Seven NASA astronauts answered the most popular Google space searches. Can birds fly in space? Does Mars have an atmosphere and what is the temperature there? To these and 47 more questions about space, the astronauts tried to give short and sensible - and sometimes funny - answers. And it turned out that even those who have been there themselves do not know something about space.

Astronauts from the NASA space agency were asked to answer the fifty most popular questions about space that Internet users ask on Google. WIRED invited Canadian former astronauts Christopher Hadfield and Americans Jeffrey Hoffman, Jerry Linenger, Leland Melvin, May Carol Jemison, Michael Massamino and Nicole Scott to answer them.

The questions were in descending order, from least popular to most popular. And in rare cases, when the astronauts did not fully cope with the answer (or misunderstood what was meant), the WIRED help (in brackets) came to the rescue.

50. Can birds fly in space?

No. Only inside spaceship.

49. Is space finite?

Endless! (WIRED: Not sure exactly).

48. Can the International Space Station (ISS) be seen from Earth?

Certainly! (Sometimes).

47. Why was NASA created?

To defeat the Russians. (NASA was created in 1958 during the space race between the US and the Soviet Union).

46. ​​How did space appear?

We don't know for sure!

Jeff Hoffman: In a big bang! (According to the dominant scientific theory - as a result of the rapid expansion that followed the big bang).

45. How much does the space shuttle weigh?

250 thousand pounds / 113 tons.

Mike Messamino: With a crew that ate a lot!

(230 thousand pounds / 104 tons at the end of the mission).

44. Is it possible to see the stars while in space?

43. How fast is the ISS flying?

42. What is the temperature in outer space?

It's cold there. (Minus 270 degrees Celsius).

Jeff Hoffman: Actually, the question doesn't make sense, because there's a vacuum in space.

41. Do weapons fire in space?

Yeah why not.

40. What is the Goldilocks zone?

Where it is not too cold and not too hot - just right! (The zone around a star where the temperature is neither too cold nor too hot to support liquid water. This means that the planet could theoretically support carbon-based life forms.)

39. What revolves around the Earth?

Moon and satellites! (Moon, ISS and about 1,700 satellites).

38. How many rovers are on the surface of Mars?

Two active and... Only four!

37. How long does one passage in the Earth's orbit take?

Depends where you are. (Depends on the distance from the object to the Earth. The Moon makes a complete revolution around the Earth every 27 days, the ISS - every 90 minutes).

36. How did Mars get its name?

The Romans gave it its name. (The Romans named the five brightest planets after the major gods of their pantheon. Mars was named after the god of war, Mars, most likely because of its blood-red color.)

35. Who are astronauts?

Russian astronauts.

34. Do people age in space?

Oh sure! (Growing old, but a little slower than on Earth).

33. What is a space probe?

This is an object that is sent to observe other planets. (An unmanned ship that is launched into space in order to collect information and send it to Earth).

32. Is there gravity on Mars?

Yes. (Mars' gravity is about 38 percent of Earth's).

31. Where is the Kennedy Space Center located?

In Florida. (Merritt Island, Florida).

30. How fast is the shuttle moving?

17,500 miles per hour / 28 thousand kilometers per hour.

29. What is space-time?

One of the theories explaining the structure of the universe. (A way of considering the three spatial dimensions that we observe in everyday life, and one temporal dimension (time) as a single four-dimensional vector).

28. Is it possible to live on Mars?

Yes. With a life support system. (Only the use of technology makes it possible to breathe and survive in the hostile conditions of Mars).

27. How far is space?

Endless! Very far!

*The astronauts did not really understand the question - it meant where the boundary of space begins*

(The boundary where the Earth's atmosphere ends and the "real" space begins is considered to be one hundred kilometers above the Earth's surface).

26. Why is space black?

Because nothing in it reflects light.

Jerry Linenger: I'll give you the real answer. Because due to the age and scope of the universe, we only see light that has had enough time to reach us. (And because our eyes are not sensitive enough to see the scattered light from distant sources from the Earth).

25. What was the name of the first woman in space?

Valentina Tereshkova.

24. Where is the asteroid belt located?

Between Mars and Jupiter.

23. When was Mars discovered?

We do not know! Before the beginning of written history. (The first mention of Mars appears in the records of the Babylonians for 400 years BC).

22. What does it mean to "move in orbit"?

This means the rotation of one object around another. (The curved path of an object around a star, planet, or satellite).

21. Can you see the Great Wall of China from space?

Not! (It is a myth).

20. When can Mars be observed?

At night! At the right time. (Mars can often be observed from the surface of the Earth. The next time the maximum approach of Mars, when the planet will be especially clearly visible, will occur on July 31, 2018).

19. Who was the first American in space?

Alan Shepard.

18. Does Mars have an atmosphere?

17. Who was the first man in space?

Yuri Gagarin!

16. How long does it take to fly into space?

Nine minutes! Eight minutes! Depends on the ship. (Space Shuttle gets to orbit in nine minutes, Dragon X in ten minutes).

15. Where is the ISS located?

In space! (In constant motion).

Mike Massamino: Trick question!

14. How long is a year on Mars?

Two earth years. (687 Earth days).

13. How much money do astronauts make?

Not enough! (Laughing).

(65-100 thousand dollars a year / 3.5-5.5 million rubles a year).

12. Is Mars bigger than Earth?

11. Why is Mars red?

iron oxide. (Mars gets its coloration from its "rusty" soil.)

10. How many satellites does the Earth have?

Hundreds! Lot. (1,738 as of August 2017).

9. Is space a vacuum?

Yes. (Perfect vacuum does not exist, but the cosmos is very close to this state).

8. What is the temperature on Mars?

10-15 degrees Celsius during the day and below minus one hundred Celsius at night. (Average temperature: minus 62 degrees Celsius).

7. Can you hear anything in space?

No. In a vacuum, no.

But you can listen to the signals of stars and planets converted into sound, which NASA published for Halloween. The date was not chosen by chance - sometimes it really becomes uncomfortable.

6. How to become an astronaut?

Work hard and be lucky. (You need to have a bachelor's degree in the relevant field, pass through lengthy physical fitness tests, have three years of experience in a related field or a thousand hours of experience in flying a jet aircraft. And then go through two more years of special training).

5. What is an asteroid?

A stone that revolves around the sun. Smaller than a planet.

4. Is there life on Mars?

We don't know exactly. But it will be when we get there.

Shot from the movie "The Martian"

3. How many moons does Mars have?

Two. (Phobos and Deimos).

2. What does NASA mean?

National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

1. How long does it take to fly to Mars?

Depends on several things. But generally six to nine months. Someday we will be able to do it much faster. (The delivery of the Curiosity rover to Mars took 254 days, or 8 months and 10 days).

The full video appeared on the WIRED YouTube channel on March 26th and is well worth watching if only for the reactions to some of the questions.

Space is closer than you think! This was decided to prove to everyone by an amateur astronomer from Los Angeles, who installed a telescope on the street and. And the reactions of passers-by, as if for the first time, who saw the Earth's satellite, prove that the mysterious cosmos beckons each of us.

Over to finally get closer new era human civilization, the creator of SpaceX Elon Musk is working. In February 2018, he launched a reusable Falcon Heavy rocket into space - and with it, with a forever frozen driver at the steering wheel. Aliens, we're out!

It is hard to believe that space exploration for the USSR was so successful: the first attempt with the participation of man - and immediately good luck! During the tense rivalry between the Soviet Union and America, the temptation to wishful thinking was too great to maintain the prestige of the country. Therefore, among the then dissidents and today's skeptics there are those who doubt the official version. It cannot be absolutely certain that Gagarin did not have predecessors whose life ended tragically in space.

Cosmonaut Bondarenko died in March 1961 while on duty.

In the early 1990s, when it became possible to work with previously classified archives, they began to study the Soviet space theme, discarding rumors. According to the results of the study by A. Zheleznyakov and A. Pervushin, only one cosmonaut died before Gagarin's flight.

Due to the fact that all the details about the death of a member of the first cosmonaut squad were classified, many people willingly believed in alternative versions.

In fact, Senior Lieutenant Bondarenko died on Earth, at the Institute of Aviation Medicine. This happened during an experiment simulating space conditions. The atmosphere in the pressure chamber contained an extremely high proportion of oxygen, and a high pressure was also maintained. These characteristics contributed to the rapid spread of fire when an astronaut mistakenly dropped cotton wool soaked in alcohol on a hot electric stove. With this cotton, he wiped the skin, removing medical sensors.

Not only the entire contents of the pressure chamber were on fire, but even the tester's woolen suit. It was not possible to help Valentin quickly, as the opening of the doors took time due to the pressure drop. A 24-year-old boy was taken to the hospital with extensive burns, but his life could not be saved.

The unavailability of information about this incident was an indirect reason for a similar tragedy for American astronauts in 1967. When preparing the mission "Apollo" in the space complex. Kennedy during the test, there was a strong fire that claimed 3 lives. The scope of the safety instructions was prepared in great detail, it contained more than 200 pages. But the risk of a fire was not taken into account, this gap became fatal.

Vladimir Ilyushin - cosmonaut, ahead of Gagarin, landed unsuccessfully in China and was captured

In 1961, a sensational note appeared in the American left-wing newspaper Daily Worker that the first flight into space was made not by Gagarin at all, but by V. Ilyushin. And the event took place not on April 12, but five days earlier.

The presentation of false information by the USSR to the world community was explained as follows: Vladimir Ilyushin landed unsuccessfully in China. There, the cosmonaut was held captive, ferreting out secret information about the achievements of Soviet cosmonautics. Therefore, Gagarin was introduced to the public, who, according to rumors, was not the first at all.

In reality, V. Ilyushin had never been in space, and he had no such prospects. He was a test pilot, and, moreover, a brilliant pilot, a world record holder who deserved many awards. Vladimir's father - Sergey - was a famous aircraft designer, whose name is IL aircraft.

In the air, Vladimir Ilyushin was invulnerable, did not lose his clarity of thought even in the most difficult situations. But on the ground, the accident could not be avoided - it occurred in the summer of 1960, the pilot's health condition seriously deteriorated. He decided to turn to alternative Chinese medicine by going to Hangzhou. And so the legend appeared that after a difficult landing, V. Ilyushin was being held in poor condition by the Chinese.

Alexey Belokonev suffocated from lack of oxygen

A lot of conflicting information, which was eagerly picked up by Western newspapers, came from Italian radio amateurs by the name of Judica-Cordilla. They reported that they repeatedly heard signals from space, which distinguished the beating of a human heart, confused breathing, morse code, requests for help, and just the speech of astronauts communicating with the station. One of the victims of the system, whose death was secretly witnessed by the Italians, was A. Belokonov (there is a spelling variant Belokonev). According to several newspapers, including Reader's Digest and Corriere della Sera, the named Soviet cosmonaut suffocated during the flight.

The plausibility of this version was added by the fact that the photo of Belokonev, together with colleagues who are preparing for space conditions, was published in the Ogonyok magazine. The preparation was shown, but the results were not, which means they hide failure under the Iron Curtain, which means the astronauts died - this was the logical chain of events for all Western journalists involved in the space theme.

In fact, a person with that name existed and was associated with astronautics, but he did not make a single flight, as he was an equipment tester. Moreover, he lived and was well for almost 30 years after the described tragedy in space, back in the 70s he continued to work at the Institute of Space Medicine. Died in 1991.

Ivan Kachur died due to an explosion during a launch in 1960

According to the Reuters agency, Alexei's colleague Ivan Kachur, also an equipment tester, who specialized in high-altitude tests, where he had to breathe oxygen under excess pressure, also entered the number of "zero" cosmonauts. Western media claimed that the astronaut died during the launch of a ballistic missile in the fall of 1960, in an explosion.

In fact, the launch was really carried out in September 1960, and indeed it was unsuccessful - an explosion thundered. But there were only 2 dogs on board, they died. And equipment tester Ivan Kachur at that time had already been fired from Soviet army(this event dates back to April 28), returned to the Ukrainian SSR, to his native Ivano-Frankivsk region.

Zavodovsky was blown away in an unknown direction during a space flight

Another test technician, Gennady Zavodovsky, according to the Reuters news agency, was lost in outer space in 1960. The cause is called a breakdown of the spacecraft's attitude control system. And instead of approaching the Earth, the ship began to move away.

In fact, the tester Zavodovsky, like his colleagues, did not go into space before Gagarin, and in general had never been there. This man helped in the development of cosmonautics by being tested - he specialized in breathing with changes in altitude and pressure. His activities are noted in the book of honor of testers.

The tester died in 2002, rests in the cemetery "Rakitki" in the suburbs.

Astronautics historian A. Peslyak writes that the work of testers on Earth was quite difficult and dangerous. Many soldiers who participated in the development of Soviet cosmonautics sacrificed their health. For 10 years, while the USSR was preparing for the triumphal exploration of space, 20% of the testers were found to be limited fit for further service, and about 16% of the commission was not allowed to further work in the conditions of "Earth space" at all. Average duration the life of the testers did not exceed 50 years.

Apr 13, 2018 Gennady

To date, it is not known for certain who was the first cosmonaut, who was the first Soviet cosmonaut, and who was the first Soviet cosmonaut to successfully (!) fly into space. This topic is quite extensive and requires numerous studies, including the opening of archives, which today's RF cannot do for a number of reasons. Here are just the facts.

1. All everyday documents of preparation for the so-called "flight" and Gagarin's "flight" itself are classified today. Only some squeezes emerge, the reliability of which is extremely doubtful.

2. During the launch of the Vostok spacecraft, not only representatives of foreign media who could be objective witnesses of the process were not present at the cosmodrome, but there was also no one from the Soviet press who would record the launch of the rocket with Gagarin on board into space.
All currently available "evidence" comes from dependent and interested persons, such as the military command, and looks something like "I saw a bus with Gagarin, which was going to the launch pad, and then we were taken to the bunker", which, of course, is not serious.
The world learned about the "first flight" of a man into space from a TASS report.

3. All filming of the "first flight" of a man into space was a reconstruction, which was also recognized by Gagarin's daughter Elena.

4. To date, the only evidence of the alleged flight of Gagarin is fuzzy signals with the reproduction of the voice and images of the astronaut in the spacecraft, caught by foreign observers. Moreover, all these "proofs" could be recorded in advance on Earth and subsequently relayed from space. Interesting fact: shortly before, twice, the Italian radio amateurs, the brothers Battista Giudica-Cordigliovi, on November 28, 1960 and February 2, 1961, received signals from space for help in Russian. Soviet Union then it was justified by the fact that it was an audio recording for checking radio communications from space, that is, our designers had sufficient experience in transmitting a signal through a spacecraft.

These are the only so-called "proofs" of Gagarin's flight into space to date. You can take them off, as you know, anywhere. All other footage is an officially recognized production.

5. Further, the facts are smaller, but they all cast doubt on Gagarin's flight into space:
a) Gagarin himself did not take a single picture of the Earth from space - he did not have a photo or a movie camera with him.
b) Gagarin "landed" outside the descent vehicle. Soviet propaganda claimed that this was done because the descent in the descent vehicle was not yet worked out at that time and was too risky. On the other hand, in this way, Gagarin could simply parachute from the plane. It is interesting that later the version was changed, saying that they wanted to fix the record, which was simply impossible without a descent vehicle.
c) Gagarin "landed" near the territory of military unit 40218 in the Saratov region. An hour and a half later, two military officers reached Gagarin, finding him in the middle of a field. Moreover, no one saw the process of "landing" and even more so did not film it. Although, most likely, the very fact of a parachute jump from an airplane was: as you know, after landing, Gagarin was robbed by local residents, stealing from him an inflatable boat, which he was supposed to use in case of splashdown. They gave him this boat only after the police threatened the peasants that they would plant the entire village if the boat was not returned.
d) Even if we assume that Gagarin flew into space, then the words that he circled the Earth is a lie - it is established that he did not reach the "coil around the Earth".

So, did Gagarin really not fly into space? I do not dare to say this and therefore titled the post, based on one of the available hypotheses. Now, if I was then in the cosmonaut corps and knew for sure that Gagarin did not fly into space, then I would bet that Gagarin was not in space. I believe that the probability that Gagarin was in space is 50/50. Is it a lot or a little? Well, if you are offered to buy a lottery ticket and are given a 50% chance that you will win a million, then of course you should take it - these are very cool chances. And if you settle for new job and you are told that there is a 50% chance that we will pay you a salary, then these chances are negligible - you need to run from such a job.
So in relation to the flight of the first man into space, they approached us and said that a certain Pupkin jumped above his head in the basement at night and even changed his shoes in the air, and now everyone should respect him for this, because someone alone with a hangover is saw. Will you believe in this story and will you respect Pupkin? Question...

Here the question also arises what, what kind of event is this that no one saw, which happened in secret, in which we should believe only because of the TASS statement? Imagine that an expedition to Mars is leaving tomorrow. Yes, we will follow the astronauts long before it starts, we will know their names, we will know the date of their launch, we will follow their flight to the red planet. We will sympathize with them if something happens ...
As for Gagarin's flight into space, everything turns into some kind of absolutely mysterious trash.

In this post, I did not touch on the situation with the death of Gagarin, to which there are still many questions. I didn't bother to figure out who was actually the first person in space at all, and who was the first person in space to land safely - all of these are vast topics beyond the scope of this post, and they also have quite a lot of strange and questionable.

In any case, the country of the USSR, which lagged behind the West in almost all positions, really needed some kind of history where it would get ahead of the West, overtake the United States, and give food for pride to the ordinary Soviet man in the street. It is this history and pride, as in the case of Gagarin, that the party has created for us. And did she create it in reality or only on paper - a big question.

The last "spiritual bonds" that pull Russia together are the Second World War and Gagarin. Both phenomena are now being revised - this is the most easy way destroy what is left of the country. Czech journalist Jan Bervid-Bukua has long been conducting his “investigation”, according to which Gagarin did not fly into space.

Historical revision - powerful way"rocking the boat" in Russia. During Perestroika, the blow fell on the Revolution of 1917 and Stalin, thereby the top of the intelligentsia tried to prove that the USSR was based on the criminal activities of the Bolsheviks. And, therefore, even Gorbachev with his herbivorous Politburo are the successors of the criminals, and there is nothing shameful to throw off the power of the "raspberry".

Interestingly, the Bolsheviks carried out the same operation in the 1920s and 30s against the tsarist regime. Even earlier - the tsarist regime in relation to the "Troubles", proving that the then legally elected tsar is not a tsar at all. The whole history of Russia is a continuous historical revision, created to please the current moment.

It is no coincidence that now the authorities with such brutality are protecting the last "spiritual bonds" - the Great Patriotic War (and even Stalin, as its derivative) and the Cosmos. The revisionists of these two phenomena are declared extremists, even criminal articles 280 and 282 are sewn to the most ardent. Putin and his entourage are well aware that if you pull out the power of the people and the power of scientific and technological progress from the history of the country of the Second World War and Gagarin, and only the dull snowy East will remain under them. -European plain with time stopped, pain and emptiness.

In the West, journalists and historians are not so scrupulous and ideological, and therefore the revision of the history of Russia begins from there (in fact, the previous revisions also came from there - from NTS leaflets to Voice of America programs). The Czech journalist Jan Bervid-Bukua has long specialized in "debunking the myth of Gagarin". It doesn't matter that many of the components of his "investigation" contradict each other - everything can be attributed to the closeness of the Soviet-Russian archives and the veil of secrecy that still exists.

In his investigation, the Czech agrees that on April 12, 1961, an empty rocket was sent into space. Okay, this is half the shocking truth, the second is that the Americans knew this very well, and went into silence in order to save Khrushchev, who was supposed to negotiate disarmament with Kennedy:

“The reformers in Moscow knew that the new US president, John F. Kennedy, was in favor of eliminating Stalin’s policies in the USSR, and thus they staked everything on White House. However, disappointment soon set in. The Americans did not want to help with a single dollar. They only wanted to negotiate disarmament. This was not enough, and such lengthy negotiations certainly would not have given an instant effect. But, nevertheless, the United States was interested in Nikita Khrushchev retaining his position. So, the time has come for the intelligence of both countries. It was necessary to develop a plan for an "instant effect" (supposedly named in the annals of the CIA Immediate Effect called Cosmos).

On March 3, 1961, FBI chief Edgar Hoover, CIA chief Allen Welsh Dulles, and Pentagon chief Robert McNamara met to create a plan to rescue the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee and make it not even cost Washington a dollar. The plan was simple and brilliant at the same time. Thanks to the primacy in the launch of Sputnik in 1957, Bolshevik Russia attracted the exclusive attention of the whole world. And if this time it will be the first country to send a man into space? All this, of course, must be done in the period from March 3 (the meeting of the three chiefs) to May 5, 1961 (the United States will send its own astronaut into space on that day - Alan Shepard).

And the fact that the USSR does not yet have the necessary know-how to successfully send a pilot on such a difficult mission does not matter. Moscow will launch an empty Vostok-type spacecraft into orbit and claim that there is a pilot-cosmonaut, and Washington will confirm everything. Then comes the turn of the US and Soviet intelligence services. Their task will be to ensure that this "duck" goes around all corners of the world. It is also necessary that the head of the Soviet communists appear together with the cosmonaut as often as possible. From an ideological point of view, it is necessary in the media of Eastern Europe to unambiguously attribute this "global success" to the policies of Nikita Khrushchev. This was to be taken care of by the head of the Soviet GRU, Ivan Serov. With this task, he coped with "excellent". So the pilot Yuri Gagarin became the "first man in space" that did not exist.

Jan Bervid-Boukua lacks direct evidence? But what about the mysterious death of Gagarin? The Czech journalist finds the truth here too:

“The General Secretary of the CPSU was not so annoyed by the fact that a fake “cosmonaut” drunk among his colleagues was chatting something about a flight into space that did not exist. It could always be "hushed up" with the words: "Yuri was impossibly drunk and talking nonsense!" Brezhnev, rather, was annoyed by the fact that he said such things in public, and she did not ask if Comrade Major was drunk or not. The street will simply say: "We heard it from Gagarin himself!"

The leadership of the GRU was absolutely sure: Gagarin was a danger to the USSR, and therefore he was to be liquidated. "Hero of the USSR" and "the first man in space" to plant or even shoot? This is unthinkable from the point of view of world propaganda. The only possible option for getting rid of an unnecessary witness is an assassination attempt. And since it was about the pilot, the most in a simple way the implementation of a political assassination, of course, seemed like a "plane crash"!

On March 27, 1968, at 10:00 a.m., an alcoholic "cosmonaut" was entrusted with a test flight at the Chkalovsky military airfield. This time Gagarin was sober. In front of him stood a dilapidated veteran UTI MiG-15 (Czech-made aircraft). In addition, the aircraft had two additional fuel containers, which limited its maneuverability. In addition, for a short test flight, this fuel was useless. Of course, unless the object is scheduled to explode after falling to the ground, all evidence will be destroyed. There was no black box, of course.

Yuri Gagarin refused to get into this "flying coffin". Pilot-instructor Captain Khmel assured him that everything was in order on the technical side. Lieutenant Colonel Ustimenko joined these words. Colonel Igor Kuznetsov ordered the pilot to prepare the plane for launch. The real cosmonaut got angry, rudely cursed the ground personnel and categorically sought a conversation with the instructor, Colonel Vladimir Seregin. He arrived and, in order to calm Gagarin, said that he would fly with him. Only on the fifth attempt at 10.19 two pilots managed to set this museum piece in motion. And although the flight was supposed to last at least 20 minutes, already at 10.30 Gagarin requested permission to return. It was clearly about a sharp decrease in pressure in the cockpit. But while the pilot justified his request to return, the plane fell into a tailspin. At a speed of 648 km / h, he crashed to the ground, near the village of Novoselovo, and exploded. The explosion destroyed almost everything.

In the evening of the same day, the GRU formed a commission under the leadership of Marshal Konstantin Vershinin. The next day, another commission headed by General Dmitry Ustinov, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, joined the investigation. Both commissions issued statements on the case and banned the investigation. However, their reports differed. Vershinin: "The cause of the accident was a failed maneuver by the pilot in order to bypass the meteorological probe." Ustinov: "The plane got into thick clouds, and the pilot lost his bearings." Only investigator engineer Igor Kuznetsov made a plausible conclusion in 2008: “The accident was caused by a valve that was not fully closed. He was responsible for maintaining the pressure in the cabin. Due to the pressure drop, the pilots lost their orientation and then consciousness. If things had been different, they might have ejected. But the pilot in an unconscious state cannot eject ... "

Jan Bervid-Boukua is not alone in his investigations. There are many inquisitive people in the Czech Republic who are trying to bring Russia to clean water. (Interestingly, the Czech Republic has become the center of anti-Russian research today. This phenomenon requires separate consideration). Here is another Czech journalist, Jan Novak - however, his version says that the first cosmonaut was still Russian, but not Gagarin, but Vladimir Ilyushin, the son of the legendary aircraft designer:

“In the 60s, not only professionals, but also amateurs tried to catch and listen to the signals of Soviet spacecraft. If the former, as a rule, were silent about their results, then the latter are no longer. One of the best were the Italian brothers Achilles and Giovanni Battista Giudica-Cordigliovi. In 1957, near Turin, in an old German bunker left over from World War II, they installed a station.

They claimed that on November 28, 1960, that is, six months before Gagarin's flight, they caught a signal for help. Something similar was said to have happened on February 2, 1961, when they received a recording of a man's irregular heartbeat. Shortly after Gagarin, on May 17, 1961, the Italians even recorded a female voice talking to a ground station, from the conversation it followed that the ship had lost its heat shield and it was on fire during re-entry. The recording in Russian is still on the Internet today, it gives chills to the skin. Immediately after that, on May 23, 1961, the Soviet TASS agency reported that a huge automatic satellite had burned up in the dense layers of the atmosphere. And although it was not possible to verify this information from independent sources, it is interesting that at about the same time (May 20th), the British radio telescope Jodrell Bank picked up unknown signals.

... Ilyushin was born on March 31, 1927. He was a test pilot at the Sukhoi design bureau. In July 1959, in a combat aircraft, he set a world record, taking a height of 28,857 meters. For this, Ilyushin received the Hero of the Soviet Union.

But then strange things began to happen around the figure of young Ilyushin. Just two days before Gagarin's flight, the British newspaper Daily Mail published an article by its Moscow correspondent, Dennis Ogden, which claimed that a manned flight had been made in the USSR, during which the cosmonaut was seriously injured. The next day, French journalist Eduard Brobovsky sent a message from Moscow that the unknown pilot was Vladimir Ilyushin. Then Gagarin flew off, and Brobowski said that this was either not true or a red herring to cover up a previous failure.

In response to Brobowski's reports, TASS reported on May 1 that Ilyushin had had a serious accident earlier and was now being treated in China. It was said that a drunk driver drove into his car in the forehead. But why did the famous pilot, the son of an even more famous designer and the hero of the USSR, prefer the doctors of lagging behind China, and not Soviet specialists? Nobody really explained this.

The Vostok ships were designed in such a way that the astronaut had to eject before landing. And to do this, apparently, it was possible only being conscious. Thus, Ilyushin fell along with the cab and was seriously injured. Due to unfavorable conditions, the flight also ended in China.”

You can build as many versions around Gagarin's flight into space as you like. Trust them and debunk them to smithereens. Still, one cannot break through to the truth, since a significant part Soviet archives is still closed. paranoid passion Russian authorities hiding a more or less significant piece of paper will someday play a cruel joke with them - people will not even believe the truth once made public three times, declaring it to be another falsification.

Soon "exposure" awaits the Second World War. The large-scale collaborationism of Soviet citizens will be revealed, the truth about detachments, intelligence officers, the unsuitability of the generals, the true number of victims (see a footnote about them below), etc.

It is not enough just to believe in "spiritual bonds", they must be defended with the truth in hand. Even if it's the bitter truth.

An audio recording of a space message from an unknown Soviet cosmonaut who allegedly burned up during re-entry into the atmosphere:

For each anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic flight, "revealing" articles appear again and again in newspapers and the Internet, claiming that Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut. Usually they come down to listing rumors about pilots who allegedly flew into space before Gagarin, but died there, so their names are classified. Where did the myth about the victims of Soviet cosmonautics come from?

Venus phantom

For the first time, the Soviet Union was accused of hushing up the death of astronauts even before Gagarin's flight. In the diary of the then head of the cosmonaut corps, Nikolai Kamanin, there is an entry dated February 12, 1961:

Since the launch of the rocket to Venus on February 4, many in the West believe that we have unsuccessfully launched a man into space; the Italians even allegedly “heard” groans and intermittent Russian speech. These are all completely baseless speculations. In fact, we are working hard on a guaranteed astronaut landing. From my point of view, we are even too cautious in this. There will never be a full guarantee of a successful first flight into space, and a certain amount of risk is justified by the greatness of the task ...

The launch on February 4, 1961 was indeed unsuccessful, but there was no one on board. This was the first attempt to send a research apparatus to Venus. The Molniya launch vehicle launched it into space, but due to a malfunction, the device remained in near-Earth orbit. The Soviet government, according to established tradition, did not officially acknowledge the failure, and in a TASS message to the whole world, it was announced the successful launch of a heavy satellite and the fulfillment of the scientific and technical tasks set at the same time.

In general, it was precisely the unjustified in many cases veil of secrecy that surrounded the domestic space program that gave rise to a lot of rumors and conjectures - and not only among Western journalists, but also among Soviet citizens.

The birth of a myth

However, back to Western journalists. The first message dedicated to the "victims of red space" was published by Italians: in December 1959, the Continental agency circulated a statement by a certain high-ranking Czech communist that the USSR had been launching manned ballistic missiles since 1957. One of the pilots named Alexey Ledovsky allegedly died on November 1, 1957 during such a suborbital launch. Developing the topic, the journalists mentioned three more "dead cosmonauts": Sergei Shiborin (allegedly died on February 1, 1958), Andrei Mitkov (allegedly died on January 1, 1959) and Maria Gromova (allegedly died on June 1, 1959). At the same time, the female pilot allegedly crashed not in a rocket, but while testing a prototype orbital aircraft with a rocket engine.

At the same time, rocket pioneer Herman Oberth said that he heard about a manned suborbital launch, which allegedly took place at the Kapustin Yar test site in early 1958 and ended in the death of the pilot. However, Oberth emphasized that he knew about the "cosmic catastrophe" from other people's words and could not vouch for the veracity of the information.

And the Continental agency produced sensation after sensation. Italian correspondents talked either about the "lunar ship" that exploded on the launch pad of the mythical Siberian cosmodrome "Sputnikgrad", or about the upcoming secret flight of two Soviet pilots ... Since none of the sensations was confirmed, the reports of "Continental" ceased to be trusted. But the "rumor factory" soon had followers.

In October 1959, an article about aircraft testers was published in the Ogonyok magazine. Aleksey Belokonev, Ivan Kachur, Aleksey Grachev were mentioned among them. The Vechernyaya Moskva newspaper, in an article on a similar topic, spoke about Gennady Mikhailov and Gennady Zavodovsky. The journalist of the Associated Press, who reprinted the materials, for some reason decided that the photographs in these articles depict future Soviet cosmonauts. Since their names did not subsequently appear in TASS "space" reports, a "logical" conclusion was made: these five died during early unsuccessful launches.

The real Belokonov, Grachev and Kachur in the photographs from Ogonyok (Photo: Dmitry Baltermants)

Moreover, the exuberant fantasy of journalists played out so much that for each of the pilots they came up with a separate detailed version of the death. So, after the launch on May 15, 1960 of the first satellite ship 1KP, the prototype of the Vostok, the Western media claimed that the pilot Zavodovsky was on board. He allegedly died due to a malfunction in the attitude control system, which brought the ship into a higher orbit.

The mythical cosmonaut Kachur found his death on September 27, 1960 during the unsuccessful launch of another satellite ship, the orbital flight of which was to take place during Nikita Khrushchev's visit to New York. According to rumors, the Soviet leader had with him a model of a manned spacecraft, which he would triumphantly show to Western journalists if the flight was successful.

It must be admitted that the Soviet diplomatic services themselves created an unhealthy atmosphere of expectation of some high-profile event, hinting to American journalists that “something amazing” would happen on September 27th. Intelligence reported that spacecraft tracking ships took up positions in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. A Soviet sailor who escaped during the same period confirmed that a space launch was being prepared. But, having knocked with his fist at the UN General Assembly, on October 13, 1960, Nikita Khrushchev left America. There have been no official statements from TASS. Of course, journalists immediately trumpeted to the whole world about a new catastrophe that had befallen the Soviet space program.

Many years later, it became known that a launch was indeed planned for those days. But not a man was supposed to fly into space, but 1M - the first apparatus for studying Mars. However, attempts to send two identical devices at least into near-Earth orbit, undertaken on October 10 and 14, ended ingloriously: in both cases, the launch failed due to an accident with the Molniya launch vehicle.

The next "victim of the space race", the pilot Grachev, died, according to the Western media, on September 15, 1961. About him terrible death told the same factory of rumors "Continental". In February 1962, the agency said that in September 1961, two Soviet cosmonauts were launched on the Vostok-3 spacecraft: supposedly this launch was timed to coincide with the XXII Congress of the CPSU and during the flight the ship was supposed to fly around the Moon, but instead " lost in the depths of the universe."

Cosmonaut Ilyushin?

Vladimir Sergeevich Ilyushin, the son of a famous aircraft designer, is another victim of sensation hunters. In 1960, he had an accident, and he was declared another "Dogagarin cosmonaut." Conspiracy theorists believe that Ilyushin was forbidden to talk about his flight into space until the end of his life, because he allegedly ... landed in China. It is impossible to think of a more ridiculous reason to abandon the space championship. Moreover, Ilyushin not only did not die - he lived until 2010 and rose to the rank of major general.

Voices in space

The grave of the tester Zavodovsky. As can be seen from the dates, the “deceased cosmonaut” died in the 21st century in retirement

The failed launch of the Venus station on February 4, 1961 gave rise to a new wave of rumors. Then, for the first time, the amateur radio brothers Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordilla made themselves known, having built their own radio station near Turin. They claimed to have been able to intercept telemetry radio signals from the beating of a human heart and the ragged breathing of a dying Soviet cosmonaut. This "incident" is associated with the name of the mythical cosmonaut Mikhailov, who allegedly died in orbit.

But that's not all! In 1965, the amateur radio brothers told an Italian newspaper about three strange broadcasts from space at once. The first interception allegedly took place on November 28, 1960: radio amateurs heard the sounds of Morse code and a request for help on English language. On May 16, 1961, they managed to catch on the air the confused speech of a Russian female cosmonaut. During the third radio interception on May 15, 1962, the conversations of three Russian pilots (two men and a woman) who died in space were recorded. In the recording, through the crackle of static, the following phrases could be distinguished: "Conditions are getting worse ... why are you not answering? .. the speed is dropping ... the world will never know about us ..."

Impressive, isn't it? To finally assure the reader of the authenticity of the stated "facts", the Italian newspaper names the dead. The first "victim" on this list was pilot Alexei Grachev. The female cosmonaut's name was Lyudmila. Among the trio who died in 1962, for some reason, only one is named - Alexei Belokonev, about whom Ogonyok wrote.

In the same year, the "sensational" information of the Italian newspaper was reprinted by the American magazine Reader's Digest. Four years later, the book Autopsy of an Astronaut was published, written by pathologist Sam Stonebreaker. In it, the author claimed to have flown into space on a Gemini 12 to obtain tissue samples from dead Soviet pilots who had been in orbit since May 1962.

That's who really flew into space before Gagarin - the dummy Ivan Ivanovich. So that he would not be mistaken for the corpse of an astronaut, a sign "Layout" was inserted into the helmet

As for the article in Ogonyok, which gave rise not even to a myth, but to a whole mythology, the well-known journalist Yaroslav Golovanov, who investigated the stories of the “Dogagarin cosmonauts”, interviewed Alexei Timofeevich Belokonov himself (exactly so, and not Belokonev, as is customary among the myth-makers ). Here is what the tester said, who was buried a long time ago by Western rumor mills.

In the 50s, long before Gagarin's flight, my comrades and I, then very young guys - Lyosha Grachev, Gennady Zavodovsky, Gennady Mikhailov, Vanya Kachur, were engaged in ground tests of aviation equipment and anti-g flight suits. By the way, at the same time, spacesuits for dogs that flew on high-altitude rockets were created and tested in a neighboring laboratory. The work was difficult, but very interesting.

Once a correspondent from the Ogonyok magazine came to us, walked around the laboratories, talked with us, and then published a report “On the threshold high altitudes"with photographs (see "Spark" No. 42, 1959 - Ya. G.). The main character of this reportage was Lyosha Grachev, but it was also told about me, how I experienced the effect of explosive decompression. Ivan Kachur was also mentioned. It was also said about the high-altitude record of Vladimir Ilyushin, who then climbed 28,852 meters. The journalist slightly distorted my last name, called me not Belokonov, but Belokonev.

Well, this is where it all started. The New York Journal-American magazine printed a fake that my comrades and I flew to Gagarin in space and died. The editor-in-chief of Izvestia Alexey Ivanovich Adzhubey invited Mikhailov and me to the editorial office. We arrived, talked with journalists, we were photographed. This picture was published in Izvestia (May 27, 1963 - Ya. G.) next to open letter Adjubey to Mr. Hearst, Jr., the owner of that magazine that sent us into space and buried us.

We ourselves published a response to the Americans to their article in the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper (May 29, 1963 - Ya. G.), in which we honestly wrote: “We did not have a chance to rise into extraatmospheric space. We are testing various equipment for high-altitude flights.” No one died during these tests. Gennady Zavodovsky lived in Moscow, worked as a driver, didn’t get into Izvestia then - he was on a flight, Lyosha Grachev worked in Ryazan at a factory of calculating and analytical machines, Ivan Kachur lived in the town of Pechenezhin in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, worked as a teacher in an orphanage . Later, I participated in tests related to cosmonauts' life support systems, and even after Gagarin's flight, I was awarded the medal "For Labor Valor" for this work ...

Forgotten Heroes

So, in the list of mythical astronauts, there were still people who worked for the space program, but their real life was noticeably different from journalistic fantasies.

In addition to the four test friends, a very real figure was, for example, Pyotr Dolgov. The Western media announced him as an astronaut who died during the catastrophe of an orbiting satellite ship on October 10, 1960 (in fact, they tried to launch the 1M No. 1 apparatus that day). Colonel Pyotr Dolgov died much later: on November 1, 1962, during a parachute jump from a stratostat, raised to a height of 25.5 kilometers. When Dolgov left the stratospheric balloon, the face shield of the pressure helmet cracked - death came instantly.

Parachutist-record holder Pyotr Dolgov really died, but space has nothing to do with it

Pilot Anokhin flew on a rocket plane, not on a spaceship

I present all these details here not to impress the reader or make him doubt the known history of astronautics. A review of rumors and mythical episodes is needed to show how detrimental to the reputation of the domestic space program was the policy of silence and disinformation. The unwillingness and inability to admit mistakes played a cruel joke on us: even when TASS made a completely truthful statement, they refused to believe it, looking for contradictions or trying to read "between the lines."

Sometimes the test pilots themselves contribute to the spread of rumors. Shortly before his death in 1986, the prominent Soviet pilot Sergei Anokhin dropped in an interview: "I flew on a rocket." Journalists immediately asked themselves: when and on what rocket could he fly? They recalled that Anokhin, from the mid-1960s, headed the department in the bureau of Sergei Korolev, which prepared "civilian" cosmonauts for flights. Yes, he was part of the team. Is it because he already had the experience of "flying on a rocket" in the early 1950s? .. But in fact, long before working for the bureau, Anokhin participated in the testing of a rocket plane and a cruise missile, and most likely had this in mind.

James Oberg, one of the debunkers of this "conspiracy theory"

All the rumors about the Soviet cosmonautics, which had flickered in the Western press since the mid-1960s, were taken to systematize by the American space technology expert James Oberg. Based on the collected material, he wrote the article "Phantoms of the Cosmos", first published in 1975. Now this work has been supplemented with new materials and has gone through many reprints. Having the reputation of a staunch anti-Soviet, Oberg is nevertheless very scrupulous in selecting information regarding the secrets of the Soviet space program, and very cautious in his conclusions. Without denying that there are many “blank spots” in the history of Soviet cosmonautics, he concludes that stories about astronauts who died during launch or in orbit are implausible. All this is the fruit of a fantasy fueled by the regime of secrecy.

Reality versus myth

Soviet cosmonauts really died - both before Gagarin's flight and after it. Let us remember them and bow our heads before Valentin Bondarenko (he died on Earth, without flying into space, on March 23, 1961 due to a fire during tests), Vladimir Komarov (died on April 24, 1967 due to a disaster during the landing of the Soyuz- 1"), Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev (died on June 30, 1971 due to depressurization of the descent module of the Soyuz-11 spacecraft). However, in the history of Soviet cosmonautics there was and is no secret corpses.

For cynics who do not believe documents, memoirs and diaries, but rely on "logic" and "common sense", I will give a cynical, but absolutely logical argument. Under the conditions of the space race, it did not matter whether the first cosmonaut returned to Earth or not - the main thing was to announce his priority. Therefore, if the pilot Zavodovsky were on the 1KP satellite, as irresponsible authors are trying to assure us, it would be Zavodovsky who would be declared the first cosmonaut of the planet. Of course, the whole world would mourn him, but the Soviet people would still be the first to go into space, and this is the main thing.

The readiness of the USSR government for any outcome of the flight is also confirmed by declassified documents. I will give here a fragment of a note sent to the Central Committee of the CPSU on March 30, 1961 on behalf of people involved in the space program:

We consider it expedient to publish the first TASS message immediately after the satellite enters orbit for the following reasons:

a) if necessary, it will facilitate quick organization salvation;
b) this will exclude the declaration by any foreign state of the astronaut as a reconnaissance officer for military purposes ...

Here is another paper on the same subject. On April 3, the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution "On the launch of a spacecraft-satellite":

1. Approve the proposal<…>on the launch of the Vostok-3 spacecraft-satellite with an astronaut on board.
2. Approve the draft TASS report on the launch of a spacecraft with an astronaut on board the Earth satellite and grant the right to the Launch Commission, if necessary, to make clarifications on the results of the launch, and to publish it to the Commission of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on military-industrial issues.

As decided, so they did. The TASS message, dedicated to the first manned flight into space, sounded even before Gagarin returned to Earth. He could have died during the descent - and April 12 would still be Cosmonautics Day.