Posted on 03/30/2011 3:04:52 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
Soviet officials lied about the success of Yuri Gagarin's historic 1961 flight into space and covered up the fact that he had landed more than 200 miles away from where they were expecting him, a new book discloses.
The Soviet Union held up his mission, the first manned flight into space, as a major Cold War propaganda coup, portraying it as a glitch-free triumph of Communist ideology.
However, a new book published on the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin's famous flight has revealed that scientists twice miscalculated where he would land which is why there was nobody there to meet him when he finally touched down some 500 miles south of Moscow.
"For many years Soviet literature claimed that Yuri Gagarin and his Vostok landing capsule had come down in the area it was supposed to," according to the book, titled 108 Minutes That Changed the World.
"(But) this information was far from the truth," it added, saying Soviet space planners had been expecting him to land almost 250 miles further to the south. "So it turned out that nobody was waiting or looking for Yuri Gagarin. Therefore the first thing he had to do after landing was set off to look for people and communications so he could tell the leadership where he was."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
“Heck, that’s no different from the moon landing that we faked on a Burbank sound stage!”
This actually reminds me of something this story made me wonder. If it would be so easy to fake a moon landing, like some assert, then why didn’t the Russians do it before us? They didn’t seem to have a problem deceiving the world in regards to other aspects of their space program.
Lots of connections between the followers of both symbols:
The Russians have had a couple other landings hundreds of miles away from the planned landing spot. One was in 2008.
http://www.space.com/5262-space-station-astronauts-land-target-safely.html
The real scandal about Gagarin’s landing is that, apparently, he had to parachute out of the capsule by design. This would have disqualified him from some of the international flight awards and records because they require successful take off and landing IN the craft.
:’)
Thanks MM.
And we're scrapping the US space shuttle program so our astronauts can hitch a ride on Russian spacecraft?
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