![]() “Those nine orbits of Earth made Laika the world’s first cosmonaut - sacrificed for the sake of the success of future space missions,” said Kotovskaya. But, things did not go exactly to plan and the dog was only able to survive for a few hours, flying around the Earth nine times. It followed the first ever Sputnik satellite launch earlier that year. The Soviet Union sent the dog up to space in a satellite on Novem60 years ago. After the flight, Laika was seen as a hero, but there was a dark lie behind her story. Laika’s Window is a journey well worth taking, and a rewarding read.The street dog named Laika is recorded in history as the first living being who left the Earth’s atmosphere and went on a journey without a return. Rather, through this beautiful, thoughtful exploration of the “Muttnick” refugee from Moscow’s cold streets and her journey to the edge of space, we’re offered an opportunity to take the measure of our own humanity “The dog is an extension of the human animal,” Caswell tells us, and later, “We cast a dog out beyond us to scout.” Yet Laika’s window is as much a mirror of humankind as it is a portal to the stars, and Caswell doesn’t let the reader off the hook with a simplistic and unknowing dog’s final view of the world. Lives always hang in the balance, and there is always a price to be paid. But what endures after reading the book is the plangent, lyrical, and careful regard Caswell has not only for the dog, but also for the introspection and reflection about the timeless struggle to balance science and ethics, progress and principles, the promise of the future and the obligations of our innate humanity. Through Laika’s space-capsule window, we speculate not only about the wonders of space flight that were her dying glimpse of existence but about the more mundane Earthly concerns of politics, scientific research, and the attendant overlay of sociopolitical and ideological competition that fueled the space race in the first place: what price, in terms of lives and treasure-human and animal-can we justify? What really mattered in the race: science or ideology? Was or is that ever worth the price?Ĭaswell delivers the space-geek goods, the physical deets of late-1950s rocket science in general, and the arcane history of animals in early space flight in particular. The details of Laika’s life as a stray on the cold Moscow streets, then her selection, training, and eventual spaceflight, is related in the laconic astronaut-speak worthy of NASA’s Mission Control simultaneously, Caswell steps back and offers a broader perspective that questions our very humanity: Laika, and mankind’s largely offhand regard for her service and unwitting ultimate sacrifice, is truly a window through which Caswell shows readers a broader and equally significant view. This book is a rich bricolage of fact and metanarrative, an unlikely but deft mashup of Jim Lovell’s daring Apollo Thirteen and Robert Bly’s heavily allegorical Iron John. Laika’s Window is so much more, although the details in Caswell’s work provide at least that. For a space geek-and I have been one my whole life-the initial expectation is a largely historical, linear, and chronological narrative tracing the desperate embryonic stage of the Cold War Space Race between the Russians and the Americans. To appreciate Laika’s Window, you have to understand what it really is. Laika’s Window: The Legacy of a Soviet Space Dog ![]()
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