Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "The Space Race" channel.

  1. 1. Sending a dog got approval from Khruschev because of its propaganda value. A small animal like a mouse would not do - not impressive enough.. 2. The leading animal boffin involved had done a lot of work with dogs and stuck with what he was familiar with. 3. Dogs can tolerate many hours of inactivity, which mice and rabbits cannot do. During launch preparation, the process can be stopped (known in the US as holding the count down) while technicians sort out faults - leading to hours of just sitting in a capsule doing nothing. 4. Dogs are highly trainable. They trained the dog to expect and tolerate high G's during take off followed by weightlessness. A rabbit under such conditions would simple have a heart attack from fright and die. Probably a mouse would too. 5. Small animals even if they survived launch stress wouldn't last long enough to get useful data. A dog could be trained to eat the gel food provided. 6. The ultimate goal was to see if space travel was safe for men. it was thought that there just might be radiation in space that might kill or medically affect men, so an animal close in size and physiology to men was desirable. The Soviets chose a dog and the US chose monkeys.
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