Laika began her life as a stray dog on the streets of Moscow and died in 1957 aboard the Soviet satellite Sputnik II. Initially the USSR reported that Laika, the first animal to orbit the earth, had survived in space for seven days, providing valuable data that would make future manned space flight possible. People believed that Laika died a painless death as her oxygen ran out. Only in recent decades has the real story become public: Laika died after only a few hours in orbit when her capsule overheated. Join Texas Tech professor and author of Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog, Kurt Caswell in this lecture where he examines Laika’s life and death and the speculation surrounding both.
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 30 | 6:30 PM
Trinity University Holt Center | 106 Oakmont Court
While a few of the other space dog flights rival Laika’s in endurance and technological advancements, Caswell argues that Laika’s flight serves as a tipping point in space exploration “beyond which the dream of exploring nearby and distant planets opened into a kind of fever from which humanity has never recovered.”
Examining the depth of human empathy—what we are willing to risk and sacrifice in the name of scientific achievement and our exploration of the cosmos, and how politics and marketing can influence it—Laika’s story is also about our search to overcome loneliness and the role animals play in our drive to look far beyond the earth for answers.
Reception, lecture, Q&A, and book signing. Free and open to the public.
Canine Cosmonaut is part of Words Matter—A series of lectures on the vital life of the written word presented by Gemini Ink and Trinity University Press.
