Gagarin not first man in space?

[margamatix]

I read this on the Aulis website.

"As 40 years have passed since Gagarin's flight, new sensational details of this event were disclosed: Gagarin was not the first man to fly to space.

Three Soviet pilots died in attempts to conquer space before Gagarin's famous space flight, Mikhail Rudenko, senior engineer-experimenter with Experimental Design Office 456 (located in Khimki, in the Moscow region) said on Thursday [12 April 2001].

According to Rudenko, spacecraft with pilots Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov at the controls were launched from the Kapustin Yar cosmodrome (in the Astrakhan region) in 1957, 1958 and 1959.

"All three pilots died during the flights, and their names were never officially published," Rudenko said."


Does anyone know if this is true? If so, why would the USSR do this, and why did the USA not blow the whistle on it before the Russians "fessed up"?

[JayUtah]

This is the USSR's classic space conspiracy theory. I asked Jim Oberg about it (he is the author of books on the Soviet space program) and he said it was bunk. I haven't investigated the claim personally, but I trust Jim to do his homework.

Aulis uses the story -- true or not -- as a sort of guilt-by-association ploy. They want us to believe that since the USSR could hide such a momentous fact, then certainly NASA in the United States could be capable of it. Despite the gross illogic, the comparison is really apples to oranges. The Soviet space program was carried out in utmost secrecy, even compartmentalizing the missions from other people in the program. In contrast the U.S. space program was quite open. It would be much easier to hide such a failure in the Soviet program than in the U.S. program.

[JayUtah]

Sorry, I realized I answered only one of your questions.

If so, why would the USSR do this...?

To avoid embarrassment. There are several good books on the political nature of the Soviet space program. I suggest a few chapters in Burroughs' This New Ocean as a brief overview. The Soviet government -- and by that I mean Krushchev -- considered the space program little more than an opportunity to embarrass and outshine the west. This led him to mandate dangerous and foolhardy missions for the sake of firstmanship. Krushchev wanted space flight records, not necessarily a working space program. But of course it is embarrassing under those circumstances to try but then fail, so the Soviets had a practice of announcing missions only after they had been flown.

...why did the USA not blow the whistle on it before the Russians "fessed up"?

Why not indeed.

One possible answer, of course, is that the alleged missions never happened.

Another is that we are just now learning about some aspects of the Soviet space program that we did not previously know. As I said, the Soviet space program was largely secret until the mid-1990s when the program was opened up. I worked with some Soviet scientists in the late 1980s and early 1990s who swore up and down that the Soviets had had no serious plans to go to the moon during the 1960s. And according to their knowledge, they were right. You'd think that Soviet space scientists would know, but in fact these guys did not. They didn't work in the bureau that was developing the moon missions, and so they knew nothing about it. They found out about the details of the Soviet moon endeavor at the same time the West did.

We certainly had some espionage-style intelligence about the Soviet space program, but it was possible at the time for the Soviets to carry out sub-orbital missions that would have been effectively hidden from the West. It's hard to hide a fully orbital mission attempt.

To my knowledge, no one from the United States has admitted to having tracked any of these pre-Gagarin flights or known of their existence. For the details I'd have to refer you to Oberg. Let me see if I can hunt down anything he might have on the web about this particular theory.

[margamatix]

Apparently it was post-Communism "Pravda" (probably the most respected Russian newspaper) who released this information, and Aulis also contains this quote....

"Laura Whitlock of NASA’s Star Child Project (a NASA web site intended for children) has stated that her own research concurs with the claim that these three test pilots were indeed those named by Pravda and albeit spelling their names slightly differently, she adds more detail regarding dates, and for Ledovsky—the maximum height achieved in orbit"

[JayUtah]

Apparently it was post-Communism "Pravda" (probably the most respected Russian newspaper) who released this information...

You haven't read Pravda recently, have you? It's pretty much a tabloid since the fall of communism.

Dr. Whitlock now teaches at Sonoma State in California. I have an associate who teaches at the same institution; I'll see if he can confirm the quote. The Aulis authors are not very conscientious about accurate quotation.

[JayUtah]

Jim's site is currently down. I was able to uncover this, however:

www.fas.org/spp/guide/russia/piloted/oberg8810.htm

I've only skimmed it, but it seems to be a synopsis of what I've read before from him. In a nutshell, it seems that people associated with the Soviet space program (sometimes correctly identified as, but also sometimes mistakenly called, cosmonauts in the Western press) disappeared from the program without public explanation. There is no need to suppose that they perished in space; perhaps they were killed in other accidents (as were American astronauts) or simply fell out of favor. However, because their departures remain unexplained, the door is left open for conspiracy theorists to speculate that they perished in missions earlier than Gagarin's.

[TaeKwonDan]

margamatix said:

Apparently it was post-Communism "Pravda" (probably the most respected Russian newspaper) who released this information, and Aulis also contains this quote....

LMAO!

Oh I needed that. That is rich. Pravda probably receives more links on fark.com for crazy made-up headlines than even the Weekly World News and its beloved bat-boy.

Pravda hurts the credibility of the story.

[margamatix]

taekwondan said:

margamatix said:

Apparently it was post-Communism "Pravda" (probably the most respected Russian newspaper) who released this information, and Aulis also contains this quote....

Pravda hurts the credibility of the story.

NASA tells the same story- see the quote I provided above.

[JayUtah]

One person once from NASA allegedly confirms portions of the story. That is not equivalent to official endorsement. I have not yet heard back from Dr. Whitlock, but I suspect you never even tried to contact her to confirm the story.

Further, James Oberg has just as much connection with NASA as Dr. Whitlock, and also has the distinction of being a noted expert on Russian space travel. You are in the unlucky position of believing one (ex-)NASA individual over another, apparently simply because she is telling you what you want to hear. This scenario gives you the option of respecting either expertise or a favorable viewpoint. You have clearly chosen a favorable viewpoint over expertise. That casts grave doubt on any objectivity you might wish to claim.