Laika's story is far more heartbreaking. Everyone involved with handling Laika hated to send her to death. From a technician who was the last person to see Laik

Laika's story is far more heartbreaking. Everyone involved with handling Laika hated to send her to death. From a technician who was the last person to see Laika, > One of the technicians preparing the capsule before final liftoff stated that "after placing Laika in the container and before closing the hatch, we kissed her nose and wished her bon voyage, knowing that she would not survive the flight."[16] One of the lead scientists involved expressed regrets over Laika's sacrifice, > Oleg Gazenko, one of the scientists responsible for sending Laika into space, expressed regret for allowing her to die: > "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." "We treat them like babies who cannot speak." The US Air Force's aeromedical research division, under the aegis of the Air Force Missile Development Center, became the first entity to send an animal (fruit flies) into space on a captured Nazi V2 rocket. They also became the first to send a mammal into space, Albert II. A rhesus monkey who suffered the ignoble fate of dying on impact after a parachute failure. These experiments led to the development of the first aeromedical research studies that supported the eventual development of crewed capsules. NASA has a great series on the topic, https://history.nasa.gov/afspbio/part1.htm https://history.nasa.gov/afspbio/part1.htm You can also watch an early film made by the USAF describing their research, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBO0haqAwc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSBO0haqAwc