In 1961, a Soviet cosmonaut went into space for the first time, becoming the first person in history to travel into space and return to Earth.

However, things did not always go so smoothly. Interesting facts, the secrets of space and the secrets of Soviet cosmonautics - in the material.

Ghost astronauts

From the first day of man's launch into space and until now, the media has been circulating the version that Yuri Gagarin was far from the first person to travel beyond the Earth. Before him, at least 12 more people were sent into space, the so-called “zero astronauts” or “ghost astronauts.” Recordings of a distress signal allegedly received from space before the launch of a rocket have even been published on the Internet.

In addition, according to the assumption of some journalists, ordinary citizens of the USSR and foreign researchers, the rocket sent to Venus on February 4, 1961 contained people who died after an unsuccessful launch. This situation was described by Aviation Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin in his diary.

“Many in the West believe that we failed to launch a man into space. The Italians even allegedly heard intermittent Russian speech and groans. All of this is absolutely groundless fiction,” wrote Kamanin, adding that there will never be a guarantee of a successful outcome of launching a person into space.

Another mystery is connected with the mysterious death Soviet pilot. The USSR and the USA competed for primacy in the space industry, and in 1961 Soviet Union tirelessly prepared astronauts for launch into space.

A list of 29 applicants was compiled, and Valentin Bondarenko was on this list. As part of his mental training, he had to spend 10 days in silence and solitude. However, his own carelessness led to tragic consequences.

volnorez.com.ua

During the medical examination, Bondarenko removed the sensors from the body, wiped the traces of the suction cups with alcohol and accidentally threw the cotton wool onto the hot coil. The air in the pressure chamber consisted of pure oxygen, and therefore the fire spread instantly.

The astronaut was taken to intensive care with 98% of his body burns; his eyes, hair and blood vessels were burned. Bondarenko died 16 hours later. After 19 days, Yuri Gagarin went into space. All materials in the case of Valentin Bondarenko were classified; this became known only in 1986 from an article in the Izvestia newspaper.

“Moonlight” death of Yuri Gagarin

There are also many theories and guesses about Yuri Gagarin. The most unthinkable of them is that Gagarin died during his flight to the Moon. It is assumed that the USSR wanted to conquer the earth's satellite at all costs before the United States. At the same time, after Gagarin's first flight into space, he again longed to go there and persuaded the management of the lunar mission to choose him for this task.

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At the beginning of March 1968, Yuri Gagarin was allegedly sent to the Moon on the Zond-4 spacecraft, but spacecraft lost his way and flew in the other direction. Zond 4 crashed on Earth and the astronaut died tragically. Not wanting to reveal this failure, the government decided to find a double of Yuri Gagarin and arrange his death in a plane crash.

However, the documentation associated with the launch of Zond-4 completely refutes these assumptions. In addition, Yuri Gagarin was never a member of Lunar mission. The astronaut was involved in the Soyuz program.

Half a century has passed since earthlings began to explore space. However, he remains the Great Unknown. This is once again proven by the mysterious surprises in its vast expanses, evidence of which does not appear in open sources.

They say that on March 26, 1991, a descent capsule with American astronaut Charles Gibson, who supposedly flew into space back in 1963, splashed down in the Atlantic.

After NASA's radio contact with him was lost and his Gemeni spacecraft disappeared from orbit, Gibson was presumed dead under unclear circumstances. When the capsule was caught and opened, it turned out that the astronaut was alive! How he survived for 28 years on a ship with a supply of oxygen and food for only six months and where he disappeared from Gemini orbit remains a mystery to this day.

After returning to Earth, Gibson went through quarantine and medical rehabilitation at Edwards Air Force Base in California. Both the astronaut and Gemini were carefully studied by scientists and specialists in various fields, but this did not clarify what happened to them. Therefore, the NASA representative limited himself to a very vague message:

Charles Gibson is physically well, but he is completely disoriented. He is not aware of his long absence from Earth. The astronaut’s mental state leaves much to be desired, and his words cannot be connected into one whole. When asked where he had been for so many years, Gibson invariably answers only something incomprehensible: “Never again, never again!”

The second such incident, which occurred with astronaut John Smith, was allegedly reported by the popular British newspaper The Sun.

In October 1973, Smith went into space on a ship that was disguised as another satellite launched by order of the Pentagon, supposedly to study near-Earth space. The first three days of the flight went quite normally, but then the ship’s maneuvering and orientation system malfunctioned.

As a result, the astronaut found himself in the zone of action of the so-called radiation belts, which negatively affect not only living organisms, but even equipment. NASA management intended to make attempts to save John, but communication with him completely unexpectedly stopped.

After what happened in space, NASA was in a state of shock for several days. The management was the first to come to its senses and strictly ordered all employees, under threat of dismissal, to forget about the cosmic tragedy that had occurred, as if it had never happened. At the same time, the launch of the spacecraft piloted by John was noted in the documentation simply as unsuccessful, and the astronaut was written off as having died as a result of an accident during a training flight.

But the story of the mysterious incident did not end there; on the contrary, it received a new and unexpected continuation. At the end of 2000, an amateur astronomer from the Fiji Islands accidentally recorded an unknown cosmic body in orbit at an altitude of 480 km and immediately reported his discovery to NASA. There, experts immediately pointed radars at the indicated area of ​​the sky and, after rummaging through the archives, came to an unexpected conclusion: this is nothing more than the once missing Smith ship, which appeared out of nowhere.

In addition, the ship gradually descended, but did not respond to radio requests. Then NASA decided to remove the object from orbit when it dropped to an acceptable altitude. At the beginning of 2001, the operation to return him to Earth was carried out during the next flight of the Endeavor shuttle.

The returned object was immediately opened, and, to the surprise of everyone present, it contained the safe and sound Smith, but only in an unconscious state, because the temperature inside the ship was close to absolute zero. When they began to gradually raise her, the astronaut began to show obvious signs of life. Specialists in cryogenic medicine were urgently called. They slowly but surely revived the astronaut.

And it soon became clear that it was not John Smith who returned to Earth, but someone who was exactly like him. The first suspicions arose among doctors who, after checking the patient’s condition with his medical record, were surprised to notice significant discrepancies. It, for example, recorded traces of a rib fracture that John received as a child, but the astronaut under study had nothing of the kind. It was also well known that Smith had some difficulty with higher mathematics, and the patient under study was quite fluent in extracting cube roots of 18-digit numbers.

A physiological anomaly was also discovered, namely: the “new” Smith’s heart turned out to be displaced to the right side of the chest, which the real John did not have. Other oddities also emerged. In particular, in the personal notebook that is given to each astronaut before departure, only half of the 100 sheets remain. Moreover, for some reason the imaginary John covered 50 pages with strange small symbols, not similar to oriental hieroglyphs, nor to ancient ideographic writings, nor to the letters of any modern alphabet. IN

As a result, experts came to the conclusion that it was not John Smith who returned to Earth, but a certain humanoid creature who replaced the astronaut. Who did this and why is unknown. And a few days later, the vigilantly guarded alien allegedly disappeared without a trace. Searches for him did not yield any results. However, it is possible that US official circles simply kept the mysterious incident strictly classified and isolated its hero from communication with scientists.

Paranormal investigators believe they know the answer to both cases: both the first Gemini with astronaut Charles Gibson and the second ship with John Smith fell into the so-called time whirlpool.

It is known that our world exists in time and space. With the second, everything seems to be clear. But we have little idea what it means to exist in time. Meanwhile, this is not so difficult: you just have to imagine a stormy river carrying various objects, including houses and people washed away by it. We can say that they exist precisely in this river. So we exist in the flow of time.

But the smooth flow of the river of time, like any stream, can be disrupted. Whirlpools sometimes arise in it, in which the passage of time is distorted. People and objects caught in such anomalies find themselves, figuratively speaking, drawn into the depths of this river, where there is no current, that is, time stops. Then, after some interval, the “prisoners” are thrown to the surface, that is, back to our time. It is possible that cardinal psychophysical changes occur in their bodies. This is exactly what happened to both astronauts.

ANGELIC VISIONS

In 1985, when the Soviet space program was on the rise, and people preferred not to report emergency incidents in space, the unexpected happened at the Salyut 7 orbital station. It was the 155th day of the flight. A crew of three cosmonauts - Oleg Atkov, Vladimir Solovyov and Leonid Kizim - was engaged in the planned experiments and observations. A series of medical experiments was about to begin. Suddenly, the station was flooded with a brilliant orange light, blinding the astronauts. It was not an explosion or fire at the station itself. It seemed that the light penetrated into it from the outside, from space, through the completely opaque walls of the Salyut.

Fortunately, my vision returned almost immediately. The astronauts rushing to the porthole could not believe their eyes: on the other side of the heavy-duty glass, seven giant figures were clearly visible in the orange luminous cloud! They had human faces and bodies, but, in addition, behind their backs they could see something translucent, similar to wings.

All three cosmonauts were people with a strong psyche, who passed all kinds of tests during training. There was no question of religious superstitions. However, they all had the same thought: angels were flying in space next to them! For 10 minutes they accompanied Salyut 7 at the same speed, repeating the ship’s maneuvers, and then disappeared. The orange glowing cloud also disappeared. Having regained consciousness, ship commander Oleg Atkov, cosmonauts Vladimir Solovyov and Leonid Kizim reported what had happened to the control center.

They demanded a detailed report on what they saw. When the flight directors got acquainted with it, the report was immediately classified as “secret”, and the astronauts became interested in the ground team of doctors. So instead of medical experiments, the station crew began studying the condition own health, both physical and mental. Tests showed normal. Therefore, it was decided to consider the incident a group hallucination due to overwork during the five-month flight.

However, the unexpected happened. On the 167th day of the flight, three colleagues joined the first crew: Svetlana Savitskaya, Igor Volk and Vladimir Dzhanibekov. And again orbital station illuminated with orange light and seven “angels” appeared. Now all six cosmonauts reported that they saw “smiling angels.” The version of group insanity due to overwork could be safely rejected, since the second crew arrived just a few days before the second “angelic vision”.

Of course, you can attribute what happened to the human factor. You never know how being in space can affect your psyche. However, in the West, several photographs taken orbital telescope"Hubble", which the ubiquitous journalists somehow got from the American laboratory "Jet Propulsion". There, in strict secrecy, experts studied the mysterious anomalies captured by Hubble. Seven flying angel-like figures were clearly visible in the photographs! Scientists have not yet been able to establish their true essence.

However, in orbit, astronauts encounter not only mysterious visual visions, but also equally mysterious cosmic voices. The first to report the mysterious phenomenon in October 1995 was cosmonaut-researcher Sergei Krichevsky, senior researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center. Yu.A. Gagarin and the Institute of History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and also a candidate of technical sciences and a full member Russian Academy cosmonautics named after. K.E. Tsiolkovsky.

His report states that “all information about fantastic visions accompanied by a cosmic voice is the property of a very narrow circle of people... The cosmonauts transmitted and are transmitting information about them exclusively to each other, sharing information with those who will soon make the flight.”

They heard various sounds, including the speech of other creatures, and it was understandable - assimilated immediately, without training. A characteristic point in this case is that the astronaut begins to perceive a flow of information coming from somewhere outside, but when the flow ceases, it still unexpectedly disappears. That is, there is a feeling that someone powerful and great outside is transmitting some new and unusual information for a person.

It also happened, with a very detailed forecast, and anticipation of future events - with a detailed “showing” of threatening dangerous situations or moments that - as if with an inner voice - were especially highlighted and commented on. At the same time, they heard: they say, everything will work out, it will end well. Thus, the most difficult and dangerous moments of the flight program were anticipated in advance.
There was a case that if not for such a “prophetic vision”, the astronauts could have died.

The accuracy and detail of dangerous moments is also amazing. Thus, the voice predicted the mortal danger that awaited the astronauts during spacewalks. In the prophetic vision, this danger was shown several times and commented on by voice. In a real exit, when working outside the station, all this was absolutely confirmed, but the cosmonaut was already prepared and saved his life (otherwise he would have flown away from the station).

There is no point in guessing who is the intelligent entity that the astronauts come into contact with. There is no necessary data for this yet. We can only quote the words of one of the astronauts who heard someone else’s voice: “Space has proven to us that he is certainly intelligent and much more complex than our ideas about him. And also the fact that our knowledge today does not allow us to understand the essence of most of the processes occurring in the Universe.”

Ivan Chipurin

Each state has strategic sectors, information about which is not subject to full disclosure. Cosmonautics is one of these. The deployment of space programs occurred at a time of acute, albeit hidden, struggle between two political systems. As they used to say, two worlds were fighting, two ways of life - socialism and capitalism. The fact that he was the first to fly into space soviet man , was, from the point of view of the leadership of the USSR, clear proof of the superiority of the socialist system, an achievement of the entire Soviet system. The first flight beyond the Earth caused a huge resonance. The Times of London wrote: “Yuri Gagarin has become a hero in the eyes of the whole world. He flew where no man had gone before. He expanded the horizons of knowledge and ushered in the space age. Flying among the stars in April 1961, he showed us that the age of travel and discovery was not yet over.” Gagarin was enthusiastically received by 33 countries. However, after the ovation, the propaganda machine began to work with all its might. Everyone understood perfectly well that space flight was, first and foremost, a political victory. The New York Herald Tribune put it bluntly: “In propaganda terms, the first man in space is worth perhaps more than 100 divisions or dozens of intercontinental ballistic missiles ready to take off at the first order.” The Americans, who were also working on the problem of launching humans into space, could not allow the Russians to take precedence in this direction. But since the fact had happened and it could not be changed, all that remained was to downplay its significance. Of course, not immediately after the landing of the Vostok-1 spacecraft, but quite soon there was talk that Gagarin was not the first cosmonaut. In the Guinness Book of Records (1964 edition), the first person to fly into space is named Vladimir Ilyushin. Ilyushin was the son of a famous aircraft designer, which gave the information some credibility. It so happened that on June 8, 1960, he was in a car accident. A car with a drunken group of young people flew into the oncoming lane and collided head-on with the car of Vladimir, who was driving to the airfield. The young man was treated for a long time in his homeland, and then in China. This gave rise to allegations by Western journalists about a failed space launch and an emergency landing in the Middle Kingdom. For some reason, Ilyushin’s own story about the details of the accident on the pages of the Yunost magazine was not accepted as evidence. Another candidate for cosmonaut number one is Valentin Bondarenko. This Kharkov resident was the youngest participant in the first, as it would later be called, Gagarin recruitment. His, in general, absurd death occurred shortly before Gagarin’s flight, on March 23, 1961. Like all other participants in the project, Valentin participated in experiments in a pressure chamber. Each had their own conditions of isolation, for example, Gagarin had an inverted work schedule - sleep during the day and work at night. Bondarenko, with reduced pressure in the chamber, had an increased oxygen content. Ten days after all the research, he wiped the sensor mounting points with cotton wool soaked in alcohol. Apparently, out of fatigue, he threw it away without looking, and the cotton wool fell on the heated tile. The tightness of the chamber did not allow Valentin to be immediately pulled out of the instant fire that broke out. When they got to him, he was still alive and conscious, and kept repeating that he was to blame. Valentin Bondarenko was posthumously awarded the title of cosmonaut by government decree. That is, he is really the first cosmonaut, but he has not been in space. There were rumors about other pilots who allegedly piloted rockets launched before 1961. Foreign press She even named names such as Shaborin and Ledovskikh. At the same time, we read in the book of memoirs of the head of the cosmonaut corps, Lieutenant General of Aviation N. Kamanin: “After the launch of a rocket to Venus on February 4, many in the West believe that we unsuccessfully launched a man into space; the Italians even allegedly heard groans and intermittent Russian speech. All of this is completely baseless fiction. In fact, we are working hard to guarantee the astronaut's landing. From my point of view, we are even overly cautious in this. Full guarantee successful first there will never be a flight into space, and some of the risk is justified by the greatness of the task...” Many facts indicate that Soviet scientists are doing everything for the safe flight of man into space. The issue of security became especially acute after more than 100 people died in preparation for the first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on October 24, 1960, including Mitrofan Nedelin, the commander-in-chief missile forces strategic purpose. They started talking about launching a person into orbit only after the safe return of the fourth and fifth satellite ships with dogs, guinea pigs and other small animals on board, as well as mannequins imitating an astronaut. We can read in S.P. Korolev’s letters to his wife: “We We try to do everything slowly and thoroughly. Our motto: take care of people. May God give us the strength and ability to always achieve this, which, however, is contrary to the law of knowledge of life...” Sergei Pavlovich worried about the cosmonauts as if they were his own children. During Gagarin’s flight, he admitted: “After all, a man is flying... After all, I have known him for a long time. I'm used to it. He is like a son to me.” Unfortunately, it was not always possible to avoid mistakes, which led to tragic consequences. The reasons were different, but their origins, as a rule, were in the desire for propaganda effects. The race in the space sector required confirmation of leadership, proof of superiority. First photo reverse side The moon, the first woman astronaut, the first manned spacewalk - all this was not so much a necessity, but, as they would say now, an advertising campaign. Unfortunately, such actions were sometimes very costly. And it was for the same reason that unsuccessful operations were hushed up. Most a shining example The accident of the Soyuz-1 spacecraft with Vladimir Komarov on board in April 1967 may serve as an example. Although much was written about this incident in the Soviet press, the main details of what happened became known only now. One of the engineers who developed the fire-resistant coating of the Soyuz spacecraft, who later emigrated to the United States, said: “Some launches were carried out almost exclusively for propaganda purposes. For example, the launch of Vladimir Komarov on the Soyuz-1 spacecraft was timed to coincide with the celebration of International Workers' Day. The design bureau knew that the ship had not yet been fully tested, and that some time was required for its final development and start of operation. But the Communist Party ordered the launch despite the fact that four previous test launches had shown flaws in the attitude control, thermal control and parachute systems.” It was the parachute system that subsequently failed during the descent of the ship. If it were not for orders from above, no one would have thought of launching. Only S.P. Korolev could prove its absurdity, but he was no longer alive. Vasily Mishin, who became the head of the OKB, did not have the determination to resist the instructions to the end. He held this post for less than a year and did not yet feel entitled to dictate terms. Mishin managed to persuade Komarov to fly as the most prepared and technically competent. Such a calculation later justified itself: Komarov managed to cope with control in such conditions in which another person would have been simply doomed to failure. True, there were so many problems that after a day the ship still had to be grounded. According to some reports, the astronaut, unable to bear it, cursed directly on the air. It seems that even in orbit he knew that he was doomed, and conducted several communication sessions with his wife and Prime Minister A. Kosygin.

Secret space. Did Gagarin have predecessors? Zheleznyakov Alexander Borisovich

CHAPTER XI Secret flights to Mir

Secret flights to Mir

It was not without reason that the Mir orbital station was called the pride of Soviet cosmonautics. At one time, she “owned” all conceivable and inconceivable records that could be set during the exploration of outer space.

And only one record turned out to be “unavailable” for “Mir”. In terms of the number of “phantom cosmonauts” who “worked” on board, the complex lags significantly behind both its predecessors, Salyut-type stations, and American reusable spacecraft, and even more so from Soviet ships type "East".

I was able to count only five “episodes” related to “Mir” in “phantom cosmonautics”. And even then, all the rumors about “secret flights” aboard the station were so vague that they did not cause a stir even in those publications that in previous years would not have failed to take advantage of the opportunity and would have long and persistently discussed “the next secrets of Soviet cosmonautics.” Except that the last “episode” received a little more attention. I will talk about it in the chapter where we talk about the death of the complex. I’ll talk about one more “episode” in the chapter “Sex in Space,” and about the other three in this chapter.

But first, a few words that may explain why so few rumors about the flights of “phantom cosmonauts” were associated with Mir. The reason for the “inattention” most likely was the time when the station was in orbit.

The start of operation of the orbital complex coincided with the end of the Cold War. The era of perestroika and glasnost began in the USSR, and the flow of information that overwhelmed us all about many of the “blank spots” of our recent history turned out to be more fascinating than some rumors about space flights, about which nothing was supposedly officially reported. And trust in government sources has strengthened significantly.

Then came the time of radical changes on the political map of the world - the Soviet Union ceased to exist, a united Germany emerged, the European Union was created, old alliances disappeared into oblivion, and new ones emerged. People had to adapt to a rapidly changing world and interest in astronautics decreased. If you look at the publications of the first half of the 1990s, you will notice that only the specialized press wrote about many space flights. All other newspapers and magazines, at best, only stated the fact of launch and landing. Moreover, if some emergency happened.

And only at the end of the last century, thanks to the World Wide Web, interest in outer space exploration arose again. It must be said frankly that this happened largely thanks to enthusiasts who collected information about space flights bit by bit, summarized it and made it available via the Internet. The pioneers of this unique movement were the Americans Jonathan McDowell and Mark Wade, the Russians Alexander Krasnikov and the author of these lines. Nowadays, few people are surprised by such things, but there was a time when there were very few of us.

Talking about the changes that took place in those years, I was somewhat distracted from the main topic of our story and completely forgot about the Mir station, which was already circling the Earth. Before the changes happened, rumors managed to quietly “send” two cosmonauts aboard the station. There could be more of them, but...

The first rumor about a “secret flight” to Mir appeared when the Soyuz TM-8 spacecraft went into space. The launch took place on September 6, 1989, and on board were Soviet cosmonauts Alexander Viktorenko and Alexander Serebrov. This was the flight of the fifth main expedition aboard the orbital complex.

The program for the crew was quite ordinary, if not routine. True, tests were supposed to be carried out autonomous means movement of astronauts in outer space, that is, a “space motorcycle”. There were no plans to conduct any “special” experiments on board the station. Although there was a lot of talk about this possibility, recalling the Almaz flights in the 1970s. Subsequently, it turned out that it was indeed possible to solve problems of a military nature on the Mir. The station was designed for this. But that's another topic. Moreover, all these experiments in the interests of the Soviet military department have nothing to do with “phantom cosmonautics”.

Then a lot was written about the flight of Viktorenko and Serebrov. Nowadays they are remembered only sporadically, and even then mainly only by historians. The flight went well. The return to our native land also happened without any problems.

Rumors that not two, but three cosmonauts flew on the Soyuz TM-8 spacecraft appeared shortly after TASS reported about the landing of the spacecraft's descent module. As is known, Soyuz-class ships can be piloted by three crew members. The flights of 1987–1988 “accustomed” to the fact that the crew always includes three cosmonauts. And then suddenly two of them went into orbit.

This is probably why rumors appeared about the presence of another expedition member on board Soyuz TM-8 and the Mir station, who was not shown on television. Some Western publications even published the first and last name of this “secret cosmonaut” - Roman Petrov. His tasks were so “specific” that they “preferred” not to report them officially, as well as his very existence. According to legend, this Petrov was experimenting with laser weapons.

But, as I already noted, new times have come and the “report” of a number of tabloids about the next “secret flight” was rather routine. It was forgotten almost immediately and remembered again only in August 1990, when cosmonauts Anatoly Solovyov and Alexander Balandin returned to Earth on the Soyuz TM-9 spacecraft. Just like six months before, the crew of the next Soviet manned spacecraft was “increased” by one person. This time the third was a certain Leonid Ivanov, who was “training” in low-Earth orbit to pilot a military version of the Buran, a reusable ship created in those years in our country.

The “life” of Roman Petrov and Leonid Ivanov turned out to be very short. Therefore, I will not pay much attention to them. Few people now remember that such “phantom cosmonauts” once appeared in popular rumors. This is not surprising - most rumors have been circulating for an extremely short time. True, there are exceptions, like the unforgettable Ledovsky, Shiborin and Mitkov, about whom I have already written.

If we evaluate the technical capabilities of the Soyuz TM spacecraft and the Mir station, then the flights of Petrov and Ivanov could well have taken place. But, as in the vast majority of cases with “ghost astronauts,” there was simply no need for them.

Firstly, such flights entail a lot of other problems that also need to be taken into account when conducting a “cover-up operation.” How, for example, to organize the exchange of information between the board and the Mission Control Center so that no one notices. And okay, ordinary people who follow the flight, feeding only on information disseminated officially, would not notice. But American technical intelligence, which closely followed and continues to monitor everyone now space objects, it’s unlikely that she would have “missed” the exchange through closed channels.

Secondly, all the experiments that Petrov and Ivanov “conducted” could have been done by other crew members. It was both simpler technically and much easier organizationally. So why would there be a fence around this entire garden?

Therefore, the conclusion suggests itself: the flights of Petrov and Ivanov are a myth, like many others.

I can’t say anything about the personality of Roman Petrov, who became the prototype of the “phantom cosmonaut”. It is quite possible that the image is collective and has nothing to do with a specific person. You understand that the surname “Petrov” is very rare for residents of Russia. The only less common ones are “Ivanov” and “Kuznetsov”. Joke.

But Leonid Ivanov has a very real prototype, and with a man who was actually preparing for space flights. True, he was physically unable to make the flight in 1990.

Leonid Georgievich Ivanov was born on June 25, 1950 in the small town of Safonovo, in the Smolensk region. In 1971 he graduated from the Kachin Higher Military Aviation School named after A.F. Myasnikov and was placed at the disposal of the commander of the 14th Air Army, in which he served for more than three years.

In August 1976, Ivanov was enrolled as a student cosmonaut in the cosmonaut corps of the Cosmonaut Training Center. Next came special parachute training, general space training, numerous tests and exams, and endless training. On January 20, 1979, Ivanov was assigned to the position of cosmonaut in the aviation group. space systems cosmonaut corps.

It is quite possible that in the future Ivanov would join the ranks of real space explorers, and not “phantom cosmonauts.” However, fate decreed otherwise. On October 24, 1980, Leonid Georgievich took the MiG-27 fighter into the sky to test it for a spin. This turned out to be his last flight. The plane crashed and Ivanov died.

What happened to the car on that ill-fated day remained unknown to most. Experts, of course, determined the probable cause of the failure that led to the accident. But what does this change in the end?

Why the creators of myths about Soviet cosmonautics remembered Leonid Ivanov in 1990 is difficult to say. Maybe to give your version some credibility? Or maybe someone learned something about a real member of the cosmonaut corps (at that time we didn’t know everyone by name yet) and he decided to use it?

Be that as it may, “cosmonaut Roman Petrov” and “cosmonaut Leonid Ivanov” will also have to be included in our list, which by this time already includes several dozen names. And this is far from the end. Even in this chapter, one more name will have to be mentioned - “cosmonaut Igor Fedrov.”

According to legend, this space conqueror died in December 1991 during an unsuccessful landing on the Soyuz TM-15 spacecraft. The financial difficulties of the Soviet cosmonautics of that period, already mentioned above, led to the fact that spaceships, whose service life was about 180 days, flew somewhat longer than expected. Therefore, during the descent from orbit, the astronauts had to risk themselves, relying only on “maybe.” One day it all ended tragically and “cosmonaut Igor Fedrov” was unable to return to his native Earth.

I will not pay much attention to this story, since everything in it is fictitious, from beginning to end. At least this fact - the Soyuz TM-15 spacecraft launched on July 27, 1992, and landed on February 1, 1993. Thus, no one could die on it when there were many months left before returning to Earth.

The same can be said about the flight duration - just under 189 days. The excess of the resource is within “reasonable limits” and it is unlikely that it could somehow fatally affect the favorable outcome of the case.

It is impossible to establish how this legend was born. These are the depths of human consciousness, which are very difficult to penetrate. Moreover, it is not clear whose consciousness should be penetrated.

But finding out the place of “birth” of the legend turned out to be quite simple - it appeared in New York, on Brighton Beach, where our former compatriots lived and still live in abundance. It can be assumed that out of nostalgia for their homeland, and remembering the gossip they once heard about the “secret flights of Soviet cosmonauts,” someone started a rumor about another “victim of Soviet cosmonautics.”

It is difficult to say who became the prototype of “cosmonaut Igor Fedrov”. You don't meet people with that last name very often. At one time, the Fedorovs appeared in Rus' due to the oversight (or laziness) of a scribe, who “lost” the first letter “o” in the surname “Fedorov”.

Among those who were involved in astronautics, Fedrov is not visible. But there is Anatoly Pavlovich Fedorov, who from 1965 to 1974 prepared for space flights in the corps of Soviet cosmonauts. I would venture to suggest that it was he who became the forerunner of “cosmonaut Igor Fedrov.” Although I can’t say this with certainty. Maybe I'm wrong.

And the last thing about “cosmonaut Igor Fedrov”. In 2001, the short film “Cosmonaut” by Norwegian director Stefan Faldbakken was shown with great success at the Venice Film Festival. It retold the New York legend with absolute accuracy. Even the surname of the fictional astronaut turned out to be the same. And the fate was similar - he died returning to Earth on an “overdue” ship.

By the way, Igor Fedrov is the second “hero” from the history of “phantom astronautics”, whose image was used during filming feature films. I already wrote about the first of them in the chapter on the lunar race (Andrei Mikoyan). It is quite possible that there are other films whose plots are based on the myths of “ghost astronauts”. But they went across the screens unnoticed, without any fuss. That's why I can't talk about them in this book. I think that two “heroes” are enough to trace the “inextricable connection between urban folklore and cinema.”

This is where I finish talking about “secret flights aboard the Mir station” and move on to “secret flights of American reusable ships.”

From the book Secret Weapons of the Third Reich author Slavin Stanislav Nikolaevich

Secret fairways So, when analyzing the achievements of the leaders of the Third Reich, as a rule, we have to admit that the Fuhrer and his henchmen were never able to truly use the scientific and technical potential that they had at hand. Partly according

From the book Defense of Livshits: Lawyer Stories author Livshits Vladimir

Abrikosov's flights

From the book The Lost City of Z. A Tale of a Deadly Obsession with the Amazon by Grann David

Chapter 9 Secret Documents While in England, I tried to find Fawcett’s descendants, who might be able to tell me more about the traveler himself and about his path to the city of Z. Fawcett’s wife and children died long ago, but in Cardiff, Wales, I found one of his

From the book Notes of a Smart Adventurer. Through the looking glass of the special services author Linder Joseph Borisovich

Secret services of the party It all started after the end of the first congress, when it became clear that there were not only external opponents, but also in the ranks of the Social Democratic movement there were a sufficient number of multidirectional and completely incompatible

From the book First in Space. How the USSR defeated the USA author

CHAPTER XIV New frontiers, new projects, new flights The first years of the era of manned flights were years of general euphoria. Having quickly burst into space, humanity believed that space exploration would continue at the same pace. That's why

From the book Secret Space. Did Gagarin have predecessors? author Zheleznyakov Alexander Borisovich

CHAPTER XII Unannounced Shuttle Flights Until a certain point, the Americans did not have fertile soil for the birth of “ghost astronauts.” The Americans, unlike Soviet official bodies, have always covered their space activities,

From the book The Secret of Woland author Buzinovsky Sergey Borisovich

From the book Secret Alien Bases. UFO undercover FBI by Blank Alec

UFO. Secret documents Excerpts from the media The first country to open public access to documents about UFOs was France. AFP reported this on March 22, 2007. On this day, 400 dossiers detailing eyewitness encounters with unidentified flying objects were

From the book Mysteries of Rocket Accidents. Payment for a breakthrough into space author Zheleznyakov Alexander Borisovich

Secret Reports FBI Office, Albuquerque, 5:37 pm local time. To: Director of the FBI. From: FSA, 62 Albuquerque, New Mexico. Subject of the message: Unidentified flying object in Socorro, New Mexico. This message described the incident,

From the book The Secret Bunkers of Königsberg author Przhezdomsky Andrey Stanislavovich

Chapter 19 Flights that never happened In the history of manned astronautics, there were many cases when previously planned flights had to be cancelled. The reasons are different: program adjustments, lack of technical and financial resources, accidents and catastrophes. To many

From the book Dive Bombers Over the Jungle by Smith Peter

Part III Secret objects of Erich Koch

From the book Secrets of American Cosmonautics author Zheleznyakov Alexander Borisovich

From the book Parting with Myths. Conversations with famous contemporaries author Buzinov Viktor Mikhailovich

Chapter 30 Gemini Flights The Gemini program can be considered both as a development of the Mercury program and as a preliminary stage of the American lunar program. This is a kind of intermediate project that incorporates both what has already been done and what

From the book The Martian: How to Survive on the Red Planet author Pervushin Anton Ivanovich

Chapter 54 Secret NOSSes And again about reconnaissance satellites. There have been a great many of them in the history of American astronautics, more than other types of spacecraft, which is why we have to talk about them so often. In 1976, group launches began in the USA

From the author's book

Flying in a dream and in reality – You can say it in one word – tree. For eight years, starting in 1994, when we were still living in Belgium, I entered the trade and production of lumber at random, through trial and error, and have been doing this to this day. We have a flight plant. By the way, you

From the author's book

Flights to Mars and back What do you need to do to see how Martians live? Right. We need to build a spaceship and send a brave man on an interplanetary flight. This is exactly what the authors of adventure prose did, which eventually gave rise to prose

The mystery of the missing astronaut - a lost mission in the depths of the Triangulum constellation. In the 80s of the last century, a spacecraft was sent into Earth orbit. NASA officially presented the mission as a space debris collection project. Astronaut John Coleman was on board the device.

As optical physicist John Maccabi told the French newspaper “SUN” about this, the goal pursued by the mission to collect space debris is only an official cover for another task. Working with a kind of network deployed in outer space, you can not only strain out the debris of spent orbital vehicles like a string bag, but also “grab” satellites of other countries.

However, what the space agency NASA faced was beyond reasonable understanding. Suddenly, during the mission of astronaut Coleman, communication with him is lost. As always when emergency situations occur with spacecraft, work turmoil arises in the Mission Control Center.

At the same time, visual observation of the spacecraft is also lost in the MCC. Everything suggests that the device seemed to instantly disappear from orbit, but experts cannot believe it. But still it is so! — attempts to detect the spacecraft led nowhere. The wreckage of the device could not be found.

Meanwhile, another remarkable fact was noted - which at first experts did not pay attention to. These are unknown radio signals coming from the Triangulum constellation, reminiscent of “white noise” - at that time they were not given much attention, considering them to be radio interference.

As Professor Maccabi says, astronaut Coleman officially died not in Earth orbit in space, but on a training flight. But according to the professor, this is not so, and astronaut Coleman, lost in outer space, had to be remembered 27 years later.

Return spaceship out of obscurity after 27 years.

In 2007, a spacecraft suddenly appears in Earth's orbit - as it turns out, it belongs to NASA. Experts establish that this is the same device that astronaut Coleman piloted 27 years ago. In addition to the understandable interest - the device appeared almost 30 years after its absence - for the same reason, experts are very surprised - where was it for so many years?

NASA is quickly preparing an expedition to board the ship and find out what happened. A year later they succeed.

As an external inspection showed, the ship is in good condition, and the years have not affected it - the Americans could be proud of the quality of their equipment. However, research inside the ship made many remember mystical stories about the “Flying Dutchman”, and colored the story of the returning ship with an even greater veil of horror. It was empty. That is, there were absolutely no remains of the pilot inside the ship!

But there was something else. This is a notebook covered in unknown writing! The notes made in the notebook could not be deciphered. And the mystery of the ship that visited unknown distances continues to remain a mystery.

However, the newspaper that published the professor’s article did not receive any comments from agency representatives on this issue. And the question was whether this was an event, or whether it was just another “canard” of fans of anomalous phenomena and extraterrestrial life is unknown. But we can express confidence in something else - even if there were negative comments about this event, ufologists would still say that NASA is hiding the truth about this flight.

But it is noteworthy that NASA representatives are always skeptical about the words - aliens, extraterrestrial intelligence, alien creatures….

Nevertheless, the representatives interestingly told reporters that there are many alien vehicles around the Earth, and we must know everything about the creatures inside them in order to imagine what can be expected from them………