Since the first man in space didn’t get there until 1961, I’m gonna have to say no.
I’ve seen recently a documentary about these brothers (I couldn’t tell if the stories about SOS and such were mentioned, since I listened very casually), and their archives and recordings (of basically everything coming from anything launched in space at the time) are still existing. So, yes, I assume that it could be investigated.
Yes… but you wouldn’t be in an expanding orbit. If you are under escaoe velocity, your movement away from the earth eventually slows to a stop and you begin to fall back, accelerating towards the earth until you whip around the earth and get flung back out again. I think that’s called an eccentric orbit. If you are above escape velocity, your movement away from the earth slows, but doesn’t stop. You don’t fall back and don’t go around the earth again. Thus, you aren’t in an expanding orbit or any other kind of orbit.
Maybe that’s what was meant by “at a single point and slowly moving away from the Earth” but I get the feeling both of these descriptions were written by people who are under the impression that “there’s no gravity in space” and picture the supposed cosmonauts just drifting away. Of corse, that’s just not how it works in reality.
From the linked article:
This makes no sense at all. It seems to be saying you can recognize a satellite because the Doppler shift shows orbital speed. But the 1960/11/28 signal didn’t have these characteristics, so it’s… a satellite not in orbit? :smack:
In any case, it’s silly to think that a spacecraft designed to go into low-earth orbit can somehow end up with escape speed by accident.
Now that the Soviet Union is no more, can the records of their space program be accessed? I think the soviets were very secretive, and it is indeed possible that there were accidents (that were not reported at the time). So if the sovs lots some guys, the records should show this…anybody know what the archives have revealed?
This actually makes sense, at least if you allow for a pretty vaguely-written explanation. There are two important components to the Doppler shift for an orbiting object: from the object’s orbital velocity, and from the Earth’s rotational velocity. An object in low-Earth orbit has an orbital speed of about 8000m/s, roughly 16 times larger than the Earth’s rotational speed of 500m/s. So a transmitter in LEO has a Doppler shift of roughly 2.5e-5 (so for Sputnik’s frequency of 20MHz, a shift of about 500Hz), while a star-synchronous transmitter has a Doppler shift of about 1.5e-6 (about 30Hz at 20MHz). An Earth-fixed transmitter, of course, has no Doppler shift at all. This is (maybe) what the article is talking about: seeing a Doppler shift, but less of one than usual–of only ~60Hz instead of ~1000Hz (and over a longer time period). Of course that could also just indicate a higher orbit than usual; you’d have to do some longer-term tracking to decide which you’re actually seeing.
I agree with this, though. The date seems wrong to be anything other than a LEO attempt, which wouldn’t have enough fuel for escape.
O S O
enough said
Read Cecil’s article linked above- the theory is that the Soviets covered up the actual first man in space, since it wouldn’t be much of a PR coup if he was still up there when you fired up the press conference cameras.
Apparently unfounded, of course, but just because Gagarin is said to be first doesn’t make it so.
They built a 50-foot satellite dish and presumably something to shift it around (ie., a motor, servo, or whatever) so “hobbyists” probably isn’t quite accurate. Anyway, it’s more likely that the author of the article simply doesn’t know the difference between an LED and a light bulb.