Secret (most likely) failed Russian space flights

There is an article in the most current issue of "Air and Space" magazine about some italians who built a rudimentary tracking station that recorded transmissions from secret soviet capsules in space. Some of the recordings include a russian women saying "Listen!Listen!, Come in . . . come in . . . come in . . . talk to me . . . talke to me . . . I am hot! . . . I am hot! . . . I can see a flame . . ." There are more, but i was just wondering anyone views on secret soviet missions in space.

Would love to hear about more of these. Please post some links and quotes. Thanks.

Sorry I couldn't find a link to the article on the Air & Space website. Another transmission intercepted by the italians was in morse code saying, "SOS to the entire world" then later one saying, "Conditions growing worse why dont you answer?" This was in November 1960, months befor Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Does anyone else know anymore on this subject?

Foudn this by googling "SOS to the entire world"

www.astrosurf.org...

is this what you're talking about?


Wow, just read it. Very very interesting

[edit on 1-8-2005 by Burgess]

Thanks alot, thats article has alot more detail than the current one i was looking at, though some things dont match up, i suppose thats to be expected over 40 odd years. You would think more people would know about these transmissions from doomed cosmonauts. It sounds like the soviets had alot going on in space that the world may never know about . . .

hmmm.. hear about this a lot too..
But the strange part is that the americans themselves denied the plausilibity of such calls ever occuring..
Saw this aon a discovery program called "red space" I think..

But note that 3 russian cosmonauts suffocated to death on re-entry after a vist to the salyut space station..
That's a confirmed event..

Originally posted by hak3r_13
"SOS to the entire world"

Alexis Graciov - Died November 28, 1960

Cryptic Morse code English message 'SOS to the entire world' from a stationary point in the sky. They concluded this was from a cosmonaut who had inadvertently rocketed into a translunar trajectory.

Some Others..

Oct.11, 1960: Col. Piotr Ivanovitch, a cosmonaut, is monitored for 30-minutes.

Nov. 28, 1960: An unknown cosmonaut was heard sending frantic voice SOS signals.

Feb. 2, 1961: An unknown cosmonaut's breathing and heart signals were monitored for almost 30-minutes.

Apr. 7, 1961: Signals from cosmonaut Vassilievitch Dowodovsky stopped shortly after liftoff. Five days later, on Apr 12, cosmonaut Maj. Yuri Gargarin orbited Earth and was officially acknowledged as the first human in space.

May. 17, 1961: Two persons in a capsule, one possibly female, monitored for 2-minutes.

Oct .14, 1961: Two persons, one a female, were monitored for 7-hours, apparently on the way to the Moon.

May 1960: An unknown cosmonaut is stranded in space.

Sept. 1960: A cosmonaut, possibly named Pyotr Dolgov, is blown up on the launchpad.

Feb. 4, 1961: Heartbeats were monitored for a time from a Soviet satellite. (Similar to the Feb. 2, 1961 Launchspace entry.)

April 1961: Vladimir Ilyushin circled the earth three times but was badly injured on his return.

Mid-May 1961: Two cosmonauts heard issuing faint calls for help.

Oct. 14, 1961: A solar flare causes a multi-man Soviet spacecraft to go off course and never return.

Nov. 1962: Signals from a doomed mission detected. The victim may be a cosmonaut named Belokonev.

Nov. 19, 1963: Attempts to launch the second woman into space fails.

April 1964: Two men and a woman in desperate conversation: 'Conditions growing worse ; why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . '

From Outer Space

Midnight, 19 May 1961. A crisp frost had descended on Turin’s city centre which was deserted and deathly silent. Well, almost. Two brothers, aged 20 and 23, raced through the grid-like streets (that would later be made famous by the film The Italian Job) in a tiny Fiat 600, which screamed in protest as they bounced across one cobbled piazza after another at top speed.

The Fiat was loaded with dozens of iron pipes and aluminium sheets which poked out of windows and were strapped to the roof. The car screeched to a halt outside the city’s tallest block of flats. Grabbing their assorted pipes, along with a large toolbox, the two brothers ran up the stairs to the rooftop. Moments later, the city’s silence was rudely broken once more as they set to work: a concerto of hammering, clattering, sawing and shouting.

Suddenly, an angry voice rang out; the man who lived on the floor below leant out of the window and screamed: “Will you stop that racket, I’m trying to sleep!”

One of the young men shouted back “Sorry sir; the Soviets have launched a satellite and we’re trying to intercept it!”

The brothers finished setting up, grabbed their head-sets, twiddled the knobs on their portable receivers, hit the record button and listened…

“Come in… come in… come in… Listen! Come in! Talk to me! I am hot! I am hot! Come in! What? Forty-five? What? Fifty? Yes. Yes, yes, breathing. Oxygen, oxygen… I am hot. This… isn’t this dangerous?” The brothers looked nervously at one another. They only fully understood the Russian later when their sister translated for them, but the desperation in the woman’s voice was clear.

“Transmission begins now. Forty-one. Yes, I feel hot. I feel hot, it’s all… it’s all hot. I can see a flame! I can see a flame! I can see a flame! Thirty-two… thirty-two. Am I going to crash? Yes, yes I feel hot… I am listening, I feel hot, I will re-enter. I’m hot!”

The signal went dead.

There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going.

Alexis Graciov - Died November 28, 1960

Then, on 28 November 1960, the Bochum space observatory in West Germany said it had intercepted radio signals which it thought might have been a satellite. No official announcement had been made of any launch. “Our reaction was to immediately switch on the receivers and listen,” said Achille. After almost an hour of tuning in to static, the boys were about to give up when suddenly a tapping sound emerged from the hiss and crackle.

“It was a signal we recognised immediately as Morse code – SOS,” said Gian. But something about this signal was strange. It was moving slowly, as if the craft was not orbiting but was at a single point and slowly moving away from the Earth. The SOS faded into distant space.

Lost In Space..

Some really interesting stuff!!

[edit on 30-3-2009 by crisko]

[edit on 30-3-2009 by crisko]

Here is a link with audio files of the first man in space. This person died during the mission and was covered up by the USSR.

It requires real player - the audio is of his heart beat and his breathing.

Eerie stuff!

Wikipedia has a interresting page about Soviet Space conspiracy allegation. Some of them have been proved hoaxes, some of them have not.

The Lost Cosmonauts, or Phantom Cosmonauts, are cosmonauts who allegedly entered outer space, but whose existence has never been acknowledged by either the Soviet or Russian space authorities.

Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory concede that Yuri Gagarin was the first man to survive space travel, but claim that the Soviet Union attempted to launch two or more manned space flights prior to Gagarin's, and that at least two cosmonauts died in the attempts. Another cosmonaut, Vladimir Ilyushin, is believed to have landed off-course and was held by the Chinese government. The Soviet government supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the Cold War.

The evidence cited to support Lost Cosmonaut theories is generally not regarded as conclusive, and several cases have been confirmed as hoaxes. In the 1980s, American journalist James Oberg researched space-related disasters in the Soviet Union, but found no evidence of these Lost Cosmonauts.[1] However, since the early 1990s collapse of the Soviet Union, much previously restricted information is now available. Even with access to published Soviet archival material and memoirs of Russian space pioneers, no hard evidence has emerged to support the Lost Cosmonaut stories. Some argue[who?] that records are still being kept confidential, or were destroyed altogether.

en.wikipedia.org...

Russia was very active nine years before the US Moon launch.
Good thing the US made many orbital and sub orbital flights.
Russia did explore the Moon very well by remote control.
And Russia had perhaps many sub orbital and orbital flights.

If US astronauts heard that Russian history perhaps they would say:
"Don't put me in space Bro."

That from a taser incident made the taser look tame where as the victims
would most likely fall from a standing position and break their head.

Would all these Russian disasters cause second thoughts in the US
about any moon launch?

reply to post by TeslaandLyne


I don't think the Russian mishaps would have prevented the US from going into space.

I am beginning to wonder if the November 28, 1960 incident is a hoax, I mean it takes a lot of energy to enter orbit, even more to leave Earth's pull. Does anyone have any information on the rocket used during this alleged launch? Would it have had the horsepower needed to do such a thing?

I have read James Oberg's book, it's titled Red Orbit I believe. But bear in mind it was written 28 years ago, and the Iron Curtain was still alive and well. I am sure much more information has come to light since then!

Good thread!




[edit on 30-3-2009 by crisko]

It wouldn't surprise me that the Russians were so haphazard and desperate to place men into space before America, and perhaps even on the moon.

Sputnik effectively scared the pants off the Truman Administration in Washington as it was thought the Russians were merely months away from fully-fledged ICBM's and various delivery systems for Atomic warheads, not to mention lightyears ahead of the US in communications satellites.

It can naturally be assumed they wanted to capitalize on their space-race successes as much as possible, to show America even though they had pioneered the Atomic Bomb, the Soviets were pioneering rocketry and advanced delivery systems necessary to properly field Atomic bombs.

When you consider this, in addition to how brutal Stalinist Russia was and the lengths they would go in the name of national security and propaganda value, it doesn't surprise in the least that they were firing off live, human test subjects without any remorse into space before 1961, with little or no planning put into how they would return.

My conclusion is they were simply testing human reactions to space and weightlessness and whether survival was fully feasible. Before they actually worked on re-entry systems and planning a full fledged orbital mission.

Btw, those voice recordings are very chilling indeed.

One has to assume given the surprise and shock of the Cosmonauts transmissions once they realise they're essentially doomed in Space, that they were never properly informed of the severe risk of their missions or the very likelihood they would perish in space or upon re-entry.

They were probably falsely led to believe that everything was fine and they would indeed land back on Earth again.

reply to post by crisko

I am beginning to wonder if the November 28, 1960 incident is a hoax, I mean it takes a lot of energy to enter orbit, even more to leave Earth's pull.

Escaping Earth's gravity was not the problem, the Nazis accomplished that back in WW2 with the numerous V2 launches.

Escaping the exosphere and Van Allen Belt (true outer space), not to mention Earth's intense magnetic fields is an entirely different story however. (And one of the primary criticisms of the Apollo Moon Landings)

According the the links you posted, the Cosmonaut, V. Zavadovsky, was in some kind of prototype of the Vostok manned capsule (later used by Gagarin) and attempted to fire retrorockets to slow his acceleration but these somehow "malfunctioned" and fire in the opposite direction, in fact accelerating him out of the Earth's atmosphere.

For an example of the total thrust capacity of these rockets, the US Mecury Capsule (counterpart to the Vostok) had 3, solid fuel, 1000 lbf (4.5 kN) retrorockets.

Presumably, Zavadovsky was at the end of his ascent and had burned out the primary and secondary boosters, so by that time he was probably somewhere in the early thermosphere (85-100km).

The Earth's atmosphere here is maybe 1/1000th that of sea level and the air density is minute, meaning it requires exceptionally more velocity to resist being pulled back into an orbit around the Earth, far more than taking off does (17,000mph), somewhere in the area of 25,000mph.

If you do the math, I think it stands to reason, no retrorockets (unless truly massive) would possess enough thrust to fire a space capsule from low-earth orbit into true outer space.

[edit on 31/3/09 by The Godfather of Conspira]

Originally posted by crisko

Cryptic Morse code English message 'SOS to the entire world' from a stationary point in the sky. They concluded this was from a cosmonaut who had inadvertently rocketed into a translunar trajectory.

You don't "inadvertently" rocket to a translunar trajectory. It takes a huge amount of fuel to launch a manned craft to a translunar trajectory from either a Saturn V or an N1, but the latter never had a successful launch and neither existed before Yuri's first flight. Translunar trajectories do not appear to be stationary in the sky either, so this is a poorly constructed hoaxall the way around.

There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at –270 degrees C (–454ºF); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going.

Alexis Graciov - Died November 28, 1960

No rocket ever built has enough power to launch a manned capsule into an interstellar trajectory. And space is a great insulator, not a refrigerator. Even at 9 billion miles, you will not be at absolute zero - you're still being heated slightly by the sun and starlight.

reply to post by ngchunter


Actually, it is semi-possible, but only under some very specific circumstances and extreme amount of luck. Also not directly... if you were to send a capsule to it's maximum potential altitude, then miss-fired the retro's you could send it into an erratic LEO orbit. It could then over time POSSIBLY fall from LEO out into space by gaining speed via micro gravity sling-shots.

This is all assuming it doesn't slow down and fall off into the gravitational pull.

This has been documented on a few sat's and discarded boosters from many missions...so it IS possible, just not in the time-frame applied to this story.

Originally posted by Foxe
reply to post by ngchunter

 

Actually, it is semi-possible, but only under some very specific circumstances and extreme amount of luck. Also not directly... if you were to send a capsule to it's maximum potential altitude, then miss-fired the retro's you could send it into an erratic LEO orbit. It could then over time POSSIBLY fall from LEO out into space by gaining speed via micro gravity sling-shots.

Ummm, you can't slingshot out of LEO using the earth, or out of any body using the body that you're already orbiting. You need a secondary large body with sufficient gravity orbiting the dominant body of your orbit, and moving in orbit in a direction that you want to add to your velocity vector. In short, you'd already have to have enough energy in you orbit to reach the moon to even have the smallest chance of getting an accidental slingshot.
www.go.ednet.ns.ca...
(Replace the word sun with earth and the word planet with moon to see a diagram of what I'm saying)

[edit on 1-4-2009 by ngchunter]

Normally like your posts but i can't say much good over the few in this thread...

Originally posted by The Godfather of Conspira
It wouldn't surprise me that the Russians were so haphazard and desperate to place men into space before America, and perhaps even on the moon.

They weren't; in fact it was the US effort that was even more disorganized and hopelessly haphazard that resulted in the USSR managing the ininitial firsts. You do remember Laika don't you?

Sputnik effectively scared the pants off the Truman Administration in Washington as it was thought the Russians were merely months away from fully-fledged ICBM's and various delivery systems for Atomic warheads, not to mention lightyears ahead of the US in communications satellites.

Imperialist are always running it circles worrying that their empite might somehow come crashing down around their ears so i don't doubt that they were panicked by this even thought they had vastly beter and more means to rain destruction on the USSR.

It can naturally be assumed they wanted to capitalize on their space-race successes as much as possible, to show America even though they had pioneered the Atomic Bomb, the Soviets were pioneering rocketry and advanced delivery systems necessary to properly field Atomic bombs.

Wouldn't go that far given who had ICBM's first and in which volumes.....

When you consider this, in addition to how brutal Stalinist Russia was and the lengths they would go in the name of national security and propaganda value, it doesn't surprise in the least that they were firing off live, human test subjects without any remorse into space before 1961, with little or no planning put into how they would return.

But they very probably weren't and investigation hasn't really revealed much anything to the contrary. Considering what happened to Russian space administrators and engineers who 'failed' ( so relatively publicly) i don't think there was far greater pressure to 'just do it', at least no more so than the Us program which had it's share of initial casualties. I think this sentiment typifies how we think about the 'evil empire' more so than it does much to prove how events in fact took place.

My conclusion is they were simply testing human reactions to space and weightlessness and whether survival was fully feasible. Before they actually worked on re-entry systems and planning a full fledged orbital mission.

That's what Laika and other animal tests subjects were for. The Russians are people too you know?



Either way here is some good reading material related to this issue:

www.astronautix.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

www.jamesoberg.com...

I am open to the suggestion that many more men from either side died in space but then mostly in the context of a fight for the moon in the 70's; and that isn't just to 'prove' that i like conspiracies.

Stellar

These stories never die, they keep re-arising:

FALLEN IDOL: THE YURI GAGARIN CONSPIRACY

www.indicanpictures.com...


But then, as a lifelong space fable debunker, what would i do without a target-rich environment of bunk?

reply to post by JimOberg


50th anniversary of Gagarin flight in a few weeks -- any interest in these old stories?