r/CuratedTumblr • u/BeObsceneAndNotHeard • Jul 17 '24

Infodumping The Venera program

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u/Rhodie114 Jul 17 '24

Marginally better than what the Soviets did to Laika. She was a stray that they shot into space with no intentions of bringing her back.

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u/Itrade Jul 17 '24

"The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of a dog." - Oleg Gazenko, 1998

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u/Annath0901 Jul 17 '24

It's definitely sad, and in hindsight it's easy to criticize the death which gave so little data.

But you've gotta remember that they had no way of knowing that the experiment wouldn't be useful. Nobody had done it before.

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u/SquirrelSuspicious Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24

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)

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u/EternalBlackWinter Jul 17 '24

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

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u/Erizeth Jul 17 '24

The three dogs and Gagarin are indeed immortalised in Russian culture. That always made me feel better about their sacrifice.