The Moscow monument commemorating Laika (russian: Лайка), the first living being to reach space, unveiled in 2008 in front of the facility in which she was prepared for her historic flight in November 3, 1957.
Everyone involved in this deserved to die. How is this still written and tossed around like a cute story? They strapped a poor fucking dog in a tiny space for an INTENDED ONE WAY FLIGHT. SHE DIDNT DIE QUICKLY. SHE DIDNT DIE PAINLESSLY. SHE SPENT A WEEK, HUNGRY, DEHUDRATED, UNABLE TO MOVE OR USE THE BATHROOM AND SHE DIED EVENTUALLY FROM OVER HEATING ON THE FOURTH FUCKING ORBIT. SO FUCK ALL OF YOU JUST REBLOGGING THIS LIKE IT WAS OK. FUCK YOU AMD FUCK THEN AND FUCK THIS SHIT.
Laika died a few hours into her flight, not a week, you’re confusing the official statement of the time with the actual cause of her death.
As for the involved deserving to die, let me quote Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists tasked with taking care of the dogs during both the sub-orbital and orbital flight programs.
“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.”
They didn’t want to kill Laika, no one in the program wanted to kill Laika, but pressure from the Politburo, the Soviet government, forced the scientists to rush her flight in order to “humiliate” the Americans, since Sputnik 1 had recently flown, the world’s first man-made object to orbit the earth, and they wanted to double down on the successes of the soviet space program.
Read up on the history of the soviet space dogs, Tsygan, ZIB, Krasavka, Belka and Strelka, Strelka’s Pushinka and the pupniks, Zvyozdochka, Veterok and Ugolyok, among others, find out how the soviets did take care of their dogs, as stated by Gazenko, going so far as to consider them their babies, and even though some died, Dezik, the pup that started it all, Pchyolka and Mushka the most notorious besides Laika, in the end they did their best to keep them alive, all in the name of science and the breaking of humanity’s last barrier, space.
