[FPSPACE] "Phantom Cosmonauts" and Ed C's theories....

[Peter Pesavento]

>From JimO's book "Uncovering Soviet Disasters"....he mentions that Vladimir Shatalov told his counterparts during the cooperation for ASTP that there may have been a number of cosmonaut trainees that died in accidents....it was well more than two....seven, or eight or nine....according to Shatalov...

Perhaps good ol' Volodya was mis-recalling....it is possible...

I think that the article series in Izvestia back in 1986 was the definitive effort to quell a lot of "loose dead cosmonaut" rumors abounding--at least for the Gagarin group....Yes, it is true that that article series came out during the Soviet regime...

The key question is, for at least American researchers (and our American viewpoints) is this:  When were the Soviet media outlets telling the "complete" truth, and when were they revealing "officially approved (that is, partial) truth," and when were they basically misleading in total?  

This is the uncomfortable question that our Russian colleagues must ask themselves....it is the after-effects of being under the sway of Communism as practiced by Lenin, Stalin, Krushchev, Brezhnev, etc...---when truth was kept hidden much of the time--including from and among those in power.....


I personally feel that too much "Cold War" residuals color the stories from both sides...you see, I said "both".....

Now to Ed C's theories....

Ed, because of his background, has a lot of good knowledge about things relating to the era of the Moon race...part of his work was to be a "convergent" thinker--that is, take a lot of disparate tidbits and pieces of what appeared to be non-sequitur information, and connect them together....when one does that for their "bread and butter," (along with more usual analysis based on loads and loads of information that was garnered during his work from many important sources and methods used that he also engaged in), he has a unique perspective on things...

However, I do disagree with him that Gagarin and Seryogin were on Zond 4...there were indeed voice transmissions coming from Zond 4, and the information released by the Russians appears to indicate that Sevastyanov and Popovich were reading prices of Vodka into a transmitter and sent to the spacecraft (?) (or was it pre-recorded?) that was then re-transmitted from Zond 4 back to the ground....I believe I wrote about this (at least about the cosmonauts reading the materials during the Zond 4 mission) in my New Scientist piece back in 1993....based on the disclosures released by the Russians at that time...

That doesn't mean that Gagarin was inebriated when he crashed his plane (as some rumors/stories have portended); and it doesn't mean that some of the rumors I have read that appear to indicate that there were attempts on Gagarin's life prior to his plane crash weren't real; it's just that Seryogin wasn't (as far as I can recall) an actual cosmonaut in training....I don't think, not in their wildest imaginings, would the Soviets put a non-cosmonaut on board a crew-able spacecraft....at least during this time frame...

Now to the July 1969 N-1 launching.....this mission remains murky....from the American perspective....no photography of the 5L rocket during assembly, nor of its payload (in which the photographs are directly stating in their captions that it is 5L, as well as its payload) has been released through official channels....at RKK Energia back in the early 1990s, a film documentary about the N-1 program was shown to participants in the sponsored fpspace colloquy in the Moscow/Star City area (I at least think it was fpspace related; perhaps it wasn't)....and some footage was shown of the film of the night launch of 5L, as well as of the recovery (the next day) of the capsule that was successfully pulled away as the N-1 fell back on the pad......however, some participants attempted to videotape this documentary, and according to some eyewitnesses that attended, there was an unpleasant result--the videotapes were confiscated and destroyed....

ONe of the additional open and murky things about the July 1969 mission is which cosmonauts were in attendance for the launching....this remains a vein to be appropriately "mined"......we know that, based on the article by myself and Charles Vick that was published in Quest (Part 2 in May), we make mention of Khrunov and Leonov....however, it is without doubt that others were also in attendance, including potentially unflown cosmonauts (ie, "rookies")....there is some data that appears to indicate that, that is presently extant .....

Now whether one can say Belyayev (who was--according to a previous posting on fpspace that said this--along with many other cosmonauts, in attendance of the Borman shindigs AFTER the N-1 launching--not before....remember, the failure was early on July 3, 1969;  It was July 4 or even July 5 that cosmonauts were attending Borman's functions...and Leonov was a "no show," if memory serves....) was bouncing around on top of a rocket is beyond the scope of any information that I know of....I don't think Belyayev was even in consideration--and Mishin's technical notations point to that regarding L-3 trainees....(again, spelled out in the Part 2 Quest article)....Belyayev is not among them...

As I recounted in Part 2 of the Quest article serialization (in the back reference matter), US intelligence FULLY EXPECTED a manned lunar mission prior to APollo 11....exactly what the mission intention and course is still not clear--but like Dr. Sheldon wrote in the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists," they fully expected a Podsadka-type option of a N-1 launched lunar stack to be rendezvoused and boarded by cosmonauts from a separately launched Soyuz craft....

NOW.....

There is other information that I have recently come into awareness of that might provide somewhat of a basis for Ed C's speculations for the 5L launching....if "Podsadka" was the version of the July 1969 lunar mission that was expected by the CIA, what was the CIA's chief counterpart (and, at times, a chief rival) the NSA thinking the July 1969 Soviet lunar mission was to encompass?  

I will leave it at that....

Cheers...

If I have "muddied" the waters further, then they will just have to get muddier...

Our Russian researcher friends HOLD THE KEYS TO ANSWERING THIS...all of this lurks in the heads of the L-1 and L-3 participants, as well as in the archives of RKK ENERGIA>.....

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