Every year on April, 12 the world remembers with emotion the amazing achievement of Yuri Gagarin, the first man to watch Earth from space. 53 years ago mankind reached the ultimate frontier. Something to be rightly celebrated and I did it as well.
And then I started thinking – that was an achievement paved by the sacrifice of other (species). Laika, for example, the first mammal to orbit our planet, four years before Yuri.
It is safe to say that Laika stunned everybody. The first capsule to leave Earth, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957, made an enormous impact – but Laika’s mission was comparable, if not even bigger, because little was known at that time about survival in space.
And she was launched with Sputnik 2 only a month after, on November, 3 – a stray dog from Moscow’s streets to achieve the human version of immortality, instant fame . Good for her, because her mortal fate was quite sad.She died a few hours later in lower orbit, of overheating and stress, even if the whole story was kept hidden for long time. The Soviets claimed she had survived longer and died painlessly. My dog could argue about that.
(Credit: Laika’s pictures from http://sciencepenguin.com/laika)
More worrying is that people generally don’t remember it now – we don’t have any Laika’s day (or, I should say, only in the Republic of Molossia. Not sure how representative it is for the rest of the 7 billion humans.) Now, if we consider it in a wider perspective, how will that look like to an alien observer? We are the dominant species of this planet, but we ruthlessly use all the others for what we claim is the common good, and we don’t say even thank you.
Without Laika, there would have not been any Yuri, or Valentina (first woman in space), or the Space Shuttle, or the ISS we all so proud of.
(Credit: I Fucking Love Science)
At a better thought, they’d better stay where they are. They won’t be treated any nicer.