5 Soviet Space Programs That Prove Russia Was Insane

5 Space Dogs

Between 1951 and 1966, the USSR sent over twenty dogs into the cosmos, but to be fair, they weren't the only ones who tested the viability of human space travel by sending animals up first. What separated the Soviet space dogs from the American monkeys, however, was that Soviet programs didn't always have the animal's best interests at heart. And by that we mean they often had no intention of bringing the animal back alive.

Take Laika, for example. In November 1957 the whole world watched in astonishment as the Soviets not only launched Sputnik 2, but revealed they had a stray mongrel in the satellite as well, making them the first to get a living organism in orbit. Everything about Laika's journey seemed to go swimmingly, until we realized the Soviets never had a safe return plan for their pooch, and they planned for her to die in space all along. Which sucks, of course, but at least she died peacefully when she ate her poisoned food dose a week into orbit, as the Soviets reported.

Except, oh wait, that's not how Laika died at all. In 2002 it was revealed that Laika wasn't euthanized, but that she died in the most horrifying way possible within hours of the launch. Sputnik 2, it turned out, was something of a rush job. The whole thing had been planned and put together in four weeks, so no one should have been surprised when the thermal insulation system broke right away. Poor Laika, whose little doggy heart was already beating at four times its resting rate, found herself in a cabin that was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Her body shut down from stress and heat within five to seven hours of her launch.

Even when the Soviet space dogs punched space in the face and landed safely, they still had to contend with a Russian winter, because the Soviets weren't exactly, how do you say, capable of landing them at the right place. Which was why dogonaut capsules came equipped with a 60 hour self-destruct timer on board, just in case. That self destruct function was almost used in December, 1960, when Damka and Krasavka's capsule landed off course in the middle of a NEGATIVE 45 DEGREE Russian winter. Rescuers barely got to the dogs before they became pupcicles.

Eventually, more and more of the dogs started coming back safe and sound, so the Soviets thought space was finally safe for humans.

(Spoiler: it wasn't.)

4 Expendable Cosmonauts

All that dog torture paid off when the Soviets safely launched and returned human cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. But there are more than a few people who contend that Yuri the Fury wasn't actually the first man in space, he was just the first one to survive to tell the tale. And that, theoretically, there are some cosmonauts still out there hurtling across the universe.

While the Soviets hit the ground running in the space race, we later found out that their actual space program was a bit of a shit show. However, they did have one advantage on their side; their ability to cover up every single failure and destroy all evidence of incompetence, which is why no one can actually prove what we're about to tell you.

In 1959 a German scientist claimed at least four Soviet cosmonauts had already died between the years 1957 and 1959. According to Hermann Oberth, the Soviets were converting rockets to manned spaceships, and he would know, because he was working with NASA and had seen the intelligence to prove it. Plus, a high ranking Czech official further corroborated the story when he also leaked information that unofficial launches killed a few cosmonauts.

But it wasn't until two Italian brothers with a knack for radio got in the act that the story really gained some ground. After cobbling together an improvised listening system comprised of scavenged equipment and sheer audacity, Achilles and Giovanni Battista Judica-Cordiglia started picking up some creepy shit. Specifically, an SOS signal in Morse Code. And the dying gasps and fading heartbeat of a cosmonaut whose signal was getting farther and farther away from Earth. And a Russian woman who said:

Transmission begins now. Forty-one. Yes, I feel hot. I feel hot, it's all... it's all hot. I can see a flame! I can see a flame! I can see a flame! Thirty-two... thirty-two. Am I going to crash? Yes, yes I feel hot... I am listening, I feel hot, I will re-enter. I'm hot!

Just as signs of screaming began, the transmission was cut off. And then there was the couple who desperately pleaded for help:

Conditions growing worse. Why don't you answer? . . . we are going slower . . . the world will never know about us...

None of the transmissions were acknowledged by the Soviets, but the KGB began taking a hearty interest in the brothers, nevertheless. And then, as if it wasn't creepy enough that two Italian guys were recording the tortured last cries of phantom space travelers, there was the whole matter of the cosmonauts who mysteriously disappeared from official pictures.

Later we learned that one of the airbrushed cosmonauts was cut from official pictures and all records after suffering a horrific death by fire on the launchpad. Another was expunged because he was a drunk brawler who eventually committed suicide. As for the rest, we'll never know.

3 The Voskhod Program

By 1964, the Soviets were trying to get their Commie asses on the moon, but they needed a bigger spaceship to do the job. Voskhod was the stepping stone to that spaceship, just like NASA's Gemini program was the stepping stone to Apollo. And for a while there, things went great! Voskhod 1 was the first spaceflight to have more than one person on board, which we're sure they celebrated by doing the first squat-kick dance in space.

Voskhod 2, however, proceeded with a Three Stoogian level of things going wrong, minus the hilarious eye pokes. The launch went up safely, got into an orbit, and a cosmonaut, Alexei Leonov, became the first human to perform a spacewalk. Super. But that was about when things took a turn for the cataclysmic.

On his way back in, Leonov's spacesuit inflated due to the vacuum of space, which, apparently, the guys who designed the suit had never heard of. His suit was so laughably ballooney, in fact, that he could barely move and most definitely couldn't fit back in the spaceship door. Leonov was forced to let some air out, all the while suffering from heatstroke and the bends. By the time his little 12 minute walk turned into a 20 minute walk, he was up to his knees in sweat. But he made it back in to the ship, safe and sound.

Remember how we said the Soviet program was a bit of a shit show? This is the part where that shitshowiness comes into play. Voskhod 2 was really just a modified version of an earlier vessel, the Vostok, which was never meant to carry more than one cosmonaut. But in the race to beat the Americans, the Soviet government insisted this version go up.

Because of the crappy design, crew members had to crane their heads at a 90 degree angle just to read their instruments, and the capsule had zero exit strategies if an emergency came up during re-entry. But best of all, once the automatic landing failed, which it did, getting to the navigation system required one cosmonaut to lie down across the seats, while the other held him in place. So, imagine you just made humankind's first walk in space, you get back in the space ship, sick as all get-out, and now you have goose your partner while he tries to get you back home.

AND THEN IT GOT WORSE. Pavel Belyayev, the guy who had to land the thing manually, asked Leonov to check their attitude. That little move cost them time, which cost them landing accuracy, which meant they were forced to land 800 miles off course in a part of the Ural Mountains so forested that no helicopters could land to rescue them. They literally had to chop wood for a fire and fend off wolves for two days while they waited for their rescuers, who eventually arrived on skis. The only way Voskhod 2 could have gone any worse would have been if Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase were the ones sent for the rescue.

2 The Moonshot

By 1967, the space race to the moon was neck and neck, and the Soviets were cutting a lot of corners to get there first. And it didn't help that their moon plan was Rube Goldbergian in its complication. The cosmonaut in the Russian program would have to physically go outside the orbiting craft and do a spacewalk just to get into the moon landing craft. And on the way back from the moon, he would have to carry a huge specimen bag of moon rocks. Through the vacuum of space.

So the program had to hit some major milestones to make this crap shoot possible: they had to figure out how to rendezvous in orbit, how to exit and spacewalk between crafts and, oh yeah, how to actually land on the moon. All in about 18 months. And PS, their rockets suuuuuuuuucked.

And the cosmonauts knew it.

When Yuri Gagarin inspected Soyuz 1, the capsule that was supposed to eventually get the reds to the moon, he found no less than 203 structural problems with the thing. So naturally, he recommended a postponement of its practice launch. Officials gave a hearty "NYET CAN DO" because they wanted that first space docking in time for 50th anniversary of the Communist revolution.

But it wasn't Gagarin who was scheduled to make the flight, it was his best friend Vladimir Komarov. And Vladimir wouldn't back out of a sure suicide mission because Gagarin was his back-up; if he didn't make the flight Yuri would, and he didn't want to kill his best friend. And Yuri felt the same way. Apparently he showed up on launch day as well, demanding to go in Vladimir's place.

But it would be Vladimir who would make the trip, and his problems started the minute he got into orbit. His solar panel didn't work, so the power to his systems failed. His orientation detectors froze, so he couldn't maneuver the craft. His automatic stabilization system died and his manual stabilization system was only partially working. In other words, Soyuz 1 was up space creek without a paddle.

After 13 orbits around the Earth, the mission was aborted and Vladimir was ordered back home. Unfortunately, his parachutes got tangled on re-entry and he never had a chance slow his stupid Soyuz down. And did we mention that he had radio contact with Earth the whole time, where US scientists listening in reported hearing Vladimir and his flight commander crying and cursing, or that his wife was on the call, asking him what to tell their children? If you click here, you can hear his last words and see what remained of him after landing. But only click there if you're already dead inside.

So that was Soyuz 1. Soyuz 5's landing was so hard that it broke the pilot's teeth, and he was so off course that he had to find shelter at a peasant's house before he was rescued. Soyuz 6, 7, and 8 all failed to dock together. But by this point, it didn't matter anymore, because Apollo was already on the moon.

1 Planned Manned Flights to Venus and Mars

By this point, anyone with a lick of sense knew that the space race was over and Uncle Sam won. Yet the Soviets figured if they had to go out, they might as well go out with a bang (uh...hopefully not literally). Thus the program to get cosmonauts on Venus and Mars were pursued.

You have to hand it to them, the plans had moxy. First off, the three man mission to Mars would take three years. And to keep those cosmonauts alive during the three years, Russian scientists came up with some pretty ambitious systems. Like, "growing 20 to 50% of the crew's food in hydroponic greenhouses" ambitious. And "just hoping for the best when it comes to periods of prolonged weightlessness since no one had gone longer than a few days in space before" ambitious.

Pipe dreams based on uninvented technologies excluded, the mission itself was made of insanity. In one version, the cosmonauts would orbit around Mars, swing back to Earth, bypass Earth to go to Venus, just for fun, then come home. Total trip time: four years. In another version, a six man crew would actually land on Mars and live there for a year as they explored the Red Planet from pole to pole. Also, while there, they'd construct a nuclear powered "Mars Train" for getting around and stuff. Because that sounded totally doable by this point.

Shockingly, neither program got past the testing stage. The rocket they were supposed to use went through four flights from 1969 to 1972, and came back in pieces every single time. Turns out the flaw was simply not trusting American methods. Instead of using liquid oxygen and hydrogen like NASA, the Soviets went with the method of mixing benzene with kerosene. While being anti-American, they were also pro-explosion: kerosene mixed with benzene is a dangerous mix that is more combustible than gasoline.

Unfortunately for all involved, the Soviets directed their energies toward their space station instead. We say "unfortunately" because the first three cosmonauts to visit it tragically died before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. Although, considering the alternative was thrusting a nuclear powered disastercraft away from the Earth, we should probably be grateful for the distraction their little space station provided.

For more on space, check out 5 Retarded Space Travel Ideas (That Might Actually Work) and 6 Reasons Space Travel Will Always Suck.