| here is still no rational explanation, nearly ten years after the fall of the communist regimes of eastern Europe, for the permanence of a curtain of silence over the loss of a number of soviet cosmonauts, at the beginning of the space program. It is puzzling how, in the midst of ‘Glasnost’, the unknown heroes who gave their life to take mankind into space have not yet been given the recognition in the history of planet Earth which they earned with their very lives.
The Judica-Cordiglia brothers showed beyond doubt decades ago, that the soviet authorities of the time conducted, for reasons of propaganda, experiments doomed to almost certain failure, sacrificing their best pilots to the cause of communism.
The callousness of the soviet mission controllers went as far as actually cautioning their crews against saying things which “the people in Turin” may pick up and record!
But we know now that these heroes, men and women, are not the only victims of man’s quest for space. In both the american and soviet space programs many lives have been lost. Many are the heroes who gave their lives for the supreme ideal of the advancement of science.
Yet those first cosmonauts, those “voices” heard in Turin, have to suffer the shame of being nameless, of being ignored by history. Their lives have been erased, their contribution may never be known. Many are the nameless heroes of our times. Few are the heroes whose heartbeats, whose very last words we are allowed to hear, extreme farewells dedicated to the advancement of science and the progress of this planet Earth. Let us not forget them |
