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One Small Step?: The Great Moon Hoax and the Race to Dominate Earth from Space
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Commencer à lireLongueur: 505 pages8 heures
- Éditeur:
- Clairview Books
- Sortie:
- Dec 17, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781905570591
- Format:
- Livre
Description
Is it possible that the famous American moon landings were nothing but an illusion - a fabrication? Could NASA have fooled the world by broadcasting simulations that had been filmed for training purposes?
From the very first manned flight into orbit right up to the present day there have been serious anomalies in the official narrative of the conquest of space. Bestselling author Gerhard Wisnewski dissects the history in minute detail - from the first Russian missions to the final American moon project of Apollo 17 - looking at films, photos, radio communications, personal statements and any other available material. Using forensic methods of investigation, he pieces together a complex jigsaw depicting a disturbing picture of falsifications, lies and fakery in the Cold War struggle for supremacy between the Soviet Union and the USA. The evidence he presents casts serious doubt on the possibility of humans ever having walked on the moon.
Wisnewski’s research calls for a reassessment of the received wisdom that has entered the fabric of our culture. The true story of space exploration has a more sinister undertone, he argues. Beneath the guise of civilian space travel the US military has been developing fearsome new equipment and weapons to be secretly stationed in space with the aim of militarizing the orbit around the earth. The potential targets: every human being on the planet.
Profusely illustrated with over 200 photos and diagrams.
Informations sur le livre
One Small Step?: The Great Moon Hoax and the Race to Dominate Earth from Space
Longueur: 505 pages8 heures
Description
Is it possible that the famous American moon landings were nothing but an illusion - a fabrication? Could NASA have fooled the world by broadcasting simulations that had been filmed for training purposes?
From the very first manned flight into orbit right up to the present day there have been serious anomalies in the official narrative of the conquest of space. Bestselling author Gerhard Wisnewski dissects the history in minute detail - from the first Russian missions to the final American moon project of Apollo 17 - looking at films, photos, radio communications, personal statements and any other available material. Using forensic methods of investigation, he pieces together a complex jigsaw depicting a disturbing picture of falsifications, lies and fakery in the Cold War struggle for supremacy between the Soviet Union and the USA. The evidence he presents casts serious doubt on the possibility of humans ever having walked on the moon.
Wisnewski’s research calls for a reassessment of the received wisdom that has entered the fabric of our culture. The true story of space exploration has a more sinister undertone, he argues. Beneath the guise of civilian space travel the US military has been developing fearsome new equipment and weapons to be secretly stationed in space with the aim of militarizing the orbit around the earth. The potential targets: every human being on the planet.
Profusely illustrated with over 200 photos and diagrams.
- Éditeur:
- Clairview Books
- Sortie:
- Dec 17, 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781905570591
- Format:
- Livre
À propos de l'auteur
GERHARD WISNEWSKI was born in 1959. He studied political science, and since 1986 has worked as an author and documentary filmmaker. His bestselling (German) books include Das RAF-Phantom (The RAF Phantom), Operation 9/11 (Operation 9/11), Mythos 9/11 (9/11 - a myth) and Verschluss-Sache Terror (The secret files of terror). The film Das Phantom, based on the book Das RAF-Phantom, was awarded the Grimm Prize in 2000.
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One Small Step? - Gerhard Wisnewski
GERHARD WISNEWSKI was born in 1959. He studied political science, and since 1986 has worked as an author and documentary filmmaker. His bestselling (German) books include Das RAF-Phantom (The RAF Phantom), Operation 9/11 (Operation 9/11), Mythos 9/11 (9/11 - a myth) and Verschluss-Sache Terror (The secret files of terror). The film Das Phantom, based on the book Das RAF-Phantom, was awarded the Grimm Prize in 2000.
ONE SMALL STEP?
THE GREAT MOON HOAX AND THE RACE
TO DOMINATE EARTH FROM SPACE
GERHARD WISNEWSKI
Translated by J. Collis
Clairview Books
Hillside House, The Square
Forest Row, East Sussex
RH18 5ES
www.clairviewbooks.com
Published by Clairview 2012
Originally published in German under the title Lügen im Weltraum, Von der Mondlandung zur Weltherrschaft by Knaur Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich, in 2005
Translated by Johanna Collis
© Knaur Taschenbuch 2005
This translation © Clairview Books 2007
Gerhard Wisnewski asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 905570 59 1
Cover by Andrew Morgan Design
Typeset by DP Photosetting, Neath, West Glamorgan
My flight on 12 April 1961 was the first manned space flight in history.
Yuri Gagarin
That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
Neil Armstrong
Have the courage to make use of your own intelligence.
Immanuel Kant
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Lies travel long distances
Space – the perfect place for a falsehood
PART ONE: THE SOVIET UNION
Lost in space
SOS to the entire world
The front in space
Heroes don’t fall out of the sky
An unremarkable man
The flight of Yuri G.
The Vostok myth
A voice from space
If only landing were unnecessary...
The smiling major
An embarrassing accident
PART TWO: THE USA
A victor’s strategy
Master weapons smith to the world powers
Knowledge and the realities
Let’s begin with the lap of honour
A dud rocket named Redstone
The case of Virgil G.
The Apollo 1 disaster
Off to the moon
Once and never again – the lunar module
The moon landing
The hidden plot
The USA – a rogue state?
Mountaineers and hunters...
He came along, he had a look, he took a snap
A moon with two suns
The riddle of the crosshairs
Silent lift-off from the moon
‘My God, space is radioactive!’
When astronauts see stars
Welcome to ‘Hotel Lunatic’
The death of Laika the bitch
Bad news about moon rocks
A photon named NASA
Has anyone got a lunar module to spare?
Galileo and the moon landing
Along comes a spacecraft
Hunting for Apollo
The UFO trap
The simplest assumption is the right one
The best simulation of all time
One small step for NASA...
PART THREE: TO DOMINATE THE GLOBE
‘Failure was not an option’
The power of the MIC
NASA, a department of the Pentagon
La Paloma Blanca
Mission to Planet Earth
Ronald and the rockets
ISS: Last man out to switch off the light
Dubya has a vision
Guantánamo in the solar system
Atom bombs into space
The arsenal of Dr Strangelove
Table: ‘Where did you say Apollo landed?
Notes
Bibliography
Picture Sources
Acknowledgements
Preface
Washington, December 2004. There is uproar in the corridors of the Capitol, almost as though airliners from Osama bin Laden were once more hovering above the heads of the senators. There is no doubt that the security of the nation is under threat again. But the threat this time is not from Osama bin Laden or some other Islamists gone wild but from the Government itself and the circles that support it. What it wants to do is put a highly secret satellite system into space at a cost so high that even some of the senators are getting cold feet. The sum that has so far leaked out is: 9.5 billion dollars – a huge amount for a single project. ‘Experts suspect that the satellites in question are to be armed,’¹ commented Der Spiegel.
The uproar surrounding these most recent secret machinations of the United States in space highlights what has been going on above our heads throughout the course of 45 years of ‘civilian space exploration’. After over 40 years of manned and unmanned space aviation no one quite knows what the USA is really up to out there in space – not even its own congress is allowed to speak publicly about it. This was not the plan when the world first began to hold its breath over the adventures of ‘civilian’ astronauts – or was it? Was everything even then geared to dominating the world from space?
This is only one of the questions I intend to explore in my present book. First one asks: Is the history of space travel as it is being told to us actually true? And if not, what exactly is hidden behind it? In this respect the events of 11 September 2001 provided me with a key experience. When researching my books Operation 9/11 (Operation 9/11) and Mythos 9/11 (9/11 – a myth) I came across numerous inconsistencies, and I was not the only individual whose outlook concerning the American past began to change. More and more people were asking themselves what else they ought to know about the other stories the USA had been telling the world about itself. Many of them have since been exposed as humbug, for example the tale about the sinking of the battleship Maine in 1898, the supposedly surprise attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor in 1941, or the official version of the August 1964 Tonkin Incident. All these events served as excuses for entering into a war and all resulted in huge national efforts. But none of them had followed courses as described by the USA.
The more closely you scrutinize American history, the more impenetrable does the thicket of contradictions, half-truths, distortions and lies become. These false representations are also the reason why there is so much scepticism worldwide regarding many of the US Government’s claims: ‘One of the reasons for these conspiracy theories is that the US Government lies so much,’ said the American secret service expert and best-selling author James Bamford to my colleague Willy Brunner and me in 2003 while we were working on a film in the USA: ‘I mean, the US Government is always lying, lies about so many different things. Lies about whether there are nuclear weapons in Iraq for example, sends phoney documents to the UN, just recently. It lied all about Vietnam, it lied about Watergate, lied about a lot of things. So obviously there is gonna be a lot of suspicion about whether the US Government is telling the truth.’ It is tempting to embrace the idea that the might of the United States of America derives not from its military machine, its atom bombs or its financial and commercial strength but from its lies.
The greatest success story told to the world by the USA since the end of World War II, however, is the epic tale about the landing on the moon. It tells of two dozen American heroes setting out once upon a time to conquer the moon on behalf of all mankind. The moon landing brought the USA an overwhelming political, publicity and propaganda victory over its then enemy, the Soviet Union. And not only over the Soviet Union. With this achievement the USA showed everyone, once and for all, who had the final say the world over. The landing on the moon brought the USA a prestige advantage which it enjoys to this day. So at least in this matter, was everything as it appeared to be?
For some time now numerous suspicions have been making the rounds, suspicions that hint at facts and reasons why all is not in order. This is for me the reason why now, after writing Mythos 9/11, I want to follow up this huge American saga: What is the moon landing all about? What really lies hidden behind civilian space aviation? Is it really aimed at conquering space or actually perhaps at conquering the earth? I hope to have come closer to presenting answers to all these questions by the end of this book.
Gerhard Wisnewski
Munich, May 2007
Introduction
Lies travel long distances
It is 21 July 1969 at around 0340 hrs Central European Time. On a distant heavenly body a window opens in a strange spindly-legged vehicle. Like an odd-looking beetle a human being slides out on his stomach; in his clumsy spacesuit he somewhat resembles the famous Michelin Man. Hand over hand he slowly descends the ladder till he ends up standing on one of the large landing feet of the vehicle. Hopping down off this he says: ‘That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.’
Here was sensationalism at its most accomplished – the Americans the first to land on the moon having beaten the Soviets to it. That Neil Armstrong/Buzz Aldrin team was followed by five more. All six conducted scientific experiments there, brought back with them a total of 382 kg of moon rocks and then lived happily ever after, if not on the moon then on the earth. And if they are not dead, then ... But did this really happen? Did twelve American heroes really land on the moon before returning safely to earth, as President Kennedy had decreed in 1961? Or was it all nothing more than a strategic lie as an increasing number of sceptics maintain? A lie intended to establish ideological and political dominion over the globe once and for all?
We shall see. In my search for the truth I will begin before the summer of 1969, for the story of the moon landing obviously does not begin in 1969, nor in 1965 or 1963. It begins in 1961 at the latest, which was the year when the first manned flight in space was launched with the Russian Yuri Gagarin on board. More than any other, this event was the one that finally set off the race to reach the moon by providing the USA with the ultimate justification for its multi-billion dollar programme of manned space exploration. So to whet readers’ appetites, let me begin with a brief consideration of the beginnings of manned space travel in the USSR. As we shall see, it was not solely a matter of two great powers battling against one another, for their space programmes were also complementary. However much they may have been serving their contradictory interests in their rivalry, in terms of public interest the show they put on amounted to a collaboration. The space adventures of cosmonauts and astronauts alike held the attention not only of the two power blocs but of the whole world for decades. The two blocs gathered their populations around their own heroes and their own political leaders, getting them to hold their breath in anticipation of the next showdown in space, causing them to forget their day-to-day problems and – above all – the billions and billions-of-billions seeping away in the military and industrial complexes of each country. At the sight of those beaming heroes very few thought to ask where the huge sums of taxpayers’ money had gone; that would have appeared small-minded and unpatriotic.
Those heroic deeds have long since found their way into school and history books and now belong to the cultural heritage of humanity as a whole. Both in the USA and in Russia the adventures of the space travellers have attained cult status. Especially in the United States schoolchildren are systematically primed concerning the heroic deeds of the astronauts with whom they are expected to identify. The adventures of both astronauts and cosmonauts are not forgotten but have become obligatory components of school curricula, important for unifying the nation.
So what is the psychological and propagandistic significance of Yuri Gagarin’s flight as the basis of America’s moon programme? Having undertaken what I found to be an exciting trip into the beginnings of Soviet manned space flight we shall then, in Part Two of this book, endeavour to leave no stone unturned (on the moon, of course) in following up almost all known and not yet known indications that point to a faked landing on the moon. I want to clear up a number of unjustified doubts while also uncovering some new and hitherto not yet investigated absurdities. My leading question will not be whether the USA faked the moon landings, but whether they only faked them. Obviously they had to be simulated initially for training purposes, but the question remains as to whether they then subsequently actually took place. This is a peculiar question, is it not? For surely the former cold war enemies have recognized each other’s achievements in space without any envy? Has not every space flight been photographed a thousand times and documented as well? Haven’t the heroes been passed from hand to hand the world over on lecture and interview tours?
Yes, they have. Yet the doubts continue to multiply. The supposition is growing that there have been lies and swindles, fibs and fakes everywhere. In Part Three, finally, I shall show how civilian space travel has been used as a cover for achieving domination over the whole world, and what we can expect from space in the future. The book will ask what has been done – in addition to or instead of the so-called ‘conquest of space’ – with regard to conquering the earth. I shall show how, under the cover of civilian space travel, the powers exploring space, first and foremost the USA, have transformed the orbit into a battlefield of the future, with the ultimate aim of shackling the whole globe.
Space – the perfect place for a falsehood
There are many reasons why the ‘history’ of space travel should be taken with many pinches of salt. I have already mentioned one of those reasons: the free and easy way in which the USA has been treating truth. Another is the fact that information about space travel emanates almost exclusively from Soviet and American propaganda machines. ‘The information reaching the public is at best filtered, and not unusually falsified by propaganda,’ we read for example on the jacket of Harro Zimmer’s book Der rote Orbit (The red orbit). Propaganda and falsification are integral parts of military operations as depicted in the space activities of the superpowers. In every case careful decisions are made about which aspects of an operation are to be disclosed to the public and which not, for what the public knows is also known to the enemy. This means that in principle the public and the enemy can be seen as essentially one and the same thing.
It goes without saying that the space programme of the USA is first and foremost a military programme. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) emerged from NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), an agency devoted to researching military aeronautics. The men who landed on the moon were officers bound by the mechanisms of command and obedience. The rockets used by both blocs for the first ‘civilian’ missions were modified intercontinental rockets.
The best (tall) story about a military operation is the one that says it is not a military operation at all. This is how the idea of ‘civilian’ manned space travel came into existence.
The reason why we intuitively believe in American space travel more than in the Soviet variety is because the ‘information policy’ of the USA was quite different. Whereas the Soviet Union released information extremely sparingly, the exact opposite applied to America’s strategy which was positively loquacious. Especially as regards the moon landings they bombarded journalists with fat press kits while also publishing detailed drawings of the spacecraft involved. In comparison with Soviet handling of information, the public following American space travel were thoroughly smothered in it. Everything appeared to be taking place in full public view. With their mystification and contradictory carry-on the Soviets created one gap in their credibility after the other, whereas in America any similar potholes were immediately filled in with vast quantities of information – whether true or false being initially of secondary importance. So much eloquence certainly made it appear that there could be no secrets, and definitely no murky secrets.
The question, however, is: With all this seeming or actual openness, how was the American side handling its crisis management? While the secrecy of the Soviet Union served to hush up awkward incidents or mishaps, the Americans appeared to be courting the danger of spectacular failure before the very eyes of their ideological enemy. If the Soviet publicity machine was used for crisis and reality management, how were the Americans handling the matter of crisis and reality management? For it is surely obvious that for their propaganda specialists, too, this would have to be the most important task.
How were the United States dealing with the huge dangers of the moon missions? What precautions had they taken with regard to reality management? Did they really take the risk of failing in spectacular fashion before the very eyes of the whole world? Having built up their astronauts for years and years as national heroes, did they really send them to the moon as the whole of humanity watched in real time – while leaving the result open – like an open-ended military mission in which they subjected themselves to a kind of ‘divine judgement’ as to victory or defeat? Are we really expected to believe this? Or was there a back door somewhere, as it were a ‘win-win situation’ which to this day we know nothing about, or at least nothing specific?
There was nothing that either of the two sides ‘needed less than dead astronauts or cosmonauts. Only survivors could be used to demonstrate superiority,’ says Matthias Gründer quite rightly in his book SOS im Weltall (SOS in space).²
And finally there is also another reason for scepticism, namely, that outer space is a theatre like no other in the history of humanity. Apart from the powers involved in space travel, no one can go there to check whether everything is in order or perhaps to see if all those stories about heroic space missions are true. So space is the perfect place for a falsehood. As ever, the adventures undergone there are described virtually exclusively by those who underwent them, a typical characteristic of what is known on earth as the seafarer’s yarn. In respect of the truth this bodes nothing good.
PART ONE: THE SOVIET UNION
Lost in space
San Maurizio Canavese near Turin, 2 February 1961. In a room in their father’s house, Villa Bertalazona, the Italian brothers Achille and Gian-Battista Judica-Cordiglia have rigged up an amateur radio station for monitoring Soviet satellites. They have named the station Torre Bert after the villa. Torre stands for one of the villa’s towers, Bert for Bertalazona. For months they have been hunting for the beeping of Soviet ‘Sputniks’. But what they hear today takes their breath away. There is a clear sound like groaning or sighing coming from orbit. And the sound of a human heartbeat is also reaching them through the loudspeakers of their small listening station. They stand there electrified: the Soviets have sent a human being into space! This was the beginning of manned space travel – and not Yuri Gagarin’s flight – if we are to believe the descriptions of Gian-Battista and Achille Judica-Cordiglia (today in their mid-sixties and early seventies respectively). They are still fighting for their version of the history of manned space travel to be recognized. Listening to these two Italians makes you doubt your own ears. According to their reports, Yuri Gagarin was not the first man in space. Long before his flight on 12 April 1961 the Soviets had begun to send people into space. And always listening closely were the Judica-Cordiglias, two sons of a medical doctor from San Maurizio Canavese.
However much the Soviet empire tried to shut itself off, as soon as a spacecraft went into orbit and began to transmit radio signals it was in principle possible for anyone to pick them up. Having once spoken with a sheep-breeder in Australia, a professor in San Francisco or a scientist at the South Pole, someone from Central Europe couldn’t help becoming hopelessly hooked on amateur radionics. But the prospect of being able to listen-in to a satellite flying in space was frankly unheard of.
However, it is not as difficult as it sounds to listen to a satellite. The altitude of a few hundred kilometres at which it flies is nothing like as far as the normal reach of an amateur radio enthusiast.
The Judica-Cordiglia brothers at their listening station (left) and today (right)
On 23 May 1961 Gian-Battista and Achille now pick up something that officially does not exist: the voice of a woman in space. Until this moment the only people supposed to have travelled into space are Russian Yuri Gagarin (12 April 1961) and the American Alan Shepard (5 May 1961). But the Judica-Cordiglias stick to their story of hearing from space, through much crackling, the desperate voice of a woman:
Listen! Listen!
Come in! Come in! Come in!
Listen! Listen! Come in!
Come in! Come in! Talk to me!
Talk to me! I am hot! I am hot!
What... ? Forty-five? What?...
Forty-five? Fifty?
Yes... Yes... Yes... Breathing...
Breathing... Oxygen...
Oxygen... I am hot...
Isn’t this dangerous? ... It’s all...
Isn’t this dangerous? ... It’s all...
Yes... Yes... Yes... How is this?
What? ... Talk to me!
How should I transmit? Yes... Yes... Yes...
What? Our transmission begins now...
Forty-one... This way... Our transmission begins now...
Forty-one... Yes... I feel hot...
I feel hot... It’s all... It’s hot...
I feel hot... I feel hot... I feel hot...
I can see a flame! ... What?
I can see a flame! ... I can see a flame!...
I feel hot...I feel hot...
Thirty-two... Thirty-two... Forty-one... Forty-one
Am I going to crash? ... Yes... Yes... I feel hot!
I feel hot! ... I will re-enter! ... I will re-enter!...
I am listening! ... I feel hot!...
(English translation from Russian)³
At the time, the record written down by the two doctor’s sons from Piedmont was taken entirely seriously. The story of space travel was still young and had not yet coagulated to a viscous mass that has since gummed up school books and encyclopedias. The international media were regular visitors to the brothers, feeling this to be the most likely place to garner the latest news about the satellites of the ‘Reds’. To a good many of them the brothers seemed more trustworthy than the Soviet and American PR machines, both of which appeared not only obscure but also driven by selfish interests. The Judica-Cordiglias were regarded as an independent source – though nowadays we never hear anything about them. A long article about them in the Readers Digest is only one example of countless media reports. Under the title ‘Italy’s Amazing Amateur Space Watchers’ we read: ‘With home-made electronic equipment, two young Italians are keeping tabs on Russian satellites and making some startling discoveries.’⁴ Already ‘on 17 May 1961, the voices of two men and a woman were heard in desperate conversation,’ says Readers Digest: ’ Conditions growing worse. Why don’t you answer? We are going slower. The world will never know about us...
Then silence. The same words were picked up in Alaska and Sweden. Their meaning? No one will know until the Russians choose to talk.’
The problem was that officially the Soviets had no three-man spacecraft at that time. The most moving message was undoubtedly the wordless one in February 1961: ‘Tapes, which I myself heard at Torre Bert,’ continued the Digest reporter, ‘recorded the racing beat of an over-exerted heart (the hearts of all astronauts are monitored automatically) and sounds of laboured breathing. The Judica-Cordiglia brothers took the tapes to famed heart surgeon Dr A.M. Dogliotti. His verdict: This is the heart of a dying man.
The brothers are convinced that the Russians were very lax in the way they dealt with human lives in their quest for success in space. Collected evidence points to at least ten deaths.’⁵
The revelations of the brothers posed such a threat that the propaganda machine of the mighty Soviet superpower turned its attention onto the two young radio amateurs: ‘In March of the present year the Milan daily Corriere della Sera published an article about Soviet cosmonauts who perished in space
,’ thundered Radio Moscow on 7 April 1965:
The article is based upon statements made by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers, who allegedly received signals and recorded conversations in space by a number of Soviet cosmonauts who did not return from their flights... Two years ago the same nonsense could be found in the pages of the Washington Post... A few organs of the bourgeois press, in an attempt to give their cosmic lies an appearance of truthfulness, mention data provided by the American information services... However, such data do not reflect the truth. And with this statement we could close the whole matter. But we want to add a few words about the Judica-Cordiglia brothers. This is not the first time that they got involved in the reception of these signals... No one can doubt the safety of our space vehicles any more.⁶
So the propaganda machine of the Soviet Union was thoroughly rattled by the two young Italians. No wonder, for they were behaving like an uninvited theatre critic who kept reporting on failed rehearsals for a new play. The Soviets, however, wanted to tell only perfect tales, tales of clean heroes fulfilling their duty in space without any hitches before receiving a red-carpet welcome by the party leadership, as happened in Yuri Gagarin’s case.
Today, every school textbook tells us that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Full stop. But if their reports are true the history written by the Judica-Cordiglia brothers and other sources is rather different. According to them, Soviet manned space travel began in 1957 with suborbital flights in which a capsule is shot into the sky more or less vertically and falls back to earth almost immediately. Soviet experiments with orbital flights began in 1960, when manned spacecraft began to orbit the earth. But according to the reports and research of the Cordiglia brothers, by the time Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov went into space in 1961 a number of human guinea-pigs had already been sacrificed in space flights.
Can this really be true? Is it really possible that the Soviet Union led the world by the nose to such an extent? In principle it is, for this practice was rife in the whole of Soviet space travel, not only in manned flights. Only successes or else staged events were made public. In the case of Soviet probes and lunar missions, Mission Mond (Moon Mission), a popular moon lexicon, tells us how things went:
When a successful entry into an orbit was achieved, the probe was given the name Luna plus a running number. But when a rocket crashed during launch or soon after, it remained without an official name. If a launch was successful but the probe failed to leave the earth’s gravity it was officially included as a satellite in the sequence of countless Sputnik or Cosmos launches. In this way the West remained ignorant for a long time as to the true number of failures.⁷
In other words, the Soviets simply swept failed missions under the carpet. So why should they not also apply this method to the much more ticklish manned missions? After all, such failures would be far more embarrassing and damaging to national prestige than failures of unmanned flights.
SOS to the entire world
An especially sinister report came from the Judica-Cordiglias as early as 28 November 1960, i.e. four-and-a-half months before the official inauguration of the age of manned space flight by Yuri Gagarin. They described it as a message in Morse code saying: ‘SOS to the entire world.’ What the brothers found unusual about it was the presence of the Doppler effect. The Doppler effect is a distortion of radio frequency from which one can deduce the speed and direction of a spacecraft. And the Doppler effect in this case, they said, showed that the message came not from a spacecraft in orbit but from one that was travelling away from the earth:
We confirmed the presence of the Doppler effect in amounts very similar to what we later detected during reception of signals from such moon probes as the Luniks. Clearly the signal was not coming from an orbiting satellite, but rather from something that was moving away from the earth. The signal was very weak.
And then Gian-Battista Judica-Cordiglia described a scenario that gives one the shivers. In order to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere from orbit, a Soviet spacecraft had to be turned to point its retro-rockets forward in the direction of flight prior to ignition.
We surmised that the capsule may not have executed the attitude reversal at the time of retro-rocket ignition, gaining speed in the process. Starting at a speed of about 8 km/sec, the spacecraft may have been pushed into a higher orbit, even reaching sufficient velocity to escape the earth’s gravitational pull. If my recollection is accurate, the escape velocity required to reach the Moon is about 11.2 km/sec. The Morse code message was broadcast in English. We believed it was a desperate plea for help ... After a while, the signals stopped. I remember that on 2 December [i.e. four days later, GW] the Soviet authorities announced the launch of Sputnik VI and almost immediately announced that it had been lost.⁸
Sputnik VI was still known by a different name: Vostok, the name of Soviet manned spacecraft. The official Soviet statement listed a cargo of two dogs, insects and plants. But a glance at the planning for Vostok flights yields a nasty surprise: no flights with experimental animals were planned. Vostok planning in April 1960 show:
- a prototype Vostok 1 (IK) for launch trials and construction in orbit, after which it would burn up. It had no heat shields or life-support systems;
- to adapt Vostok Platform 1 as a spy satellite called Vostok 2 (alias ‘Zenith’) and also as a manned spacecraft (Vostok 3) with life-support systems, a seat and heat shields.
The Vostok family tree thus looked like this:
No animals are mentioned here. According to Vostok planning, between September and December 1960 three Vostok 3 spacecraft were to be prepared for manned flights. Manned flights were to take place from 11 October 1960 right up to December.⁹
And, according to the Judica-Cordiglias, this involved a certain Piotr Dolgoff exactly on 11 October 1960, Alexis Gracioff in December 1960 and Gennady Mikhailov in February 1961. Interestingly, it even appears that Sergei Korolyev, Soviet construction engineer in chief, confirmed the start of manned space flights long before Gagarin’s flight on 12 April 1961. On 30 March 1961 he wrote a letter to the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in which he reported on ‘two launches of Vostok 3A’,¹⁰ i.e. evidently the manned type. Strangely, however, Korolyev mentions in the same letter that preparations were complete for the first flight of a human being into cosmic space. Was he contradicting himself? Or did he simply mean the first official manned flight? Or was he simply playing with the fact that the functionaries of the Central Committee would anyway not know the difference between Vostok 1 and 3? Quite possibly. But it is also possible that Korolyev’s letter was only written after Gagarin’s flight – as an official documentation of history. The timing appears to be perfect. On 30 March Korolyev reported to the Central Committee that manned flights could now be undertaken, and only 13 days later Gagarin flew. This seems to be quite a short interval. On 3 April 1961, nine days before Gagarin’s official flight, Korolyev told
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