Laika: the space dog
Poor, poor Laika.
On this day, November 3rd, in 1957, Laika, a stray dog specially trained for the job, was launched into space. The Russians put her aboard Sputnik 2 just one month after the launch of the original satellite. It was to be a one way trip.
Laika’s training doesn’t sound especially fun either. She was forced to become accustomed to increasingly small cages and put in centrifuges to see how much pressure she could withstand. Her trainer gave her one nice night though. On the eve of her journey he brought her home to play with his kids. “I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live,” he said. He then provided her with an optimistic week’s worth of food, put a diaper and harness on her and sent her on her adventure.
The Russians originally claimed she survived for several days, but revealed a couple of years ago that she really only made it a couple of hours. For her sacrifice she has been immortalized in postage stamp and statue forms. Plus she got to be the first living thing to experience the final frontier, if only for a short while, and that’s much more than 99.9999% of people can say.
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Boing Boing has posted some stuff on Laika in the recent past
The statue – http://www.boingboing.net/2008/04/11/laica-the-space-dog.html
The graphic novel – http://boingboing.net/2007/11/19/laika-graphic-novel.html
I (heavy) heartily recommend the novel
Comment left on November 3, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
[...] Laika: The Space Dog (The Retro Blog) [...]
Pingback left on November 3, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
Poor Laika, I feel so sorry for her every time I read about her.
Oleg Gazenko, the guy who chose Laika and was in charge of her training later apologised for the way she was treated. He said: “We shouldn”t have done it… We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”
Poor old Laika.
Comment left on November 3, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
Laika was a cute little dog whose name and tale will outlive most of us. She is immortalized by a couple of bands, the trip-hop band Laika and the surf band Laika & the Cosmonauts. Laika also played a supporting role in the Swedish film, My Life As A Dog. I”m glad to read the truth about Laika’’s fate and I”m comforted by the action of her handler to take her home to play with his kids on her last night on Earth.
Comment left on November 3, 2009 @ 9:44 pm
Ditto on Nick Abadzis” graphic novel.
http://historyforchildren.blogspot.com/search/label/Space%20Exploration
Comment left on November 4, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
I”ve been saying this for years…just don”t have a blog to express my opinions on. Might have to change that. Thanks.
Comment left on December 11, 2009 @ 1:41 pm