Laikia the dog. Life's greatest adventurer.

[Voltaic]

Possibly life's most monumental achievement. and it was not man who first ventured into space, but a stray Russian dog, The bested of girls.

I feel this video touches on a deep subject. A huge achievement in the florishment of life. possibilities expanding exponentially for what life can become, now capable of traveling off the prison of the earth to new bounds. This was the start of Life's first steps from the cradle, venturing out into the unknown.
It wasn't a human capable of realizing the magnitude of what he was, or what he was doing. The first animal to take this gigantic leap was a dog incapable of seeing his own monumental accomplishments.
I feel it is bitter sweet. bitter, as the dog in the end died, living the rest of his moments in fear from the thing that cemented him in history to near god like status, but sweet, in the sense he did what no life was able to do before hand.


I leave to ask the question. Great is the privileged of achievement, but at what cost?

 

[oregano]

For decades the official Soviet line was that Laika was peacefully put to sleep after giving the Russians valuable info. It wasn't until a couple years ago that one of the scientists gave a deathbed confession that Laika had in fact roasted to death during the launch of the rocket because the Soviets hadn't realized how hot the satellite would get from the friction of air hitting it as it got fast enough to escape the atmosphere. Still, Laika may have paved the way for Yuri Gagarin a few years later, even with that small contribution.

 

[tree]

"The noises and pressures of flight terrified Laika: Her heartbeat rocketed to triple the normal rate, and her breath rate quadrupled. The National Air and Space Museum holds declassified printouts showing Laika’s respiration during the flight.

She reached orbit alive, circling the Earth in about 103 minutes. Unfortunately, loss of the heat shield made the temperature in the capsule rise unexpectedly, taking its toll on Laika. She died “soon after launch,” Russian medical doctor and space dog trainer Oleg Gazenko revealed in 1993.

“The temperature inside the spacecraft after the fourth orbit registered over 90 degrees,” Lewis says. “There’s really no expectation that she made it beyond an orbit or two after that.” Without its passenger, Sputnik 2 continued to orbit for five months.

During and after the flight, the Soviet Union kept up the fiction that Laika survived for several days."
The Sad, Sad Story of Laika, the Space Dog, and Her One-Way Trip into Orbit | At the Smithsonian | Smithsonian Magazine