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Laika, the Pioneering Space Dog, Was Launched 60 Years Ago Today (space.com)
sqorbit writes: Sixty years ago, the space race was in full swing. Russia had sent Sputnik into space with much success. In an effort to push farther, they rushed sending a dog into space in a re-purposed Sputnik rocket. The mission launched with no clear solution to a safe re-entry. Within a few hours of launch, temperature controls failed, killing the female dog named Laika. Launched on November 3, 1957, it did not re-enter the earth's atmosphere until April 14, 1958. Laika was the first living creature to fly into orbit, Space.com reports. While Soviet publications at the time claimed that Laika died, painlessly, after a week in Earth's orbit, Anatoly Zak of RussianSpaceWeb.com writes that several Russian sources revealed decades later that the dog actually survived in orbit for four days and then died when the cabin overheated. "According to other sources, severe overheating and the death of the dog occurred only five or six hours into the mission," he writes. "With all systems dead, the spacecraft continued circling the Earth until April 14, 1958, when it re-entered the atmosphere after 2,570 orbits (2,370 orbits according to other sources) or 162 days in space. Many people reportedly saw a fiery trail of Sputnik 2 as it flew over New York and reached the Amazon region in just 10 minutes during its re-entry."
I only hope she got to pop out a litter or two and had lots of good food before she got sent up.
Somehow I think she probably got gruel and kept in a tiny cage though :(
The 3rd was yesterday
Poltroyans and a sympathetic Gi, as I recall. The Krondaku didn't care, the Simbari were scandalized, and the Lylmik were inscrutable.
If it helps
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=03282008
"Many people reportedly saw a fiery trail of Sputnik 2 as it flew over New York and reached the Amazon region in just 10 minutes during its re-entry."
Just fyi, I think the reference to Amazon here is something different.
I found this link on the web.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River
Laika was launched on this date, but it took some time for the Soviet scientists to sort out all the bugs.
Innovative thieves and liars.
i cri evrytim
That's almost half a dog millennium!
..and time the landing for lunchtime.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
One has to understand that at this epoch the USSR was very vulnerable. The US planes could fly over the whole Soviet territory, but the soviet planes could not even reach the USA.
That is why they tried to make from the rocket program more than it actually was. These first rockets could barely fly.
Space Doggity
- Mike
How many americanised monkeys ended burned to death in explosions in USA's tests? I have heard of about 60 pieces of apes, incinerated during or shortly after lauch. But these truths are being kept under a deep deep all-deniable lid.
...in dog years.
Or all the dogs we poison in say , south america. Or all the cruelty life has to offer , etc.
Remember how many humans are jumping at the bit to die on Mars for progress?
Wtf else was laika really going to do anyway?
Not sure if this will play outside Canada or not.
But here it is: Cosmonauts: How Russia Won The Space Program, a fascinating look at the USSR's space program, and what they got right, and why.
Definitely worth watching.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I've always loved Laika. His was a sad tale, a tragedy really. Poor Laika is in dog heaven now.
... the soviets came up with the most convoluted and expensive way to euthanize a dog.
I've heard nothing of any attempts at sterilising Sputnik 1, so it's almost certain that it carried bacteria, insects and possibly tardigrades into space, where some would have persisted for a time.
Do people actually no think at all before committing their stream of consciousness to electrons?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Or all the dogs we poison in say , south america.
Go suck dick, asshole. South America is a dog's heaven. Choose some hellhole in Asia to vent your prejudice. Asshole.
The goodest of dogs.
I am almost certain I saw Boris and Natashia send them up.
Many people reportedly saw a fiery trail of Sputnik 2 as it flew over New York and reached the Amazon region"
They could have paid for Prime, and poor Laika would have been safely home two days later.
Speaking of assholes, what the hell crawled up yours?
"Within a few hours of launch, temperature controls failed, killing the female dog named Laika"
No, the dog was electrocuted in orbit as the Soviets had yet to master controlled re-entry and the dog would have fried and/or been killed on impact. Even Gagarin had to bail out at twenty thousand feet and parachute to earth.
The VonBraun team had a rocket ready to orbit a payload before Sputnik, but were forbidden to launch it and thus kept it under a tarp.
The Eisenhower admin had two other priorities: let the Navy/CalTech team try an all-American system first (which famously failed on live TV) and also let the Soviets orbit first so that they would have an object pass above all nations first and be the ones to establish the precedent that there was a top limit to the airspace claims of any nation.
Eisenhower, the former general, saw little value in manned spaceflight but put great value on the future of spy sats for strategic intel in the nuclear age. Had the US orbited first, he assumed the Russians would go nuts and complain even more loudly than about spy planes, but if the Russians went first they would lose the ability to complain. Von Braun's team had assured him they could already orbit satellites with cameras and he was very worried about the viability of future spy plane flights. The US lagged behind the Soviets in manned flights for years for two reasons: Eisenhower's lack of interest (until the PR blowback of Sputnik which he had failed to anticipate) which caused the US to have made no preps, and the advanced state of US nukes which were smaller and lighter and thus did not require a booster as large as the Soviets (so the US needed a newer bigger rocket to fly men into orbit than they needed for their early nukes whereas the Soviet nuke booster was powerful enough to fly a man).
After the Sputnik flew and then the Navy/CalTech team failed, the VonBraun team (then under authority of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency at the Redstone Arsenal) was given the green light and that rocket they had in storage before Sputnik launched became the rocket that orbited America's first satellite. Their success got the team transferred from the Army to the civilian NACA which then was re-built as NASA at the direction of the unlikely paring of Republican president Eisenhower and Democrat senator Johnson (who went on to become Kennedy's VP and then President himself).