Was a first person in space actually a women (that flown before Gagarin)

[magnemoe]

On 3/16/2021 at 9:38 PM, SunlitZelkova said:

I don't think so. The cadets said it was on that day (when the conversation took place) which was May 15th, 1960. No dog launches took place then.

Also compared to human spaceflights which were announced as they were underway, dogs weren't revealed until after landing if I remember correctly. There were dogs that died that were covered up, but they are known now as the documents about them have been declassified.

Keep in mind though that the "coverup" only went so far as not letting info leak to outsiders. It's not like low level employees at OKB-1 were literally being told "we never sent those dogs into space", or that newspapers were removed off the shelves en masse and regular civilians were being told "that thing you read about never happened". It was simply a secret (and it is no longer a secret).

Rather than mistranslation, I think the soldiers were just messing with him or they themselves were to dumb to interpret the news correctly.

Reading more about Korabl-Sputnik 1 (the May 15th test flight) the Soviets actually had a surprisingly detailed announcement of the flight, mentioning it was only an uncrewed test flight with no pilot on board.

As I understand the Soviet did not publish early missions until they was underway and if an launch failed they reused the program number. 
And yes the employee knew but I doubts it went into newspapers as it would make it public and obviously the embassies got all the newspapers. 
The real reason to keep launches confidential was probably to not look stupid to their own people and the world since the US was very good at blowing up rockets at this time.

And launching the first Vostok probe unmanned and having it relay voice makes sense.

[Ziggy Kerman]

On 3/19/2021 at 11:27 AM, magnemoe said:

And launching the first Vostok probe unmanned and having it relay voice makes sense.

It would have been a good backup if Vostok 1 didn't pan out and killed Yuri, or at least he didn't make it to orbit, or space even for that matter.