Yeah, the rest of it sounds pretty reasonable, but the SOS one is sort of impossible that early in the space race. To reach escape velocity they would have to b

Yeah, the rest of it sounds pretty reasonable, but the SOS one is sort of impossible that early in the space race. To reach escape velocity they would have to build and launch a Delta-III like rocket. And then scale back the later launches to ICBM based rockets? Yeah right! But, and this is highly unlikely (but I'm trying to remember from astrophysics class), if the spacecraft was going fast enough (but not necessarily escape velocity) and entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle it could skip across the surface of the atmosphere until it achieved enough speed to escape orbit. But that is highly, highly unlikely. Unless Russian scientists were born with Jedi powers of astromechanics.