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Russians Reveal Early Death of Laika
jonerik writes "Contrary to long-believed Soviet reports that Laika the space dog - the first living animal to be launched into orbit from Earth - lived for a week or so after she was launched into orbit aboard Sputnik 2 in November 1957, CNN is now reporting that Dimitri Malashenkov of the Institute for Biomedical Problems in Moscow has presented a scientific paper at the World Space Congress in Houston, Texas in which he revealed that Laika actually died a few hours after launch due to thermal insulation problems overheating the cabin interior. Sputnik 2 remained in orbit a total of 162 days, before burning up in the atmosphere on April 14, 1958."
> died a few hours after launch due to thermal insulation problems overheating the cabin interior :)
China is just looking for new ways to cook dogs alive without animal rights organisations close by
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
I remember a french comic named "proteo" where a green-java-like alien observing the earth space race substracted laika from the vesel and adopted her as a mascot. Even as a little kid i knew it was just fantasy but I always want it to be true. RIP laika
16,777,216 comments ought to be enough for any forum!
I dont get why this is moderated as flamebait??
Hot-dogs anyone?
I couldnt resist...
Snowy?
TinTin what have you done!!!!
Pure fantasy!
All things in moderation; including moderation
The said part is that the dog had a better chance of surving in a leaky space craft than in the old Soviet Union.
Let's face it, if Wolfy had made it home alive he'd have been in a Stalinburger with extra cheese within a fort night.
Someone you trust is one of us.
The original story didn't make much sense.Seeing that the room for payload in sputnik-2 was probably on the order of 20lbs, how could she have lived for a few weeks without food and water?
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I'm really surprised they didn't include a humane method of euthanizing the animal in the spacecraft. I think it's very sad.
I should have picked out the nickname Demosthenes!Tecumseh.
Funny how the old science books from way back in middle school neglect to mention that she never came back alive after being the first animal in space. I guess you don't want kids unecessarily grieving over an acheivement that only merits a few sentences. Oh well, I suppose it wouldn't be in a science book's editor's interest to turn a young budding scientist into a young budding animal rights activist.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
Would you prefer they sent a person up as an initial test?.. yourself perhaps?
I never met a Space Dog I didn't Laika!
...that is unless you belong to a UFO cult like the Raelians and think we're originally from outer space.
Oh, well...
Anyway, I think its interesting to remember that Dogs made it into space before humans.
Only in slashdot are posts of solidarity modded at -1 Redundant, while posts of antagonism are modded as -1 Flamebait.
Since when is "death within hours" a "biomedical problem"?
This is not a signature.
That's nothing, you should see what they do to monkeys! No cooking required!
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"they are pet rights organizations.. they dont give a shit about beef and poultry, but if its cute and cuddly and can be bought at a pet store, it all the sudden deserves rights..
if we kept pet cows or chickens or pigs in USA, and ate dogs, and china ate cows/chickens/pigs, the "animal" rights whackos would protest that instead...
But having a dog burn to death is a terrible, terrible thing.
Our house burnt down when I was 6, and I watched as our family's golden retriever -- coincidentally named "Lucky" -- was trapped under a burning dresser it slept by in the living room. It let out howls of torment that haunt me to this day as it died slowly being helplessly charred as my mom covered my tearful eyes and my father was unable to save it.
So please show some respect for Laika.
Yes, it should have been better to send a human (or even better, a criminal) instead of an animal for that flight, for a lot of reasons: we have enough of them to spare, they will at least know what will happen to them and they are able to speak, informing the scientists what is happening to them.
But they might lie. Imagine - you're a criminal, sentenced to death. As your dying act of revenge upon the unjust society with wrongly convicted you, you screw up the scientist's results big time.
Better yet, send an entire boy band.
"...and they are able to speak, informing the scientists what is happening to them."
Yeah, but someone yelling "OHMYGODITBUUUURNS!!!!" isn't much better than what they had.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
<whine> "Animals have feelings too..." </whine>
As a scientist who studies cognition in all animals, including humans, I can tell you that in the case of any mammal, while their feelings are not the same as ours, they're pretty damn close.
Luckily, they don't have the same broad autobiographical understanding of 'self', and hence don't feer death in the same way (they typically have a very shallow understanding of death, but still obviously fear pain)
Having said that; I aggee with your first statement, but probably not with specifically which traits.
/..sig file not found - permission denied.
Some accounts of the mission indicated that the last food pellets within the probe had a fast acting poision to at least make Laika's death fast and relatively humane.
Of course this is now quite moot.
I never heard of this history. To think that they launched that poor defenseless puppy knowing full well that it would eventually die of starvation/lack of oxygen is horrible. Such inhumane treatment. The people that did this should be ashamed!
We humans kill animals for a large number of reasons: food, clothing, entertainment and science.
Out of these, the animals killed for science are relatively limited in numbers, but large in their payoff to man. In this case the payoff was priceless information about how to set up a cabin.
If you are so concerned about animals I suggest you focus your struggle on the entertainment portion (hunting, animal fights), then food and clothing, science last.
Tor
Do you eat meat, eggs, or dairy? Have you ever owned something made of leather? Have you ever received any form of medical treatment, pharmaceutical, or cosmetic?
If the answer is yes to any of those questions, you can shut up and go away.
I can accept that. :)
Something I've always wanted to know... just HOW does one go about determining whether animals have feelings or not? They obviously can't communicate on anything more than the most primitive of yes/no concepts.
There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.
I'm curious what the most "scientific" available test for this is myself - the problem isn't really any different than determining whether OTHER HUMAN BEINGS have feelings or not...
Seriously. I mean, if people can think that John Travolta shows 'feelings' when he's acting, surely others could be faking it...how do I know that I'm not the only human being in the world gifted with "feelings" while everyone else is a mindless robot who's just pretending?
Outside of a "hard science" context, that's a pretty nonsensical question - we "just know" other people (in general) have feelings. "I just know" is nowhere near sufficient for real science, though.
Anyone with significant interaction with other (nonhuman) mammals "just knows" those animals have feelings, too, but it's rather difficult to prove in a "hard science" sort of way. I suspect the best that can be done is comparisons of brain scans and such between humans and non-humans to the extent that one can say in a more-or-less "hard science" way - "it is probable that other mammals have subjective feelings similar in quality to those of human beings, or at least, that is the most likely explanation for the similarities of response."
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
This is how wonderful science is to animals.
He was my favorite character on "Taxi."
"Tank you very much."
is Laika, by the Spanish group Mecano. Rough translation:
She was Russian and her name was Laika
she was a very normal dog
she went from being a common animal
to be a world star.
They put her into a spaceship
to observe the reaction
She was the first astronaut
in outer space.
---
Ready is the rocket for take off
ground control tells Laika goodbye.
---
In base everything was silent
waiting for any signal.
All with the helmets to their ears
heard the dog bark.
While on Earth a great party,
shouting, laughter, crying and champagne,
Laika looked out through the window.
"What is that colored ball?
And why am I going around it?".
---
One night, on the telescope
a new light appeared
nobody could give an explanation
to the appearance of the new sun.
And if we listen to the legend
then we'll have to think
that on Earth there is one less dog
and on the sky one more star.
Or even better yet, a criminal animal rights activist.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Why in hell do you consider this funny? Because you don't eat dog? Americans eat corn and that's considered filth in some countries. You eat lobster which was considered a dirty scavenger just a little more than a century ago. Well it's China who's laughing at you behind your backs. Your greed is fueling the birth of the next first world superpower. Soon the USA will be facing a true economic and military dragon that it never dreamed could exist. Arrogant fools wake up or become extinct.
this is so sick.
those experimenting should have been sent up instead, and had their "last meal".
humans are beyond hope...
Tor,
Are you the same Tor/Tosc who used to play Mozart mud?
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
To think that they launched that poor defenseless puppy knowing full well that it would eventually die of starvation/lack of oxygen is horrible. Such inhumane treatment. The people that did this should be ashamed!
I agree. Wouldn't it have been a better test for them to do everything they can to keep the dog alive? That's what the goal is for humans, isn't it?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
I went to the Smithsonian's Air and Space Museum and took the 1 hour tour with the guide. When we reached the mockup of sputnik 1, the tour guide said that then the Soviets donated it (didn't ask when it was donated tho) they admitted that the dog died because the A/C system on it failed.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Well, if you're going to go all scientifically philosophical on us, how can you be sure that we exist at all? Maybe we're just figments of your imagination? ;-)
Just what assumptions you have to make to "prove" that others have feelings would be interesting to discuss though.
Stefan Axelsson
"Dogs are People Too!"
- Radar O'Reilly, M*A*S*H
First off, I think it is terribly sad the dog died up there (I was aware of the Laika story except for the part where she never came back down to earth). :)
However, what some people tend to forget is they aren't sending someone's pet dog up there they send their own dogs (animals) that they breed and raise specifically for laboratory animal tests..At least that is what they do here, in the USA.
Anyway, the point is she probably didn't have a very good quality life to begin with nor would she have come home to one (if she had survived, though it turns out it was rigged so she'd die up there anyway.) so while it doesn't make it not cruel, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't.. Just like the whole issue of testing animals in any laboratory experiments..Well, we could test on animals or we can test on humans, -pick your poison..I'm sure nobody at the time wanted to shoot up their old Aunt Birtha, so I think that kind of limited them to picking an animal
Why a dog? I dunno. I'd rather they picked another critter but that is because like most Americans I was raised with the idea that dogs are "pets" and to be treated more highly than say what we consider traditional "food animals" such as cows.
There are other countries where if you sent a cow you'd have just murdered your Great Uncle Ralph (or so they believe).. Their wasn't any other way around it other than creating a robot that could accurately mimic real flesh and blood creatures reactions to stimuli.
BTW "Laika" is also the name of a specicfic breed of Russian dog called East Siberian Laika..Also West Siberian Laika..I've heard from Laika people that the space dog was one of those.. However, I've always read in Science books she was a mix breed.
Fuzdout
..My sig ran away. Has anyone seen my sig?