On November 3, 1957, the dog Laika was sent into space on a journey of no return.
Laika was a stray dog and she was the first living being in an Earth orbit as well. Today, she is remembered on the list of the fallen Soviet comonauts in the Star City, at the Northeast of Moscow. We now know that she died few hours after the launch due to a failure of the capsule's thermal insulator.
Although I already knew about Laika and her travel to the space, I did not know the whole sad story of this little dog. I recently learned about what happened and it impressed me very much. In this post, I share a poem of that time and a poem that I wrote to her.
In 1957, people of that time thought that Laika would return from space because of the Soviet propaganda and it was not until a few years ago that the world would know what really happened.
The Italian
poet Clelia Conterno Guglielminetti, who wrote poetry in Esperanto, dedicated a
poem to her that illustrates what was thought of Laika at that time.
To Laika
Laika, dog with lively eyes,
you travel
through the stars without knowing it:
what you hope
will remain a secret ...
Laika, naive,
simple and innocent,
afraid of
loneliness.
My little one
looks like you when he sleeps
and he walks
through the stars without knowing it,
what he sees
will remain a secret.
In solitude,
my little one
live the
intimate drama of his dream,
floating in
the infinity,
fragile and
defenseless creature.
And when he
comes back
like you,
Laika, if you come back,
he will keep
the secrets of the stars
in his black
pupils.
And in his
ears,
pink snail
shells,
the eternal
music of the space,
But he can't
tell me
He knows
everything and he knows nothing,
like you, Laika.
(Translation
of the poem in Portuguese, published in the Revista Literaria em Traducao 12)
In 2002, it was revealed that Laika died from overheating a few hours after the launch of Sputnik 2 and not from euthanasia when she had been in orbit for 6 days, as it was reported at that time.
The dog was trained in the Soviet Union Space Dog Program together with Albina and Mushka (little fly). She was the best one to passed the tests and that is the reason to be selected to travel in Sputnik 2 that was going to be launched to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. However, everyone in the program knew that it was going to be a one-way trip.
Her story impressed
very much and for this reason, I composed this poem for her, thinking of other
stray dogs as well.
Laika
We won't know, just as we don't know now, what dogs feel.
What does mean
living for 3 years wandering in the street with cold?
How does it
feel to search and fight for food every day?
How does it
feel to find a human looking at you from afar
and offering
you food, showing you affection and giving you a home?
What is to be
loved and use electrodes in experiments?
What is to eat
a mixture with hungry that comes from your birth?
How blessed were
those days, although the time was short,
When you were
with other friends: Albina and Mushka,
but I wonder
if you played like the dogs play.
They say that
you barked a lot, pretty Curly dog, Little Lemon and Bug,
as they named
you, perhaps as a game or due to affection?
What did you
feel when you were caged and days passed?
You behaved well;
we have no doubt, perhaps wanting to give them joy?
What did you
imagine in your thoughts when one day,
they took you
and without understanding it they operated you later?
Then they put
you in a metallic suit – the Sputnik capsule -, they said,
and then, that
exoskeleton became your body.
What did you
feel when they left you? Where did those living eyes go?
What were you
looking out of the window? Clouds? The sun? The space? The glow?
Your little
heart beat even faster. What did you think cute? Did you understand something?
You flew miles
away from the atmosphere; fid you wait for a human being?
From that sad
moment of science, what we can say about those facts?
Were you a martyr
of the progress? Was it a murder? A sad life and a tragic destiny?
I hope your
name moves hearts; I hope those sad and old memories
make us look
at our space around where many other dogs live.
looking at the clouds, the sun and the space, waiting patiently for
somebody…
Do we drop
them or pick them up? Do we ignore them or take care of them?
Laika was selected because, as a stray dog, she was seen like a survivor and with her in the experiment, the Soviet program wanted to measure the response of a living being in the space. Scientists preferred females because of their anatomy when urinating.
In the Soviet space program, in addition to Laika, Pchyolka (little bee) and Mushka (little fly) died when on December 1, 1960, Sputnik 6 was intentionally destroyed because its trajectory of re-entry into the atmosphere got out of control. The Soviets take this decision in order to avoid any inspection of the capsule by countries other than the USSR.
In the space race, many animals participated in tests and launches. Among them, there were dogs, chimpanzees, mice, and living things like insects and plants. The USSR and the United States wanted to win each other regardless of the consequences.
Sadly, other trade and political wars are taking place nowadays that have negative repercussions on other living beings and on the environment.
I wonder if
what humanity is looking for justifies the damage done to other living beings
... Sincerely, I do not think so.
(You can read the original post here and translate it to your language)
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