5 minute read
Little Barker Kathryn Lee
little barker
By Kathryn Lee
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On November 3, 1957, Soviet scientists launched the second artificial satellite into space — Sputnik 2. For the first time, a passenger would be on board: a small black-and-white dog named Laika.1
Laika’s origins are undocumented. She was a stray from the streets of Moscow, chosen because scientists believed her experience fending for herself prepared her for harsh space conditions. She was plucked from one hard life to an even harder one — one that few humans, let alone dogs, would imagine possible for themselves.
Tetherless, loveless Laika had no name before she encountered the scientists, and they were equally at a loss for what to call her. They experimented: with names like Kudryavka, “little curly”; Limonchik, “little lemon”; Damka, “little lady.” These names stretch only as far as interpreters’ imagination, and died with some of the Sputnik scientists who knew Laika as they brushed their fingers over her downy coat and coaxed her into trusting them. But it is not hard to imagine that a little dog with onyx eyes, like little shining pearls of black, could have encompassed being curly, like a lemon and like a lady all at once.
The scientists eventually settled on an intensely practical name: Laika, literally, “barker.” Gone was the timid affection of “little curly,” “little lemon,” “little lady.” This was a dog, an animal, a soon-to-be dead one at that, though Laika hardly knew it herself. After being scooped from the icy streets and placed under the scrutiny of dozens of men and women, what did she think? Was she grateful to be petted — was she petted? Was she confused — or did she luxuriate in the attention? Did her ears perk up at the sound of footsteps — did she whine at people to play with her, did she sleep on her side or on her stomach?
Dogs in the flight program were spun in centrifuges and fed food in jelly form2 to prepare them for conditions in outer space. While there were many dogs in the program, scientists decided who would board Sputnik 2 less than two weeks before takeoff. Albina, another dog in the program, was rumored to have outperformed Laika in tests3, but had recently given birth. Her name is not the one that children around the world, slumped in hard plastic chairs in front of blackboards, learn. Albina’s handlers were too attached to let her go.
Laika had no such defenders. So she — two years old, black-and-white, stray from Moscow, curly, little lemon, little lady — was chosen for the mission that would immortalize her.
Civilians updated on the Sputnik 2 project — Soviet and otherwise — agonized over her survival. The Los Angeles Times reported that Laika would be fed poisoned food after orbiting for a week and die painlessly. It was important that Laika, floating thousands of miles above anyone that had ever known her, pass without suffering.
1https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/remembering-laika-space-dog-and-soviet-hero 2https://www.britannica.com/topic/Laika 3https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/sad-story-laika-space-dog-and-her-one-way-trip-orbit-1-180968728/
4 ASIAN OUTLOOK
But she would pass. She would die. It was an inevitable conclusion even to the animal rights activists who bemoaned the dangers of the mission and demanded its end. And when all was said and done, few people cared about a singular dog. This was the era of duck-and-cover and proxy wars. If ending either of those things meant launching and forgetting about a single canine, then better one dog than millions of people.
Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky, one of the scientists on the Sputnik 2 project, took Laika home with him the night before she paid for human progress with her own life. She played with his children, and here we have to fill in the gaps ourselves: perhaps she played fetch with them. She yipped at them. She rolled around on carpet or tile or hardwood. She was allowed to be a dog for the first time in her life, in a short, shimmering purgatory between living on the streets and dying in a void.
“I wanted to do something nice for her,” said Yazdovsky. “She had so little time left to live.”
Laika went from a warm home to the vestibule that would serve as her coffin. A female scientist broke protocol and fed her before launch — a death row meal. At 5:30 a.m., Laika left earth, never to return.
Her heart rate tripled.
Her breath rate quadrupled.
She died a few days after reaching orbit, reported Soviet scientists, insisting also that she had died painlessly. Their 1950s audience breathed a sigh of relief, shook their heads in that’s too bad, but oh well, that’s what it is, and moved on with their lives. The 1960s boasted Armstrong and the end of the Space Race, the 1980s toppled the Berlin Wall and the 1990s ushered in McDonald’s in Moscow.
And in 2002, Sputnik scientists admitted that Laika had not died a few days into orbit as had been reported forty-five years earlier. Under immense time pressure, they did not fully test the cooling system aboard the spacecraft. Laika died from overheating, suffering from temperatures upwards of ninety degrees. She burned up—Laika, little barker, trapped in a metal orb where no one could hear her cry.
Since Laika’s death, myriad tributes have been made to her, including a stone monument in Moscow. Perched atop a rocketesque pillar, she looks nobly down at admirers. It is a stark contrast from the photos of her at launch, in which she is tucked into a metal seat like a child forced into a high chair. Her tongue lolls out slightly — the single detail in the scene reminding viewers of her existence as a dog rather than a name in a textbook. The stone monument is to honor Laika — to present her as she is known retrospectively, as a pioneer who proved that living beings can exist in space — and yet there is an undeniable aura of head-bowing, of eye-averting.
“The more time passes, the more I’m sorry about it,” said one of the scientists on the Sputnik 2 project. “We shouldn’t have done it. We did not learn enough from the mission to justify the death of the dog.”
Laika, little barker, stray from Moscow, unknowing and unwilling pioneer — the best-known dog in history and the best betrayed.
