If you are in the LA area the Museum of Jurassic Technology is worth visiting for, among other reasons, the room dedicated to the dogs of the Soviet space program. It features paintings and bios of 5 dogs who were involved in the space program.
I'll enthusiastically second the recommendation. I won't ruin too much, but their policy of not allowing mobile phones while you are in the museum to prevent you from searching anything up really helps to preserve the atmosphere.
I remember reading about Laika as a kid and how they sent up the dog in space and just let it die up there. It made me feel so bad and still does today. :(
Same feelings here. I adored space and space travel as a kid, and I did many school projects on them (and became a pilot later in life), but the one aspect about space travel that always left a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach was when I read about the animals they sent on one way missions.
I could rationalise with the brave astronauts and cosmonauts who undertook some of these missions, because as a rational thinking human, you can weigh the risks and make a decision to go, knowing full well that you may never come back. But a dog or chimpanzee really has no way to say "Umm, actually now you mention it, NO, I'd rather not be sealed in a capsule and blasted into space - never to walk on a grassy field again. I'd much rather you chose another dog while I happily gnaw on this bone right here..."
I was somewhat assuaged back then by the statements made that Laika was fed a poisoned tablet after a certain time, and passed away painlessly. But a few years ago when I read those declassified documents detailing how she actually died under horrendous circumstances, my heart broke all over again...
So what? People can't feel emotions towards abstract statistics. I'm sure if I could see every animal being abused world wide I would probably have a mental breakdown.
B takes attention and hides A. We feel for a single dog sent in space but have no feelings for pigs being slaughtered each second. We feel for a handful of people killed in NYC but are oblivious to 276 victims in Mogadiscio. It's important to put things in order sometimes.
The author of this piece, Alex Wellerstein, is absolutely fantastic on the history of the Nuclear bomb, and I cannot recommend his blog enough: http://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com
For cultural references, in my opinion you can't beat Hallstrom/Jonsson's "My Life as a Dog", whose main character ponders the fate of Laika while his own life undergoes traumatic changes.
I remember reading about Laika when I was a child. Growing up when the space race was really big I remember both countries us and the Russians sending up animals to test how they would react in space before sending up a human.
A great achievement. I remember reading about Laika when I was a child. I was into astronauts (or cosmonauts) a lot when I was a child, I dreamed of becoming an astronaut for NASA. I read all books related to space travel and astronautics at the time.
One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
I think the reaction to Laika's demise illustrated this.
The exact quantity of dogs 'put to sleep' in 1964 in the USA is not known. However, I am sure that many thousands were 'put to sleep' every single day, with more than a million dogs euthanised in the USA over the year because that is what happens.
Incidentally, the last shuttle disaster (Challenger, 2003) was bad news for 13 rats, eight garden orb weaver spiders, five silkworms and three cocoons, four Medaka fish eggs, three carpenter bees, 15 harvester ants and an assortment of fish. Plus the human crew.
I am sure all of the animals all had names. There was no mass outpouring of emotion though or letters to the New York Times saying how cruel it was to put them on the Space Shuttle given the likeliness of it going badly wrong.
I think the perspective is more cynical: they mourn and reflect on “sad news” instead of actual events. Everyone knows that there is help needed to make human/animal situation more sane (in many senses of sane), but most of the help is putting likes on fb or choosing single data points to resolve.
Prove me wrong, but I think that sane relationships with animals should come from cold mind weighting statistical decisions (no matter if you’re going to eat, pet or test them), not from emotional sort of hypocrisy of either pet/slaughter way.
Did you miss the part about strays literally being killed off everyday (then and today for that matter)? How is sending a dog to space unnecessary by any means compared to that...
For those in the SF Bay area, the Chabot space center has a lot of old Soviet space hardware -- including a training capsule like the one in the picture at the top of the article.
You can see taxidermied Belka and Strelka at the Moscow space museum. A bit morbid, but they are front and center as parts of the soviet space program.
Somewhat related, Miss Baker [0] was one of the first two animals launched by the United States into space and recovered alive.
After her flight and some time in Florida, she lived at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama until her death. She was a "star" there, routinely receiving fan mail from kids around the country. When she died in 1984, she was buried in front of the museum. You walk right by her grave on the way in. People often leave bananas.
Albert was followed by Albert II who survived the V-2 flight but died on impact on June 14, 1949, after a parachute failure.[2] Albert II became the first monkey and first primate in space as his flight reached 134 km (83 mi) - past the Kármán line of 100 km taken to designate the beginning of space.
Adding to the cultural references... Jonathan Coulton wrote a superb song about Laika called "Space Doggity".
The cage is very small, a tiny silver ball
that makes you a hero the moment you step inside.
The world is watching you, what you're about to do
will live on forever, even though you'll be dead
and gone, buckle up we're about to turn the engines on.
Hello from Sputnik 2, I am receiving you.
Thanks for the the dog food, I'm somewhere above you now.
Guess what, Maloshenkov? I took my collar off
I'm holding my own leash, walking myself outside this door.
I don't think I want to be a good dog anymore.
Now I'm floating free, and the moon's with me
and it's bright enough to light the dark.
And it's so high up here, and the stars so clear,
Are they close enough? Will they hear me bark from here?
Hello to Sputnik 2, I think we're losing you,
Your lifesigns are fading, I can't really say that we're surprised.
It's a shame, there's always something that gets compromised
Now I'm floating free, and the moon's with me
and it's bright enough to light the dark.
And it's so high up here, and the stars so clear
Are they close enough? Will they hear me bark from here?
Another cultural reference, this one fairly recent. Author Nick Abadzis wrote a graphic novel about Laika's life and kept to the facts with a minimum of fictional embellishment [1]. He later got much feedback from readers who were upset at the sad fate of Laika at the end of his book. So much that he prepared alternate endings [2] to allay the tragic feelings invoked by the true ending he put in the original work.
I know it's always tempting to generalize, but we have more to learn here if we cleave to the subject and not whatever we have handy in mind tagged with the keyword ‘Russia’.
http://www.mjt.org/recentaddtions/creatures.html
Edit: Some info about and images of the paintings here:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-...