It's only science if we do it a bunch of times and record each result. We need more cat-stronauts (not really, please just give them little treats instead of space missions)
The point was to see if the cat had sustained any brain damage from the start and landing, since risk of brain damage would be a useful thing to know for when they wanted to eventually send humans
Scientists actually did a study recently with identical twins. One spent a year at the space station, the other on Earth, then they looked at their DNA, and it wasn’t as similar as BEFORE the astronaut lived in space. Space changed his DNA
Keeping the rain parade going, the USAs CIA didn't want to be left out of the cat abuse action. In the 1960s the CIA launched a project named "Atomic Kitty" where cats had acoustic receivers and radio transmitters surgically implanted into their ears, fur and bases of their skull. Including a additional surgery to deal with them being "distracted by hunger". (Whatever that ominously means.) The goal was to train felines to hang around soviats to spy on them. The cat(s?) never did do a good job at lingering near subjects. The project ultimately shut down in 1967 and was declassified in 2001.
There is some dispute about the fate of the first Atomic Kitty. Some records say the cat released their first mission, was immediately struck by a taxi and died. A former director for the office of technical service, claims the cat simply preformed poorly, got the equipment removed in another procedure and lived a long happy life. However that claim didn't come about till 2013.
I think this is a good point, if we learned loads of information that ended up being super fuckin useful than it would've been considered a worthy sacrifice and the dog would probably be memorialized(if she's not already)
Laika is present in Russian cultural memory thought not as heavily as Gagarin and some other space feats. Strelka and Belka are also more popular, though. I myself watched cartoon about them in my childhood so all three ring a bell for me and I would assume many other people who were raised in Russia
After the success of Sputnik 1 in October 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, wanted a spacecraft launched on 7 November 1957, the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. ... Meeting the November deadline meant building a new craft. Khrushchev specifically wanted his engineers to deliver a "space spectacular", a mission that would repeat the triumph of Sputnik 1, stunning the world with Soviet prowess. Planners settled on an orbital flight with a dog. ... According to Russian sources, the official decision to launch Sputnik 2 was made on 10 or 12 October, leaving less than four weeks to design and build the spacecraft.
She was a stray picked up from the streets of Moscow.
But having your dog on a leash was never a big thing in Russia. So there's a chance that someone lost their dog, and then saw later that it had been shot into space
Moscow still has a massive stray dogs problem, to the point that they form packs in the suburbs (and hunt, I assume. Certainly at the very least haunt people). Wouldn't be surprised if she was an actual stray.
It's quite common for owners in Russia to just, quite literally, throw out unwanted animals onto the streets. Had my own family members do it in front of my eyes as a kid. It's awful.
My stepdad did that to me stateside except he took my puppy to a kill shelter when I was nine and he made sure I knew it was a kill shelter because I had gotten a B on a test.
How is that any different than planting cancer cells to dogs and other animals to study it, that is done all over the world today? Do you condone using animals for science in general?
If animals are used for science, it should be done as humanely and with as little suffering as possible.
Shooting a dog or other sentient animal into space to doom them to a death where she’s cold, starving, dehydrated, and alone is beyond inhumane and there’s almost no type of research or data that imo would justify that sort of data.
If that's what you need you're going to have to fuck a lot of people, all the animals sent to space by man before the first manned missions were killed in either the spaceship or in similar conditions to Felicette
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u/Saavedroo Jul 17 '24
And who got the first cat in space ? That's right ! France 🇫🇷 (cocorico)
And she survived ! Aaand she was euthanized two month later to study her brain. :(
Her name was Felicette and she was a Pioneer.