Myth and bluff of Russian cosmonautics

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

I continue to blow up clichés and stereotypes in the heads of "Soviet people". One of the cornerstones in imperial thinking is the myth of the greatness and achievements of the USSR in space technology. However, the truth is that there is no space technology from the USSR. There is one big MYTH and BLUFF.

The first to go into space were the Germans. On February 17, 1943, their FAU-2 rocket reached an altitude of 190 km. The Americans were the second to go into space (the damned West - everywhere puts a spoke in our wheels!). In May 1948, the American Bumper missile reached an altitude of 390 km. The first stage of the "Bumper" was the German FAU-2 rocket, developed by the greatest scientist Werner von Braun. While our Korolev was sitting in Kolyma, the entire industry of Germany worked for Brown, after the war, the powerful industry of the United States was attached to his mind.

According to captured drawings and parts of FAU-2 missiles, Korolev also riveted our "magnificent missiles"; dozens of captured German engineers who were engaged in rocketry in the 3rd Reich worked in his design bureau. But he was never able to make a single-chamber engine with sufficient thrust. Rather, the Soviet industry, industry could not do it. Gagarin had to fly in a "bunch". A "bundle" is a "stick" of several small diameter rackets. Flight reliability was estimated at 64%. These first flights cannot be called anything other than experiments on people. Yes, what's there! Read the candidate of sciences Geliy Malkovich Salakhutdinov. He wrote books about the myth of Soviet cosmonautics. Was subjected to fierce harassment and attacks for such a scrapping of the matrix in the heads. If you dare to deprive yourself of yet another illusion, you will find his books and read. Until then, his interview:

About crazy Tsiolkovsky, unfortunate Gagarin and much, much more …

Interview of Geliy Salakhutdinov to the "Ogonyok" magazine

Helium Salakhutdinov

They have been threatening to kill him for a long time. And this is strange, because who could get in the way of a simple scientist? But no - I got up. Candidate of Sciences Geliy Malkovich Salakhutdinov encroached on the most sacred thing - the history of Russian natural science. And he upset many people with his research that one graduate student, right at the institute, attacked Geliy Malkovich with his fists. Well, Geliy Malkovich was engaged in boxing before, otherwise it is not known how his scientific career would have ended. And the graduate student, by the way, in this scientific discussion got off with only broken glasses … Yes, but why such a heat of passions around historical science?

Passions are always simmering around historical science, this is not a question. Our magazine has been dealing with the topic of history for a long time. We gave the floor to both the fans of the Fomenkovo theory and the anti-Fomenkovites, published in several issues the most interesting profomenkovo arguments of Garry Kasparov, debunked historical myths from the Second World War, talked about teaching history at school, even studied variable history - discussed what would have happened if history has changed its course somewhere. And our articles have always evoked the most lively responses from the working people. Mostly working people in the field of historical science. But ordinary citizens were very angry when we exposed some of the pro-Soviet myths created by Stalinist historiography. I'm afraid our article today will also generate a sea of spiteful responses. In any case, we really count on it …

So, today, on his way from Star City to Moscow, for the first time on our historical stage, a man of difficult fate sings and dances all evening, but at the same time, Candidate of Technical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences Geliy Salakhutdinov. I beg!..

- Geliy Malkovich, as far as I understand, you are engaged in a well-documented, quiet and calm area of history - the history of technology. And suddenly such scandals. How did your journey of the cross in historical science begin?

- It all started with the fact that in 1984 I took a research topic on the history of world cosmonautics. And it turned out that our entire national history of cosmonautics was falsified.

Our entire history of astronautics supports the legend that as a result of the intense competition head to head between our two countries in space, the Soviet Union won this race with honor against the United States by launching the first satellite and so on … And no one here knows - this is carefully hidden, - that back in 1946, Wernher von Braun, the father of the German V-2 rocket, proposed to the Americans a project to launch the first artificial earth satellite. And the Americans refused this proposal, rightly judging that the satellite could not have military use. In 1954, von Braun again proposed launching a satellite. He is again denied.

In 1957, von Braun already said: Give me 90 days and I will launch a satellite. He is again denied. And he already had the rocket ready! (The von Braun rocket Jupiter-C (Missile 27), successfully launched on September 20, 1956, rose to an altitude of over 1,000 kilometers. If the last stage had fuel instead of sand, it could put the first artificial Earth satellite into orbit. P. Kh.) And on October 4, 1957, the USSR launched its satellite … The Americans gave von Braun permission to launch only after our dog Laika flew.

- But still the first satellite was ours!

Valentina Tereshkova

- Yes, our first blank flew. But all the first applied satellites are American. The first scientific satellite was American, the first messenger - American, navigation, meteorological - also American. The first orbital station is American. (Actually, the first orbital station, Salyut, launched in 1971, was Soviet. The Americans were then too busy with flights to the moon, and they did not have time for near-Earth fuss. By the way, the first cosmonauts who visited Salyut, - Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsaev - died on their return to Earth, which they try not to remember. - P. Kh.) The first winged return vehicle is an American one. The first people on the moon are Americans. And our N-1 rocket, which was being prepared for a flight to the moon, successfully exploded with terrible force on all four launches.

The Americans walked the road of practicality, and we launched the symbols. The first disc is a satellite. The first woman, scared to tears. She burst into tears there, she started having snot - in general, it poured from all the holes. She shouted: "Mom! Mom!.." (She also threatened to commit suicide. - P. Kh.) And after that Korolev said: "With me there will be no more women in space!" And he drove them all out of the cosmonaut corps. There were four more pieces … (To be more precise, Korolev did not expel women from the cosmonaut corps, but, anyway, women did not fly into space with him. Svetlana Savitskaya, the second Soviet cosmonaut, flew into space almost 20 years after Tereshkova, after the death of Korolev. - P. Kh.)

- Why was the girl so scared?

- Fearfully. (In addition to everything, she began to have female malaise in orbit. - P. Kh.) After all, the first flights were some kind of idiocy, they had a 50% chance of returning! (A little more. - P. Kh.) When, for example, Gagarin was flying, there was a serious fear that the brake engine would not work. In this case, the device was provided with water and food for ten days, it was expected that it would be decelerated by the atmosphere during this time and would fall by itself. However, the orbit turned out to be higher than the calculated one, and if the brake had not worked, Gagarin would have died - he would not have had enough food and water supplies to wait for natural deceleration. Gagarin played the role of a living symbol. They sent the dog, now we need a little man … (By the way, it's not a fact that Gagarin was in space at all. But this is a separate conversation. - P. Kh.)

In the history of our cosmonautics, there is falsification all around. With the same Gagarin. At a press conference, journalists ask him: how did you land, by parachute or in the cockpit of the ship? And our first cosmonaut Gagarin begins to get out. He says, they say, the chief designer has provided for both options for descent from orbit. Didn't answer the question directly.

- Who cares?

Yuri Gagarin

- It was necessary to establish an international record. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale awarded the range record only if the pilot landed in the ship's cockpit. And what do you think? They took and deceived the entire world community - they wrote that Gagarin went down in the cockpit of the ship. And he went down by parachute - ejected from the cockpit! (There is a version that the cosmonaut, who actually went into space that day, died during the flight, and Gagarin was released from the plane by parachute. - P. Kh.) But the funny thing is that a few years later ours really created the Voskhod-1 spacecraft., on which the cosmonauts sat in the cockpit. And the USSR … officially announced that for the first time in the world a soft landing of people in the ship's cockpit was made! Completely forgetting that a few years ago Gagarin had already "sat down" in the cockpit.

- The union was famous for its eyewash. Especially the military and politicians …

- We tried to match the cosmonautics with politics. The flight of Titov was personally chosen by Khrushchev in such a way as to erect the Berlin Wall under his guise. Under the guise of Tereshkova, they extinguished the scandal with the deployment of missiles in Cuba … Do you know what the Americans called our Vostok-Voskhod program? Technological sophistry. (This was said by Kurt Debus, German-American American specialist, first director of the Kennedy Space Center - P. H.)

We constantly fooled them, lied. For example, if you launch the second satellite exactly one day after the first, they will be side by side in orbit. We did this and trumpeted the whole world that our vehicles are so cool that they can converge in orbits. There was a shock in America - the Russians know how to build vehicles that change orbits!..

Then we drove three cosmonauts into a single-seater ship. They literally sat in each other's arms there. In order to accommodate them, it was necessary to remove the spacesuits from the cosmonauts and dismantle the ejection seat from the cockpit. But the Americans gasped - the Russians are already making big ships for group flights!.. It never occurred to them that this was a hoax, that people flew "naked" like cannon fodder …

When all this was revealed, the Americans called our space program technological sophistry.

- What happened then, after you rewrote the history of astronautics?

- And then I took up Tsiolkovsky. Tsiolkovsky is also completely falsified.

- How did this happen to him?

- Because of the revolution. By the time of the revolution, Tsiolkovsky had already been exposed by the scientific community as a pseudo-scientist and pseudo-inventor. Zhukovsky, Vetchinkin, the Imperial Russian Technical Society opposed him … What saved this provincial semi-literate dreamer? In 1921, Lenin signed a decree awarding Tsiolkovsky a personal pension - quite by accident. There was a long story. Familiar military men - semi-literate cavalrymen - and two compatriots from the "Kaluga Society of Nature Lovers of the Local Area", who went to the authorities, a teacher and a doctor, were bothering for Tsiolkovsky. When the council for awarding personal pensions gathered, they looked - all the signatures were collected. And they voted.

Tsiolkovsky was awarded a pension "for special services in the field of aviation." And according to the regulations, all members of the government, including Lenin, had to endorse this document. Well, since Lenin's signature, historians began to make a great scientist out of the city madman. The last critical publication about Tsiolkovsky was in 1934, when his selected works were published, and in the preface there was an article by Professor Moiseev from the Zhukovsky Academy, who simply ridiculed Tsiolkovsky's "works" on aerodynamics and natural science.

When I myself began to look at the works of Tsiolkovsky, I saw with horror that this "scientist" had managed not to derive a single formula without error. The only correct formula, which for some reason is attributed to Tsiolkovsky - the equation of motion of a point of variable mass - belongs to Meshchersky. Moreover, it does not belong to Meshchersky either, strictly speaking! She was taken out in exams fifty years earlier by students at the University of Cambridge.

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

- I know that Tsiolkovsky was a schizophrenic. I came across his "philosophical" works. When I read them for the first time, I realized that I had already seen something similar: a lot of similar Tsiolkovs with their treatises are circulating around the editorial offices. They are often published in "MK" under the heading "There, Beyond the Horizon".

- Tsiolkovsky had a serious shift. He himself wrote about this: "I got a nervous breakdown, so strong that I completely forgot how to run, and this affected my children." I decided to check his confession and made sure that almost everyone in Tsiolkovsky's family was crazy. Of his six children, two committed suicide. One wanted to pierce his eardrum all his life in order to become as brilliant as his father. Another one was simply feeble-minded …

- It was possible not to work with bad heredity. Tsiolkovsky's diagnosis is clearly visible in his writings and memoirs. I remember he himself described how he saw the word "paradise" written in the sky. And his philosophical views …

- Yes, he just has a terrible philosophy. Its essence is as follows - when a person dies, his atoms are scattered throughout the Universe, and then settle in some other living being. This is how their second life begins in a different guise. And if the deceased being was happy, then the atoms will be happy, and the new life of the new being will be happy. If the atoms are unhappy, the opposite is true. And the task of humanity is to destroy all unhappy life on Earth and in space. Then Tsiolkovsky describes how, whom and in what order to kill. I will quote: "sick, crippled, feeble-minded, irresponsible … wild and domestic animals, insects …"

And this schizophrenic delirium our ciolologists and ciolkolyuby introduce into the rank of philosophy - scientific cosmism. Every year the Tsiolkovsky Readings are held in Kaluga - "On the Development of Scientific Heritage and the Development of Tsiolkovsky's Ideas".

- All right you say, but we have so many stupid things going on in the country, why did your research provoke such an angry reaction, and not only in the scientific world?

- I wrote the book "The Shine and Poverty of Tsiolkovsky", before I even had time to publish it, they pounced on me … A book that has not yet been published is an unprecedented thing for our science! - a bunch of reviews were immediately published, which did not contain a single scientific argument against me. And there was only abuse. I will quote. Here is a certain Grigory Khozin - as it is said about him here, "an outstanding specialist in the field of humanitarian aspects of astronautics", by the way, a professor! - writes about me in his abusive brochure: "I still tremble, how is it possible, being a Russian, although bearing the name Salakhutdinov, to pour crap on the greatest genius of mankind?"

- Most of all I liked "… although bearing the name of Salakhutdinov."

- By the way, the Russian Tsiolkovsky, whom Khozin protects, was also half Tatar, although he had a Polish surname … This is why they attacked me so that many people fed and still feed from historical legends. If in the 60s they knew that Tsiolkovsky was not a genius, but a nutcase, would they have built a museum for him in Kaluga, looking at which, foreigners unanimously ask: how much does it cost? Have you been to Kaluga? This is the Palace of Congresses! Near the hotel "Intourist". The road was built. The funding was powerful. Hundreds of people have been feeding on this and are still feeding. The authorities from the city of Kaluga approached me with threats …

- But the palace was built for the deceased not for his "philosophical" works, but for the principles of jet propulsion, for space, for the rockets he invented …

- Rockets have existed since the 13th century. And not invented, but real, solid fuel, powder. Tsiolkovsky knew this. He read the brochure of the naval officer Fedorov, to which he repeatedly referred. What did Tsiolkovsky do? Tsiolkovsky offered to board a rocket and fly it into space. But the first proposal on this matter was made by the physicist and writer Cyrano de Bergerac back in 1648. (The Chinese Wang Hu, according to legend, tried to take off 150 years earlier. - PH) Then there was Jules Verne with the same proposal. There was a Chinese Wang Hu … but a lot of people!.. Tsiolkovsky did not come up with anything new.

- I read that Tsiolkovsky was the first to invent multistage rockets.

- Impudent and cynical lies! Already in the 18th century, such missiles existed in projects. And the first patent for multistage rockets was received by Robert Goddard in America in 1914. A little later, in 1923, a book was published by the German professor Obert, who proposed a two-stage rocket for space flight. And only four years later, Mr. Tsiolkovsky was finally bursting with his idea. By this time, the whole country already knew about multistage missiles! Because the newspaper Pravda has repeatedly written about the idea of "the German professor Obert, who invented a way to fly into space"! But Tsiolkovsky did not read Pravda …

And Tsiolkovsky did not invent any multistage rockets. Do you know what Tsiolkovsky actually suggested? He proposed to simultaneously launch 512 DIFFERENT missiles, operated by 512 pilots. When the fuel is used up by half, the rockets somehow meet in the air in pairs - and half of the rockets pour the rest of the fuel into the others. Empty rockets with pilots fall, the rest fly until they again run out of half a tank. Etc. One of 512 rockets and one pilot reaches space. Bullshit!

Even the popularizer of his works, Perelman, who sympathized with Tsiolkovsky, could not stand it and in his book in 1937 wrote: yes, we must combine them, missiles! And then 512 pilots will not be needed, but one will be enough, and it will be easier to discard the spent missiles, "as suggested by Goddard and Obert."

- Well, at least something new in science said the unfortunate deaf madman from Kaluga?

- Said. He offered to put the pipe on wheels and push it down the mountain. And then, according to Tsiolkovsky, a stream of air flowing through the pipe will create a jet thrust, and the pipe will run forever!.. He did not even understand the principle of the rocket engine, this village dreamer. Do you know that Tsiolkovsky studied at the gymnasium for only four years, and two of them were in the same class?

- The founder of theoretical cosmonautics … Okay, so you have written a true book. AND?..

- At my own expense, by the way, it was my unscheduled topic … I wrote and, out of my naivety, suggested Tsiolkovsky to the commission. I thought I made a discovery, a coup. I thought they would grab it. After all, no less than 800 books have been written about Tsiolkovsky - and not a single truthful one … And then such hysteria began!

Newspaper articles, where I was poured for desecration of the holy names … Devastating reviews of my book by various "scientists". One professor tried so hard that he wrote an abusive review for a section … which was not even in my book! Our institute adopted a resolution condemning me. I am regularly threatened with dismissal. They started spreading rumors that I was a "bad person" …

Well, okay, let me be a "bad person", but leave my personality alone, answer in essence, as it should be in the scientific community. But no!.. And I understand them, there are no arguments against me: I am based on the works of Tsiolkovsky himself.

Comes to the ridiculous. I published an article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta. And the director of our institute - a former Komsomol worker who is accustomed to protecting sacred cows - calls the editorial office to Andrey Vaganov …

He calls, it means that he says that the article is erroneous, and instead of reasoned criticism he begins to tell Andrey … what a bad person I am. Vaganov meets me, laughs, says: "Write more!.."

By the way, after reading this article, a professor at Yale University started looking for me through the Leningrad branch of our institute. And they tell him there: we, of course, will give you the coordinates of this Salakhutdinov, but you should know - he is a very bad person.

This professor calls me, asks for a meeting. I answer: I, of course, will meet with you, but you should know - I am a very bad person. He laughs, says: but I have already been told …

- I really liked how this guy wrote about you in a devastating brochure … Read a couple more passages from the immortal.

- Here you are, there is a wonderful moment … Khozin first draws attention to the fact that Tsiolkovsky was a pacifist and did not want to work for the war, and then writes: table together, put the creative legacy of Tsiolkovsky, put down his philosophical works, talk to these gentlemen in uniform and tell them: maybe there is a more effective use of this potential?"

Can you imagine? Khozin and a bunch of generals in uniform are sitting at the negotiating table. For the generals cannons, bombs, and Khozin put Tsiolkovsky's works on the table! Let us, gentlemen, generals, make an eternal rocket out of a pipe on wheels, push it down a hill … Idiocy. Doctor of Science, by the way.

Here's another lovely passage: "Tsiolkovsky should be known as an integral socio-, political, philosophical, humanitarian-moral piggy bank of the treasures of civilization." Wow? How he cleverly privatized them, the treasures of civilization … Piggy bank!

Then this mistress came to me strongly … Melpomene … uh … there is such a philosophical girl, I forgot …

- Mapelman.

- Yes! How do you know?

- She read our philosophy at the institute. She looks so decent. And why did she attack you?

- So she just defended her doctoral dissertation about the "philosopher" Tsiolkovsky - Russian cosmism. Why should she now admit that she is not a doctor of philosophy, but of psychiatric sciences?

- But I suppose you didn't stop at Tsiolkovsky?

Mikhail Lomonosov

- Didn't stop. After they began to persecute me, our employees began to quietly approach me and say: listen, since you are so brave, look - something is wrong with Lomonosov there. And with Popov. And it seems Petrov did not open the electric arc … I began to look at the documents. Precisely, Lomonosov did not make any discoveries!..

- Under the gut … And we at school passed that he discovered the law of conservation of mass.

- The law of conservation of mass was discovered by Lavoisier. And all Lomonosov's works in chemistry and physics are semi-literate fantasies. Lomonosov was simply a talented administrator. He founded the university, organized scientific expeditions. By himself, he was a rather illiterate person, did not know mathematics, by the end of his life he drank himself to death, came to the Academy of Sciences and arranged drunken fights there.

- How I like listening to you!

- The same thing was revealed for other characters! It turned out, really, Popov had not invented the radio …

- Marconi?

- Nobody invented it at all! Just like a parachute, a helicopter or gears … The first patent for a signal transmission device based on Faraday's electromagnetic induction was taken by Edison. He also created a receiving and transmitting device operating at a distance of up to 200 meters. Maintained communication between the coast and the ship in the roadstead, the station and the approaching train. In general, Hertz, who discovered electromagnetic waves, was the first to hold in his hands a device that transmitted electromagnetic signals over a distance.

Then the Russian magazine "Electricity", the Englishman Crooks and the Serb Tesla practically simultaneously announced that long-distance communication devices could be created on the basis of hertz waves. Go out into space, transmit messages to the other side of the globe. Tesla invents an antenna, draws a diagram of a radio … The only thing that Tesla could not do was find a good receiver, he used a wire ring. But this problem was solved by the Englishman Brantley - he invented a tube with metal powder as a receiver.

- I remember her. This tube was shown in a black-and-white film about Popov. There, for some reason, the hammer from the alarm clock was shaking her all the time.

- This hammer with a clockwork was invented by the Englishman Lodge, and not by Popov, by the way … And this was demonstrated in England. Popov and Marconi learn about the English experiments, they begin to repeat them, increasing the antenna lift and signal strength. That's all they made up their own. The question is: who has priority in the invention of radio?

The same with other characters … The Russian scientist Petrov did not open any electric arc. The arc was opened by Major - a Russian, but an English citizen, so he, of course, was on the side, and Petrov was appointed the discoverer … The Cherepanovs began to build their unsuccessful steam locomotive after a trip to England, where they saw a steam locomotive. Sliders were not the inventor of the steam engine, it was invented fifty years before him … He licked the machine, but there was no necessary metal processing technology in Russia, and the piston just dangled in the cylinder, the machine did not work …

There was no Leninist GOELRO plan. This electrification plan was invented during the tsarist government. Wherever you poke - everywhere lies.

- How could this happen to our history?

- Very simple. On direct instructions from Stalin in 1946, the Russian and Soviet history of science and technology began to be rewritten. As part of the fight against cosmopolitanism and groveling before the West …

In short, when I understood all this, I immediately began to write about it - mainly in the press, because in our journal "Questions of the History of Natural Science and Technology of the Russian Academy of Sciences" I became persona non grata. Because the editor-in-chief of the magazine is the director of our institute. And I understand him humanly: how can he publish Salakhutdinov? After Gorbachev announced perestroika, and the social sciences and history began to cleanse themselves of the ugly influx of totalitarianism, nothing like this happened in the history of natural science and technology. The question is, what have you been doing all these years? Supported the myths?

- Is our entire history of science falsified?

- Fully. All inventions, all science came to us from abroad. Think about it: there are only eight Nobel laureates for the whole huge Soviet Union. In tiny Denmark - eight, in Switzerland - twelve. In America - one hundred fifty four! And we have eight. But in the literature there is approximate equality: the Americans have seven, we have five laureates.

- Maybe they condemned our scientific guys there?

- On the contrary, the Nobel Committee and, in general, foreign scientists loved and sympathized with our scientists very much, they understood how hard it is to work in a totalitarian country. Sometimes they even gave prizes, which, in my opinion, should not have been given. For example, I would not give Kapitza and Landau the Nobel Prize.

- Why did the graduate student attack you with fists right within the walls of the institute?

- His girlfriend works in Kaluga at the Tsiolkovsky Museum. And I am encroaching on her crazy idol. And he, defending his girlfriend, attacked me, the persecutor of Tsiolkovsky.

- How confused everything is. But you are already an old man. And he is young. How did you survive?

- But I was once engaged in boxing. So he threw him away with his hand, he flew off, his glasses fell off. And then he stepped on them himself. He took his broken glasses and went to write a denunciation against me. And I said: let him file a lawsuit!

- What are your plans for the future, Geliy Malkovich?

- I will fight further.

- Thank you for your struggle. For helping us squeeze the Tsiolkovsky out of you drop by drop …

Alexander Nikonov

"Ogonyok", No. 50, December 10, 2001