She's gone laddy... By about 70 years

Quote from: Snow Digger on December 10, 2014, 02:48:29 PM

Laika's dead mang

Quote from: Epsira on December 10, 2014, 03:02:12 PM

She's gone laddy... By about 70 years

You're wrong

The Cold War was only a decade old when the space race between the Soviet Union and the United States began. On October 4, 1957, the Soviets were the first to successfully launch a rocket into space with their launch of Sputnik 1, a basketball-sized satellite.

Approximately a week after Sputnik 1's successful launch, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev suggested that another rocket be launched into space to mark the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution on November 7, 1957. That left Soviet engineers only three weeks to fully design and build a new rocket.

The Soviets, in ruthless competition with the United States, wanted to make another "first;" so they decided to send the first living creature into orbit. While Soviet engineers hurriedly worked on the design, three stray dogs (Albina, Mushka and Laika) were extensively tested and trained for the flight.

The dogs were confined in small places, subjected to extremely loud noises and vibrations, and made to wear a newly created space suit. All of these tests were to condition the dogs to the experiences they would likely have during the flight. Though all three did well, it was Laika who was chosen to board Sputnik 2.

Laika, which means "barker" in Russian, was a three-year old, stray mutt that weighed thirteen pounds and had a calm demeanor. She was placed in her restrictive module several days in advance and then right before launch, she was covered in a alcohol solution and painted with iodine in several spots so that sensors could be placed on her. The sensors were to monitor her heartbeat, blood pressure, and other bodily functions to better understand any physical changes that might occur in space.

Though Laika's module was restrictive, it was padded and had just enough room for her to lay down or stand as she wished. She also had access to special, gelatinous, space food made for her.

On November 3, 1957, Sputnik 2 launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome (now located in Kazakhstan near the Aral Sea). The rocket successfully reached space and the spacecraft, with Laika inside, began to orbit the earth. The spacecraft circled the earth every hour and forty-two minutes, traveling approximately 18,000 miles per hour. As the world watched and waited for news of Laika's condition, the Soviet Union announced that a recovery plan had not been established for Laika. With only three weeks to create the new spacecraft, they did not have time to create a way for Laika to make it home. The de facto plan was for Laika to die in space.

Though all agree Laika made into space and successfully lived through several orbits, there is a question as to how long she lived after that. Some say that the plan was for her to live for several days and that her last food allotment was poisoned. Others say she died four days into the trip when there was an electrical burnout and the interior temperatures rose dramatically. And still others say she died five to seven hours into the flight from stress and heat.

However, she certainly did not live beyond six days into trip, because on the sixth day, the batteries in the spacecraft died and all life-support systems failed. The spacecraft continued to orbit the earth with all its systems off until it reentered earth's atmosphere on April 14, 1958 and burned up on reentry.

Laika proved that it was possible for a living being to enter space. Her death also sparked animal rights debates across the planet. In the Soviet Union, Laika and all the other animals that made space flight possible are remembered as heroes.

Union sends the first living creature into orbit

It was a Space Race victory that would have broken Sarah McLachlan’s heart. On this day, Nov. 3, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first-ever living animal into orbit: a dog named Laika. The flight was meant to test the safety of space travel for humans, but it was a guaranteed suicide mission for the dog, since technology hadn’t advanced as far as the return trip.


Laika was a stray, picked up from the Moscow streets just over a week before the rocket was set to launch. She was promoted to cosmonaut based partly on her size (small) and demeanor (calm), according to the Associated Press. All of the 36 dogs the Soviets sent into space — before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth — were strays, chosen for their scrappiness. (Other dogs had gone into space before Laika, but only for sub-orbital launches.) The mission was another in a series of coups for the Soviet Union, which was then leading the way in space exploration while the United States lagged. Just a month earlier, they had launched Sputnik, the world’s first satellite. When Laika’s vessel, Sputnik 2, shot into orbit, the U.S. fell even further behind.

News media alternated between mockery and pity for the dog sent into space. According to a 1957 TIME report on how the press was covering the event, “headlines yelped such barbaric new words as pupnik and pooch-nik, sputpup and woofnik,” before ultimately settling on “Muttnik.”

“The Chicago American noted: ‘The Russian sputpup isn’t the first dog in the sky. That honor belongs to the dog star. But we’re getting too Sirius,’” the piece adds.

Other headline-writers treated Laika with more compassion. According to another story in the same issue, the Brits were especially full of feeling for the dog — and outrage toward the Russians. “THE DOG WILL DIE, WE CAN’T SAVE IT, wailed London’s mass-minded Daily Mirror,” the story declares. The Soviet embassy in London was forced to switch from celebration mode to damage control.

“The Russians love dogs,” a Soviet official protested, per TIME. “This has been done not for the sake of cruelty but for the benefit of humanity.”

Nearly a half-century later, Russian officials found themselves handling PR fallout once again after it was revealed that reports of Laika’s humane death were greatly exaggerated.

Although they had long insisted that Laika expired painlessly after about a week in orbit, an official with Moscow’s Institute for Biological Problems leaked the true story in 2002: She died within hours of takeoff from panic and overheating, according to the BBC. Sputnik 2 continued to orbit the Earth for five months, then burned up when it reentered the atmosphere in April 1958.

One of Laika’s human counterparts in the Soviet space program recalled her as a good dog. He even brought her home to play with his children before she began her space odyssey.

“Laika was quiet and charming,” Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote in a book about Soviet space medicine, as quoted by the AP. “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.”