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."

Comments

Re:of course she died.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, the dog had food and water for 10 days. that has been public for a long time....

Re:science books (anthropomorphising)

[jungd]

Animal Rights is a form of anthropomorphising, attributing (wrongly) human traits to animals.

<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.

When I was in Washington D.C. 3 weeks ago...

[Squeezer]

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.