[SunkenCiv]

Thanks grey_whiskers for the ping and thanks Renfield for the topic.

There are those who believe that somewhere in the vast blackness of space, about nine billion miles from the Sun, the first human is about to cross the boundary of our Solar System into interstellar space. His body, perfectly preserved, is frozen at -270°C (-454°F); his tiny capsule has been silently sailing away from the Earth at 18,000 mph (29,000km/h) for the last 45 years. He is the original lost cosmonaut, whose rocket went up and, instead of coming back down, just kept on going.

Whoops. Seems like they'd now take credit for this "first", if it were true.

Here's an oldie, I didn't check to see if the link is live or not.

Explorer Hero: Sergei Vladimir Ilyushin, Jr.
by Paul Tsarinsky

On April 7th, 1961, five days before Gagarin's successful flight, Ilyushin was launched and entered orbit. There had been no publicity around the launch. After three orbits Ilyushin lost contact with the mission control engineers on the ground. During the reentry, when he was supposed to eject from the capsule and parachute to safety, Ilyushin was unable to eject (he had lost consciousness as some point during the flight) and made a "hard landing" in the capsule. Ilyushin survived, but was injured.

The USSR under Kruschev (sp?) also made a few attempts to orbit craft, send pictures, and "land" (crash) on Mars, but missed badly. I think there's a description of those on Oberg's website. FWIW, Oberg also dumps all over this Ilyushin story.

[Sax]

Leave-taking ceremony for Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, who died in the crash landing on April 26, 1967. The Crash of Soyuz 1

[Las Vegas Dave]

*OPI pings. (*=Of Possible Interest)

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