Laika the space dog gets a statue

Photos Uncategorized 2008 04 11 Laikamonument

Everybody's favorite space dog Laika now has a statue near Moscow's Military Medicine Institute! In 1957, Laika became the first living creature (from our planet, anyway) to orbit the Earth. Todd Lappin has more on Laica over at Telstar Logistics.
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David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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Takuan

ah, THAT is why I tear-up for Laika and not tundra dinner; killing to live has no existential subtext, it is just brute necessity, second hand. Condemning a trusting dog to black, airless frozen death is too much like what the gods do to us….
invictus

Takuan@18: Literally, “curly one” or just plain “curly.”

If anyone can find a better-quality photo, I’ll translate the full text.
Takuan

aha!

http://mickeyzhere.com/3-stooges_curly.jpg
invictus

…I may have made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Isengrim

I was always so moved by her story, I named my main character after her. She’s not a dog, but she is canine. :)

http://www3.telus.net/public/isengrim

http://www.darwinsoutcasts.blogspot.com
Jonathan Badger

Laika was a female so she didn’t need to lift a leg; according to http://dogsinthenews.com/issues/0211/articles/021103a.htm
that was actually the reason they chose a female.
Patrick Dodds

Kristen at no. 12 – that’s beautiful.
Trent Hawkins

to: #17

Well her name WAS Laika. The Scientists that picked her up named her Laika (not a particularly creative bunch when it came to naming dogs… most likely because it was not a good idea to get too attached to dogs when you’re strapping them to a ton of explosives for the purpose of shooting them in to space).

It was only much later when the dog became famous that they bothered to learn her original name Kudryavka.

I mean it’s not like they were particularly selective when it came to choosing which dogs they used. I mean look at Bolik that ran away a few day s before the launch. So the scientists just grabbed a stray dog off the street and launched it up.
mbourgon

The coolest part of that photo is not that Laika has a statue. It’s that someone put roses up for her. That’s pretty darn cool.
jphilby

Oh please. Ya wanna tear up? See the Oscar-nominated film Katyn.

PROPORTIONAL RESPONSE! Laika got a stamp, several times over.
Takuan

come now, Russians butchering Poles and blaming it on Germans so British and Americans can feel superior about how they were never caught is just more of what humans do all too well and all too often. Doggies are innocent.
JJR1971

Pretty darn cool, and very Russian.
Frank_in_Virginia

Just so it can be said. “My Life as a Dog” (“Mitt liv som hund”) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089606/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Life_as_a_Dog

…the protagonistâ€”a boy who feels powerless over his own fateâ€”compares himself to Laika.
Cpt. Tim

oh laika. martyr for animal rights? hero of space exploration? both?

just try and watch this without tears coming to your eyes.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6G5UGybYN-E
bob2

This is not the first Russian tribute to the dogs of science. That distinction belongs to the many dogs of Pavlov.

http://www.pavlovian.org/pavimages.htm
Antinous

Looks like the Russians are thinking about sending monkeys to Mars. That should go over well.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7341211.stm
Kristen Chew

When I was very very young, I thought that the words to “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” were “Laika diamond in the sky,” rather than “like a diamond…”. Someone had mentioned Laika to me, and I’d conflated the two. I was disturbed, even then, that she had been sent into space and no one had gotten her down.

The statue is a lovely thing.
Jake0748

Trent Hawkins @15, “…many animals were sent up in space and returned safely before Laika went to orbit”. REALLY?? Can you tell about a few? I’ve been following the space programs pretty closely for over 40 years and this is the first I’ve heard of other animals in space before Laika.
Jake0748

Ah… on further research I see you are correct. There were several animals sent into space before Laika. She was the first critter to go into ORBIT.
Takuan

almost

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.16.97/gifs/stooges2-9703.jpg
Jake0748

nyuk nyuk nyuk, woobwoobwoobwoobwoobwoob!
RJ

Poor Laika. I still can’t hear or read the story of that dog without it bothering me a bit much. That’s nice they would honor her memory in this way, though it was a profoundly sad way for her to die at the time.

I agree, the roses’ presence speaks to a fine quality in the people who have seen the memorial.
Georgia Tills

Oh poor little thing, I hope it got lots of treats before they sent it up there.
starcadia

Here’s to you, Laika, brave doggie. If all the animals who’ve been forced to sacrifice themselves for us in horrible ways had such statues we’d run out of metal.
Takuan

why is it I tear up about a dog sent to die alone in space, but an Inuit hunter reduced to eating his entire team only merits a grunt?
Antinous

The same thing happens to thousands of dogs and quite a few babies left in cars every year. They just do it at 1G.
robcat2075

They should have posed him next to his capsule and lifting one leg.
mouser882

Nick Abadzis’s graphic novel Laika is really excellent and about brought me to tears quite a few times while reading (though I’m a sucker for sad animal stories, ie WE3). Cory has blogged about it in November (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/11/19/laika-graphic-novel.html).

@6 Takuan: I think it’s because people can say or do something about the things happening to them, but animals (especially domesticated ones) are mostly helpless with little recourse but to trust people.
Trent Hawkins

It’s not like Laika was sent up simply to die, many animals were sent up in space and returned safely before Laika went to orbit. She just happened to die from stress and overheating along the way.
davechua

Laika’s also featured as a character in Jeanette Winterson’s Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles. She gets to be Atlas’ pet.
Moon

ROBCAT, when I first looked at the picture, I thought Laika was taking a leak-a!

:)
kmf

Laika …. Lassie’s Stunt double! Awesome!
Blaine

I always wind up feeling like a dick but…

Laika wasn’t the first living creature intentionally sent into space. They experimented, like in so many other blog posts, with fruit flies first.

“First Vertebrate In Space” isn’t as sexy.
ethanol

If I may indulge myself in a bit of pedantry, Laika’s name wasn’t Laika; it was Kudryavka. Laika is the Russian name of her breed, but to call her that would be like naming a beagle Beagle. But somehow or other, instead of just being “a laika” or “the laika”, after she went to space she was known as simply “Laika”.

Come to think of it, though, the Russian language doesn’t use articles like “a” and “the”, so I guess that makes sense. Maybe some scientist told a reporter, “Ve sent laika into orbit,” and the reporter misunderstood. It’s as good a theory as any…
Takuan

what does “Kudryavka”mean?
starcadia

I don’t know Russian, Ethanol, but the five large characters on the monument look like they might say “Laika”.