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| Soyuz crew capsule returns to Earth in October 2021. |
This morning, a Soyuz spacecraft carrying an American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts landed in Kazakhstan.
The American -- astronaut Mark Vande Hei, who now holds the US record of 355 days in space -- was promptly whisked off to Houston.
The space race was started during the Cold War, with the ability to put a man on the moon serving as a cover story for building rockets and targeting systems capable of putting an atomic bomb in downtown Moscow or New York City.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it looked like the Cold War was over and that some level of comity might arise between the US and Russia.
The International Space Station -- a joint production of the two countries, along with Japan, Europe, and Canada -- was supposed to be physical and visible evidence of a thawing relationship.
And it was... right up to the day the Russians invaded Ukraine and Dmitry Rogozin, the head of the Russian space agency, began to threaten America's astronaut in orbit.
Now with NASA building its own massive Artemis rocket to re-visit the moon, and Space X sending both satellites and humans into orbit on for-profit private rockets, the future of the Russian space program is very much in jeopardy.
Does anyone really believe Russia will pull their troops out of Ukraine, return Crimea and the Donbas to Ukraine, and pay billions of dollars in war reparations?
Does anyone think the international sanctions will end if it does not?
And even if sanctions are partially lifted some time in the future, does anyone think Europe will ever trust Russia to supply oil, natural gas, and coal in the future, or that airplane makers and airline owners will trust Russia after having their assets summarily seized?
And where will Russia get the money?
The oligarchs are fleeing and taking their assets with them, the educated are queuing up at airports and rail stations causing a massive "brain drain," and the Russian military is (apparently) a basket case of broken machines, rotten tires, rusty ships, and expired meals ready to eat.
Which is not to say that there was ever a time when things were all "sweetness and light" in the Russian space program.
In fact, things were pretty grim, right from the beginning, as the Russians tried to beat the US into space.
Job One, was to put a dog in orbit.
Laika in training.
Beginning in the early 1950s, small female stray dogs were gathered from the streets of Moscow and taken to a nearby Russian research center for experiments in suborbital space flight. Dogs were chosen for these experiments because they were cheap and scientists felt they would be able to endure long periods of inactivity better than most other animals.
Females were chosen because they did not have to stand and lift a leg to urinate. The female dogs used in the "space race" experiments were trained to stay still for long periods of time (they spent 15-20 days at a time in small boxes) and wear such pieces of clothing as a pressurized suit and helmet.
From 1951 through 1952, nine unnamed dogs successfully flew suborbitally in R-1 series rockets. Three of these dogs flew two missions each.
A dog named "Laika" was launched into space in Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. Laika, whose real name was Kudryavka (Little Curly), is often described as a "huskie-mix" but pictures show a small dog that looks very much like a fox terrier. The fact that Laika weighed only 13 pounds supports a fox terrier taxonomy -- even the smallest of huskies would weight much more. American newspapers of the time called her "Muttnik".
Laika was the first living creature ever to be launched into earth orbit, and Laika was the only animal Russian scientists knowingly sent into space to die. At the time there was no recovery method for true orbital flights.
At the World Space Congress in Houston in November of 2003, Dimitri Malashenkov of the Institute for Biological problems in Moscow finally revealed what happened to Laika. According to Malashenkov, medical sensors recorded that immediately after the launch, Laika's capsule reached speeds of nearly 18,000 miles per hour. As the pressure in the capsule increased, Laika's pulse rate increased to three times its normal level, presumably due to overheating, fear and stress. Five to seven hours into the flight, no further life signs were received from the dog.
Sputnik 2 fell back to earth on April 14, 1958 -- four and a half months after leaving earth -- and burned up on re-entry.
In 1998, 79-year-old Oleg Gazenko, one of the lead scientists on the Soviet animals-in-space program, expressed his deep regrets during a Moscow news conference: "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it.... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."
Laika in training.
Females were chosen because they did not have to stand and lift a leg to urinate. The female dogs used in the "space race" experiments were trained to stay still for long periods of time (they spent 15-20 days at a time in small boxes) and wear such pieces of clothing as a pressurized suit and helmet.
From 1951 through 1952, nine unnamed dogs successfully flew suborbitally in R-1 series rockets. Three of these dogs flew two missions each.
A dog named "Laika" was launched into space in Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957. Laika, whose real name was Kudryavka (Little Curly), is often described as a "huskie-mix" but pictures show a small dog that looks very much like a fox terrier. The fact that Laika weighed only 13 pounds supports a fox terrier taxonomy -- even the smallest of huskies would weight much more. American newspapers of the time called her "Muttnik".
Laika was the first living creature ever to be launched into earth orbit, and Laika was the only animal Russian scientists knowingly sent into space to die. At the time there was no recovery method for true orbital flights.
At the World Space Congress in Houston in November of 2003, Dimitri Malashenkov of the Institute for Biological problems in Moscow finally revealed what happened to Laika. According to Malashenkov, medical sensors recorded that immediately after the launch, Laika's capsule reached speeds of nearly 18,000 miles per hour. As the pressure in the capsule increased, Laika's pulse rate increased to three times its normal level, presumably due to overheating, fear and stress. Five to seven hours into the flight, no further life signs were received from the dog.
Sputnik 2 fell back to earth on April 14, 1958 -- four and a half months after leaving earth -- and burned up on re-entry.
In 1998, 79-year-old Oleg Gazenko, one of the lead scientists on the Soviet animals-in-space program, expressed his deep regrets during a Moscow news conference: "The more time passes, the more I'm sorry about it. We shouldn't have done it.... We did not learn enough from this mission to justify the death of the dog."
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