Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

238 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe
celebrity and complex historical memory surrounding “Laika,” the mixedbreed
dog that became the frst living being to orbit earth in November 1957,
is certainly one of the most intriguing examples. Instantly famous as evidence
that the Soviets led the race to conquer space, Laika joined a small group of
animals who are celebrities in their own right. But while the fame of other
creatures in this cohort often derives from humans’ shared assessment of their
symbolic importance—as an emblem of grit and courage in the case of a depression-era
racehorse such as Seabiscuit or as an exotic token of national rivalry in
the case of p. t. Barnum’s giant pachyderm, Jumbo, (purchased in 1882 from
the London zoo for a then-record sum of $10,000), 5 Laika’s celebrity was more
controversial at the outset and remains more complicated 50 years after the
fight of Sputnik II. By examining the ongoing resonance of the frst space dog
in global popular culture, this essay shows how a defning episode of the early
Space age has been remembered even as its specifc historical circumstances
have been efaced. this contradictory legacy has much to say about the shifting,
mutable nature of social frames of memory (and, by extension, forgetting), and
about the complex ways that humans engage, imagine, and remember the life
and death of an individual dog.
Speculation about Laika’s fate and the signifcance of her voyage served
as the crux of the initial controversy. as Susan Buck-Morss and David Caute
have recently noted, the ferceness of the cultural Cold War derived, somewhat
ironically, from the superpowers’ shared enlightenment heritage and the fact
that both sides largely agreed on cultural values, including a faith in progress, a
veneration of science and technology, and a determination to harness nature to
human ends. the space race, inaugurated a short month before Laika’s voyage
with the launch of the frst artifcial satellite, tapped into all of these concerns
while also serving as a proxy for armed confict. Caute’s bemused assertion that
“a Soviet dog orbiting in space caused all american dogs to howl” highlights
the international drama precipitated by Laika’s fight. as ordinary citizens
scanned the night sky and amateur radio operators tracked the satellite’s radio
signal, world headlines confrmed the Soviets’ latest victory in the space race—a
competition of scientifc, engineering, and industrial might that was both more
threatening and more fascinating than conventional warfare. 6
Sending a dog into orbit further undermined Western confdence already
shaken by the launch of Sputnik I. at the same time, this bizarre, public form of
animal experimentation outraged animal welfare groups. For although Laika’s
5. Laura hillenbrand, Seabiscuit an American Legend (New York, NY: random house, 2001); harriet
ritvo, The Animal Estate.The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, Ma:
harvard University press, 1987), pp. 220, 232-233.
6. David Caute, The Dancer Defects.The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford,
UK: Oxford University press, 2003), pp. 4, 38-39; Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe.
The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 2002).