Yesterday while working on my blog I was all set up for an article on theLost Cosmonauts. It’s a pretty interesting story, and one that makesperfect sense given what a counselor told me at the Huntsville Space Center.*
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The idea is that back when the USand the Soviet Union were bitterly competing to have the very best spaceprogram the USSRhad one important advantage: they controlled their media. This meant that while failures in the US programwould be broadcast all over the country (and the world) the same wasn’t true offailures in the cosmonaut program. Failures could be neatly swept under the rug and ignored while successeswere trumpeted on the propaganda equivalent of the mountaintop.
Well, according to rumor there were a couple of rather disastrous failuresthat never made the news. Failures thatresulted in cosmonauts who never made it home.
We know that the Soviet Union had asometimes callous relationship with their cosmonauts. According to the story I heard in Huntsville the firstdocumented spacewalk almost ended in disaster. It was performed by Alexei Leonov and at first seemed to be a success,after all, he survived the 20 minute EVA, albeit with a couple of airleaks.
But the biggest problem came when he was about to re-enter the spacecraft. As he walked out of the vacuum Leonov’s suitballooned and became rigid, keeping him from moving his joints and preventinghim from getting back in the airlock. Hewas trapped outside while his companion cosmonaut Belyayev was trapped inside,unable to help him.
All he could do was listen to Leonov’s desperate voice, panic obvious overthe transmission.
Now, according to the story that I heard (which I can’t independently verify)USSRmission control assumed that Leonov was not going to be able to get in. Rather than trying to find another solution,they decided to cut their losses and told Belyayev to cut him loose.
But Leonov wasn’t going to give up that easy. Thinking quickly he quickly released the cuffof his glove and refastened it, letting out some of the pressure in his suit-even though he risked depressurization, suffocation, and the bends to do so-and allowing him to re-enter the spacecraft and make it home.
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| The capsule Leonov had to squeeze into |
This is the same mission, remember, that went off target in the Ural mountains- leaving the crew to spend the night inthe deep woods surrounded by the howls of hungry wolves. The same mission that led all of thefollowing Russian missions to carry a little extra object amidst the emergencysupplies: a double-barreled sawed-off shotgun.**
Given how quickly their mission control was willing to give up on Leonov,then, it wouldn’t seem that surprising if ham radio enthusiasts in Italy hadpicked up a strange and disturbing signal from space that showed that the USSRhad abandoned a dying cosmonaut, would it? Or maybe more than one?
The transmissions- as there were several of them- were supposedly picked upby Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia, as well as by their 15fellow friends, a group of people who had a special radio setup that allowed themto hear transmission to space.
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| Either that or they were working really hard trying to steal cable. |
According to the story, on November 28, 1960 they caught the words “SOS to theentire world” radioed in both Morse code and English several times. There was no response back, but the Russiansdid announce a failed launch on December 1st. Then in early 1961 they caught laboredbreathing and a wildly beating heart but nothing more- although it is thoughtthat this might have been one of the Russian test animals.
