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Did the Russians not report lost cosmonauts in early space race?
Mark Lee Rollins for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
With yesterday’s “rogue” Russian spacecraft falling back to Earth, it jogged our memory to some other Russian space mishaps–namely one that is still a mystery: The supposed loss of Russian cosmonauts during the early space race (aka the height of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR).
Let’s explain:
The Judica-Cordiglia brothers were fans of the early space programs, and in the late 1950s, set up a highly sophisticated telemetry station near Turin, Italy. Called “Torre Bert,” these guys set up a listening station equipped with audio and video recording equipment, on an absolute shoestring budget. They were, however, able to listen to and track Soviet and US space launches, and allegedly record broadcasts from the occupants.
They have made claims and have recordings purported to be, among others:
November 28, 1950: Morse Code “SOS” broadcast from spacecraft
February 2, 1961: Heartbeat of dying astronaut
May 17, 1961: Multiple (!) cosmonauts (male and female [!!]) in a capsule on fire
At the time, the Soviet Union denied any losses of Cosmonauts, but that in and of itself doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Long before Glasnost, the USSR played their cards closely. No one heard the details of the 1957 Kyshtym nuclear disaster – in a city not even on Soviet maps – until 1976. The Nedelin catastrophe from 1960 wasn’t officially acknowledged until 1989; and decades later we learned of the radioactive apartment building. And let’s not forget the über-secret weapon from the mid-’60s, the ekranoplan; trust me, I’ve tried.
So it certainly is plausible these incidents occurred. However, there are reportedly several holes in the Judica-Cordiglia brothers’ stories, large enough to launch a Soviet-built N1 rocket through.
The first is no other tracking station heard these things. And these were “real” tracking stations, with millions invested in telemetry gear. The second is that heartbeat data was broadcast by the USSR, at the time, a different way than voice data, so it would’ve been impossible for a heartbeat to have been heard or recorded. The third is that critical analysis of antenna systems and equipment indicate it was probably impossible for them to hear or see most of the things they claimed, such as pictures from the Luna-4 moonshot. And lastly, many recordings available on the web are so garbled as to be incomprehensible, even to someone who speaks Russian.
So did a cosmonaut or cosmonauts perish in the early days of the Soviet space race? Most likely not, though we may never know for sure. After all, it took until 1980 for the world to learn about Valentin Bondarenko, a cosmonaut who died in training exercises in 1960.
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Source: http://www.redorbit.com/news/space/1113387524/did-the-russians-not-report-lost-cosmonauts-in-early-space-race-050815/
