Dedicated to all the dogs – past, present and future - that give their lives for
mankind.
Background
It was the nineteen fifties, an era that saw a stand-off between the superpowers
- i.e. the almighty USSR and the proud USA. The Soviets were putting pressure on
the North Americans by announcing their successes - which had more to do with propaganda
than with science, cheered on by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, the Russian president
known all over the world simply by his surname. The Cold War and espionage, together
with the arms and space races, were part of everyday life in those days.
The truth is that the first animal to make the great leap forward into space was
a monkey called Albert in 1948 (although experiments with monkeys had been going
on for almost a decade), on a suborbital flight which he failed to survive, because
the North Americans used them to test weightlessness and the effects of acceleration
on primates, being the creatures most similar to human beings, in order to forecast
what effects there might be on explorers in the future. The Russians were hot on
their heels, as they didn’t want to fall behind because they needed to exploit the
resounding success of Sputnik - which was launched on 4th October 1957, orbiting
Planet Earth in Outer Space - for propaganda purposes and as a result they took
enormous security measures in order to guard against any possible espionage and/or
sabotage at all times.
The Soviet space programme was headed up by three men: Sergei Pavlovich Korolev
(the engineer who had founded the space programme), Doctor Vladimir Yazdovsky, who
was in charge of selecting the animals, and a scientist called Oleg Georgievich
Gazenko, who was in charge of training. President Khrushchev gave the former the
job of redesigning a copy of Sputnik so that it could carry a pressurised container
which might house a living creature. The president wanted everything to be ready
in less than a month in order to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik
Revolution.
This would be a twofold coup - celebrating with great pomp while the whole world
looked on, and showing off the scientific and technological might of the USSR.
Dogs rather than monkeys, mongrels rather than pure-bred
The Soviets used dogs rather than monkeys for various reasons - the first was that
they were cheap, as they were street animals, the second was that they responded
to training better than nervous primates, the third was they could withstand longer
periods of inactivity, the fourth was that stray dogs show an incredible ability
to survive in adverse circumstances and the fifth was because they were popular;
it was as though a beloved part of the Russian people were travelling into space
to represent them.
They were chosen very carefully; females were usually preferred because they did
not need to cock a leg to urinate, which was important as they would be in a very
small space. They could be no more than 35 centimetres tall, had to weigh no more
than 6 kilos and could be no older than 6 and no younger than 2 years of age, in
excellent physical condition and health, and with a quiet nature.
The animals were usually captured in Moscow itself and sent to the Aerospace Medical
Research Institute, where they were selected and trained and then those which failed
to pass the tests were put down.
All of this was top secret, so much so that even the names of the dogs were encrypted
and no information was available until the break-up of the Soviet Union.
Although Laika was not the first dog to fly, she was the first one ever to go into
orbit. Various suborbital flights with dogs were launched, the first of which were
Dezik (marble white) and Tsygan (black and white) on 22nd July 1951.
Both survived,
becoming the first living beings in the world to come back from one of these experiments,
although one of them died on a subsequent mission.
Space training
They underwent a very tough training programme, with Gazenko in charge. He handled
this himself, getting the animals which had been chosen – based on the characteristics
I explained in the previous section - accustomed to being in a small cockpit, using
compartments which got gradually smaller until they reached a size simulating the
one in which they would be travelling. They were in there for periods of time ranging
from just a few hours up to twenty days, which meant that many animals suffered
enormous physical damage and failed to complete the training programme.
Another part of the training was to place them in a centrifugal machine, inside
which they were subjected to high speeds in order to simulate the accelerations
or G forces that the animals would experience during a flight. The dogs were monitored
during this experiment. It doubled their pulses and blood pressures, they breathed
more quickly and many of them ended up vomiting and fainting. This was very tough
training which also involved various vibrations and sudden movements in order to
familiarise them with the capsule taking off and landing.
Laika the space explorer
Three animals were preselected: Laika, Albina (who had already completed two suborbital
flights) and Mushka (Little Fly), and they all underwent an even tougher second
training programme specifically designed for the new mission. The three little females
became accustomed to feeding themselves in the capsule using a special mechanism
and got used to the noises made by the operational equipment which would accompany
it.
Laika, the little Moscow street dog, looked rather like a small terrier. She was
one of the group of twelve dogs trained at the Experimental Institute, and which
spent more than a year getting ready for suborbital flights, although this time
it would be far tougher. When she was captured, she was originally named Kudryavka
(Little Curly), although that was soon changed to Laika (Barker), as this was the
name of various breeds from northern Russia and Siberia and it sounded more patriotic.
She was selected to occupy the ship by Doctor Yazdovsky ten days earlier. Her substitute
would be Albina and, if the latter failed, Mushka was third choice.
Each dog was got used to wearing a suit with a harness which restricted her movements
but allowed her to lie down, sit and move slightly backwards and forwards, and which
also protected her skin. They all underwent surgery to install sensors near their
carotid arteries, with another near the heart and a kind of girdle around their
chests. They were watched carefully to avoid any infections after the operations.
The Russians got them used to having a meal and drinking water twice a day and to
relieving themselves into a bag located behind them.
The animal’s cockpit measured 64 x 80 cm and had a cover and a small cylindrical
window made of aluminium alloy. There was equipment to measure the ambient temperature
and humidity, plus the monitors to which the dog was connected so that a close eye
could be kept on her vital signs. If the temperature rose by 15°, a ventilation
system was activated which also used chemical compounds to absorb any excess humidity
and carbon dioxide.
Laika, who was roughly two years old and weighed six kilos, discovered at first
hand just how selfish human beings can be. Khrushchev was in a hurry and the engineers
were unable to provide the ship with a safe return system so, as a result, the doctors
only left her with enough food for a week and, finally, a certain amount of poison
to put her to sleep so that the poor animal would not suffer.
Doctor Yazdovsky had become fond of the little dog due to her docility and sweet
nature and, on the day before they were to take her to Baikonur Cosmodrome - the
base in Kazakhstan - he secretly took her home with him, so that she should experience
the love of a family and she spent a long time playing with the doctor’s children,
to give her something she had never known, the warmth and love of a family.
Then off Laika went to meet her destiny, she spent three days before take-off living
in the cockpit in which she would have to travel. The module was heated so that
the low temperatures would not damage Laika´s health before she set off.
She set off on her one-way trip at 5.30 a.m. Moscow time on 3rd November
1957. Initially
the dog’s rate of breathing rose to four times more than normal and her heart rate
doubled, but within ten minutes her vital signs had returned almost to normal, and
she had something to eat. On going into orbit, the capsule broke away successfully,
but they had not taken into account the fact that the friction would generate more
heat which meant that the ventilation system broke down and the temperature in the
cabin rose to 40°, and as a result Laika was only able to survive for between five
and seven hours. The whole truth became known in October 2002, at the World Space
Congress which was held in Houston (Texas) and this information was revealed by
Dimitri Malashenkov, who took part in the whole project.
The ship became Laika’s coffin, orbiting for 162 days until 14th April
1958, then
breaking up on contact with the Earth. It had travelled more than 100 million kilometres
and orbited Earth approximately 2,400 times.
All of this created a huge stir among animal lovers who, as part of a series of
organised protests, demonstrated in front of the USSR’s various embassies around
the world, as well as a mass demonstration in front of the United Nations headquarters.
In Russia, people were talking not about Laika but about the damage to USSR’s image
this had caused.
Khrushchev was inundated with letters of protest from all over the Western world.
The Soviet political propaganda machine attempted to repair the damage to the country’s
image in the West caused by the way Laika had been treated and she was idolised
as a national hero in books and children’s toys, on posters, in photographic prints,
on matchboxes etc., etc. in a jumble of the USSR’s Pop Art, the police and the coronation
of a mongrel as a representative of the Soviet people and the working classes who,
in posters in the street, displayed a stylised, arrogant profile. She became no
more nor less than yet another icon of Communism.
Some people in the West used her as a symbol of the martyrdom of animals and put
up monuments to her, while others saw her as a symbol of Bolshevism and its victory
in the space race, opening monuments to her to shout down the voices of Western
protest. She may perhaps be the dog who has received the most tributes from mankind,
with the largest monument being the one dedicated to the conquerors of space, on
which she is shown by an explanatory bas relief, unveiled in 1964.
Other cosmonaut dogs
In spite of the protests from the West, many dogs continued to be used for tests
of this kind up until 1966 and were actually later replaced by monkeys.
Lisichka (Little Fox) and Bars (Snow Leopard) died in the Vostok flight test which
exploded upon launch on 28th July 1960. On 5th August of the
same year, Belka (Squirrel)
and Strelka (Little Arrow), together with 40 mice, 2 rats and plants, were launched
into orbit on the 19th of the same month, returning on the 20th
with the animals
safe and sound. Strelka gave birth to six healthy puppies and one of them was presented
to President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. On 1st December of the same year,
Mushka -
one of Laika’s substitutes - and Pchyolka (Little Bee) died upon re-entering the
Earth’s atmosphere when the space capsule blew up. On 22nd December of
the same
year, Damka (Queen of Draughts) and Krasavka (Little Beauty) were on an orbital
flight which was aborted and the bitches survived and returned safely. Chernushka
(Blackie) set off on 9th March 1961 and was safely recovered and Zvyozdochka
(Starlet),
who took off on 25th March, was also recovered without any problems.
The final journey
- as far as we know - by dogs into space took place in 1966, on board the biosatellite
Kosmos, Veterok (Light Breeze) and Ugolek (Coal) spent twenty-two days in space
and were fortunately recovered; these latter two dogs are the ones who have spent
the most time in space.
After this it would appear that there were no further experiments with our four-legged
friends. I cannot leave you without repeating the exact words used by Gazenko, the
man who trained Laika and various other space dogs, when talking about the canine
pioneer: “The more time goes by, the more I regret what happened. We shouldn’t have
done it… We didn’t even learn enough to justify the animal’s death”; he said this
in 1998 and always remembered her right up until his own death in 2007.
Rafael Fernández de Zafra
Bibliography
Soviet Space dogs by Damon Murray
On The Pathways Of The Universe by Doctor Vladimir Yazdovskiy