TWIL: Aniiiiiiimals in spaaaaace

Lots of space news recently, with 50% unsuccessful lunar landings and the stranded shuttle astronauts. I know I take the space program too much to heart -- if anyone wanted to low-key trigger me they could change my Outlook alert to the NASA coms beep -- but it made me think, why do we need to risk people? Robots have been doing the job on the moon and Mars. 

And you know, we weren't always determined to risk human life. I found this article on all the animals who stepped in for humans in the early space programs. 

"Yeah, dead animals," you say, and HAH, you are partially wrong.

Here is a summary of the retired space explorer animals in the article above.

September 20, 1951 (U.S.) A monkey named Yorick and 11 mice were recovered after a missile flight of 236,000 feet at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.

May 22, 1952 (U.S.) Two monkeys, Patricia and Mike, were recovered after a similar missile flight. Pat and Mike eventually died at the National Zoo of natural causes.

August 15, 1951 (Russia) The Soviets sent dogs Dezik and Tsygan (“Gypsy”) into suborbit. They were successfully retrieved. "Shortly afterwards, Smelaya (‘Bold’) and Malyshka (‘Little One’) were launched. Smelaya ran off the day before the launch. The crew was worried that wolves that lived nearby would eat her. She returned a day later and the test flight resumed successfully."

September 15, 1951 (Russia) Another Russian dog nopes out of history. "One of the two dogs, Bobik, escaped and a replacement was found near the local canteen. She was a mutt, given the name ZIB, the Russian acronym for 'Substitute for Missing Dog Bobik.' The two dogs reached 100 kilometers and returned successfully."

November 3, 1957 (Russia) Okay, full disclosure, I'm including a dead dog here: famous first dog in orbit, Laika. I'm including her because the article said she "was hastily trained" and put aboard Sputnik 2. Trained? Trained to do what? Math? Engineering?

May 2, 1959 (U.S.) Monkeys Able and Baker were launched in the nose cone of a rocket to a 300-mile altitude, and both were recovered unharmed. 

December 4, 1959 (U.S.) Monkey Sam took a Mercury capsule (so cool) up 51 miles and then splashed down in the ocean. "He was later returned to the colony in which he trained, where he died in November 1982 and his remains were cremated." Again, what training? 

January 21, 1960 (U.S.) Sam's mate, Miss Sam, did the same and also returned to this mysterious monkey training colony.

January 31, 1961 (U.S.) Ham became the first chimpanzee in space, paving the way for John Glenn. Ham then retired: first to the National Zoo, then he joined fellow chimps at the North Carolina Zoological Park in Asheboro.

There were others (including a French cat) but evidently they couldn't be trained to land lunar modules.  

It's a good article with a sense of humor, and I recommend it. 

But seriously, though, send robots to Mars, have the robots build bigger robots, get all your assembly and exploration done by robots. 

Comments

[KC]

I would bet the "training" was part toilet/wearing-diaper training and part "don't chew on everything" training and part "do not panic when things accelerate in ways your body is unaccustomed to, we will give you treats so you do not spend the whole flight freaking out so much you might *actually* die from it" training, but what do I know?

[theQueen]

KC - aiee! They were put into centrifuges! Poor babies! And they were also subjected to rocket noise.
Something else said the Russians liked street mutts because they thought they/d be tougher. Like G-Force tough.