[Virginia Ridgerunner]

I say BS! During reentry, a capsule is surrounded by ultra-hot, ionized gasses that make radio transmissions impossible. There is no way they could have heard such a thing, and moreover, once in orbit (essentially falling around the earth due to gravity), without some means of additional propulsion, it is impossible for a spacecraft to simply veer off course and fly off into space.

[Rome2000]

I'm no expert but if even half of this is true it would make a great movie.

Or Hollywood could remake "The Day the Earth Stood Still" with Keanu Reeves

[Libertarian4Bush]

what an awesome find.

thank you.

[Doctor Raoul]

Amazing.

[wideawake]

Absolutely fascinating. Thanks for posting this.

[rabscuttle385]

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 degrees C (–454ºF); 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.

That is one helluva zot.

[mountn man]

ping

[bmwcyle]

bttt for later

[dalereed]

A close friend of mine that was an engineer @ JPL said that they used to monitor the Russian capsules and that most of the first ones (many) that when the heart monitor quit and everything else was still functioning they knew that the cosmonaut had reached space temperature.

[VOA]

bump for later read

[mkjessup]

Thanks for posting, bookmarked for later.

[petitfour]

interesting

[GreyFriar]

Thanks for posting this interesting article

[Skooz]

Thanks for the fascinating post. Bump for later.

[Bigg Red]

Fascinating stuff.

[bajabaja]

A cool, fun science read.

[Kimmers]

Thank you for posting such an interesting read.

[willgolfforfood]

I call BS on the cosmonaut lost in space, and I'll tell you why.

A rocket needs to achieve about 18,000 to 19,000 MPH to get an object into a low orbit. If the speed is less than that, the object doesn't complete one orbit, but falls back to earth.

It takes about 35,000 MPH (from memory) to completly break free of the gravity of earth. That's how fast the lunar landing craft had to go to get to the point in space where the pull of the moon's gravity is stronger than the pull of the earth's gavity.

If the lunar craft had NOT achieved that speed, it would have fallen back to earth without ever reaching the moon.

If you design rockets, fuel tanks, etc. and supply enough launch fuel on the pad to only achieve 18,000 MPH, there is NO WAY IN HELL that you can somehow, even with pilot error, get that craft to essentially double in speed, and therefore be capable of escpaping earth's gravity, and just "sail off" into the solar system, and points beyond. Just CAN'T be done.

[BenLurkin]

space pine

[cyclotic]

Ping for my son, the space nut to read. What a great story.