HERE.

Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

A sign marks the entrance to the town of Baikonur, Kazakhstan.

A Russian Orthodox priest blesses the Soyuz TMA1-14M spacecraft at the launch pad of the Cosmodrome on September 24, 2014.

Russia's Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft blasts off from Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome on May 29, 2014.

Security monitors the Soyuz TMA-11M rocket at the Cosmodrome on November 5, 2013.

The Soyuz TMA-11M rocket is rolled out to the launch pad by train at the Cosmodrome on November 5, 2013.

People take photographs as Russia's Soyuz TMA-11M spacecraft carrying an an unlit Olympic torch for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi aboard blasts off from the Baikonur cosmodrome on November 7, 2013.

Specialists prepare a Soyuz TMA-20 rocket at a rocket assembly line at the Russian-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome on December 12, 2010.

The Soyuz TMA-01M rocket being rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on October 5, 2010.

A missile launching pad destroyed by an explosion in 1989 during a military test at Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Cosmodrome before launch of the 'Energia' launch vehicle with the Buran spacecraft, October 22, 1988.

Soyuz 28 on the launch pad at the Cosmodrome, 1978.

Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin and rocket engineer Sergey Korolyov at the Cosmodrome, 1961.

Picture from the Soviet daily Pravda dated 13 November 1957 of the dog Laika, the first living creature ever sent in space, onboard Sputnik II.

Picture dated 04 October 1957 shows the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik I, launched by the Soviet Union from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.