Awesome or Off-Putting is a weekly delve into cryptozoology, ufology, aliens, medical marvels, scientific wonders, secret societies, government conspiracies, cults, ghosts, EVPs, ancient artifacts, strange facts, odd sightings or just the plain unexplainable.
Back in the sixties the USSR did a pretty good job of shrouding their space program in secrecy. In fact – as we understand it they even made their cosmonauts mop their way up the flight ramp so the press would just think they were janitors. That’s very subversive.
Really though – they did keep it pretty well hidden. And when a bunch of orbiting, thick accented human beings died in at least 3 separate incidents the world at large didn’t even know about it.
Something seems kind of cool about your body floating through space forever. If you were alive there’d be a lot of panic at first – and hunger. But once you accepted your inevitable death all that endless nothing you’d see out of your windows might seem calming.
You know, some say a cosmonaut who’s feet last touched the ground in the sixties is still floating out there – way out there. This is how the Fortean Times puts it:
“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 (?454?F); 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.”
That’s something, isn’t it? The phrase ‘into interstellar space’ really gets us. It’s hard to think of a human being so very far away from us. It’s also weird to think that he’s not alone up there in the big black. Allegedly.
Well that’s according to a couple of Italian brothers anyway. They made themselves a pretty powerful radio back in the day. They used it to intercept space transmissions from both sides of the Paific – even the secret ones.
This from The Straight Dope:
“Back to the Italian brothers. According to Reader’s Digest, Achille and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia and their team of 15 space enthusiasts heard three signs of distress from Russian rocketeers. On November 28, 1960, a spacecraft supposedly radioed three times, in Morse code and in English, “SOS to the entire world.” A few days later the Russians admitted a failed launch on December 1 but said nothing about anyone on board. This was months before the flight of Yury Gagarin, who supposedly became the first human in orbit on April 12, 1961. In early February 1961 the brothers picked up the sound of a wildly beating heart and labored breathing–a dying cosmonaut? Finally, on May 17, 1961, two men and a woman were overheard saying, in Russian, “Conditions growing worse; why don’t you answer? . . . we are going slower . . . the world will never know about us.””
‘SOS to the entire world’ could certainly be interpreted in many ways. What it probably meant though was ‘we won’t be picky about which country’s flag is painted on the side of a rescue ship.’
But rescue ships never came. Even today nobody would be able to launch in time to save them. That’s why we think if a country wants to have a space program they should be obligated by law to also have a really long pole with a hook at the end of it. If somebody gets stuck up there – we fish them out.
NASA – you should probably put that on your 2011 Op Plan. You too Russian NASA.
Eugene says
I couldn’t help noticing that you didn’t include the rest of the Straight Dope article, where they concluded that the rumours of “Lost Cosmonauts” were baseless.
Back in the day, there were a lot of unknowns about the Russian space program. Group photos of cosmonauts sometimes were later revised to airbrush people out, and the fates of these “missing” cosmonauts used to be unknown in the west. However, Russia has opened up since the mid-eighties, and the fates of all these people is now known — some were killed in training accidents, others were dropped from the program for disciplinary reasons. They were airbrushed out of the official photos to ensure that the cosmonauts never appeared to be less than perfect supermen.
The article in the Fortean Times says “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. ” There are also those that think that the Holocaust was a fraud, or who think that Elvis is working in a Burger King in Kalamazoo, Michigan. That doesn’t necessarily make it true.
CaseyLee says
Elvis IS working at that Burger King! I swear, lol. If you’re going to mention ANYTHING about Michigan, don’t forget about the Dogman “sightings”.
Cookie Monster says
Soo, help me out, here; does that make of off-putting?
As an aside, according to the Muppert Show, many a pig was lost in space. I believe that they were, in-fact, slaughtered, butchered, cooked, and enjoyed with apple sauce. Damn creepy talking pigs…