…If you mean by “pissed because they didn’t orbit *anything* first”, perhaps. But if you’re referring to the fact that the Ruskies launched a *dog* before the US did…No, it wasn’t *that* simple or even anywhere near black and white. The US never had any intention of sending a dog up. That’s because sending either a monkey, a rodent or a pig actually delivers scientific results closer to relative to human requirements.

…And on a side note, the ASCPA was raising unmitigated hell about Kudryavka’s demise almost immediately after the announcement was made by TASS and reported over in the West. The State Department and NASA didn’t make any derogatory observations of the same until after the Soviets announced the end of the mission.

Remember, kids, this was a Cold *War*. Sacrifices are made during wartime.

That’s actually how I heard about Laika, was through this graphic novel (they’re pretty closely related)

…On a side note, just to put it all in the proper perspective, let us also note that one of the early Mercury test flight proposals was to send up not a monkey, but a pig. Pigs were eliminated as Little Joe flight test subjects when studies disclosed that they could not survive long periods of time on their backs. However, McDonnell Douglas did use a pig, ‘Gentle Bess,’ to test the impact crushable support, and the test was successful. No one has ever admitted whether the story was true that Bess was cooked and eaten at a celbratory party a few weeks later, tho.

…But hindsight isn’t always 20/20. It’s always easy for the victor to rewrite history and make the loser more of a loser than he/she/it really was. Where Laika’s concerned, SPK tends to get that sort of misinterpretation. If you want to get the clearest picture of the “Chief Designer” and “Father of the Integral”, I recommend three books:

1) Yaroslav Golovanov’s 1994 book, which was the first *real* bio of SPK, which was really only possible after the fall of the Evil Soviet Empire and the opening of the floodgates of data from the various rocket groups behind the Iron Curtain. The book’s very hard to find translated to English, and the one I read had been hand-translated by a former Rossia Yazik professor and was only loaned to me for a short while back in ’95.

2) James Hartford’s 1998 bio, which is now considered the standard reference for trying to understand SPK for the man he was, and all the shit he went through during the Stalin tyranny. Sadly, he doesn’t address the one story about SPK’s death – the one where the doctor who refused to “operate on a dead man” when he saw the state of SPK’s cancer instead of the hernia he was supposed to be fixing, who supposedly was taken to a wall outside the hospital shortly after SPK expired, explained just who he’d let die, and then had his brains blown out on the wall for “costing the Rodina their chance to beat the Americans to the Moon!”

3) SPK’s daughter, Natalya, wrote her own bio of her father in 2002, and while this one hasn’t made it into English, it reportedly has a TON of never-before-seen photos from behind the scenes of the Soviet program. Those who’ve seen it say it *has* to be a good read, if only they’d translate the damn thing!

…Also, there’s a plethora of sites out there that discuss SPK and the program that explain the truth without really pulling any punches. Mark Wade’s Encyclopedia Astronomica and Anatoly Zak’s Russian Space Web are great resources for those wanting to understand what really went on during that particular phase of the Cold War.

Bottom Line: Before you condemn SPK for what happened to Laika, do a little research. There was more to the mission than some Stalinist monster picking up a poor dog off the street and sending her to certain doom. This novel actually tells you that if you read the lines *AND* what’s between them.

“Driven semi-madman,” however, I will not disagree with.

Wish I could find a reference for you but no luck so far.

I only recently learned this from an old space-geek friend of mine, who suggested that the problem might have arisen from the absence of definite articles in the Russian language. (Russian scientist: “Ve put laika into space!” Western reporters: *scribble scribble scribble*) Hey, it’s a theory.

It’s funny, the short recap of the story here on Boing Boing is so much different in tone from what I learned about Laika as a child. She was mentioned as a hero, a brave creature who sacrificed herself for science. I read the passage over and over, wondering what it was like to die so far away from home, with no hope of rescue. Even though it wasn’t hard to figure out that Laika probably didn’t volunteer to suffer the gruesome death, it’s very difficult for me not to continue to think of her as a hero, and of the whole endeavour as mankind’s courageous attempt to reach the stars.

Mind, we do grow up with the idea that dogs are loyal, good creatures and best friends to man. I don’t think anyone cares about all the lab rats who perished in space station experiments.

Yes, the dog’s name for most of the novel is Kudryavka.

I doubt any nation would have passed up the chance to be the first to put a living creature into space. My guess is that the spin doctors in the US used the event to cast the Russians as cruel dog killers, when the truth is they were just pissed that they didn’t do it first.

Łajka nie żyje, zabili ją Sowieci,
Kto teraz w kosmos rakietÄ… poleci?
(Laika is dead, the soviets killed her
Who now will fly in space in a rocket?)

Łajka nie żyje, zabili ją Sowieci,
Nad naszym ziemią, psie ścierwo leci.
(Laika is dead, the soviets killed her
Above our earth, a dog’s corpse is flying.)

It’s very mock-serious – sounds like a funeral march – but is actually full of dark communist-era humour and irony.

Not sure if there was a Russian version too.

I wasn’t trying to make a point, it was just a thought on how we need something to hit close to home to make us care.