SBS 8:30pm tonight 18/7/08
During the early 1960s, brothers Achille and Giovanni Judica-Cordiglia, two amateur radio enthusiasts, listened to sound from space with home-built equipment in their hometown of Torino Italy. But one night in 1961, some weeks prior to Yuri Gagarin's historical mission, they recorded something quite different from the usual static that would change their lives forever. Clear sounds from space had reached their home-made listening station: an agonising heartbeat, and heavy laboured breathing. It was a Russian cosmonaut only seconds before his death..
also:
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question...y/q0235a.shtml
In its short span of life, Torre Bert has plucked some remarkable messages from space. On November 28, 1960, for example, there was the cryptic message: "SOS to the entire world." It came from a moving space vehicle and was repeated three times. Amateurs in Texas and Germany picked up the same message. Three days later Russia admitted a launch which had ended in failure - but did not mention a man aboard.
On May 17, 1961, the voices of two men and a woman were heard in desperate conversation - "Conditions growing worse why don't you answer? ... we are going slower... the world will never know about us . . ." Then silence. The same words were picked up in Alaska and Sweden. Their meaning? No one will know until the Russians choose to talk.
Perhaps the most moving message of all was a wordless one made early in February 1961. Tapes, which I myself heard at Torre Bert, recorded the racing beat of an over - exerted heart (the hearts of all astronauts are monitored automatically) and sounds of labored breathing. The Judica - Cordiglia brothers took the tapes to famed heart surgeon Dr. A. M. Dogliotti. His verdict: "This is the heart of a dying man." The brothers are firmly convinced that the Russians have spent freely of human life to achieve their space successes. Accumulated evidence indicates that there may have been at least ten deaths.
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You would think after a few months I'd have learned that I don't get SBS here!
But, hey...the skies are pretty dark!
