Think about the animals used in product testing. Think about the monkeys shot into space. Without their death, their pain, without their sacrifice, we would have nothing.

And that is completely true isn't it? We think of Armstrong and Gargarin when we think of the pioneers of spaceflight. We never stop to think about the Laika and the other nameless animals shot into space with no intention to be retrieved. We've build the foundations of so many great discoveries on the corpses of animals whose names we never bother to remember. Hell, how many people even know who Laika is?

I know when I was a kid I didn't. Then my mum bought me this poster from Kinokuniya with a map of the Solar System, complete with little icons showing approximately where various spacecraft were at the time of printing. In of of the icons, there was a cartoon of a dog sitting on a rocket. So I looked it up on the internet and read about Laika.

It's something that struck a chord in me. It's like a Disney tale with a twisted ending. From stray dog to astronaut martyr. There is without a doubt than in Laika's short three years alive, she had accomplished something far greater than most of us could ever aspire to do.

Work with animals is a source of suffering to all of us. We treat them like babies who cannot speak. 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. - Dr. Vladimir Yazdovsky

I wanted to do something nice for her: She had so little time left to live. - Oleg Gazenko

So before Gargarin, remember Laika...