WEBVTT - S04 Episode 2 Extra: Dog Star 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.400 Nothing's better than feeling comfortable in your own shoes. Maybe 0:00:03.400 --> 0:00:05.760 you're a parent raising a little rock star, or a 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:08.560 tech nomad working from anywhere. All Birds wants you to 0:00:08.560 --> 0:00:11.719 be comfortable in your actual shoes too. They're wool runners, 0:00:11.960 --> 0:00:15.000 pipers and loungers are so cozy you might forget you're 0:00:15.040 --> 0:00:18.160 wearing them, and they're crafted from natural materials that tread 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.119 lightly on our planet. So get comfortable in your shoes. 0:00:21.480 --> 0:00:24.480 Get to know the wool runners, pipers and loungers at 0:00:24.480 --> 0:00:40.159 albirds dot com. That's alllbi rds dot com. Welcome to 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:44.920 Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClean smith, where for the 0:00:44.960 --> 0:00:47.360 weeks in between episodes, we look at the stories that, 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.040 for one reason or other, didn't make it into the show. 0:00:50.920 --> 0:00:54.640 In last week's episode, Coming to You Live, we learned 0:00:54.640 --> 0:00:58.040 briefly about the launch of the Telstar satellite, which in 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:03.000 July nineteen sixty two became the world's first active communication satellite, 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:08.000 propelling us into a new media age of instantaneous global communication. 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.400 The satellite was just one of an extraordinary array of 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:16.360 space firsts for humanity, which had begun with the world's 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:22.200 first artificial satellite, Sputnik I in nineteen fifty seven, and 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:26.520 was followed soon after by cosmonaut Yuri Gagerin, becoming the 0:01:26.560 --> 0:01:30.600 first human in outer space in nineteen sixty one. Two 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:35.319 years later, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space, 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.920 and only five years after that, Neil Armstrong of Nassa's 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.959 Apollo eleven mission achieved the ultimate prize of becoming the 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:49.360 first human to step foot on the Moon. The moments 0:01:49.400 --> 0:01:53.960 symbolized by Gagerin and Armstrong are simply seismic achievements in 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:58.080 the annals of human history, and however future historians choose 0:01:58.120 --> 0:02:01.680 to condense our present age, their names are unlikely to 0:02:01.760 --> 0:02:05.840 ever be excluded from the retelling of it. What is 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:09.200 less well known, however, is the story of those other 0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:13.440 animals who helped them, and one in particular who became 0:02:13.480 --> 0:02:17.760 the first sentient creature to orbit the Earth, A stray 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:21.639 dog plucked from the streets of Moscow that beat them all. 0:02:22.720 --> 0:02:33.560 This is her story. Though serious plans to put a 0:02:33.639 --> 0:02:36.920 human in space were circulating among rocket scientists in the 0:02:36.960 --> 0:02:40.600 early twentieth century, it wasn't until the development of the 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.240 Fowls Vye rocket, also known as v two during the 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:47.680 Second World War that it started to be considered as 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:53.920 a genuine possibility. A team led by genius aerospace engineer 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:57.680 Erna von Braun had developed the rocket for use by 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:02.080 the military of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. It isn't clear 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.040 just how supportive von Braun had been of Hitler, However, 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.160 there is little doubt that his interest in rockets had 0:03:09.200 --> 0:03:13.240 only ever been for use in space travel, remarking dryly 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.560 when first hearing news of the V two's successful deployment 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:20.640 in London that the rocket had worked perfectly well, with 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:25.280 the exception of having landed on the wrong planet. In 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:27.880 the aftermath of the defeat of the Third Reich and 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.400 Hitler's German National Socialist Workers Party, the United States and 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:36.920 Soviet Union's governments, whose own forays into rocket technology lagged 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:40.960 hopelessly behind von Braun's, soon found themselves in possession of 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:45.320 a superior weapon they didn't understand. But who better to 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:48.960 help decipher it than the scientists who built it themselves, 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.360 proving that all is indeed fair in love and war. 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:57.440 In nineteen forty six, the two governments launched the two 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:02.160 secret operations of paper Clip and so Aviakim that sought 0:04:02.200 --> 0:04:05.160 to take the best German science had to offer and 0:04:05.200 --> 0:04:09.760 put them to work on their own weapons development. The 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:13.320 biggest catch of them all, Von Braun was adopted by 0:04:13.320 --> 0:04:18.320 the United States, with his program manager Helmut Gertrup going 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:21.760 the other way and placed under the watchful eye of 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:28.359 Soviet rocket engineer Sergei Korolev. Though Korolev realized almost immediately 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.240 the potential that their newly acquired rocket technology offered for 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:37.920 space exploration, the Stalin led Communist Party, understandably rattled by 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.520 the recent US deployment of the atomic bomb, preferred to 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:44.240 focus their efforts on their use in the deployment of 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.880 nuclear weapons. However, with the announcement in nineteen fifty four 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.040 of the US Army and Navy's plan to launch the 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:57.320 world's first artificial satellite, the space race was born, and 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:01.239 though launching a satellite would be the first prize, true 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:04.720 mastery of the cosmos would only be demonstrated by the 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:09.839 nation that could first put a human up there. Planning 0:05:09.920 --> 0:05:13.880 to launch someone into space was one thing. Doing it, however, 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:19.840 was quite another matter. Entirely, the first issue was one 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:24.599 of sheer durability. When the first V two rockets, which 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:26.920 traveled at three and a half thousand miles per hour 0:05:27.120 --> 0:05:31.000 were launched. The fastest a human had ever traveled relative 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:34.240 to the Earth was three hundred and ninety four miles 0:05:34.320 --> 0:05:39.600 per hour. To achieve orbital velocity, however, would require having 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.800 to reach a speed somewhere closer to seventeen thousand miles 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:47.880 per hour. It wasn't even known if the human body 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:52.120 could withstand such a thing, and it was decided that 0:05:52.279 --> 0:06:02.640 there was only one way to find out. In the 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:07.400 US spearheaded by the U. S. Army Air Corps, Project Albert, 0:06:07.560 --> 0:06:10.720 became the first in a series of experiments designed to 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:14.239 test the physiological impact of space travel on the body. 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:18.640 Being unwilling to risk the lies of human test subjects, 0:06:19.120 --> 0:06:21.760 they alighted on the use of recess monkeys for the 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:26.239 task instead, and so it was that, on eleventh June 0:06:26.520 --> 0:06:29.760 nineteen forty eight, at the White Sand's Missile Range in 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.520 New Mexico, Albert one became the first of what we 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.720 might clumsily describe as an animal of higher learning launched 0:06:37.760 --> 0:06:42.600 into the atmosphere in the name of scientific progress. The 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.120 plan was to have Albert launched and returned to Earth safely, 0:06:46.560 --> 0:06:50.200 provided he survived the flight via a parachute linked to 0:06:50.279 --> 0:06:55.080 a detachable compartment of the rocket's nose cone. An ECG 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:59.120 needle and respiration unit was stitched directly into his skin 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.360 to monitor vital science before he, with his body having 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:06.800 been stretched out and arms strapped to his side, was 0:07:06.880 --> 0:07:11.160 placed head first into a cylindrical container measuring roughly three 0:07:11.200 --> 0:07:15.200 foot by one foot in size, and then installed into 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:20.520 the nose cone of a modified fee To rocket. To 0:07:20.640 --> 0:07:23.360 give them the best chance of achieving some useful results 0:07:23.440 --> 0:07:28.239 from the experiment, the scientists anastatized Albert forty five minutes 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:31.400 before the flight in order to prevent him from waking 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:36.560 up and dying of shock during takeoff, then promptly launched 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:39.600 him at thousands of miles an hour into the air. 0:07:41.840 --> 0:07:45.720 Due to a slight malfunction and premature burnout, the rocket 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:49.240 only reached thirty seven miles in height before the nose 0:07:49.320 --> 0:07:53.800 cone detached, sending Albert hurtling back down toward the Earth 0:07:54.480 --> 0:08:00.720 at terminal velocity. A further malfunction prevented the parachute from 0:08:00.760 --> 0:08:04.000 opening until the device was only twenty five thousand feet 0:08:04.160 --> 0:08:07.760 above the Earth's surface, by which point the sheer speed 0:08:07.800 --> 0:08:13.040 of the vehicle rendered the parachute completely useless. Seconds later, 0:08:13.840 --> 0:08:17.960 the nose cone containing Albert was obliterated on impact with 0:08:18.120 --> 0:08:22.960 the desert sands. There was no chance of survival, though 0:08:23.000 --> 0:08:25.960 it was later suggested that due to the cramped conditions 0:08:26.000 --> 0:08:29.480 in the nose cone, Albert had in fact already suffocated 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:35.640 some time before take off. The following year, Albert two 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.440 became the first monkey in space after his rocket made 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:43.000 it beyond the sixty two mile high Carmen Line, commonly 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:46.600 considered the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space. 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:51.400 Albert two was propelled to roughly eighty three miles above 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.840 the Earth before another parachute malfunction cost him his life. 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:07.760 In the Soviet Union, it was decided instead to use 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:11.440 dogs for the purpose of space research, due in part 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:14.600 to the abundance of strays roaming the streets of Moscow. 0:09:16.120 --> 0:09:19.000 Stray dogs also had the added bonus of hardy and 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.679 resilient natures built up through a lifetime of survival on 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:28.400 the often harsh and unforgiving streets. In nineteen fifty a 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:32.240 kennel was built at the USSR Air Forces Institute of 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.840 Aviation medicine in Moscow, and soon after filled with hapless 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:41.200 canines looking out with concerned curiosity at the strange new 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:45.040 world they had found themselves in, oblivious to the horrors 0:09:45.200 --> 0:09:49.520 that were shortly to come. The institute, led by doctor 0:09:49.559 --> 0:09:53.240 Vladimir Yazdovsky, at the sole purpose of training the dogs 0:09:53.280 --> 0:09:59.080 for space flight, and the criteria was simple. Suitable candidates 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.840 had to be small, weighing between thirteen to sixteen pounds 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:07.679 and between eighteen months and six years in age. It 0:10:07.880 --> 0:10:10.959 was also important that the dogs had light fur so 0:10:11.160 --> 0:10:15.480 their movements could be more easily tracked on film. Lastly, 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:18.959 in the main only female dogs were considered due to 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:23.480 the difficulties of attaching the specially designed sanitary devices required 0:10:23.520 --> 0:10:28.600 for journeying in the rockets to males. First, the dogs 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.040 were put through a series of endurance tests, beginning with 0:10:32.160 --> 0:10:37.400 measuring their ability to withstand prolonged confinement. This involved a 0:10:37.400 --> 0:10:40.559 little more than being placed in a restraining suit and 0:10:40.760 --> 0:10:46.400 locked inside a small box for four hours at a time. Next, 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:50.360 they would be placed in centrifuge machines and propelled at speed, 0:10:50.520 --> 0:10:54.280 subjecting them to the forces of gravity five times above 0:10:54.360 --> 0:10:57.679 the norm, as they might experience during a rocket to 0:10:57.760 --> 0:11:01.679 take off. Further tests were then conducted on how well 0:11:01.720 --> 0:11:05.640 the dogs fared under weightlessness and extremes of atmospheric pressure, 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.599 before finally they would be placed in simulations of the 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:13.520 cacophonous and violent conditions of takeoff to see if they 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:18.959 could handle the stress of it. With testing completed, the 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:23.480 dogs were divided into three distinct personality groups from even 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.800 tempered to restless and sluggish, which in turn would help 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.360 to decide if they were best suited to being strictly 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:33.559 rocket dogs, meaning they would only ever be used in 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.679 short test flights, or if they would be elevated to 0:11:37.800 --> 0:11:41.960 the status of satellite dogs, dogs that were considered strong 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:49.280 enough to survive in space. 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Teledoc is committed 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:32.680 to facilitating great therapeutic matches, so they make it easy 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:37.120 to change counselors if needed. For free teledoc therapy is 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:41.319 available through most insurance or employers. Download the app or 0:12:41.440 --> 0:12:45.679 visit teledoc dot com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:57.880 get started. That's teladoc dot com slash Unexplained podcast. In 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:01.920 the winter of nineteen fifty, doctor Yazdovski was informed by 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:06.160 Sergei Korolev that the first biological launches would take place 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:10.360 the following summer. The time had come to select the 0:13:10.480 --> 0:13:14.280 dogs for it, with a launch date of twenty second 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:19.520 July nineteen fifty one confirmed. Two dogs named Seagan and 0:13:19.640 --> 0:13:23.680 Debt Sick emerged as leading candidates to withstand the rigors 0:13:23.720 --> 0:13:28.720 of the flight. By this point, the US had conducted 0:13:28.840 --> 0:13:33.439 five monkey lead biological space test flights, and all of 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.680 them had resulted in the death of the test subject, 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.120 and so it was in the early hours of July 0:13:41.280 --> 0:13:46.520 twenty second at the kapustin Ya rocket launch site, located 0:13:46.760 --> 0:13:50.559 seventy five miles to the east of Stalingrad, that Seagan 0:13:50.679 --> 0:13:55.319 and Detzik were placed in their oxygenated flight capsule, and, 0:13:55.520 --> 0:13:58.679 after receiving a pat on the head by doctor Yazdovsky, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.959 were sealed in and loaded into the nose of the 0:14:02.080 --> 0:14:07.959 Soviet Arwan rocket. A number of scientists, party member dignitaries, 0:14:08.200 --> 0:14:12.520 and military personnel gathered to watch as the rocket took off, 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.640 all waiting with bated breath to observe the fate of 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:24.080 the two dogs. Moments later, a small tubular object was 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.480 spotted high up in the sky, tumbling through the air 0:14:27.640 --> 0:14:32.680 at speed, with no sign of a parachute. The crowd 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.240 gasped in horror as the object crashed into the ground 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:42.960 in a sudden blaze of light. But then something else appeared, 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:48.840 this time conical in shape, falling through the sky before 0:14:48.920 --> 0:14:53.040 being suddenly slowed down by a vast parachute ballooning open 0:14:53.280 --> 0:14:59.040 from behind it. Yazdovsky raced the nearest jeep and sped 0:14:59.120 --> 0:15:01.640 off in the direct of the cone that had now 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:06.720 landed a few miles away, bursting open the hatch. Moments later, 0:15:07.280 --> 0:15:11.040 he found the two dogs a little shaken but otherwise unharmed, 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.160 staring up at him with their tongues wagging and panting hard. 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.960 Seagan and Debt Sick had become the first animals of 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:26.360 their kind ever to survive a rocket flight. Sadly, however, 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:30.040 Debt six's participation in the space program would be short 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:33.400 lived when, on her second flight the following week, in 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:38.400 tandem with another dog named Lisa, their capsule parachute didn't deploy. 0:15:40.600 --> 0:15:44.920 On hearing the news, Anna Tolly Blagmrovov, another leading Soviet 0:15:45.000 --> 0:15:48.920 space scientist of the time, released Seagan from the program 0:15:49.480 --> 0:15:54.240 and adopted her as his pet. Over the next two months, 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.640 a total of nine dogs flew on six flights, but 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:02.000 only five of them would survive the speriments. But over 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.920 the next few years, focus again turned toward the manufacture 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:10.000 of evermore powerful rockets, and though the Space doc program 0:16:10.240 --> 0:16:14.080 continued to provide useful information, there were no plans to 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:17.800 do anything more sophisticated than what had previously been achieved. 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.760 All that changed, however, when on the fourth of October 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:27.080 nineteen fifty seven, the Soviet Union stunned the world by 0:16:27.120 --> 0:16:32.840 announcing the successful launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:39.280 Nikita Krushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party, was 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:43.040 so flattered by the global response to the achievement that 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:46.920 he suggested the party capitalize on the attention by launching 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:50.359 a second satellite on the anniversary of the Great October 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:54.200 Socialist Revolution that was due to take place just over 0:16:54.320 --> 0:17:00.320 a month later on November seventh. Sir Guy Karlov, equally 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.160 caught up in the excitement of it all, had a 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:06.800 better idea. Why not launch a dog with it to 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.120 two and become the first nation to put a living 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:22.399 creature into orbit. With the stakes now significantly higher, training 0:17:22.440 --> 0:17:27.040 at the kennel was intensified accordingly. Where before the dogs 0:17:27.080 --> 0:17:29.840 were assessed on their ability to withstand four hours in 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:34.280 a confined space, now they had to endure twenty days. 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:39.840 Only ten dogs successfully passed the test, which were then 0:17:39.880 --> 0:17:44.520 whittled down to six before finally one candidate emerged above 0:17:44.600 --> 0:17:51.600 all others, a small white mongrel named Albina. However, since 0:17:51.640 --> 0:17:54.960 Albina had already flown two missions and had just given 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.359 birth to a litter of puppies, the team decided that 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.800 she had already done enough and so the next best 0:18:01.880 --> 0:18:06.480 candidate was chosen, a two year old husky mix weighing 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.320 no more than thirteen pounds with a distinctive white line 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:14.240 running down the middle of her black furred face, called 0:18:14.440 --> 0:18:20.920 Kudriavka or little curly. Shortly after her selection, however, the 0:18:21.080 --> 0:18:24.440 team became fond of her distinctive bark and so she 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:29.240 was given the name Lycha instead, which translates loosely to 0:18:29.440 --> 0:18:34.200 barker in Russian. With less than two weeks to go 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:39.680 to the launch, doctor Yazdovski's team set about Preparinglya's body 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:44.000 for the momentous flight. To be able to record her 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:47.680 blood pressure, her carrottid artery was pulled from out of 0:18:47.720 --> 0:18:50.720 the neck and her skin cut in such a way 0:18:50.920 --> 0:18:53.480 as to allow the artery to remain on the outside 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:57.359 of her body. It would then be compressed periodically by 0:18:57.400 --> 0:19:02.520 an inflated rubber ball in order to take measurement. Silver 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:06.160 electrodes one fifth of an inch in diameter were then 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:10.240 inserted just beneath her skin to monitor her heart, with 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.400 the connecting wires also under the skin, being threaded along 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:17.919 her back and emerging on the outside of both sides 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:23.520 of her spine. By twenty seventh of October, news of 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.720 Lica's impending mission was beginning to filter around the world. 0:19:28.080 --> 0:19:32.080 Later that afternoon, Lyka captured the hearts of the nation 0:19:32.760 --> 0:19:35.400 when she was heard barking in response to questions from 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:39.560 a reporter from Radio Moscow, but few were aware of 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.359 the implications of the mission, for this was not a 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:48.280 two way trip. Realizing she had only dazed to live, 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.280 doctor Yazdovski took like a home to visit his family, 0:19:52.920 --> 0:19:55.520 where she played with his children for a number of hours. 0:19:57.240 --> 0:20:00.159 The following day, she was placed on a flight to 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.760 the bacon Or Cosmodrome, a remote spaceport located in the 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:10.160 South Kazakhstan desert. At ten a m on the morning 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.720 of October thirty. First, Lyca was taken for a walk, 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:18.040 then afterwards had her wounds, still raw from the insertion 0:20:18.119 --> 0:20:23.480 of the electrodes coated in iodine. Twelve censes in total 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:27.359 were applied to her body and her sanitation device fitted 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:32.680 before being strapped into her vest and harness. At two 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:36.520 p m. Food was placed in the feeding device, designed 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.399 to release only one load to last as long as 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:44.080 would be required, after which Lyca was placed into the 0:20:44.160 --> 0:20:49.520 rocket capsule in between two large cushions. Calmly, she lay 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.320 down on her front paws and watched the people in 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:55.359 white coats as they lowered the heat shield into place 0:20:55.600 --> 0:21:01.080 above her. Finally, they sealed up the capsule, leaving its 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:05.360 one porthole window located just above her head. The capsule 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.320 was then in turn fixed into place at the very 0:21:08.400 --> 0:21:11.600 top of an R seven rocket and left for three 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:16.320 days while Lyca's vital signs were monitored. For the next 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:19.840 seventy two hours, she looked up with the same quizzical 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:24.000 expression whenever a white coated human peered in through the 0:21:24.080 --> 0:21:30.280 porthole window, until finally the moment had arrived. At five 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:35.199 thirty am Moscow time on Sunday third of November nineteen 0:21:35.280 --> 0:21:40.760 fifty seven, Lyca, along with a Sputnik two satellite, was 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:52.240 blasted into space. Human beings start to experience severe pain 0:21:52.680 --> 0:21:56.880 and hearing loss. At one hundred and forty descerbels inside 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.800 her capsule, Lyca would have endured some and closer to 0:22:00.920 --> 0:22:05.240 two hundred decibels. This, coupled with the stress of enduring 0:22:05.359 --> 0:22:08.600 five times the force of gravity, sent her heart rate 0:22:08.720 --> 0:22:12.720 racing to two hundred and sixty bpm, three times the norm, 0:22:13.560 --> 0:22:17.280 and her breathing also quickened to four times the usual amount. 0:22:18.880 --> 0:22:22.760 Eight minutes later, having in that time traveled from nought 0:22:23.000 --> 0:22:25.520 to seventeen and a half a thousand miles per hour, 0:22:26.920 --> 0:22:31.720 Lyca reached the Carman line only a few minutes after that. 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:34.960 Having reached the orbiting height of one hundred and forty 0:22:35.040 --> 0:22:39.560 miles above the Earth, the nose cone detached and the 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:44.800 first telemetry signals were received at mission control. Lyca was 0:22:44.880 --> 0:22:49.200 alive and floating in space, the first living creature of 0:22:49.320 --> 0:22:54.959 Earth in orbit. The capsule would eventually settle, traveling at 0:22:55.000 --> 0:22:57.760 a speed of five miles per second as it made 0:22:57.800 --> 0:23:00.720 its first complete orbit of the globe in roughly one 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:05.280 hundred and three minutes. However, with the capsule only traveling 0:23:05.320 --> 0:23:09.359 across Soviet airspace for fifteen minutes of that circuit, they 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.560 had only that window of time to access data, and 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:16.000 unbeknownst to the rest of the world, it had become 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:20.640 quickly apparent that something inside the capsule was drastically wrong. 0:23:22.800 --> 0:23:27.359 Later that day, on November third, putting aside any diplomatic differences, 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:30.840 the front page of The New York Times triumphantly hailed 0:23:31.600 --> 0:23:37.080 Soviet fire's new satellite carrying dog. Articles released the following 0:23:37.160 --> 0:23:39.879 day even went as far as to suggest that Lycha 0:23:39.960 --> 0:23:43.199 could even be recovered from the flight and brought safely 0:23:43.440 --> 0:23:47.240 back to Worth, and articles from as late as the 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.720 seventh of November indicated that doctor Yazdovsky's team were still 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:56.399 receiving signs of life from the dog, but soon with 0:23:56.600 --> 0:23:59.720 journalists noting that Lyca was no longer being mentioned in 0:23:59.760 --> 0:24:03.480 a fish or communications, the sad truth was beginning to 0:24:03.560 --> 0:24:07.280 dawn that she had in fact been dead for four days, 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:12.080 suffocated by a defect in the capsule that allowed the 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:24.600 temperature inside to soar above a hundred degrees fahrenheit. Just 0:24:24.840 --> 0:24:30.080 after midnight on April fourteenth, nineteen fifty eight, a series 0:24:30.119 --> 0:24:33.200 of UFO sightings were reported along the East coast of 0:24:33.240 --> 0:24:37.680 the United States. As was documented by Paul Dixon in 0:24:37.800 --> 0:24:41.639 Sputnik The Shock of the Century, a bluish white object 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:45.000 had been seen traveling across the sky at lightning speed, 0:24:45.840 --> 0:24:50.440 before suddenly turning red and separating into several smaller objects. 0:24:52.080 --> 0:24:55.040 What had in fact been witnessed was the reentry into 0:24:55.080 --> 0:24:58.520 the Earth's atmosphere of the capsule carrying the Sputnik to 0:24:58.720 --> 0:25:04.040 satellite the dead body of Lyca before its eventual disintegration. 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:10.600 Three years later, on the twelfth of April nineteen sixty one, 0:25:11.640 --> 0:25:15.800 Yuri Gagarin became the second animal to orbit the Earth. 0:25:18.640 --> 0:25:22.439 Scientist Oleg Gatzenko, who had worked on the like A launch, 0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:26.720 would later muse that the more time passed, the more 0:25:26.760 --> 0:25:29.680 he was sorry about her death, and that we didn't 0:25:29.720 --> 0:25:33.800 learn enough from the mission to justify it. And yet 0:25:33.880 --> 0:25:38.840 within this statement lie deeper, complex and often troubling questions 0:25:39.320 --> 0:25:44.119 about these types of experiments. Some will argue that no 0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:48.400 animal should ever be sacrificed or forced to endure such suffering, 0:25:49.440 --> 0:25:54.159 that only consenting human volunteers or synthetic means should be 0:25:54.320 --> 0:25:59.119 used to collect the necessary information. Others might argue, however, 0:25:59.560 --> 0:26:02.800 that we are to go into space if we desire that, 0:26:03.400 --> 0:26:05.680 if we want to know more about what is out there, 0:26:07.040 --> 0:26:10.639 or even if one day humanity might even need to 0:26:10.880 --> 0:26:14.640 escape planet Earth. That the suffering brought on these animals 0:26:15.080 --> 0:26:19.359 was a terrible but necessary price to pay. And this 0:26:19.640 --> 0:26:23.320 is a complicated thing to know that that is the price, 0:26:23.880 --> 0:26:27.680 but to do it anyway is as equally human as 0:26:27.720 --> 0:26:34.280 to reject it. Entirely. In any case, regardless of what 0:26:34.440 --> 0:26:37.639 you believe, there is perhaps one thing that we can 0:26:37.720 --> 0:26:42.600 all agree on that whatever benefit comes of our experiments 0:26:42.640 --> 0:26:46.040 in space, let it be known that we will owe 0:26:46.080 --> 0:26:51.200 it not only to the likes of Gagerin, Tereshkova and Armstrong, 0:26:52.320 --> 0:26:57.280 but also to Albert Seagan and Debt Sick, and of 0:26:57.359 --> 0:27:07.000 course to Lia. If you enjoy listening to Unexplained and 0:27:07.119 --> 0:27:09.600 would like to help supporters, you can now go to 0:27:09.760 --> 0:27:15.240 Unexplained podcast dot com Forward Slash Support. All donations, no 0:27:15.359 --> 0:27:22.840 matter how large or small, are massively appreciated. 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