The next song is about Laika, who was a stray dog used in an experimental Soviet spacecraft in 1957. Much of this speech is drawn from the Wikipedia article on Laika.
She weighed around 11-13 lb. The size of a lap dog. But she wasn’t a lap dog when they found her; she was living on the streets of Moscow. The scientists deliberately used strays, because “they assumed that such animals had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold and hunger.”
“Soviet personnel gave her nicknames, among them Kudryavka (Russian for Little Curly), Zhuchka (Little Bug), and Limonchik (Little Lemon).” The technicians renamed her Laika, or “barker”, for her loud barking.
Before the launch one of the mission scientists took Laika home to play with his children. In a book chronicling the story of Soviet space medicine, Vladimir Yazdovsky wrote, “Laika was quiet and charming … I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live.”
Although the scientists knew she wouldn’t live long– or maybe in part because they knew that– they cared about Laika. Even if you believe Laika’s death was 100% necessary and justified, that it had to happen for the sake of science, we can still say that it was… sad.
As it was said in Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by an orphan on one side of a war talking to one from the other side: “We can’t expect to agree on everything right away, but if we start out by saying that every life is precious, that it’s sad when anyone dies, then I know we’ll meet someday. That’s what I want you to say. Not who was right. Not who was wrong. Just that it was sad when your mother died, and sad when my mother died… every life is precious, can we agree on that and let the rest go by for now, is it enough if we just agree on that?”
Even when we know a utilitarian tradeoff is right in one case, we have to remember what’s on both sides of the calculation. The cost is not zero just because the net result is positive.
On November 3, 1957, Laika was launched into low orbit on Sputnik 2. “As the technology to de-orbit had not yet been developed, Laika’s survival was never expected. She died of overheating hours into the flight.”
“The Soviet scientists had planned to euthanise Laika with a serving of poisoned food.” But she did not live long enough to eat it.
The experiment, which monitored Laika’s vital signs, aimed to prove that a living organism could survive being launched into orbit and continue to function under conditions of weakened gravity and increased radiation, providing scientists with some of the first data on the biological effects of spaceflight.
They got the data. So in a sense, this experiment was not “failed.” They always knew Laika would die.
But the knowledge gained from it had a cost.
This song is about that cost.
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