Onboard Diary

Lost in Space

Some people believe that somewhere out in the vast darkness of Space, at about 15,000 million kilometres from the Sun, the first human being is about to cross the border of our Solar System to interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at -270ºC. His little capsule's been silently drifting away from Earth at 29,000km/h for the past 45 years. He's the original lost cosmonaut whose spaceship ascended but, instead of descending afterwards, it simply kept following its course.


It's the latest fashion in Cold War legends: that in the origin of the Space era (in the late 50s and during the 60s), the Soviet Union had two Space programs; one of them was public and the other one was 'dark' and, in this one, they carried out much riskier missions, even suicidal. It was assumed that the Russia's dark operations, had they ever existed, would be kept a secret forever.

Lost in Space is an article compiling some of the stories about cosmonauts lost in Space during the first years of the Space Race. The connecting thread is the story of Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, two Italian brothers whose peculiar hobby was to intercept radio transmissions from Soviet spaceship. The brothers claim having been able to record, more than once, the last moments of the Soviet cosmonauts who died during failed missions.

"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?"

Today we know that the brothers were being watched by the KGB. It was probably their big shot to fame (after appearing on the Fiera di Sogni contest, where they won the opportunity of visiting the NASA) what saved their lives. Nearly half a century afterwards, in a completely different context, a KGB agent in charge of the brothers agrees to being interviewed anonymously.

"They had to be dealt with - an accident perhaps - but then that TV programme happened and they were famous. That saved their lives. I was glad; they were good kids."

Also horrifying are the statements by Mikhail Rudenko (a retired aerospace engineer), in which he talks about the suicidal missions undertaken by three cosmonauts between 1957 and 1959, who were simply launched to Space without anything which might enable them to get back into the atmosphere.
 Most of the statements about the obscure beginnings of the Space Race are not backed by any source. However, it's notorious the ability with which the Soviet Uniot has hidden the existence of certain facts or people. They've simply been erased from History. Although it may remind you of the ineffable Ivan Istochnikov case, the story of cosmonaut Grigoriy Nelyubov -a founding member of th Sochi Six who was 'erased'- is the perfect example.



Engineer and journalist Jim Osberg -famous for his sceptical view on conspiracy theories- has written two interesting articles in which he presents the reasons why he doesn't believe the Judica-Cordiglia story, based on the lack of evidence and some illogical facts. You can read them here and here  (PDF, 116KB y 48KB).