Catching up with the rumors, the Russians officially declared Laika dead (of asphyxiation) last week and declared that they never had any intention of bringing her back alive. Said Physiologist Aleksei Pokrovsky, trainer of space dogs: "Since the problem, of recovery has not yet been solved, it would have been useless to add to the satellite's weight by burdening it with such apparatus."
By "recovery problem" the Russians did not mean the problem of bringing the warhead of a long-range missile down through the atmosphere. To recover a living animal that has been riding in a satellite is in some ways harder,...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
