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Conditions growing worse. Why don't you answer? We're going slower. The world will never know about us.

These are words attributed to a small team of Soviet-era spacecraft pilots, cosmonauts,

some of the last words received from them in an ill-fated orbital mission.

And were it not for a pair of Italian brothers with a fascination in Ham radio, the world might not know about these doomed pilots, nor several others.

For while the world sat spellbound by the technological display of the Soviet U.S. space race.

Apparently we were all of us deceived.

The Soviets had a much more commanding lead on getting people in space than they led on,

but getting them back down from space.

Well, one out of two ain't bad. Yuri Gagarin holds the distinction of being the first person in space,

but perhaps that should be amended to the first person to return from space alive.

Failure was not an option for the Soviet space program,

and any mission not executed perfectly was wiped from history,

which is why eyes began squinting when whispered names of vanished pilots creeped into the public.

Rumors of doctored photographs erasing whole people's

have started appearing, and mysterious recordings purported to be the last moments of

some brave but frightened people's lives have washed up on the shore of the

internet.

Not only was Gagarin not the first in space, he was not the

...