[quote]During the late 1950's and early 1960's, the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union was hot. Both sides built and tested rockets as quickly as they could, trying to be the first to launch an artificial satellite into orbit, often with explosive results. Both sides had their successes, and both sides had their failures. People around the world watched and listened. Some, most notably amateur radio operators, listened more closely than others. And of these, a pair of young brothers from Italy, Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, reigned supreme. Their library of audio recordings of nearly every flight from the space race is by far the most comprehensive private collection known. But the real reason it's notable is that includes a number of recordings of alleged events that didn't make it into the history books: doomed Soviet cosmonauts captured in their final moments of life, on flights that the Soviets said never happened.
During the cold war, the Soviet Union was a knot of state secrets. More than anything else, the cold war was a war of propaganda, each side trying to show the world that they were the smartest, the fastest, the highest, and the best. In this context, it's not surprising at all that the true progress of their space program would be closely guarded and only the best news released to the world. With their state-controlled media, the Soviets had the ability to accomplish coverups of failures to a degree that would never have been possible in the United States.
Achille and Giovanni were creative and scientific geniuses in the truest sense, both in their twenties. When the Soviets announced the successful launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 and published the radio frequency for everyone to hear, the brothers scavenged what radio equipment they could and tuned it in.
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From that one recording, their self-taught education proceeded like a rocket. They learned how to detect the Doppler effect in signals from orbit, and how to calculate an object's speed and altitude from that. They filled logbooks with conversion tables and Soviet frequencies. And so, when the Soviets launched Sputnik 2 only a month after Sputnik 1, they were well prepared. And this time, the brothers discovered something new: a heartbeat:
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It was the heartbeat of Laika, a small dog. Sadly for Laika, Sputnik 2 was a one-way trip; there was no provision for re-entry or recovery. Three months later, the United States launched its first satellite, Explorer I, and like the Soviets, published the frequency of the signal. Achille and Giovanni captured it, and then their lives as local media celebrities began. They were the darlings of the local papers and radio stations. They took over a nearby concrete bunker left over from World War II, made improvements to their equipment, and built larger antennas. They called their little radio observatory Torre Bert, and anytime anything launched into space from anywhere, Torre Bert was filled with friends, reporters, local scientists, and anyone who wanted a good time.
The Torre Bert experiment took a more serious turn on November 28, 1960. A West German observatory announced that it was receiving a strange signal on a Soviet space frequency. The brothers tuned in, and heard hand-keyed Morse code repeating the international distress signal, S-O-S, over and over again. Their Doppler calculations showed almost no relative speed, which they interpreted to mean that the distressed spacecraft was on a course directly away from the Earth. The signal grew weaker and was never heard from again. Apparently, the brothers had just recorded evidence that a manned Soviet spacecraft somehow got off course and left Earth's orbit, permanently.
About two months later in February 1961, variously reported as the 2nd or the 4th of the month, they picked up another transmission from space, which experts interpreted at the time as the dying breaths of an unconscious man:
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And another signal from the same flight, interpreted by the brothers' father, a cardiologist, as a failing human heartbeat.
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The brothers' story and recordings were played throughout Italy. Two days after this publicity, the Soviets announced the failed re-entry of a large unmanned craft.
In April of 1961, a journalist at the International Press Agency in Moscow tipped off the brothers that something big was about to happen. They turned on their equipment, and the next day, listened in on Yuri Gargarin's voice during the first manned space flight.
But, the most dramatic of the brothers' recordings came about five weeks later in May of 1961, the date variously reported as the 17th, 19th, or 23rd. A woman's voice transmission, translated as "Isn't this dangerous? Talk to me! Our transmission begins now. I feel hot. I can see a flame. Am I going to crash? Yes. I feel hot, I will re-enter...":
[GO TO WEBSITE FOR SOUND FILE]
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tl;dr: The Soviet Unions' lost Cosmonauts...just listen to the sound files.
I was stunned when I heard the recordings. This is a great read overall, although I do believe some of you have heard this story. Rate me late if you have. You need a quicktime plug-in to listen to the files. This may not be the "high quality thread" that everyone is expecting, but i'm sure a few of you will enjoy it.
***Here is the website where all the soundfiles are kept.***
[url]http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4115[/url]
Lost IN SPACE.
Creepy, for some reason reminds me of the movie Red Planet.
Very sad story. Read the entire site here: [url]http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/default.htm[/url]
You will not regret it. I feel so bad for that woman.
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