When I was a kid in elementary school back in the 1970s, our teacher told us one day about Laika, the brave dog who was the first animal to orbit the Earth in a rocket. The teacher left out the sad part of the story, and I came away with the impression that Laika had survived and returned to Earth a canine hero. I was also pretty unsure about why the dog had been sent into space and what she was doing up there, and it was in this vague, distant orbit that Laika existed in my thoughts for many years. Her name got referenced here and there and she showed up briefly in the Guardians of the Galaxy movies, and that was the extent of my Laika awareness for a long time. Somewhere along the way I picked up the essential fact that she did not return safely to Earth, she died in space, and I was touched and troubled about what had been done to her. But I still knew very little of her story and never made the effort to look into it.
Recently I began writing a novel—more of a fable, really—about dogs. In my research into the history of dog/human relations, I pondered how our two species have lived and worked together through time, and Laika quickly shot to the forefront. Here she was before me at last. Possibly the most important dog in history. Of course. How had I not seen her before? Suddenly I needed to learn everything I could about her. I sought out information, and happily I found Kurt Caswell’s Laika’s Window.
It was soon obvious that, like me, Caswell had also needed to find out everything he could about Laika’s life and journey into space. And so he set out to do just that. The title of the book derives from the little window in the space capsule—mainly for the scientists to keep watch on the dog while she waited inside, before the launch even took place—and the question as to whether Laika could see out of this window after she was sent into orbit. A piece of hardware on the outside of the capsule might or might not have been jettisoned during the flight; if it was left in place, Laika’s window would have been blocked. If the piece was jettisoned, she would have had a view out. She could have been the first to behold what no one—no dog and no human—had seen before. The Earth from above.
Whenever Laika passed through my thoughts over the years that’s how I imagined her: as a slender, intelligent canine face looking out a small window at the planet below; and I’m sure many people imagined the same, as Caswell says he did. But when he seriously delved into the matter, sifting documents relating to the mission and interviewing people who might know, the answers he got about the window became complicated and contradictory. More and more layers of rumour and speculation began to unfold, just as they had over the decades as the Soviets slowly released more information as to how and when the dog actually perished. We now know Laika didn’t survive for nearly a week, as the Soviets originally claimed; sealed in the capsule for days before the actual launch, she would have already been severely dehydrated and lacking food before the rocket even went up. And she wasn’t mercifully euthanized by some remote control device, as was also claimed. Once in orbit the interior of the capsule swiftly grew unbearably hot and it was likely only a matter of hours before Laika succumbed. If she had been able to see out the window, it would have been for only a brief time.
Caswell ultimately gets a definitive answer to his question, but the books’s title goes beyond the window as a technical fact, growing into a powerful metaphor for what we ourselves can see—about dogs, about ourselves—when we ponder Laika’s life and her fate.
The window became “a medium through which [the scientists and engineers] might witness the drama of her end, if only they could follow her that far, and a medium through which they might imagine their own ends and the fate of our own capsule, the Earth, which will not last forever. Where Laika was going—into the stars, into death—the scientists and engineers knew they were going too. Like her, they would go alone, as we all must go one day. Through that window, then, we see Laika’s face and we feel triumphant and elevated in her company, and also impossibly lost and alone with or without her, each of us alone in the cosmos looking to end loneliness through something we might build with each other” (Caswell 181-82).
Why did the Soviets choose a dog to send into orbit for the first time, instead of a human being? In my novel-in-progress, I imagine a dog explaining this historical question to another dog: “The humans were in a kind of race with one another, you see. At that time there were two big powerful packs and both struggled to dominate the other. They both wanted to be the first to do astonishing new things like sending a living being into orbit. They thought this would show everyone which pack was the strongest and the best. The humans also believed that their kind was more important than ours. If they were going to send one of their own up there, they needed to know what would happen first. That’s why they chose a dog.”
Caswell’s book has also become a window for me, through which I feel I’m finally able to see Laika clearly. I still see her in my imagination as I did for years, a canine face in a little window with the Earth turning below, but now she’s looking at me, and I’m looking back.
Works cited:
Caswell, Kurt. Laika’s Window. Trinity University Press, San Antonio, 2018.
[Image ID: Photograph of Laika in her flight harness]