"TMP Banner For June 16, 1963: First Woman In Space" Topic

Hmm. I've always wondered if there were other Soviet cosmonauts, perhaps earlier female ones before Valentina Tereshkova, and if we only heard of the successes. Anyone else?

Or were the Soviets just little pussy cats with nothing but comrade love in their hearts and absolute transparency in all their goals and actions?

Do future space missions stand a chance of coming across cosmonaut bodies from failed lunar landings or trapped in stranded space capsules? Sooner or later most things are found out, right?

Inquiring minds want to know. :)

Dan
PS. There does seem to be a large number of Sci Fi paintings and sketches of astronauts making such gruesome discoveries.
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I'm with you CC in distrusting the Soviets (& now the Russians) who seem to be past masters at deception & manipulation (called, collectively, disinformation) both then and now.

The Soviets were more or less upfront about space program disasters……. link …….perhaps because they had to be.

Hard to keep this type of stuff totally under cover & an exposed secret would be worse in propaganda terms.

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the flood of information that came with it, I doubt there'[s much about their space program we don't know.

Your pulp images erroneously show skulls BTW. The artists have a poor grasp of science to think this is possible.

Well, I remember a number of articles back in the day in Popular Science and Mechanics claiming the entire Soviet space program to be faked – that wasn't so. There were also a couple of pieces about covered up accidents.

And the Soviets made similar claims about Western activities and were not above other disinformation.

At this stage, as noted, a lot of archive material has been opened up (Venona?) and I think it unlikely.

@goragrad

As you would know, sadly, the space program grew out of one-upmanship between the two Cold War powers.

Both sides were keen to denigrate the other side, so if there was even a hint of a concealed disaster, it would have been trumpeted.

The pulp "art" shown above is very much in this propaganda strain and keen to suggest Soviet tragedies (albeit in a ham-fisted and inaccurate way).

I've seen those paintings. I think one was on the cover of a SF book called "Moon Trap", IIRC ?

Kind of a neat Sci-fi concept, idea, etc. And as far as propaganda, both the East & West could both play that game pretty well during the Cold War …

And as we see … the Cold War may have only taken a brief halt or never really has ended … So we will have to wait and see.

But I do know the only way for the USA to get to the ISS. Is by hitching a ride at 1 Million bucks/astronaut on a Russian rocket …

Propaganda … ? I think we all know it isn't … sadly …

Even GW got in on this ! And the space suit is RED !!!!

IIRC there was a couple of Italian brothers that were amateur radio operators, who would record their signals I think they were trying to find alien, when they recorded a signal of cosmonauts early on in the Russians space program the flight seem to be in trouble IIRC they had a fire and their capsule and somehow was hurling out into space.

Doug

These guys?

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Dan

I read a book(yes, I can read!) in the early 90's that was a history of the soviet space program. In it the authors had access to many previousily classified documents that seemed to indicate there were frequent(unreported) disasters in the early years of the manned flight programs. Can't remember the book title or authors, but as I recall it was considered a serious study of the subject They included many photos of cosmonaut training classes, including before and after, which showed many of the men erased from the after photos that were in the before photos. A very common occurance dating from the stalin era, when persons were "disappeared" by the state.

Dave

Wasn't there a film in the last few years, Apollo 18 I think it was, about finding old cosmonaut lander on the moon?
Oh and I think it had something to do with moon monsters too.

During Gorbachev's perestroika pretty much all the archives were opened, and secrecy removed from far too many documents. We were even so kind to give the US plans of all the bugs in the fresh-builded Moscow embassy.
There were several (3) cases of the pilots dying during the training (i.e. on earth) and 4 cosmonauts died in space/landing. There were much more disastorous accidents during launches of unmanned rockets ( in one of these more than a hundred people perished in Baikonur).
Other stories are of the same calibre as fake US moon mission.
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I saw Apollo 18 … entertaining … but pure

Barin1: "We were even so kind to give the US plans of all the bugs in the fresh-builded Moscow embassy."

I remember. That was waaaay more generous than even some of our own so-called "friends" and "allies" these days.

Dan

At least one of the pictures is a Darrell Sweet cover of the novel Inherit the Stars by James Hogan (1977).

I think the first two are covers for Inherit the Stars. Interesting/fun story, but one that doesn't jive with current knowledge of the origin of the moon.