Strapped into a small compartment on the tiny spacecraft Sputnik 2, Laika died during her fourth orbit when her capsule overheated.

The Americans responded with the same panic that met the launch of the first Sputnik. Eisenhower ordered the Naval Research Laboratory---which had been working separately for years on launching an artificial satellite into space---to immediately prepare a manned spaceflight. In January 1958, America finally responded to the Soviets’ scientific aggression by launching a Vanguard rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida containing two stray dogs.

These dogs died an icy death within an hour of leaving the atmosphere when their cabin depressurized. They were hailed as national heroes, and became a massive propaganda coup for NATO. Behind the iron curtain, VOA broadcasts let anyone with a radio know that capitalists were more efficient at killing dogs in space than communists.

Khrushchev was livid. He ordered his scientists to embark on what became known as the Luna program. On the second day of 1959, Luna 1 was launched towards the moon with 17 dogs from the streets of Vienna aboard, three of which were pregnant. The dogs all perished by the time the craft reached the Van Allen belt.

NASA, which had been created the previous summer, embarked on Project Mercury, which blasted a succession of angry cats into deep space with their tails tied together. The Soviets responded with the Vostok program, which sent horses into orbit strapped into medical devices that would periodically revive them so that a single horse could be killed, theoretically, dozens of times.

In the 1960s the space race turned to a new goal: to be the first nation to kill a dog on the moon.

The Americans suffered a massive setback in 1967 when a test of the Apollo 1 capsule resulted in three dogs dying in an electrical fire on Earth, not in space. But in 1969 the lunar module of Apollo 11 landed on the surface of the moon. Before a global audience of nearly 1 billion people, the door of the Eagle opened and the three dogs perished within minutes.

The Soviets had been bested, but in 1971 they achieved another scientific breakthrough when they established the Salyut 1 space station, which embodied man’s ultimate ambition of creating a self-contained environment in space where generations of dogs could be bred and killed.

After the fall of the USSR, a team of scientists from Russia, the US, and other countries---led by the American dog-killing wunderkind Pete Buttigieg---worked together to build the International Space Station. This year is the 22nd anniversary of the launch of the ISS, which to this day remains functioning in orbit---with a fully staffed kill shelter that only services pit bulls---as a monument not only to the science of space exploration, but to harmony among men on Earth.

"sure the soviets were first to a bunch of milestones but it was only because they didn't value human life or safety!"

i've seriously heard this fucking argument which is absurd. americans have gotten way more astronauts killed and this list doesn't even count the apollo fire!

People say Americans won the space race, so they did. That's how a propaganda battle works?

Probably my most popular meme.

TBF to americans we’re pretty good at coping and seething

Hey USSR, congratulations on beating the USA in the space race, how's it going now?

Hot take: First animal shouldn't be celebrated. Laika didn't ask to be launched into space to die alone.

honestly i think this meme is a cope. The US won the propaganda campaign. Not even Russia gives a shit about the USSR's achievements in space anymore. Besides, people are just more impressed by the "personal scale." The USSR or even China could be the first one to make contact with aliens 50 light years away using signals and satellites. All of that becomes irrelevant in culture if some American shakes the hand of an alien and it's broadcasted live on TV. Chalk it up to western individualism, but the truth is that no one gives a shit about some machines, and they're definitely not going to give a shit someone being the first of anything if you can't sell it.

It's why Apple is so successful despite being years, even a decade, behind and failing to implement shit that Android and iOS jailbreak devs have released long ago. Those devs don't get the credit, and Apple reaps the benefits of other people's work thanks to their marketing team. Really, it reminds me of democrats crying about Biden's achievements lol. Let's pretend they do matter - what are they doing to fix people's perceptions that he's doing squat? Nothing. They're just banking on his "achievements" speaking for themselves instead of doing any EFFECTIVE propaganda to showcase their success.

It's not entirely true. The US had a bunch of victories as well which aren't on here.

The Soviet flag makes me feel so nostalgic

Why did the Soviets never do a manned moon landing?