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Three Russian Space Shot Deaths-- Pre-Gagarin?
Guppy06 writes: "According to this Interfax article, a senior engineer with Experimental Design Office 456 has come forward stating that the USSR attempted launching test pilots on parabolic trajectories (like what American Alan Shepard did in 1961) three different times in 1957, '58, and '59. According to Mikhail Rudenko, after losing test pilots Ledovskikh, Shaborin and Mitkov, the Soviets decided to start giving their cosmonauts special space-flight training, as well as deciding to forget the parabolas and try to reach orbit. Unfortunately, Mr. Rudenko seems to have neglected to tell us how this has yet to turn up in papers released by the CIA or KGB, or about how exactly these three died (on the pad? Re-entry?), but it seems to have a little more meat than the usual conspiracy theories (*cough* fake moon landing *cough*)."
I think he's saying that this has more meat to it than the fake moon landing conspiracy theories.
Yess.... the left == communists. That's right....
I remember several years back Final Frontier magazine had a little sidebar on the Gagarin story saying that there was a relatively safe spaceflight before Gagarin, by Vladimir Illushyn (I forget how it's spelled, but he's related to the aircraft designer). He managed to survive the flight, but looked like crap, and so they couldn't really show him off very well. But Gagarin came back just fine, so they used him instead.
You are beautiful.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sure you can cut the budget. In fact there isn't a need for any supply rockets. Just grab someone from death row who has exhausted all appeals, send them up with plenty of seed. If he can make anything grow on the moon, good for him, let him leave there forever. If not, he is a criminal who would die anyway, now he gets into history books.
He's obviously trolling, and you're only encouraging the signal degradation around here.
Please, stop it.
(The sad thing is I have mod points right now, but I've only got 3 left, and he can post infinitely, which given the evidence, he probably will.)
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
He is right. "skidding" the atmosphere would only make you lose energy, and will accelerate you towards the surface of Earth.
It's not that simple. You will convert energy to heat, and your average altitude will be lower. However, if your orbit was eccentric (common for reentry), instead of losing enough energy to actually reenter, you will end up in a more circular, lower total energy, non-reentry orbit.
This happens more or less the same way a skipping stone transfers forward momentum to upward momentum with a loss to the water and heat with each skip.
The orbit you end up with would probably be 'inconvieniantly' long lived when compared to oxygen supply. It is reasonable to guess that all fuel would have been exhausted at this point attempting to make the reentry steep enough to succeed.
hawk
hawk, who still refers to "Red China," and will be boycotting all mainland chinese goods for a full year [ironically, that tends to mean buying taiwanese, as with my daughter's scooter last week. The *sole* reason I didn't by the first one was the act of war followed by terrorism]
In this story, Slashdot posted the front page to the Huntsville Times from the day that Yuri Gagarin was launched into space. In it, you can clearly see the headline "Reds Deny Spacemen Have Died" (lower center of page). It has long been thought that the Soviets lost some astronauts during their initial test flights. The American media has yet to get their hands on any rock-hard evidence, though.
I'm not sure what to think. Heinlein's opinion of the Soviet Union was unabashedly critical; but it's not like I'd be any more trusting of official 1960s USSR reports.
The Encyclopedia Astronautica confirms that a Vostok program (the first Russian manned spaceflight) launch did occur on that day, and that it was pushed into a higher orbit when its retrorockets were fired at an incorrect attitude. The Astronautica claims that the launch was intended to test the spacecraft systems, that it was unmanned, and that it was unrecoverable because the heat shield had not been installed. If it lacked a heat shield, then it certainly wasn't a manned flight. But if they were testing reentry by firing the retrorockets, I don't understand why they wouldn't install the heat shield on the vehicle.
I think the "military cadets didn't know what they were talking about" theory is much more likely than the alternative "Heinlein made up some anti-Soviet propaganda" or "the Soviets killed a man, then tried launching dogs for a year until they felt confident to try a manned launch again" theories... but there's nothing quite so entertaining as a good conspiracy theory, is there? And the spacecraft components eventually did reenter, at a random attitude where they would burn up with or without heat shielding, so we'll never really know...
Have you been taking a few too many drugs, me lad?
you caught me. yes i have.
"the Red Grissom"? Gimme a break. American political discourse was all learned from certain Senate Subcommittees.
/. in the first place?
What attracted people like #442009 to
trade with a backward country is aid
:)
Heh, Canada is undeniably charitable to the States then.
Whose god? Papa Legba? (Not a troll, btw. The USA is a multi-cultural society therefore there is no way ever that you will become a "Godly nation" you've got way too many religions active to be able to impose a state religion.
Heh. Refer to your history textbooks. The opposite of that is true.
(FYI, I support abortion. So would you if you knew more women who trusted you enough to tell you the truth about their childhoods)
Maybe you've been brainwashed about Greenpeace, but my suspicion is that a whole lot of folk in BC regard them with a degree of suspicion and dislike... and we are, if nothing else, a whale-luvin' sort of province.
That said, Greenpeace has been caught out in its lies about logging, and we're pissed. Oh, yah, we're well aware of how fubar'd the logging regulations are -- but we also know Greenpeace lies a whole lot about it all.
Go away, Greenpeace; we'll take care of the problem ourselves.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
(This is from memory so the details may not be entirely correct. Originally from the book "From the Earth To The Moon" by Buz Aldrin)
The first near approach in space was done by simply launching two rockets from the same site at an interval which is a multiple of the orbit period. This made the americans think that the russians were way ahead of them in developing space rendezvous capability.
The first mission with three crew members on board was done with a ship designed for two and a very skinny third crew member (an engineer, not a cosmonaut). Comonauts would usually leave the craft and lan with their personal parachutes - remember that the russians do not land at sea. On this improvised setup their couldn't do this. Without water to cushion the landing they had to hope that the final landing retrorockets would fire just before touchdown or they would be crushed.
Leonov's spacewalk nearly ended in disaster when his suit started to bulge from its internal pressure and seriously limited his ability to move.
On the russian spacewalks, a foldable "tent" was used to block the hatch so the interior of the ship will remain pressurized - the vacuum tube electronics could not withstand exposure to vacuum and would probably crack from thermal shock.
On an aborted countdown a general insisted that the rocket be serviced while it is fully loaded with propellant so it might still make the launch window. It exploded on the pad killing many technicians.
Unlike the alleged pre-Gagarins these extreme risks taken under pressure from politicians are well documented.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Two engineers from Bell Aerospace systems submitted a plan to NASA in 1962 for a one-way manned moon mission in order to beat the russians. The astronaut would have no means of immediate return and would be sustained on the moon by a series of supply rockets until the technology for a return mission is developed.
This wasn't a joke. These engineers were serious.
The 1962 book "The Pilgrim Project" by Hank Searle and the 1968 movie "Countdown" were based on this plan.
It seems to me that such a plan would not only have been a way to beat the russians but also a very effective budget ratchet - you can't cut the budget with a man stranded on the moon...
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
a suborbital parabola is cheaper in energy than an orbital hyperbola while still allowing the nation that fired the shot to have claimed that it reached space
Not to mention that both the USSR and the US already had rockets made to fly a parabolic suborbital trajectory. They're called ICBMs.
0 1 - just my two bits
If the Soviets had launched 3 guys and killed them all, you bet the US intelligence services would make sure every time that it hit the press .. the propaganda benefit would have been irresistible (i.e. Communists kill another cosmonaut)
(a felon cannot hold public office)
Thats just not true.
Surfing the net and other cliches...
Surfing the net and other cliches...
(Who Meta-Meta-Moderates the Meta-Moderators?)
But when the majority didn't voted for you (check the number of vote) you have to be carefull.
Interestingly enough the majority didn't vote for Bill Clinton either. Neither in 1992 nor 1996. Due to H. Ross Perot acting as spoiler and splitting the right and moderate vote, Clinton managed to be elected with no more than 42% of the popular vote or so compared to 38 or 39% for George Bush Sr. and Bob Dole. Had Perot not run in either case it is highly unlikely Clinton would have won given that Perot took a lot more votes away from the Republican candidate than from Clinton.
To be fair, it was Ralph Nader who cost Al Gore the election, acting as spoiler, he got more than the narrow margin of victory's worth of votes in Florida, and it is likely Gore would have won Florida had Nader not been running.
I believe that G.W. Bush actually got a bigger percentage of the popular vote than Bill Clinton did in either '92 or '96, despite narrowly losing the popular vote (Perot got a lot more votes than Nader did). Of course, as we all know, it is the Electoral College that matters...
To be able to go above the atmosphere without the fuel/energy cost of achieving orbit.
Look at the early Mercury/Redstone shots, or the X-15 program for more on these kind of trajectories on their purpose - short answer: a suborbital parabola is cheaper in energy than an orbital hyperbola while still allowing the nation that fired the shot to have claimed that it reached space.
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Troll.....
I can't believe people are replying to this gibberish.
Troll score: +3
* Reference to McCarthy +3
* Reference to Quisling +1
* Reference to abortion and murder -1
* Reply from the guy who said he'd publish abortion methods +3
* Use of effective bolding techniques +2
* Referring to Hitler -1
* Replying to own troll -1 * 4 = -4
Tips and Tricks for Mozilla
Do you think we're gonna ask you whether you like it or not? Will just take you and launch you into the space without asking anything.
-"Death by launching into the space" advocacy team
Just out of curiosity, are there any slashdot readers who worked on historical engineering projects such as Mercury? I think a "Slashdot Stories" section where (older? older than me, at least!) readers could share stories and experience would be fasinating.
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jvev atvf gurm rabs pern gvba
Actually it is not all the hard to out run an H-Bomb. Atomic wepons tend to come with drag chutes to slow down that bomb so that the Bomber can get away. The US dropped a multi-megaton device from a B-52 with out the loose of the plane. The Russians drop I think a 5o megaton device from a freaking Bear. Now the Bear is very fast for a prop plane but it is sub sonic.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Myh mom (she was in highschool when sputnik was launched) told me about pre Gagarin flights for
years. Basically the story goes, that you could
pick up on a ham radio the radio transmissions
of from the doomed cosmonauts. Basically they were steuck up there, and couldn't return.
Supposably you could also hear their heartbeat (well at least the *beep* *beep* *beep* of the
EKG). My mom said that it was reported in the
papers when this happened, but I never heard anything about it except from her.
The idea of the Ruskies launching men before the
technology was ready plays into the heartless commie stereotype of the red scare.
While this whole story strikes me as plausable, without collaborating evidence, it's still just urban legend.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
Contrary to a certain old James Bond movie, it's a real bitch to hide a space launch. About the only man-made phenomena that's brighter or noisier than a launch is a nuclear blast (similar amount of energy involved for the larger rockets). Have you ever seen a man-made sunrise?
They're visible from most of Florida and good chunks of Georgia (including populous cities like Orlando and Savannah). They go right over international waters (giving interested parties like the Soviets the ability to sit and watch them up close). The ony option the USAF and NASA has to cover up the launches from Cape Canaveral is to neglect to tell the press what the payload was.
They are also very visible from orbit, Russia and China undoubtedly have similar ICBM launch detection facilities to those operated by NORAD.
You can probably get some idea of the payload from the flight path of the rocket and it's type as well as the RCS of whatever it places in orbit.
During the period in question (1961-1966), dozens of rockets were launched at Cape Canaveral, in the broad light of day. A few were well-publicized manned fligths; the rest were billed as "unmanned test shots".
Including craft pefectly capable of having crews. How do you tell if there is anyone in the command module of an Apollo capsule?
Were any launches (or orbits) detected which correspond with these alleged manned Russian attempts.
Before the Gagarin launch, they did actually check that they could get someone up there by launching wooden mannequins
This it's possible that if they did kill someone on an early flight they'd want people to think they had launched a mannequin.
Not that aircraft with bombs weren't enough to fuck over the world . . . Its just that it wasn't safe for pilots to drop really large nuclear weapons (i.e. some would wimp out, cause outrunning a H bomb is not really easy in an aircraft.)
It would be impossible to outrun the initial flash, thus all sorts of techniques to ensure pilots don't get blinded. Also the only way to outrun the blast would be in something like an FB-111, assuming sufficent fuel to run the afterburners for long enough. Even then you run into problems with multiple bombers...
>> Imipolex-G
Hah. A Pynchon reading troll
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
Look at the facts: if it went up X distance and then came down, that means it didn't have enough energy to hit Earth's escape velocity. So how, praytell, did it get enough energy from skidding off the atmosphere to go into deep space?
Secondly, there are hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers worldwide who scan the skies every night with telescopes. If such a capsule did exist, why didn't the worldwide amateur astronomical community spot it?
Someone was yanking your chain.
There are no marooned space capsules in orbit. If there were, there'd be Web sites devoted to "Enter your latitude and longitude and receive the time of day when the Russian Graveyard flies overhead!"
After her flight? That must have been extremely freaky. I know that if I had seen her coming into a room I was in a week after the flight I would have run screaming for the door.
Best Slashdot Co
So do the ranks of anti-abortionists. And the environmental movement. And most other movements. Any group is 10% composed of idiots.
Best Slashdot Co
Well, I must disagree. It works very poorly, and that's a large part of the reason why political discourse in this country is so pathetic, mostly consisting of name-calling, finger-pointing, and scare-mongering.
When there's only two sides, everyone who's not for you is against you. With a multidimensional view, you can see that those who oppose you on some issues are allies on others.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
What is it with the trend for /. trolls these days to include some babble about "liberals"? I thought that the "liberal as boogeyman" bit went out with Reagan. But then, it looks like the '00s are going to be the '80s all over again - I see kids with Mohawk haircuts, both Prince and the Go-Gos are touring this summer, there's a Crocodile Dundee
movie coming out, and an incompetent Republican pretending to be president.
Anyway, for those of you scoring the trolls at home: try a Google search on "Imipolex-G". You might also note that MK-ULTRA involved "mind control" via LSD. (No, I'm not making that up, and it is an extremely fucked up story.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Two dimensional thinking is a poor way to conceive of political views.
Leftists beleive in an economic system based on labor. Rightists beleive in an economic system based on capital. Both leftists and rightists come in libertarian and authoritarian, free-market and command-economy, isolationist and interventionist, and green and industrial flavors. You really need several axes.
Some of these combinations are more common then others, to be sure. But political philosophy is an essay question, not multiple choice.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Amen ;)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
If this is a troll, it sure is funny.
"Your time is done. The future is ours."
YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO ESCAPE! MAKE YOUR TIME! FOR GREAT JUSTICE!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I think if you will peruse either Mark Wade's Encyclopedia Astronautica or the various history articles on NASA's web site (look up the URL's yourself) you will find that there were two different flight profiles for the X-15. In both cases, the powered segment was generally quite brief, running around 80 to 120 seconds of and 8 to 12 minuite flight. The high speed profile was 'relatively' flat, as you state. But the high altitude profile, which resulted in the 62 mile altitude you refer to, is described as a ballistic trajectory, the central three minuites or so required use of reaction controls to maintain stability, as aerodynamic controls no longer worked at the extreme altitudes involved. One approximate description of a suborbital ballistic trajectory is parabolic.
Please read books before you quote them.
The black book of communism totals all the dead from the Russian civil war, the famines, the Chinese civil was, the Chinese famines, oh, and the million or so Cambodians the Pol Pot offed. As for the Gulag Archipelago, either you missed a decimal place, or you are just making numbers up.
You also seem to conflate the Soviet Union with Communism everwhere. Moscow might have liked it that way, but that was simply not the case.
This is not to say that the USSR was not a repressive totalitarian state that had no qualms about the use of violence on its citizens, but please don't just invent numbers to back up a pithy subject line.
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
This has come to mind a lot concerning Chinese manned space flight, which is expected to happen sometime within the next 5 years.
Would they announce an attempt beforehand? Or would they wait and see if it were successful first? The Americans could never afford the luxury of waiting to see if it were successful before they told the public it was happening because of the potential outcry, but the Chinese could conceivably do it. It's unlikely, but they may have already tried (and failed) to launch someone into space. The Chinese government has certainly been priming the world to expect an attempt within the next year or two.
I wonder how much a Chinese astronaut (anyone know what the Chinese version of astronaut/cosmonaut would be?) would kick the USA into being more ambitious about the manned space program?
[TMB]
Several years ago, a ham radio operator told me that some russian cosmonauts bounced off the earth's atmosphere in the late 1960's. Apparently, they tried to reenter at just the wrong angle and "skidded" off the atmosphere into deep space without any way of returning. According to the source, ham operators worldwide were able to eavesdrop on the related radio activity (which was the only way the story got out, since the Soviet government at that time still kept secret all news topics that couldn't be reported with a positive spin).
Recently, a sceptical colleague objected that this was impossible due to the laws of physics. The objector claimed that the craft would have slowed under any circustances because of its momentum and effects of the atmosphere, even if it meant burning up. However, he related a story he had heard much earlier (early 1960's?) in which AM radios, if tuned to a certain channel, could pick up a fading signal of the heartbeat of a marooned astronaut. Yet another acquaintance claimed that is was actually the first female cosmonaut who had been marooned.
Has any one else heard any more variations of this story? Is this just a reoccuring ham radio "fish story", or is there some factual basis? Also, would an object leaving orbit like that eventually return, even years later?
Check the headline: "Reds Deny Spacemen Have Died" headline. I can't quite make out the date, but I suspect it's 4-12-61...
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I'm hoping someone old enough to actually remember it could tell me whether Reds was less derogatory then. I can't see a newspaper printing "Reds" today. Is this because the use of the world has changed, or because the early 60s was just a weird time?
God will return to His rightful place in our Nation.
Until the mother fucker pays taxes he has no place in our nation.
Fucking troll
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I believe that he is refering to the Fox special about the moon landings being a hoax that there was an article about a couple of weeks ago.
check out this article on badastronomy.com.
Oh well, if it came from Experimental Design Office 456 then it has to be true.
"Just once, I'd like to meet an alien menace that wasn't immune to bullets." -- The Brigadier, Dr. Who
. Whether they can figure out docking in orbit is another question entirely...
- Their technology is based on tried and tested Russian technology.
- The Russians have more experience than anybody else at space docking
- Russia is in need of hard currency so I am sure the Chinese could buy the knowledge
- Even if the Russians aren't selling or the Chinese aren't buying, the Chinese aren't stupid (they've got this far...)
I'd say when rather than if.Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
It's 1947. The USA is interested in high altitude effects on the human body. Some test pilots have had problems and the jets don't go high enough yet.So they want to use high altitude balloons. It is considered very dangerous and quite likely fatal due to varius unknowns. So they use military prisoners who are willing to "volunteer". One balloon crashes with it's payload and is seen before it is recovered. So a story is spun about weather balloons, covering the story about spying on the Russians, covering the sory about..
Come on! Do you honestly think governments would lie to their own people?
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Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
what the heck is this guy talking about, the united states moon landing? That for sure was real.
The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
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I like to watch.
Maybe not so important these days, but the satellites are still there.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
more information please?
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
Do you tell them how many times you scored or how many times you met the hottest chick on the planet and she shot you down like the asshole you were?
The USSR & the US were involved in one hell of a game, something along the lines of "We will crush you!" If reports had surfaced that they had screwed up three times prior to a successful launch, chances are we wouldn't have been half as scared as we were, and we might not have mobilized as readily to go to the moon. What if those deaths made us think, "Ok, we are NOT spending several billion to send one or two Americans to die in space." (several billion for 55k Americans to die in random Asian spot, gogogo *ahem*)
The US did most of its space work in the open, and we love hearing about "the Right Stuff." The USSR did most of its stuff in secret, as was perfectly normal with the Communist regime at the time.
Peace,
Amit
ICQ 77863057
[o]_O
IMHO, Gagarin was the first man in space. An this is why:
Too many people were invloved in the Soviet space program - thousands and thousands of ordinary people, engineers and technicians, so I don't see any possibility to hide such a big event.
Also, some well-known people have been working with Korolev Constructors Bureau since early 50-s and they explicitly state - Gagarin was the first cosmonaut. Apparently, there's no reason for them to lie today. The USSR doesn't exist anymore and the KGB (or whatever they call it now) doesn't have enough money and, more important, not enough reasons to support the old Soviet propaganda.
So, were all those silly conspiracy theories come from? Georgy Grechko, one of the most famous russian cosmonauts, told once, that before Gagarin they often used the "Ivan Ivanovich" dummies for the test launches... Very often, some random witnesses of landing mistook the dummies for dead people. Later, the engineers decided to print the word "DUMMY" on them, to avoid those mistakes :)
Anyway, it might be one of the roots of the pre-Gagarin cosmonaut legend.
why would someone wish to be launched on a parabolic trajectory?
Because they were waiting in line for 45 minutes, and everybody coming back from the ride said it was worth it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Before the Gagarin launch, they did actually check that they could get someone up there by launching wooden mannequins. And in 1959, they didn't have a rocket that could carry the weight of a person.
I can't believe that three moderators fell for this pile of dinosaur manure. What a load of self-contradictory, nonsesical and barely-on-topic ravings. I believe that myself, the moderators and Slashdot as a whole are worse off for having read it.
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Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Not trying to be funny at all, but this kind of accident tends not to leave much in the way of a body. If the story is true, then these men were extremely brave and deserve the same sort of recognition that other test pilots who died in the space race were given.
And on a personal note, I think it would be more exciting to get launched into space not in a rocket, but by a very large sling-shot device. I'm not sure why, its just that there's something about that picture that cracks me up.
-Gnight
Hail mother russia and comrade stalin.
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Not that aircraft with bombs weren't enough to fuck over the world . . . Its just that it wasn't safe for pilots to drop really large nuclear weapons (i.e. some would wimp out, cause outrunning a H bomb is not really easy in an aircraft.)
The point of this post is that a sub orbital parabola isn't enough to hit something on the other side of the world (in the us's case, russia)
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Here's some food: Imipolex-G doesn't exist outside of Gravity's Rainbow. Please refer to a chapter in this book.
I heard a few years ago from a guy who worked at the aerospace musuem in Huntsville, Alamba that the a lot of early cosmonauts had died.
Quisling wasn't a word that Heinlein invented.
Vidkun Quisling was the wartime leader of the Norwegian NS, which collaborated with the German occupation forces. His name became synonymous with treason.
And we're supposed to believe you because .... you say so? Sorry you're going to have to do better than that. First off, your theory fails the Large Population Conspiracy test, which is that there were thousands of people intimately involved in the space program and yet no one has come forward to expose this conspiracy. Certainly years later, there should have been at least one disgruntled astronaut, engineer, or administrator who would break the silence.
Even if we assume what you say is correct, it's not clear what benefit there would have been to having a 'secret astronaut' program. Throughout the period, the US and USSR were in a race to be the first in every space accomplishment. Sending up a 'secret' astronaut on a mission that you could never mention and might allow the Soviets to jump ahead of you in public achievements just does not make any sense. By the Gemini program (after 1963), the rockets were much more reliable and there would have been little reason to have secret missions when the odds of success were already so high.
Ok, the Russians failed a couple of launches, and then covered up the results. Is anyone surprised? Does anyone care? I guess this is news for nerd, but I'm having a hard time classifying it as "stuff that matters."
Stupid like a fox!
The Chinese NASA equivelant is the China Aerospace Science Technology Corporation - don't bother clicking the English link all it says is Sorry, We are doing this work now, Please wait a while... ALL YOUR... sorry.
But seriously there was a press release back in November 2000 that suggested they would start flights "at the beginning of the 21st century"
Sometime very soon?
*** I am the real stylewagon
Dude,
... and the horse you rode in on.")
Stop trolling the kiddies.
(In case you are serious "
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
that is the single stupidest, most uninformed article i have ever read.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Well, you obviously know more about Russian History than I do (I'm just a Computer Science/Math major).
However, I don't think it's fair to imply that Soviet atrocities began with Stalin - although re-reading your post I think I see what you are trying to do, going from the harmless (Communism) to the not so harmless (Bolshevism) to the terrible (Stalinism).
However, why did we win the Cold War? Luck? Or because Communism doesn't work? I'd like to see what would happen to China and Cuba if they stopped receiving international aid (trade with a backward country is aid). Any why could all Soviets in 1953 read? The same reason all Cubans can read today, and the same reasons all Germans had radios under the Nazis - distribution of propaganda. Maybe they could all read but what choice do you have when your government holds a gun (or a trip to Siberia) to your head? On top of this: Communism is evil, because ultimately it implies that you have no right to even your own life.
As I said, I am only an amateur, and maybe this is American propaganda talking through me. I doubt it, however, because most politicians and media lean towards economic leftism (Socialism/Communism). I love listening to the horrified reactions when I or somebody else suggests doing away with Social Security or Medicare. "Hoo Boy!"
"Sorry I'm late, but I had to stop by the wax museum and give the finger to FDR!" -- Cotton Hill
A pilot, in those days, was the only unfettered and entirely independent human being that lived in the earth.-Mark Twain
So some engineer makes some claims... Shouldn't we be asking for some evidence to back them up? In any case, I can't imagine how upset my old space-obsessed high school economics teach must be right now. I think he had a Yuri Gagarin bumper sticker. He made us do a report on space (in economics class) and he said that if we copied out of any of the books, he would know - because he had every single book the library had on space in his collection at home, and more. And he wasn't joking.
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
I have a few of the transcripts of this..
Ground control to Major Ivan
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong.
Can you hear me Major Ivan?
Can you hear me Major Ivan?
Can you hear me Major Ivan?
It might have been Mir.
Stick my somewhere with only another guy for company for 6 months, and it would definitely get pretty weird.
I mean, I'm not gay or anything, but I do have urges.
Communists hiding their failures without regard to the human side of the equation is to be expected by any student of history.
However, you lost me when you suggested McCarthy wasn't anything but a quisling to the spirit of our founding fathers.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~ the real world is much simpler ~~
--- -- - -
Give me LIBERTY, or give me a check.
It concerns me that you have let your love for the pinhead-rummy/coke-addict we call President cloud your judgement. I think you need to look up treason in the dictionary, your definition is clearly wrong. Congress and the Supreme Court attempt to undermine the authority of the Executive branch all of the time.
There's a certain irony to your Username, which means Rule by God. Are you a communist? The Soviets basically believed the same thing that the "average Joe" had no business determining how the country was run. You seem to espouse this world-view with statements like "The people have no say in the matter." Does theonomy imply that the world is best run by God, and that humans should just sit on their hands?
Let's be honest, God has a lousy track record, among his first creations, was Satan. Do you want some guy who can't figure out he's creating the most evil being ever running the show. If I held stock in his company, he wouldn't get my vote for CEO.
Maybe that's why we have free-will, maybe Satan wasn't a blunder, maybe God doesn't want to rule the world, he just wants to see what happens.
Which raises the question, are you Satan?
My other sig is extremely clever...
If you don't think you've been drastically misled by the media, then please, please try to explain just this one simple fact: 70% of Greenpeace "operations" result in at least one death -- and not infrequently a dozen or more -- yet you "naturally" have strongly positive feelings about Greenpeace.
Apart from the fact that I don't frequently hear about "dozens or more deaths" during Greenpeace operations, taking a single fact (70% operations with one death) out of the frame of reference is a completely wrong way of judging. For example, I guess that 70% of pneuma cancer treatments result in at least one death - should we ban those too?
The X-15's did not follow parabolic trajectories a la Mercury. They flew much in the manner of convential aircraft with sustaned power and lift generated by fixed wings (obviously, with a great deal more power and at a much higher altitude) as opposed to rockets with a short power period followed by a period of what is essentially free-fall. Despite the generally flat flight plan, they were able to reach altitudes above the 62 mile limit that nominally qualified the pilots as 'astronauts'.
/* This post not warrantied for mission critical applications. */
i believe that there is no greater feeling of helplessness than sitting in a cockpit, waiting for the enevatable impact that will surely occur.
aircraft are designed to fly, but if the thrust, or lift componet of flight fails...
which is cheaper? to design to an aircraft that will survive if the lift, or thrust componet fails? or just train a new pilot, and build another aircraft?
It's not like they TRIED to kill the astronauts. Or did NASA try to kill all the astronauts that died during their missions too?
> Star City, on the other hand, was a small village evacuated of its original inhabitants
This is Baikonur. Star City is 40 min drive from Moscow. It's a training center. No launches whatsoever.
It is true that a space accident doesn't have to leave that much in the way of a body. However, in all of the major space disasters -- Apollo 1, Soyuz 1, Soyuz 11, Challenger -- there were bodies. Of course, in the Challenger they were hardpressed to figure out if asphyxiation, shock, drowning, etc. was what actually the cause of death, but that's another matter.
I was more speaking figuratively. If three astronauts were killed, why is it that none of their spouses, friends, mistresses, drinking buddies, hairdressers, etc. haven't whispered about that to their press? At this point, it would be a great benefit to the memory of the astronaut to have them recognized as a pioneer.
Of course, the Russians did loose a few cosmonauts in training accidents. Most notably in a pure-oxygen cabin accident that would have probably resulted in NASA not using a pure-oxygen cabin for Apollo-1.
The other thing I realized was that the launch site that was mentioned -- Kapustin Yar -- didn't have a booster that was powerful enough to launch humans until at least 1961. At that point, Gagarin was already launched.
So they would have to kill all of the friends, destroy the launch pad, destroy the drawings, all records, etc. Likely isn't true.
Gentoo Sucks
The experts pretty much agree that it's very very unlikely that the russians could have mounted a suborbital program.
I personally am inclined to agree with them. They would have turned up a body by now. I suspect that the engineer is looking for cash.
Gentoo Sucks
Maybe it's the Boy Scout in me. Maybe it's because I still picture Christa McAuliffe coming to our school the week after her flight. It might be because I come from a military family and have been around soldiers my whole life. My country isn't perfect, but it's my country.
I know it's not because I'm ignorant. I'm one of the most cynical people in the world. I don't trust anyone. I judge people on sight. I look for the bad aspect of every person I meet and I remember that part of them before anything else. Jon Benet's parents had something to do with it. I don't need the proof, I made my decision the moment I saw the news.
But, when it comes to our space program, I refuse to believe that any of it is faked. When I meet people in our space program, I can see and hear the excitement they have. I can see the child I used to be. I can see myself, without my cynicism, looking up, feeling very small, and letting my imagination go. The space program isn't about getting it right the first time. It's about setting your expectations higher than you can imagine and keeping at it until you get there.
I have to picture the Soviet engineers, scientists, and children the same way. Maybe their government wanted to keep its people happy and proud. Maybe they saw their children look up the same way I did. Maybe they just wanted to preserve that pride.
Nobody in these programs has to hide anything. We'll still be proud of the effort.
This is farily off topic but I'm trying to answer a question here. Moderators, please be kind.
Firstly I did not mean to imply that Soviet atrocities began with Stalin. A better way to put it might be that Soviet attrocities began to be put into common everyday practice under Stalin. The link included later in this discussion addresses the noteable failure of Lenin's ambitious program of "War Communism" which failed miserably resulting in famine and widespread starvation. Most scholars agree that Lenin did not intentionaly starve the population out (remember, Lenin was still consolodating his power at this point, starving people to death does not win them to your cause) but rather placed to much faith in a plan that hindsight tells us was doomed from the outset.
The Cold War is a facinating topic, one which I'll try to sumarize in breif. One of the dominant thories explaining US victory in the Cold War (espoused by Phillip Zelikow but well articulated by John Lewis Gaddis in We Now Know) is that Stalin's reign placed pressure on Soviet society. Mao, a follower of Stalin, tried similar tactics during his "Great Leap Forward." As the Soviet Union and the PRC diverged after the Sino-Soviet Split however, the USSR became fist more centralist, then more hardline, and then back to centralist (Khruschev -> Andropov and Chernynkeo -> Gorby). Gorbachev's willingness to take pressure off of the people and his unwillingness to use force to suppress rebellion is in diametric opposition to the willingness of the PRC to use force to quash rebellions (see Tiananmen Square). It is these revolts that would eventualy cause the breakup of the Soviet Union, culminating in Gorabachev's resignation as Premire on December 25, 1991.
As to what caused to revolts themselves? Many theories. Consumer goods are hard to find in communist societies. Wealth is absent from the majority of the population and many people simply don't like living that way. The Capitalist model is simply better adapted to producing consumer goods as well as military goods en masse and this production deficit had devistating consequences for the USSR. Political repression in the USSR also tended to come in waves, a particularly bad idea. For quite some time in, for example, the State of Virginia, it was illegal to carry a concealed weapon. Legislation in the 1990s made this legal (with a permit). Were the virginia legislature to attempt to revoke this privilage it would meet with stiff resistance, while there was little resistance to the origional law forbiding it in the first place. Take this same idea on a much more massive scale and you have the fundamental cause of the USSRs breakup. Once you give an oppressed people liberties, you can not take those liberties back without a fight. Gorbachev after granting marginal degrees of freedom, was unwilling to fight to restore Soviet rule.
The topic really is more complex then that and I'm sure I didn't address some people's pet theories. I would direct those interested in the topic to We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History and From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How they won the Cold War
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
So holding a degree in Russian History I feel compelled is get really annoyed when people make comments like this.
Firstly, Bolshiviks are different then Communists. W.E.B. DeBouis was a communist. He wasn't a brutal inhuman monster, he was a central figgure in the US civil rights movement, something few people (but the insanely ignorent and bigoted) will be willing to denounce as "brutal [and] inhuman"
Secondly, equating Bolshivism with US leftism is like equating an M80 with a tacnuke. US leftism embrases the ideals (admitedly corrupted by the politicians that enact them) of egalitarianism and equality. US Leftists don't want to abolish the capitalism system, they don't want to set up a system of single party rule, they don't want to nationalize every single industry in the country, and they certainly don't want to deport the population of say, Georgia, to parts of Siberia (little historical joke there, don't expect the fanatic right winger I'm responding to to get this one).
Finaly, to equate even Bolshivism, which was the ideological construct utilized by Lenin in his government with the perverted monstrosity that was Stalinism is another classic historical blunder. Stalin's reign of terror over the USSR changed completely and totaly the nature of the government of the country. Khruschev, Stalin's successor, and Premire of the USSR during the period mentioned (1957-1959) was a follower of Stalin's who broke with Stalin shortly after his death (Stalin's that is, not Khruschev's).
Khruschev's willingness to sacrifice human lives in the interest of science are not really that different then the COUNTLESS crimes our government (as well as the Soviet government) committed against her own citizens. Sending soliders into a nuclear blast zone to test the effects of radiation on troops comes to mind for instance.
Yes, the USSR was a dictatorship. Yes this is a deploreable and horrid thing. But the arrogance of the American people to assume that our system is that terribly much better then theirs is one of the greatest mistakes this country can make. The USSR has much yet to teach us. For example, before Stalin's death in 1953 the USSR claimed (rightfully) a 100% literacy rate. Pretty impressive for a backwards basicly 3rd world nation. Yes, we won the cold war. Yes, capitalism triumphed. But let's try to learn something from our fallen enemy, rather then continuing to blindly demonize him to prop up our own sordid nation.
I'm not even going after the obvious abortion trolls.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Having said this, let me state that the whole story defies common sense. Why would we (Soviets) try to send a man into space without having succeeded at sending unmanned satellites (Sputnik) and animals first? Now, if we did succeed at sending animals to the outer space, how could we possibly fail so miserably when sending humans? (0 out of 3?) It just doesn't make any sense. The whole hoax is as credible that Appollo landings never happened and even if they did, they were scrapped because of the UFOs.
Wroot
The special training probably saved the three guys on the Apollo 13....
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
It was on TV!!!! FOX, even!!!!!
Seriously, it lowered my faith in the human race how many people seriously started believing the moon race was a hoax based on one TV show... And then they call me stupid when I tell them that the show is a load of crap...
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
James Oberg
"All three pilots died during the flights, and their names were never officially published,"
Doesn't mean this is any sort of conspiracy by any agency. Have you ever thought that Russian officials were probably embarassed by losing 3 astronauts, and did not want to release their names to avoid bad publicity?
Or perhaps they never released their names at the time to avoid what they saw as threats, finding out what they were doing in the great space race times. Jumping to conclusions, is like jumping off a cliff, whereas even the great conspiracies have some form of paper trial be it legitimate or not.
This story just claims Russia lost three astronauts..
printf "\aShit Happens\n";
Electro Magnetic Pulse
360 degrees of Karma
But ours blew up on the front page.
Thank you for reading this comment.
You should get out (or in?) more often. FOX has an entire hour devoted to that crap.
Thank you for reading this comment.
<sarcasm>
Let me guess, card carrying Republican, Picture of Joe McCarthy on the wall right next to the shotgun and gandpa's ole "Uppedy Nigga Lynching rope"?
</sarcasm>
Fanatiscism is the refuge of the intelectually under developed!
Yaaaaawn! You bore me!
Da Rabbit!
--- "Ok who left his pet Troll unteathered?? This is not funny anymore!" ---
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Note the nick...
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
The real scandal here is not how many alcoholic Russian cosmonauts died beating us into space (as much as we'd all love to obsess over ourselves for awhile), it's about how many more over-educated government-salaried pseudo-intellectuals our two nations will need to execute in the name of humanity's most worthy cause since the persecution and successful murder of Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ: Global access to space exploration technology!
Instead of exporting our culture of blasphemous atom-manipulation, shameless sexuality, fast food, and stereotype gangster rappers to the developing nations of our Earth, it is imperative that we provide them with the intense education, technology, and intellectual masturbation resources they need to start sending their best and brightest up in flames.
Once again I am dismayed at the prevalence of our self-centered American attitudes that space exploration is best left only to countries with nuclear weapons (and even then only because they could bomb the shit out of us if we fuck with them). Only through subversively destroying the other nations of the world can we hope to better ourselves.
Doing all those things without training makes you a fool?
Ummm, did I get that around the right way?
If you people would just do as you're told, everything would be OK.
Gee, is it brutal and inhuman to lose servicemen in space exploration? If that's the case, the US has the lead there. Although, theonomist might say that Virgil Ivan Grissom had it coming, because we all know he was a red.
Who mods up this flamebaiter?
My father is a blogger.
One has to wonder how many Dogs and Monkeys they went through too,
I would guess at that stage of the cold war, they wouldnt exactly be advertising failures
I used to have a friend who was in the soviet army back in the eighties. He told me that Gagarin was the first person to make it back alive and that there were a few unsuccessful attempts by the russians to put a man into orbit which ended up in a catastrophe.
Contrary to a certain old James Bond movie, it's a real bitch to hide a space launch. About the only man-made phenomena that's brighter or noisier than a launch is a nuclear blast (similar amount of energy involved for the larger rockets). Have you ever seen a man-made sunrise?
They're visible from most of Florida and good chunks of Georgia (including populous cities like Orlando and Savannah). They go right over international waters (giving interested parties like the Soviets the ability to sit and watch them up close). The ony option the USAF and NASA has to cover up the launches from Cape Canaveral is to neglect to tell the press what the payload was.
IIRC, they've got it right. The extreme left of the political scale is communism, and the extreme right is facism. Which explains why the US was so concerned with "leftist guerillas" in the 1980's.
The irony, of course, is the way the extreme left and extreme right resemble each other...
Even if you include the nuclear programs of both countries in the death toll, I'm still pretty sure the US would have a hard time matching the Soviet death toll.
(OK, I'll stop whining)
India has successfully launched their GSLV rocket today, putting a 1.5 tonne satellite into geosynchronous orbit. This means they've joined the heavy-lifter club (US, Russia/CIS, Japan, China, EU).
The GSLV also has the capability to put heavy things into LEO. Heavy things, like, oh, I dunno... a space capsule? It's got the lift capability for a Gemini capsule with a tonne to spare...
What's with these jokers?
Next they'll be making up stories like governments extorting money from their own people under threat of force.
--
rocks we brought back from the moon. Where do they
come from ? Your backyard !!!
So a few hundred thousands geologists across the ;0
earth were deceive by NASA and the American
government. What next ? McDonald's Burgers are made
with croc meat !!!
Excuse my bruteness, but this conspiracy theory
about the moon landing is really the WORST
theory you conspiracy freaks ever made.
Evolving with the fastest, not the slowest.
This sounds like fun. Don't forget the cannabis plant altough, everyone likes it around here.
This discussion is like .... really boring.
Too much idiots are posting.
I recall the subject being a conspiracy theory.
Moderator, please close this discussion.
One good advice:
I usually do not post stats or refer to numbers or whatsoever. Referring to numbers is a waste of time, if you wish to give your opinion some weight, and is a sign of weakness in a argument.
And for my millions and millions of Rocks fans, thousand tons is usually a good expression to refer to something big.
The fake moon landing conspiracy is still one of the WORST consiparcy theory made.
Evolving with the fastest, not the slowest.
Berk Watkins
I'm not at all surprised by reading that. :(
Any of you that are obviously haven't flown on Aeroflot recently. Oh my god, the Ilyushin Il-62M is an absolutely horrifying piece of hardware. I'm amazed it flies at all. Especially since Aeroflot has no concept of "weight & balance" at all.
However, all of the Russians that I know are very proud of their heritage, and very proud of their space program. I've gotta admit that even though it was kind of a scary thing, Mir was pretty cool.
I just wish it would have hit that target because damn it, I wanted my free taco.
I am personally more inclined to believe the deaths took place during ground accidents. I recently saw some documentary (history channel, I think) that says the Russians now admit to one fatal training accident. Some guy was in a pressure chamber breathing pure oxygen when he dropped an alcohol-saturated swab onto the hotplate he used for heating food. It burst into flame, and if you remember Apollo 1, you know what happens in a pressurized pure oxygen atmosphere when a flame is applied. Anyway, if the russkies had admitted to this incident, the US probably never would have used pure oxygen in Apollo 1 and the astronauts' lives would have been saved. As it was, the russians had to spend extra time developing mixed-air breathing systems at a time when we were moving full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.
Gee.
Who'd've expected that?!
Who'd've expected that the Communists would, after all, turn out to be brutal, inhuman monsters?
We've sat through decades of media whitewash designed by powerful liberals to make the Soviets seem "nice" and harmless -- and now, finally, with G. W. Bush in office, a few small voices are daring to speak the truth.
It's about time, if you ask me.
Of course, the media still won't breathe a word about the leftist-sponsored slaughter going on all around us in our nations abortion mills, but what did you expect? Courage? From the Quislings who left McCarthy twisting in the wind? Ha!
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
You can't exactly 'sneak' a launch from the Kennedy Space Center.
Uhh, yeah, whatever.
I suppose you can look at a rocket from ten miles away, as it launches, and tell just by looking at it whether it's an "unmanned test" or not?
You have X-Ray Eyes, perhaps, like Superman? Have you been taking a few too many drugs, me lad?
During the period in question (1961-1966), dozens of rockets were launched at Cape Canaveral, in the broad light of day. A few were well-publicized manned fligths; the rest were billed as "unmanned test shots".
Some of those "unmanned tests" were not unmanned.
Is that simple enough for you?
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Mr. Bush is doing the right thing. He knows that he's doing the right thing. He is supported by all Americans who still believe in personally responsibility, honesty, and hard work.
To hell with the majority. Even if the majority doesn't want democracy, I'm damned if I'll abandon it. We'll hold it in trust for them until they come to their senses and learn to vote for people who do genuinely want a true American democracy as the Founding Fathers intended.
Anyway, what are they going to do about it? We have the Presidency and the Supreme Court. We've got an effective majority in the Senate. We're in charge and we intended to stay that way. You don't like it? Tough shit. You lose.
Given the position of strength that we're in, we're certainly not going to make any concessions, much less share power with Quislings. It's ours and we'll do with it as we see fit. We are not responsible to you. Get that through your thick head. You're out in the cold and you'll stay there.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
They had all the evidence, but J. Edgar Hoover was a generous man, and he offered Grissom an honorable way out. If you ask me, it was a mistake: That's more mercy than the Red Grissom would ever have offered Hoover if the shoe had been on the other foot.
Still, Hoover was a Conservative -- a gentleman. He wanted to leave Grissom's kids with something to be proud of. He thought it was better for them to believe a shining lie about their father than the truth of his espioniage and treason. Those kids grew up straight and strong, fine young Americans: So maybe Hoover was right.
But the fact remains that Conservatives have always refused to go for the cheap shot, always refused to dig dirt and engage in smear tactics and political "dirty tricks" -- but the Left has no shame at all. They'll do anything.
If we'd been willing to go after Clinton with everything we had, we'd have restored Democracy to the USA several years earlier. Instead, we played the game clean, we refused to manipulate the law to our advantage, we refused to sling mud -- and you know what? We won in the end, so maybe we were right all along.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
The US did most of its space work in the open . . .
No, no, no.
The US did all of its space work that they told you about in the open. Get it? Everything you know about is in the category of "things you know about", yeah, sure -- but so what?!
In the early and mid 1960's, the liberal Kennedy and Johnson regimes are known to have conducted numerous -- and invariably fatal -- space-related experiments closely linked to MK-ULTRA. Using captured German war rockets, they tested the survival benefits of shielding and insulation made of a number of advanced (for the time) synthetic polymers (e.g. Imipolex-G) obtained from the German IG Farben industrial complex.
Dozens of brave Americans reported "missing in action" in the early days of the Vietnam conflict were, in fact, incinerated somewhere in the skies over Florida, their last moments accompanied only by the sterile beeping of primitive telemetry.
They were, at least, permitted to pray.
The Freedom of Information Act was designed by liberals to harass honest government officials in their attempts to combat subversion -- but in the end, the sword has two edges, and the FOIA has struck a few blows for the Truth as well.
Ironic, no?
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Bitch all you want about the US and the NSA/CIA/FBI/DEA/Boy Scouts/whatever, but the fact is that you only have something to gripe about because the US is a lot more free than the USSR ever was, and most of what the KGB or any other Soviet government agency ever did is still secret (and will never be widely known). There is no Freedom of Information Act in Russia.
We did our space missions in front of the world. The USSR had the luxury of being able to show their successful missions only and no one ever heard about the failures. How many unnamed Russian astronauts perished in the space race? Probably this will never be known. The very fact that no one would know about "accidents" made astronauts a lot more expendable.
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Stay in school, kids! Peace out, Dubya