Secrets of the Space Race

Good thread, OP.

My two-penn'orth on the "space fatalities" stories is that they were disinformation. Like as not, put about by the CIA to discredit the USSR. The Soviet Union is dead and gone, but no details of these supposed cover-ups has ever emerged. Not only that, no bereaved relatives have come forward, bewailing the fact that they were silenced by the KGB for decades.

The Guinness Book of Records used to contain a little section on pre-Gagarin claims from the USSR. The GBR was run by a famously crypto-fascist RWNJ called Norris McWhirter, and it always smacked of propaganda. After the end of the Cold War, the GBR stopped perpetuating the cosmonaut death list, which gave the whole game away in many people's eyes.

Even the way the various claims were first published fits with what we know about the CIA's disinfo tactics - float the stories in the European press first, then import them into the US domestic press with the claim that the stories originated elsewhere. (That little episode in which the French broadcaster admitted he'd been put up to it by a source he wouldn't name is probably about as close as we'll get to proving it for the foreseeable future).

I was thinking what'd be an ideal mission for the X-37B/C and realized a full out swap of adversary intel satellites would be crafty. Just put an emulator sat in it's place and bring the original one home.

After learning of the CIA wishing to use the Space Shuttle to capture the defunct Salyut-6 intact now I believe my mission plan sounds do-able.

Way above my pay grade though.

Was the second part of my story covered here? I'll have to add a reference unless someone knows more about it.