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Speaker 1: albirds dot com. That's alllbi rds dot com. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith, where for the
Speaker 1: weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that,
Speaker 1: for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show.
Speaker 1: In last week's episode, Coming to You Live, we learned
Speaker 1: briefly about the launch of the Telstar satellite, which in
Speaker 1: July nineteen sixty two became the world's first active communication satellite,
Speaker 1: propelling us into a new media age of instantaneous global communication.
Speaker 1: The satellite was just one of an extraordinary array of
Speaker 1: space firsts for humanity, which had begun with the world's
Speaker 1: first artificial satellite, Sputnik I in nineteen fifty seven, and
Speaker 1: was followed soon after by cosmonaut Yuri Gagerin, becoming the
Speaker 1: first human in outer space in nineteen sixty one. Two
Speaker 1: years later, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space,
Speaker 1: and only five years after that, Neil Armstrong of Nassa's
Speaker 1: Apollo eleven mission achieved the ultimate prize of becoming the
Speaker 1: first human to step foot on the Moon. The moments
Speaker 1: symbolized by Gagerin and Armstrong are simply seismic achievements in
Speaker 1: the annals of human history, and however future historians choose
Speaker 1: to condense our present age, their names are unlikely to
Speaker 1: ever be excluded from the retelling of it. What is
Speaker 1: less well known, however, is the story of those other
Speaker 1: animals who helped them, and one in particular who became
Speaker 1: the first sentient creature to orbit the Earth, A stray
Speaker 1: dog plucked from the streets of Moscow that beat them all.
Speaker 1: This is her story. Though serious plans to put a
Speaker 1: human in space were circulating among rocket scientists in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century, it wasn't until the development of the
Speaker 1: Fowls Vye rocket, also known as v two during the
Speaker 1: Second World War that it started to be considered as
Speaker 1: a genuine possibility. A team led by genius aerospace engineer
Speaker 1: Erna von Braun had developed the rocket for use by
Speaker 1: the military of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. It isn't clear
Speaker 1: just how supportive von Braun had been of Hitler, However,
Speaker 1: there is little doubt that his interest in rockets had
Speaker 1: only ever been for use in space travel, remarking dryly
Speaker 1: when first hearing news of the V two's successful deployment
Speaker 1: in London that the rocket had worked perfectly well, with
Speaker 1: the exception of having landed on the wrong planet. In
Speaker 1: the aftermath of the defeat of the Third Reich and
Speaker 1: Hitler's German National Socialist Workers Party, the United States and
Speaker 1: Soviet Union's governments, whose own forays into rocket technology lagged
Speaker 1: hopelessly behind von Braun's, soon found themselves in possession of
Speaker 1: a superior weapon they didn't understand. But who better to
Speaker 1: help decipher it than the scientists who built it themselves,
Speaker 1: proving that all is indeed fair in love and war.
Speaker 1: In nineteen forty six, the two governments launched the two
Speaker 1: secret operations of paper Clip and so Aviakim that sought
Speaker 1: to take the best German science had to offer and
Speaker 1: put them to work on their own weapons development. The
Speaker 1: biggest catch of them all, Von Braun was adopted by
Speaker 1: the United States, with his program manager Helmut Gertrup going
Speaker 1: the other way and placed under the watchful eye of
Speaker 1: Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev. Though Korolev realized almost immediately
Speaker 1: the potential that their newly acquired rocket technology offered for
Speaker 1: space exploration, the Stalin led Communist Party, understandably rattled by
Speaker 1: the recent US deployment of the atomic bomb, preferred to
Speaker 1: focus their efforts on their use in the deployment of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons. However, with the announcement in nineteen fifty four
Speaker 1: of the US Army and Navy's plan to launch the
Speaker 1: world's first artificial satellite, the space race was born, and
Speaker 1: though launching a satellite would be the first prize, true
Speaker 1: mastery of the cosmos would only be demonstrated by the
Speaker 1: nation that could first put a human up there. Planning
Speaker 1: to launch someone into space was one thing. Doing it, however,
Speaker 1: was quite another matter. Entirely, the first issue was one
Speaker 1: of sheer durability. When the first V two rockets, which
Speaker 1: traveled at three and a half thousand miles per hour
Speaker 1: were launched. The fastest a human had ever traveled relative
Speaker 1: to the Earth was three hundred and ninety four miles
Speaker 1: per hour. To achieve orbital velocity, however, would require having
Speaker 1: to reach a speed somewhere closer to seventeen thousand miles
Speaker 1: per hour. It wasn't even known if the human body
Speaker 1: could withstand such a thing, and it was decided that
Speaker 1: there was only one way to find out. In the
Speaker 1: US spearheaded by the U. S. Army Air Corps, Project Albert,
Speaker 1: became the first in a series of experiments designed to
Speaker 1: test the physiological impact of space travel on the body.
Speaker 1: Being unwilling to risk the lies of human test subjects,
Speaker 1: they alighted on the use of recess monkeys for the
Speaker 1: task instead, and so it was that, on eleventh June
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight, at the White Sand's Missile Range in
Speaker 1: New Mexico, Albert one became the first of what we
Speaker 1: might clumsily describe as an animal of higher learning launched
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere in the name of scientific progress. The
Speaker 1: plan was to have Albert launched and returned to Earth safely,
Speaker 1: provided he survived the flight via a parachute linked to
Speaker 1: a detachable compartment of the rocket's nose cone. An ECG
Speaker 1: needle and respiration unit was stitched directly into his skin
Speaker 1: to monitor vital science before he, with his body having
Speaker 1: been stretched out and arms strapped to his side, was
Speaker 1: placed head first into a cylindrical container measuring roughly three
Speaker 1: foot by one foot in size, and then installed into
Speaker 1: the nose cone of a modified fee To rocket. To
Speaker 1: give them the best chance of achieving some useful results
Speaker 1: from the experiment, the scientists anastatized Albert forty five minutes
Speaker 1: before the flight in order to prevent him from waking
Speaker 1: up and dying of shock during takeoff, then promptly launched
Speaker 1: him at thousands of miles an hour into the air.
Speaker 1: Due to a slight malfunction and premature burnout, the rocket
Speaker 1: only reached thirty seven miles in height before the nose
Speaker 1: cone detached, sending Albert hurtling back down toward the Earth
Speaker 1: at terminal velocity. A further malfunction prevented the parachute from
Speaker 1: opening until the device was only twenty five thousand feet
Speaker 1: above the Earth's surface, by which point the sheer speed
Speaker 1: of the vehicle rendered the parachute completely useless. Seconds later,
Speaker 1: the nose cone containing Albert was obliterated on impact with
Speaker 1: the desert sands. There was no chance of survival, though
Speaker 1: it was later suggested that due to the cramped conditions
Speaker 1: in the nose cone, Albert had in fact already suffocated
Speaker 1: some time before take off. The following year, Albert two
Speaker 1: became the first monkey in space after his rocket made
Speaker 1: it beyond the sixty two mile high Carmen Line, commonly
Speaker 1: considered the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
Speaker 1: Albert two was propelled to roughly eighty three miles above
Speaker 1: the Earth before another parachute malfunction cost him his life.
Speaker 1: In the Soviet Union, it was decided instead to use
Speaker 1: dogs for the purpose of space research, due in part
Speaker 1: to the abundance of strays roaming the streets of Moscow.
Speaker 1: Stray dogs also had the added bonus of hardy and
Speaker 1: resilient natures built up through a lifetime of survival on
Speaker 1: the often harsh and unforgiving streets. In nineteen fifty a
Speaker 1: kennel was built at the USSR Air Forces Institute of
Speaker 1: Aviation medicine in Moscow, and soon after filled with hapless
Speaker 1: canines looking out with concerned curiosity at the strange new
Speaker 1: world they had found themselves in, oblivious to the horrors
Speaker 1: that were shortly to come. The institute, led by doctor
Speaker 1: Vladimir Yazdovsky, at the sole purpose of training the dogs
Speaker 1: for space flight, and the criteria was simple. Suitable candidates
Speaker 1: had to be small, weighing between thirteen to sixteen pounds
Speaker 1: and between eighteen months and six years in age. It
Speaker 1: was also important that the dogs had light fur so
Speaker 1: their movements could be more easily tracked on film. Lastly,
Speaker 1: in the main only female dogs were considered due to
Speaker 1: the difficulties of attaching the specially designed sanitary devices required
Speaker 1: for journeying in the rockets to males. First, the dogs
Speaker 1: were put through a series of endurance tests, beginning with
Speaker 1: measuring their ability to withstand prolonged confinement. This involved a
Speaker 1: little more than being placed in a restraining suit and
Speaker 1: locked inside a small box for four hours at a time. Next,
Speaker 1: they would be placed in centrifuge machines and propelled at speed,
Speaker 1: subjecting them to the forces of gravity five times above
Speaker 1: the norm, as they might experience during a rocket to
Speaker 1: take off. Further tests were then conducted on how well
Speaker 1: the dogs fared under weightlessness and extremes of atmospheric pressure,
Speaker 1: before finally they would be placed in simulations of the
Speaker 1: cacophonous and violent conditions of takeoff to see if they
Speaker 1: could handle the stress of it. With testing completed, the
Speaker 1: dogs were divided into three distinct personality groups from even
Speaker 1: tempered to restless and sluggish, which in turn would help
Speaker 1: to decide if they were best suited to being strictly
Speaker 1: rocket dogs, meaning they would only ever be used in
Speaker 1: short test flights, or if they would be elevated to
Speaker 1: the status of satellite dogs, dogs that were considered strong
Speaker 1: enough to survive in space. Are you always taking care
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Speaker 1: the winter of nineteen fifty, doctor Yazdovski was informed by
Speaker 1: Sergei Korolev that the first biological launches would take place
Speaker 1: the following summer. The time had come to select the
Speaker 1: dogs for it, with a launch date of twenty second
Speaker 1: July nineteen fifty one confirmed. Two dogs named Seagan and
Speaker 1: Debt Sick emerged as leading candidates to withstand the rigors
Speaker 1: of the flight. By this point, the US had conducted
Speaker 1: five monkey lead biological space test flights, and all of
Speaker 1: them had resulted in the death of the test subject,
Speaker 1: and so it was in the early hours of July
Speaker 1: twenty second at the kapustin Ya rocket launch site, located
Speaker 1: seventy five miles to the east of Stalingrad, that Seagan
Speaker 1: and Detzik were placed in their oxygenated flight capsule, and,
Speaker 1: after receiving a pat on the head by doctor Yazdovsky,
Speaker 1: were sealed in and loaded into the nose of the
Speaker 1: Soviet Arwan rocket. A number of scientists, party member dignitaries,
Speaker 1: and military personnel gathered to watch as the rocket took off,
Speaker 1: all waiting with bated breath to observe the fate of
Speaker 1: the two dogs. Moments later, a small tubular object was
Speaker 1: spotted high up in the sky, tumbling through the air
Speaker 1: at speed, with no sign of a parachute. The crowd
Speaker 1: gasped in horror as the object crashed into the ground
Speaker 1: in a sudden blaze of light. But then something else appeared,
Speaker 1: this time conical in shape, falling through the sky before
Speaker 1: being suddenly slowed down by a vast parachute ballooning open
Speaker 1: from behind it. Yazdovsky raced the nearest jeep and sped
Speaker 1: off in the direct of the cone that had now
Speaker 1: landed a few miles away, bursting open the hatch. Moments later,
Speaker 1: he found the two dogs a little shaken but otherwise unharmed,
Speaker 1: staring up at him with their tongues wagging and panting hard.
Speaker 1: Seagan and Debt Sick had become the first animals of
Speaker 1: their kind ever to survive a rocket flight. Sadly, however,
Speaker 1: Debt six's participation in the space program would be short
Speaker 1: lived when, on her second flight the following week, in
Speaker 1: tandem with another dog named Lisa, their capsule parachute didn't deploy.
Speaker 1: On hearing the news, Anna Tolly Blagmrovov, another leading Soviet
Speaker 1: space scientist of the time, released Seagan from the program
Speaker 1: and adopted her as his pet. Over the next two months,
Speaker 1: a total of nine dogs flew on six flights, but
Speaker 1: only five of them would survive the speriments. But over
Speaker 1: the next few years, focus again turned toward the manufacture
Speaker 1: of evermore powerful rockets, and though the Space doc program
Speaker 1: continued to provide useful information, there were no plans to
Speaker 1: do anything more sophisticated than what had previously been achieved.
Speaker 1: All that changed, however, when on the fourth of October
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, the Soviet Union stunned the world by
Speaker 1: announcing the successful launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite.
Speaker 1: Nikita Krushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party, was
Speaker 1: so flattered by the global response to the achievement that
Speaker 1: he suggested the party capitalize on the attention by launching
Speaker 1: a second satellite on the anniversary of the Great October
Speaker 1: Socialist Revolution that was due to take place just over
Speaker 1: a month later on November seventh. Sir Guy Karlov, equally
Speaker 1: caught up in the excitement of it all, had a
Speaker 1: better idea. Why not launch a dog with it to
Speaker 1: two and become the first nation to put a living
Speaker 1: creature into orbit. With the stakes now significantly higher, training
Speaker 1: at the kennel was intensified accordingly. Where before the dogs
Speaker 1: were assessed on their ability to withstand four hours in
Speaker 1: a confined space, now they had to endure twenty days.
Speaker 1: Only ten dogs successfully passed the test, which were then
Speaker 1: whittled down to six before finally one candidate emerged above
Speaker 1: all others, a small white mongrel named Albina. However, since
Speaker 1: Albina had already flown two missions and had just given
Speaker 1: birth to a litter of puppies, the team decided that
Speaker 1: she had already done enough and so the next best
Speaker 1: candidate was chosen, a two year old husky mix weighing
Speaker 1: no more than thirteen pounds with a distinctive white line
Speaker 1: running down the middle of her black furred face, called
Speaker 1: Kudriavka or little curly. Shortly after her selection, however, the
Speaker 1: team became fond of her distinctive bark and so she
Speaker 1: was given the name Lycha instead, which translates loosely to
Speaker 1: barker in Russian. With less than two weeks to go
Speaker 1: to the launch, doctor Yazdovski's team set about Preparinglya's body
Speaker 1: for the momentous flight. To be able to record her
Speaker 1: blood pressure, her carrottid artery was pulled from out of
Speaker 1: the neck and her skin cut in such a way
Speaker 1: as to allow the artery to remain on the outside
Speaker 1: of her body. It would then be compressed periodically by
Speaker 1: an inflated rubber ball in order to take measurement. Silver
Speaker 1: electrodes one fifth of an inch in diameter were then
Speaker 1: inserted just beneath her skin to monitor her heart, with
Speaker 1: the connecting wires also under the skin, being threaded along
Speaker 1: her back and emerging on the outside of both sides
Speaker 1: of her spine. By twenty seventh of October, news of
Speaker 1: Lica's impending mission was beginning to filter around the world.
Speaker 1: Later that afternoon, Lyka captured the hearts of the nation
Speaker 1: when she was heard barking in response to questions from
Speaker 1: a reporter from Radio Moscow, but few were aware of
Speaker 1: the implications of the mission, for this was not a
Speaker 1: two way trip. Realizing she had only dazed to live,
Speaker 1: doctor Yazdovski took like a home to visit his family,
Speaker 1: where she played with his children for a number of hours.
Speaker 1: The following day, she was placed on a flight to
Speaker 1: the bacon Or Cosmodrome, a remote spaceport located in the
Speaker 1: South Kazakhstan desert. At ten a m on the morning
Speaker 1: of October thirty. First, Lyca was taken for a walk,
Speaker 1: then afterwards had her wounds, still raw from the insertion
Speaker 1: of the electrodes coated in iodine. Twelve censes in total
Speaker 1: were applied to her body and her sanitation device fitted
Speaker 1: before being strapped into her vest and harness. At two
Speaker 1: p m. Food was placed in the feeding device, designed
Speaker 1: to release only one load to last as long as
Speaker 1: would be required, after which Lyca was placed into the
Speaker 1: rocket capsule in between two large cushions. Calmly, she lay
Speaker 1: down on her front paws and watched the people in
Speaker 1: white coats as they lowered the heat shield into place
Speaker 1: above her. Finally, they sealed up the capsule, leaving its
Speaker 1: one porthole window located just above her head. The capsule
Speaker 1: was then in turn fixed into place at the very
Speaker 1: top of an R seven rocket and left for three
Speaker 1: days while Lyca's vital signs were monitored. For the next
Speaker 1: seventy two hours, she looked up with the same quizzical
Speaker 1: expression whenever a white coated human peered in through the
Speaker 1: porthole window, until finally the moment had arrived. At five
Speaker 1: thirty am Moscow time on Sunday third of November nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, Lyca, along with a Sputnik two satellite, was
Speaker 1: blasted into space. Human beings start to experience severe pain
Speaker 1: and hearing loss. At one hundred and forty descerbels inside
Speaker 1: her capsule, Lyca would have endured some and closer to
Speaker 1: two hundred decibels. This, coupled with the stress of enduring
Speaker 1: five times the force of gravity, sent her heart rate
Speaker 1: racing to two hundred and sixty bpm, three times the norm,
Speaker 1: and her breathing also quickened to four times the usual amount.
Speaker 1: Eight minutes later, having in that time traveled from nought
Speaker 1: to seventeen and a half a thousand miles per hour,
Speaker 1: Lyca reached the Carman line only a few minutes after that.
Speaker 1: Having reached the orbiting height of one hundred and forty
Speaker 1: miles above the Earth, the nose cone detached and the
Speaker 1: first telemetry signals were received at mission control. Lyca was
Speaker 1: alive and floating in space, the first living creature of
Speaker 1: Earth in orbit. The capsule would eventually settle, traveling at
Speaker 1: a speed of five miles per second as it made
Speaker 1: its first complete orbit of the globe in roughly one
Speaker 1: hundred and three minutes. However, with the capsule only traveling
Speaker 1: across Soviet airspace for fifteen minutes of that circuit, they
Speaker 1: had only that window of time to access data, and
Speaker 1: unbeknownst to the rest of the world, it had become
Speaker 1: quickly apparent that something inside the capsule was drastically wrong.
Speaker 1: Later that day, on November third, putting aside any diplomatic differences,
Speaker 1: the front page of The New York Times triumphantly hailed
Speaker 1: Soviet fire's new satellite carrying dog. Articles released the following
Speaker 1: day even went as far as to suggest that Lycha
Speaker 1: could even be recovered from the flight and brought safely
Speaker 1: back to Worth, and articles from as late as the
Speaker 1: seventh of November indicated that doctor Yazdovsky's team were still
Speaker 1: receiving signs of life from the dog, but soon with
Speaker 1: journalists noting that Lyca was no longer being mentioned in
Speaker 1: a fish or communications, the sad truth was beginning to
Speaker 1: dawn that she had in fact been dead for four days,
Speaker 1: suffocated by a defect in the capsule that allowed the
Speaker 1: temperature inside to soar above a hundred degrees fahrenheit. Just
Speaker 1: after midnight on April fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight, a series
Speaker 1: of UFO sightings were reported along the East coast of
Speaker 1: the United States. As was documented by Paul Dixon in
Speaker 1: Sputnik The Shock of the Century, a bluish white object
Speaker 1: had been seen traveling across the sky at lightning speed,
Speaker 1: before suddenly turning red and separating into several smaller objects.
Speaker 1: What had in fact been witnessed was the reentry into
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere of the capsule carrying the Sputnik to
Speaker 1: satellite the dead body of Lyca before its eventual disintegration.
Speaker 1: Three years later, on the twelfth of April nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: Yuri Gagarin became the second animal to orbit the Earth.
Speaker 1: Scientist Oleg Gatzenko, who had worked on the like A launch,
Speaker 1: would later muse that the more time passed, the more
Speaker 1: he was sorry about her death, and that we didn't
Speaker 1: learn enough from the mission to justify it. And yet
Speaker 1: within this statement lie deeper, complex and often troubling questions
Speaker 1: about these types of experiments. Some will argue that no
Speaker 1: animal should ever be sacrificed or forced to endure such suffering,
Speaker 1: that only consenting human volunteers or synthetic means should be
Speaker 1: used to collect the necessary information. Others might argue, however,
Speaker 1: that we are to go into space if we desire that,
Speaker 1: if we want to know more about what is out there,
Speaker 1: or even if one day humanity might even need to
Speaker 1: escape planet Earth. That the suffering brought on these animals
Speaker 1: was a terrible but necessary price to pay. And this
Speaker 1: is a complicated thing to know that that is the price,
Speaker 1: but to do it anyway is as equally human as
Speaker 1: to reject it. Entirely. In any case, regardless of what
Speaker 1: you believe, there is perhaps one thing that we can
Speaker 1: all agree on that whatever benefit comes of our experiments
Speaker 1: in space, let it be known that we will owe
Speaker 1: it not only to the likes of Gagerin, Tereshkova and Armstrong,
Speaker 1: but also to Albert Seagan and Debt Sick, and of
Speaker 1: course to Lia. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and
Speaker 1: would like to help supporters, you can now go to
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations, no
Speaker 1: matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. All elements
Speaker 1: of Unexplained are produced by me, Richard McClain smith. Please
Speaker 1: subscribe and rate the show on iTunes. Feel free to
Speaker 1: get in touch with any thoughts or ideas regarding the
Speaker 1: stories you've heard on the show. Perhaps you have an
Speaker 1: explanation of your own you'd like to share. You can
Speaker 1: reach us online at Unexplained podcast dot com, or on
Speaker 1: Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com,
Speaker 1: Forward Slash Unexplained. Now it's time to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1: To make time for you, Tell a doc gives you
Speaker 1: access to a licensed therapist to help you get back
Speaker 1: to feeling your best, speak to a licensed therapist by
Speaker 1: phone or video anytime between seven am to nine pm
Speaker 1: local time, seven days a week. Teledoc Therapy is available
Speaker 1: through most insurance or employers. Download the app, or visit
Speaker 1: teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained Podcast Today to get started.
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