DBWI: Laika never land in the US

Dolan

Banned
Of course, I am talking about The Dog Laika, the only dog who has lived as Presidential Pet of the White House and Premier Pet of the Kremlin within her lifetime, the first living being who successfully completed orbits around earth and land back safely. So much that when she died in 1970, she was buried with full military honors of the Soviet Union which also attended by representatives of the US Government.

The official lines from both the Soviet Union and the US is that her mission was always intended as a 7 day survival mission with orbital calculation error caused the orbit to decay during the 6th day and forced Sputnik 2 to land at the Waters of Florida, when US Coast Guard ship spotted the floating capsule and managed to safely extract the first Dog in orbit.

With how Sputnik 2 land in American hands in late 1957, there are tensions about retrievability of said assets of the Soviet Union, and Laika ends up being the center of the dispute. Initially being quarantined in a NASA Facility, after tests result coming out announcing she is a perfectly healthy dog, the Americans joked about how Laika is actually defecting to the US, and this ends up resulting in Soviet Media campaign to retrieve Laika back home in Russia.

Things then escalated in a comical way, after being re-homed in the Florida Governor's Residence, the Soviets told the Americans that Laika would live in Kremlin, and as the response, from the start of 1959, Eisenhower end up adopting Laika as Presidential pet for her to live at the White House, and she ends up staying there until 1962, in which she was sent back to Moscow as part of the deal that peacefully ends the Cuban Missile Crisis, where she ends up spending the rest of her time as the official pet of Kremlin until her death in 1970.

The very fact that a mongrel dog was being the point of contention between US and USSR did amuse later generations to no end, especially when it often joked that Cuban Missile Crisis actually happened because the Soviet Union wanted their dog back.

Now, imagine another timeline where Laika end up either successfully land in the Soviet Union or worse, died in orbit, or even worse, the mission setup was a suicide mission from the start and she was not expected to come back alive. What will happen to the Space Race the hen first successful retrieval of animals from space happened later?
 
The Soviets wouldn't have sent cosmonauts until they developed a safe means of bringing other mammals back. Stalin wouldn't have cared about cosmonauts dying, but Kruschchev saw them as valuable national assets.

The incident led to the 1963 international treaty where all spacecraft and travelers were to be immediately repatriated. We were able to glean some information from the spacecraft which helped us land on the moon in 1968. Might have been 1970 otherwise.
 

Dolan

Banned
The Soviets wouldn't have sent cosmonauts until they developed a safe means of bringing other mammals back. Stalin wouldn't have cared about cosmonauts dying, but Kruschchev saw them as valuable national assets.

The incident led to the 1963 international treaty where all spacecraft and travelers were to be immediately repatriated. We were able to glean some information from the spacecraft which helped us land on the moon in 1968. Might have been 1970 otherwise.

Yes, Sputnik 2 and Laika landing in US custody has the ironic effect of Soviets pushing the schedule of first human in space earlier than planned (because at least a human could formally apply for diplomatic immunity), resulting in the much publicized death of Gherman Titov and the Soviets subsequently blamed the US for not returning Sputnik 2 and thus actively sabotaging Soviet Space Program, resulting in the partial return of Sputnik 2 Assets. The dispute finally end with the return of Laika, and the subsequent international space traveler repatriation treaty.

Of course, without Laika, there will be no Joint Moon-base program between US and USSR in the 1980s, the Laika Moon-base has been the symbol of peace between US and USSR since afterward.
 
One of the bone (pun intended) of contention was the two litter of pups that Laika had.
There were disputes about who the puppies belong to, the Florida litter which there was six pups were given to major donors of the Governor and the D.C. pups two were given to the Soviet Ambassador as a good faith measure, one was kept by the Kennedy family and two were given to ordinary citizens, there is a special registry kept by the American Kennel Club to track the descendants of Laika even thru they are considered to be mixed breeds, they are considered to be valuable by many people as "SpacePups" and there has been fraudulent puppies sold as being descended from Laika.
 
Personally, I think we should keep the dog and its pups - though I'm guessing at this point, it's grandpups and whatnot.

Thing is, the Soviets clearly didn't want their dog back - or didn't expect her to last long in space. Some of the stuff in there indicated they were either waiting to see how long the dog would live in space, and had laced some of her kibble with poison. Hell, some records at NASA show the guys were surprised the dog was even alive; the insulation might as well have been cheap cardboard and the whole thing was held together with duct tape and wishful thinking.

Then again, I suppose we haven't been that nice to our space chimps, either. Though I heard rumors of one monkey landing in Russia and the Soviets adopting him in response to Laika's "abduction".
 
I think it's a little funny to see the Laika terrier finally recognized by the American Kennel Club - as godawful as the AKC is, they caved to public pressure since the dogs descended from Laika are probably the most famous dogs this side of the Pembroke Welsh Corgis descended from Queen Elizabeth II's little herd.

Still not sure why they classified them as terriers though, I always thought Laika was part Samoyed.
 

Dolan

Banned
One of the bone (pun intended) of contention was the two litter of pups that Laika had.
There were disputes about who the puppies belong to, the Florida litter which there was six pups were given to major donors of the Governor and the D.C. pups two were given to the Soviet Ambassador as a good faith measure, one was kept by the Kennedy family and two were given to ordinary citizens, there is a special registry kept by the American Kennel Club to track the descendants of Laika even thru they are considered to be mixed breeds, they are considered to be valuable by many people as "SpacePups" and there has been fraudulent puppies sold as being descended from Laika.
There will be less problems of street dogs in North America and Soviet Union, because everyone there now outright ridiculed anyone who tried to propose any kind of Spay and Neuter program.

Well, considering that NASA did actually planned to neuter the dog as soon as she was retrieved, in fear that she has mutations that caused her puppies to become monsters, this ridiculous decision was vetoed by another part of NASA (that run a fertility test by impregnating her with NASA's own trained dog, resulting in the Florida litter). She wasn't supposed to bred again at the White House (because NASA did closely monitor her health), but Charlie, President Kennedy's terrier, end up having his way with her.

And after the craze of Laika Terriers, the success chance of any large scale spay and neuter program in US and Soviet Union is essentially nill. Everyone keep ridiculing those who advocates for making street and or pet dogs infertile would be deemed "afraid of Laika's monster pups".
 
There's still the problem of her DNA. No one has ever allowed the few samples to be tested for confirmation or comparison to their USSR counterparts. The rumors of having found Laika dead in the water from apparent overheating and being replaced with a look-a-like from a Daytona shelter might also explain why she looked so good in the late 60s for being almost 15 years old. The supposed look-a-like, a 9 month old mutt named Lana, mysteriously disappeared the same evening Laika was 'found'.
 

Dolan

Banned
The rumors of having found Laika dead in the water from apparent overheating and being replaced with a look-a-like from a Daytona shelter might also explain why she looked so good in the late 60s for being almost 15 years old.
US government, or anyone in the US has zero incentive to do that though, and the very fact that Laika end up back in USSR meant they will know if the US sent them different dog.

Yes, Laika looked good because she was basically dressed and prepared by professional dog dressers for US and later USSR public media consumption, declassified files later on did reveal that Laika did suffered from cancer that was potentially caused by her passing through the Van Allen radiation belt, and she was not euthanized because both NASA and Soviet Space Study actually shared their data about the space radiation cancer metathesis, and their attempt to supress that in Laika, and that was actually linked to her first fertility and pregnancy test (that happened when US started to train female astronauts, mind you).

Ironically, her more famous litter is the later, unplanned one, the Charlie litter, because the father is none other than Charlie the Terrier, President John F Kennedy's personal pet. They end up being the standard of Laika Terrier breed.

Yes, there are European animal rights activists who argues that Laika's mission and subsequent testings behind all the publicity stunts are animal abuse, but for many others, it was a necessary steps for humanity to explore the cosmos.
 
Still not sure why they classified them as terriers though, I always thought Laika was part Samoyed.

IIRC, it's because her terrier ancestry was the only part that could be confirmed at the time, and because the sire of her second litter (which became the standard of the breed) was a terrier.
 
Not only were Soviet pissed off that Laika landed in US Territory but that Military and NASA got soviet landing capsule as well,
What give pretty inside view of Soviet Space Technology...

...or better say baffled looks on US engineers faces, as they see the Soviet "simplistic" Hardware approach.
 
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After the assassination of JFK the puppy of Laika and Charlie was given to breeder of Charlie who was then able to convince the two other American owners of the Charlie pups to carefully breed them under supervision to the same terrier breed as Charlie, it was from those two males and one female that we now have the Laika Terrier that was recognized by the AKC in the mid nineties.
The Florida litter was sired from a mixed breed dog from a shelter and while the offspring of that litter is still tracked by the AKC, it is not recognized as a separate breed because the parentage of the sire can not be traced unlike the Charlie breed.
 

Dolan

Banned
The Florida litter was sired from a mixed breed dog from a shelter and while the offspring of that litter is still tracked by the AKC, it is not recognized as a separate breed because the parentage of the sire can not be traced unlike the Charlie breed.
Yeah, that was obviously the result of having President Kennedy's pet as the father of that litter.

It was Laika and Charlie's son, Artyom who end up being the first dog on the Moon. Carried aboard the Luna 17 together with Veteran Cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Vladimir Komarov, they land on the moon in November 1970, being the first Soviet Manned Moon Landing.

Of course, that mission end up becoming infamous for the "first dog poo left on the moon" after the Cosmonauts accidentally left Artyom's waste collection bag near the Lunokhod module. It caused quite an embarrassment, so much that the third Soviet manned landing on the Moon was specifically tasked to retrieve the dog poo back to earth. Let's be fair though, that dog poo sits on the Moon for 4 years, there must be some scientific data gleaned after re-opening that poo bag back on Earth, there must be reasons why Soviet Union expressly forbid US Astronauts to pick that.
 
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