Y’all I watched an entire documentary for this and I’m not citing a goddamn thing from it.
It involved dreadfully sad scenes with puppies. I watched it so you don’t have to.
Today’s Moment of Science… Laika, the sad tale of the Goodest Soviet Space Doggo.
In the US, we’ve slowly retconned the history of the space race into the story of America beating the Soviets in our quest to play hopscotch on the Moon. Space? Mere space? Pfft. Just a pit stop before turning the Moon into a star spangled golf course, motherfuckers.
But if we’re being a bit more honest with ourselves, the US was behind by nearly every measure for most of the race, and then we re-configured the finish line a smidge.
After the successful launch of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, a case of “fuck the Americans in the ego even harder” fever hit Moscow. Sputnik 2 was not only inevitable, the launch was moved up to a mere month away. Khrushchev wanted it to happen in time for the 40th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution.
Rarely are good decisions made based on the sentence “the launch date was moved up.”
The US and USSR both tested animals in suborbital flights through the late 1940s and 1950s, dipping a toe into space by proxy, sorting out how to not die in it. Suborbital flights didn’t present the same challenge or potential danger as launching into orbit. Now that the Soviets had pushed a Sputnik shaped raft out into space, some living critter would have to be the first to wade out and test the water.
If the Russians wanted any hope of yeeting humans off the planet to win this intercontinental dick waving contest without making said comrades too dead, it was best to send a lab rat up first.
Or if you’re running a propaganda machine, a Moscow street dog.
Many street mutts had been picked up by the USSR’s space program, voluntolding their lives to science. Soviet scientists figured being a homeless pup in Moscow was rock solid training for the relative comfort of space. They had already successfully trained and sent moscovite street pups on suborbital missions that were designed to return the dogs safely home. Some of them even succeeded, and we’re not discussing the less successful ones today.
Mutts named Albina, Mushka, and of course Laika were trained for this mission. They were chosen for temperament, size, and since everything is propaganda, cuteness. Only females were trained as they tended to be more docile, smaller, and most importantly, had an easier time peeing in a confined place.
And… look.
This isn’t pretty.
The dogs trained to endure long periods of time in small, pressurized vessels. They lived off gelatinous rations. They were put in centrifuges to simulate the g-forces they would endure. Medical devices were surgically implanted to monitor their vital statistics from space, and the images of them recovering from surgery are ghastly.
Of the three dogs, Laika was chosen to go to space. With a name roughly translating to ‘barker,’ she was about 5-6kg, and thought to be a samoyed mix, emphasis on the mix. Before the launch, one of the scientists brought Laika home to play with his children. The technicians who closed her into her spaceship kissed her on the nose before locking down the hatch.
Sputnik 2 was a rush job, sent up without any plans to attempt de-orbiting safely. There was no stable temperature control system in place. Everyone knew Laika would not be coming back.
During takeoff and her first three hours in space, her heart rate and respiration soared, then returned to normal. Sometime between five and seven hours into her voyage, no further signs of life were detected.
The mission to further demoralize the Americans I mean get the first bit of data from life in space? Super goddamn accomplished, comrades.
But at what cost?
Oleg Gazenko was one of the scientists who trained and selected Laika. Years after the Soviet Union collapsed, he said “The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.”
Future missions were planned with the intention of returning the dogs home. Some of them even succeeded. Star doggos Belka and Strelka were famously the first higher living organisms to return safely from outer space. Strelka had six puppies, one of which was named Pushinka (Fluffy) and gifted to President Kennedy in an adorable act of propaganda I mean diplomatic relations.
Laika has been memorialized in stamps, plaques, and statues for her unknowing heroism. The world’s first kosmonaut will always be a Moscow street dog.
This has been your Moment of Science, hoping Laika actually found a wormhole to Knowhere and re-emerged as Cosmo, the talking psychic Soviet space doggo.
To get the MOS delivered to your inbox five days a week and support my compulsive need to fact check the entire internet, including the podcasts, the comments section, and the porn, head to patreon.com/scibabe.
Laika’s capsule wasn’t to horrific, it had food and water and an euthanasia system.
By the time they figured it was time to activate the latter, well, it was a touch late, as the capsule had reached a temperature high enough to literally bake a cake.
Thankfully, the dog had been long expired, due to heat stroke.
Of course, the Soviets topped that with Soyuz I, which returned to earth without a deployed parachute. Again, a rush job and a bit too much paint hung up the parachute.
The cosmonaut was killed instantly by a 300 MPH impact, then the capsule caught fire. There are images, demanded in his will, of his superiors that rushed the launch date posing with his charcoaled remains.
Suffice it to say, they looked about as happy in the photo as he obviously wasn’t.
But, we topped that with Apollo I, incinerating our own astronauts, without the additional expense of launching them.
Then, everyone decided to only launch when the damnable thing’s actually ready. And when that was forgotten, more astronauts got blended.
And holes got drilled through space capsules.
Space, where getting out and walking does seem to be a good idea at times.
Now, excuse me, I’m going to go streaking around the outside of the ISS…