Animals in Space

[godai]

Somebody up for doing Veroniq with Felicette onboard? The only successful cat in space so far.

[luke strawwalker]

Originally Posted by Kevin WS

Interesting, but the treatment of the animals I do find very upsetting. There were no measures taken to either really ensure decent euthanasia or partial support.

And unfortunately, this aspect was largely glossed over or a subject of disinformation.

The Soviets were SO rushed for another "space first" that they flew Laika before they had the technology to provide either thermal control of the spacecraft or a suitable heat shield and recovery equipment (parachute) on board... and of course no maneuvering or deorbit motors capable of bringing the spacecraft back.

IIRC reading histories of the Soviet space program, basically Laika's "capsule" was adapted from their previous suborbital dog flights... which didn't need heat shields anything like that required for an orbital flight return to Earth. They had flown a number of dogs successfully on suborbital "hops" previously, and recovered quite a few of them.

The US proposed using black bears for spinal injury studies on astronauts crash-landing on land in the Mercury spacecraft, before they decided that probably wasn't the best idea and used hogs instead... evidently their spinal structures are close enough to humans to be a medical analogue...

Later! OL J R

[group b]

No. Before the flight, Laika was never like container used for any suborbital flight.
The container was original. Similar were used later for orbital flights of Belka and Strelka and others.
I agree that Laika's flight was a "political assassination". Therefore'm going to show a true animal astronauts.

First mount dog



dog in a space suit

[group b]

Polish rocket - mouse


Chinese rocket - guinea pig


USA - mouse


Retro model Saljut 6 - mouse


Chinesse Tchien kung - mouse