Laika (c. 1954 – November 3, 1957) was a Soviet space dog who became one of the first animals in space, and the first animal to orbit the Earth.
It makes me sad whenever I see this because I know how it turned out.
Laika was a stray dog, originally named Kudryavka (Russian: Кудрявка Little Curly); she underwent training with two other dogs, and was eventually chosen as the occupant of the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 that was launched into outer space on November 3, 1957, (becoming the first dog in space, to orbit the Earth, and was also the first animal to die in space.) The Soviets designed the spacecraft knowing she would not survive. One Soviet scientist took her home to play with his children because he said “I wanted to do something nice for her. She had so little time left to live.” Laika likely died within hours after launch from overheating, possibly caused by a failure of the central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload. The true cause and time of her death was not made public until 2002; instead, it was widely reported that she died when her oxygen ran out on day six, or as Soviet government initially claimed, she was euthanized prior to oxygen depletion.
As a kid who was very into rockets and airplanes I remember being told about her (mind you, I wasn’t born until the cold war was ending), but in my childish innocence I assumed she came back okay.
Here’s a statement made by Oleg Gazenko, one of the Sputnik scientists:
“Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it. We shouldn’t have done it… We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog.”
You know what makes me (sorta) happy? They built her a window. Despite the challenges and costs of building a secure window in a pressurized capsule, they did it so the dying dog could look out.
Source here:
Gazenko speaks of the bond that grew between the dog and him as they worked toward her mission, leading us in unembroidered prose through a brief tale of preparation, hours of readiness on the launch pad, and the launch itself. But the heart of the article for me, and the part to which nothing I’ve found since makes reference, is this: Gazenko tells us that as engineers rushed against deadlines to complete the capsule that would carry the dog into space, outfitting it with equipment to record the details of her death, he took on a battle in Laika’s behalf. Against heavy objections from the decision-makers, he insisted upon the installation of a window. A window in a space capsule, where such a luxury would cause complications and expenses that I can barely imagine. A window for the dog whose monitored demise had been this man’s objective in all the interactions that had bonded her to him with the eager devotion of every well-trained working canine.
Yet Gazenko persisted and prevailed.
Roof In Peace.
An Iranian soldier looks out over the desert, darkened under clouds of burning oil set alight by Iraqi forces in 1990.
Werner Herzog made a great movie about these fires, Lessons of Darkness.
The charred remains of cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on view in an open casket during his state funeral after the crash of the Soyuz 1, 1967.
…I’m surprised a Republican hasn’t blamed Obamacare yet.
Welcome to the Soviet Union.
Komarov’s story has always hit me particularly hard. He went up knowing he would likely die to spare his best friend from the same fate. (It’s tragic, they knew his space vehicle had issues, and he was sent anyway.)
“With less than a month to go before the launch, Komarov realized postponement was not an option. He met with Russayev, the now-demoted KGB agent, and said, “I’m not going to make it back from this flight.”
Russayev asked, Why not refuse? According to the authors, Komarov answered: “If I don’t make this flight, they’ll send the backup pilot instead.” That was Yuri Gagarin. Vladimir Komarov couldn’t do that to his friend. “That’s Yura,” the book quotes him saying, “and he’ll die instead of me. We’ve got to take care of him.” Komarov then burst into tears.” (Source)
According to the book by Colin Burgess, Soyuz 1 hit the ground at around 120 miles an hour. Small braking rocket engines …designed to fire moments before touchdown, exploded on impact. The …wreckage erupted into flames, …so fierce that the aluminium outer sheet melted and pooled on the ground. …recovery crews could do little but extract what they could find of Komarov’s charred remains. They did not know the parachutes would get tangled and he could only have become aware of the fatal problem in the very last couple of moments.
No one should have to suffer like that. I hope he passed as easily as possible, it’s hard to imagine such suffering.
(Those guys had massive balls participating in the early space programs when we were figuring things out as we went along.)
Kazimiera Mika, a 10 year-old Polish girl, crying over her older sister’s body. (She was killed during a German air raid while working in a field outside Warsaw, Poland); September, 1939.
Every time you hear: “USA, USA!” (or whatever your countries name is), think of this…
The glory of war is a hard stance to take in the face of these types of photos.
Photographer Julien Bryan described the scene:
“As we drove by a small field at the edge of town we were just a few minutes too late to witness a tragic event, the most incredible of all. Seven women had been digging potatoes in a field. There was no flour in their district, and they were desperate for food. Suddenly two German planes appeared from nowhere and dropped two bombs only two hundred yards away on a small home. Two women in the house were killed. The potato diggers dropped flat upon the ground, hoping to be unnoticed. After the bombers had gone, the women returned to their work. They had to have food.
But the Nazi fliers were not satisfied with their work. In a few minutes they came back and swooped down to within two hundred feet of the ground, this time raking the field with machine-gun fire. Two of the seven women were killed. The other five escaped somehow.
While I was photographing the bodies, a little ten-year old girl came running up and stood transfixed by one of the dead. The woman was her older sister. The child had never before seen death and couldn’t understand why her sister would not speak to her… The child looked at us in bewilderment. I threw my arm about her and held her tightly, trying to comfort her. She cried. So did I and the two Polish officers who were with me…”
In September 1959 Julien Bryan wrote more about it in Look magazine:
In the offices of the Express, that child, Kazimiera Mika, now 30, and I were reunited. I asked her if she remembered anything of that tragic day in the potato field. “I should,” she replied quietly. “It was the day I lost my sister, the day I first saw death, and the first time I met a foreigner – you.” Today, Kazimiera is married to a Warsaw streetcar motorman. They have a 12-year-old girl and a boy, 9, and the family lives in a 1 1/2-room apartment, typical of the overcrowded conditions of war-racked Poland. She is a charwoman at a medical school (she told me her biggest regret is that her education ended when the war began), and all of the $75 earned each month by her husband and herself goes for food. Kazimiera and her husband, like most Poles, supplement their income with odd jobs, and are sometimes forced to sell a piece of furniture for extra money. But they celebrated my visit to their home with that rare treat, a dinner with meat.
This is but one case of attacking civilians in war – this hits us so hard because we know the story and can relate to it emotionally.
Now think of the millions of people killed over the years in millions of acts just like this one – and just how horrific a person is to think bombing of civilians is an acceptable practice.
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori.
The Five Known X-ray Photographs of Hitler’s head, circa 1944
They were taken during a dental check-up.
From my reading, he had habit of not brushing his teeth properly. As result, he had gum issue, cavities, and bad breath. (It doesn’t surprise me, I mean he was a basically a bum for a period of time in the 1920’s and kind of kept some of those traits even after he came to power.)
The x-ray plates are currently housed at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Here’s more information on the images. Page 99 of the PDF document.
Soviet Red Army officers standing beside a pile of human ashes in the Majdanek concentration camp, 1944
“Personnel inside the data processing center for COBRA DANE, an intelligence-gathering phased-array system specially constructed to monitor Soviet ballistic missile testing on Siberia’s Kamchatka Peninsula”, 1977
Belgian “Death’s Head” Nacelle Farman 40 piloted by Lt Jaumotte with observer Lt Wouters; 1915-17.
Today is the 110th anniversary of the third worst conflagration to affect an American city in history: The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.
According to the Fire Museum of Baltimore, some 1,231 and 1,200 National Guardsmen were needed as part of the effort. In about 30 hours, 140 acres of downtown Baltimore had burned, taking down 1,526 buildings and 2,500 businesses in its fury.
Gaston Rébuffat atop the aiguille du Roc, Mont Blanc massif, France; ca.1944
This was photo was chosen to be included on the Golden Record on Voyager 1 and 2.
Gaston Rébuffat was actually an instructor at a military school of mountaineering run by the 27th mountain infantry. In any case, the French government clearly appreciated his contribution to history because it awarded him the Légion d’honneur in 1984.
The rarely seen back of the Hoover Dam before it filled with water; ca. 1936.
With the way Lake Mead is shrinking, we’ll get to take this shot again pretty soon.
The Parkes Radio Telescope, built in the middle of an Australian sheep paddock, towers over a rancher and his flock; ca.1960.
It was later used to transmit the majority of the first television broadcasts from the surface of the Moon.
Great Mississippi Flood of 1927
This was the inspiration for the song “When the Levee Breaks”, originally written by Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie in 1929, and later made famous by Led Zeppelin.
I hope to be remembered for my atrocities! 