[FPSPACE] Further on the 'Dead Cosmonauts' Claims of the Judica-Cordiglia Brothers

[Chris Jones]

Jim Oberg wrote:
> Further on the ‘Dead Cosmonauts’ Claims of the Judica-Cordiglia Brothers

I agree totally with Jim that the Judica-Cordigla brothers' claims are
fantastic (in the "fantasy" sense) male bovine turds, worthy only of
comment in a (sadly ineffective) attempt to put a stop to their
propagation.

> July 31, 2008

[...]

> 7. The brothers told a dramatic story of listening in ‘live’ to 
> Gagarin’s transmissions from orbit:  
> 
> /“We leapt out of bed,” said Achille, “dashed over to our receivers and 
> began listening. Suddenly, in what was a magical moment, the hiss faded 
> and this Russian voice emerged from very far away for a few seconds.” At 
> that stage, no one in the West – not even the President of the United 
> States – knew that the Russians had launched a rocket. /

Again, this is total garbage (the author seems unable to make any valid
claims of fact).  Not only did plenty of people in the West know of the
launch, but had already spied on a live television broadcast from Vostok
showing Gagarin moving inside as it flew by Alaska, confirming the many
rumors of an upcoming manned space flight which had swirled around Moscow in
the days leading up to the launch.  In fact, by the time of this fictitious
pass over Italy, TASS had announced the launch, and Vostok had fired its
retro-rocket and was plunging toward landing (and was probably undergoing a
radio blackout, though it's hard to be sure of the timing of an impossible
event).

[...]

> 18. Yet the brothers also claimed to have learned, from radio 
> intercepts, about the problems encountered by cosmonaut Leonov on the 
> world’s first space walk in 1965:
> 
> /Despite threats from the KGB, the Judica-Cordiglia brothers continued. 
> They captured …  the first-ever spacewalk, taken by Aleksei Leonov in 
> March 1965. Afterwards, when Leonov tried to climb back into the 
> airlock, he found that his spacesuit had inflated so much that he didn’t 
> fit. He managed by opening a valve in his suit to let some pressure 
> bleed off – a risky procedure. This information was withheld by the 
> Russians, but the Judica-Cordiglias passed it on to NASA, believing it 
> might save an astronaut’s life./

Again, given the orbital path of Voskhod 2 and the timing of Leonov's entry
and exit from it (taking place totally over the Asian portion of the Soviet
Union if I'm not mistaken) they couldn't have monitored it live.  It's not
outside the realm of possibility that Leonov recounted the problems after
he reentered the spacecraft, but there's no reason to credit the J-C
brothers with telling the truth in this instance when they've been shown to
be spewing falsehoods at every turn.