Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Lauren bogelbam here. In the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Speaker 1: scientists around the world launched a veritable menagerie of creatures
Speaker 1: into space. The idea was to gauge the effects of
Speaker 1: space flight on living creatures in the hopes that humans
Speaker 1: could follow. The Soviet Union sent a stray dog from
Speaker 1: Moscow named Leca into space, and subsequently the pooch was
Speaker 1: honored as a national hero, and Ham the chimpanzee was
Speaker 1: famously buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in
Speaker 1: New Mexico following his contributions to the U S Space program.
Speaker 1: And then there was France, which sent the first and
Speaker 1: so far only cat into space. She was in nobly
Speaker 1: forgotten until just a few years ago. So who was
Speaker 1: this hero cat? Felis Sette was one of fourteen cats
Speaker 1: summoned to the French space program. Each cat had electrodes
Speaker 1: implanted into their brain and all were subjected to many
Speaker 1: of the same act it is included in human astronaut training.
Speaker 1: French scientists decided to use cats as they already had
Speaker 1: a lot of neurological data on them. At the conclusion
Speaker 1: of training. Feli Sette, a petite tuxedo, got the green
Speaker 1: light in part because she had such a calm demeanor,
Speaker 1: and possibly because the other cats got too chubby during training,
Speaker 1: though Pheli Sette herself was a little bit of a
Speaker 1: loafy chunk. On October eighteenth of nineteen sixty three, Foli Sette,
Speaker 1: who was officially known as C three forty one, was
Speaker 1: strapped into a Vironic rocket and blasted from Algeria to
Speaker 1: nearly one hundred miles or one sixty kilometers above the Earth.
Speaker 1: She experienced about five minutes of weightlessness, followed by the
Speaker 1: terror of a turbulent, spinning descent by a parachute. Just
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes later the flight was complete. Helicopter crew dashed
Speaker 1: to the landing site, threw open the cabin, and found
Speaker 1: Felisette alive and well. Two months later, scientists rewarded her
Speaker 1: heroism with ethan asia. They wanted to examine her body
Speaker 1: to observe the effects of space flight, and Feli Sette
Speaker 1: was all but forgotten. France was the third nation to
Speaker 1: establish a civilian space agency, and like Feli Sette, is
Speaker 1: often regarded as an afterthought in the feverish space race
Speaker 1: between the US and the Soviet Union. So much an
Speaker 1: afterthought that in the nineteen nineties, when three former French
Speaker 1: colonies celebrated her story by issuing stamps with the cat's likeness,
Speaker 1: they mistakenly turned her into a hymn by using the
Speaker 1: wrong name Felix. But thanks to a clever Kickstarter campaign,
Speaker 1: the story has finally been set straight. Londoner Matt Guy
Speaker 1: stumbled upon the tale of Feli Sette and was shocked
Speaker 1: that she wasn't already properly recognized for her accomplishments. Guy
Speaker 1: wrote on Kickstarter in she deserves a proper memorial. His
Speaker 1: online please netted around fifty seven thousand dollars, enough to
Speaker 1: fund a five foot tall bronze statue that's about one
Speaker 1: and a half meters. On December eighteenth of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: the statue was finally unveiled at the International Space University
Speaker 1: in Strasbourg, France. Felis sets bronze Likeness hurches atop a
Speaker 1: small globe of the Earth, her keen kitty eyes fixed
Speaker 1: upward and outward, where she once soared higher than any
Speaker 1: cat in world history. Today's episode was written by Nathan
Speaker 1: Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more in
Speaker 1: this and lots of other curious topics, visit our home planet,
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And for more podcasts from
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