Everyone remembers Yuri Gagarin the first man in space but before his famous
flight there had been many more living space pioneers but didn't really have
any choice about being strapped into an experimental rocket. The tidal wave of
propaganda generated by Sputnik 1 had been unpredictable but it had been
especially positive for the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. He summoned
Sergey Korolyov the boss of the Soviet space program and told him to make sure
that a second satellite was launched in time to mark the anniversary of the
October Revolution of November 7th 1917, giving Korolyov of just over three weeks
to complete the task. Despite the short notice
Korolyov didn't want to send up another bleeping sphere.
He'd been developing his own ideas for some time and wanted to score another
first by putting the first living creature
aside from microbes into orbit and on October 12th eight days after Sputnik 1
the decision was made to send a dog. Soviet scientist Boris Chertok later told
how in the rush to design and build Sputnik 2 all the rules that had been
carefully drawn up violent missile development team were abandoned in favor
of a "gambler's enthusiasm" he wrote "The second simple satellite was produced
without any preliminary design or plan the draftsman and designers moved into
the workshops almost all the parts were manufactured using sketches assembly
wasn't so much according to the documents as according to on-the-spot
fitting". The satellite designed by korolyov's council of chief designers
contained a radio transmission system that looked very similar to Sputnik one
above it was placed an instrument to study cosmic radiation and below was the
cabin that would hold the dog. That technology already existed because the
Soviets have been sending up and other into the atmosphere since
1951 although those experiments had only involved flights of one or two hours. The
Sputnik cabin was modified and included an air-supply gelatin food
water supply there was also a light and a 100 line TV camera so scientists on
the ground could watch their progress About 10 days before the flight military
physician vladimir zovsky selected Laiker to fly on Sputnik to the name Laiker
means barker and was the female mongrels second name after first being called
Kudryavka or "little curly". Laiker and the others were strays picked up
from the streets of moscow and believed to be the best candidates because
they've learned to endure the extreme cold and hunger. Laiker weighed six
kilograms and have been selected because she appeared to be the best behaved
amongst the ten candidates a dog called Albina was selected as a backup whilst a
third dog mukha was used to test equipment on the ground. Sputnik 2 lifted
off on November 3rd in 1957 just after 5:30 p.m. Moscow time and entered the
low Earth orbit 297 seconds later. It took just over 103 minutes to circle the
planet were the nearest distance of 211 kilometres 131 miles and the farthest
distance of 1659 kilometers or 1031 miles. Sputnik 2 had no way to return to
Earth so it was only ever going to be a one-way trip for Laiker. the batteries
providing life-support were thought to be good for just 6 days meaning that
She would fail long before the end of a flight it was later revealed that she
gone much earlier and probably due to overheating of her cabin. During the
first three orbits her vital signs appeared normal
although she had been agitated during the launch procedure by the fourth orbit
less than seven hours into the mission the temperature had risen to 43 degrees
Celsius or 109 Fahrenheit and by November 4th the only life sign was
a heartbeat. By the third day of the mission no life signs were reported.
Boris Chertok later admitted that everyone knew the flight was a death
sentence for Laiker. he said "That it was virtually impossible to create a
reliable life-support and thermal control system within such a short
period of time it was a complete triumph none of us doubted that the Americans
had been put to shame only the British Royal Society for Prevention of cruelty
animals protested laikers martyrdom " Some scientist had planned on euthanizing
Laiker by poisoning her food so she wouldn't go in panic from the
overheating but it seems that this was not done in 1998. Oleg Gazenko the
scientist that selected and trained like her expressed his regret for her end
and said to following "Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us we
treat them like babies who cannot speak the more time that passes the more I am
sorry about it we shouldn't have done it we didn't learn enough from a mission to
justify the end of the dog" Sputnik 2's orbit decayed on April 14th
1958 after completing 2570 orbits of Earth with the debris including Laikers
remains impacting the Amazon region in South America. By that time Sputnik 1 was
long gone and the USA have placed their first satellite Explorer 1 into orbit
with a flight that was to last 12 years. Laiker it wasn't the first creature in space
but she was the first creature to orbit Earth On February 20th 1947 the USA had
sent up fruit flies aboard a captured German v2 rocket in an early experiment
into how radiation affects living beings. Two monkeys called Albert had been
launched later Albert one failed during the V2 flight of June 11th 1948 now but
two failed on impact when his V2 returned back to earth. On June 25th 1949 then on
December 12th Albert 4 suffered no ill effects during the flight but failed on
impact after the parachute failed. It wasn't
until September 2 20th 1951 but a monkey called Yorick an 11 mice came back OK
from an American missile flight. In July 22nd 1951 the USSR launched two dogs
Tsygan and Dezik into space although they weren't the first creatures to enter
orbit they were the first creatures to be safely landed after the flight. On
May 28 1959 two monkeys miss Abel a rhesus monkey and miss Baker a squirrel
monkey became the first two creatures to be launched 300 miles or 480 kilometers
into space by a Jupiter rocket and to be recovered at alive by the United States.
Although they survived acceleration forces of 38G and 16 minutes in space
miss Abel passed way four days after from an adverse reaction to an anaesthetic
during an operation to remove electrodes used in the flight. Miss Baker went on to
become quite famous at the US Space and Rocket Center entertaining visitors to
the museum and receiving hundreds of letters a day from schoolchildren. Miss
Baker lived until November 29th 1984 becoming the oldest living squirrel
monkey at the age of 27. After Laiker the USSR sent up two more
dogs Belka and Strelka on August 4 1919 60 along with a grey rabbit 42 mice two
rats 15 flasks of fruit flies and some plants.
This was the first mission to place creatures into orbit and bring them back
alive. On january 31st 1961 a trained chimpanzee called ham operated levers on
a project mercury mission becoming the first animal to interact with flight
controls having proved that it was possible to operate a machine in space
without the dangerous delays caused by the environment ham paved the way for
Alan Shepard to become the first American in space aboard freedom 7 on
May 2 5th 1961. Enos the chimp became the 3rd hominid after Yuri Gagarin and
Gherman Titov to orbit the Earth in November 1961 in what was to become a
full dress rehearsal for John Glenn's first orbital mission in February 1962.
In the same way the Soviet animals had enabled Yuri Gagarin to
become the first human in space, Gagarin himself jokingly referred to it
by saying "I don't know whether I am the first man in space or the last dog in
space" Later on September 14th 1968 two
tortoises, some worms and flies became the first living creatures to orbit the
moon and return safely back to earth aboard the Soviet Zond 5. Since then the
kinds of creatures have been sent into space has increased as has a number of nations
sending them there the list includes frogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, fish, geckos,
spiders and dozens of other types of insects. In September 2007 a group of
tardigrades also known as water bears eight-legged micro animals known for be
capable of going into a form of suspended animation were sent into space
on the outside of a FOTON-M3 rocket for 10 days upon arrival back on earth 68%
of them had survived the cold irradiated vacuum of outer space. The moral question
of whether we should continue sending creatures into space or whether we should
have ever done it in the first place remains a hot topic some argue that even
in the early days of space travel the only living things that should have been
sent up there were people had made the conscious decision to go and knew the
risks. Others point out but whilst it may have been necessary to do it in the past
modern flights are nothing more than sideshows another point of view is
that as we look forward to long-term plans to sending humans to Mars and
beyond we may once again have to rely upon creatures to take the risk for us. In
2013 the UK's Guardian newspaper ran a poll asking the question should we send
animals into space 21% of responders said yes while 79% said no the topic has
received renewed interest when in 2015 University of Miami philosopher Marc
Rowland's published a book in which he'd gathered recent evidence to claim that
animals were capable of understanding right from wrong and therefore could be
as moral or even more than us. So thanks for watching and don't
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