Lost In Space

Historically speaking when most countries enter the space race their initial payloads often include monkeys, chimps, or other kinds of animals to test the viability of aircraft or whatever it is that interests them regarding their dabbling in space flight.

Russia, which took the early lead over the world in the so-called space race, got dibs on the first animal in space as they sent up a dog, called Laika, on Sputnik 2. Once the rocket landed and the Ruskies realized that no one wanted to clean the capsule most countries veered off into using monkeys or some other kind of ape-like creature in their off planet voyage experiments.

That’s what led the US into using, at first Rhesus monkeys, which reportedly are very similar to humans and are renowned as the source of the RH factor in humans that deals with positive and negative blood types. In the early days of US Rocketry there were many accidents. Dozens of these poor Rhesus monkeys died during the experimental process. Sometimes the rocket would explode, other times the monkeys had a hard time landing them and would crash, still others suffocated due to poor ventilation.

Eventually, groups like the SPCA and early predecessors of the renowned PETA organization of today stressed NASA to such an extent that they resorted to using chimpanzees. Despite reports, Cheetah, the famous movie chimp from Tarzan movies of the 50’s was not chosen to chimp one of those early capsules. Instead, NASA employed Ham and Enos for the dangerous tasks. It’s interesting to note that in this case science resorted to two Biblical names for their chimps; obviously such a thing would not be permitted in today’s society where science and religion are kept separate for much the same reason that one keeps their matter and antimatter in separate locations.

Anyway, we, that is the US, and the Ruskies started this path of sending animals out to scout out our missions before we would think of sending a human into space. But eventually, we ran out of specimens to execute and had to resort to humans. Reportedly, there is no truth to the rumor that Bonzo and his assistant, some guy named Ron Regan, were the final US representatives in the early space probes.

Russia was first to put a man in space sending Yuri Gagarin up on Vostok 1 on April 12 1961.  Not to be outdone, the US followed quickly by sending Dr. Timothy Leary into space shortly thereafter, and to one-up the Russians Dr. Leary accomplished the feat without using a rocket. That record has yet to be broken, although many dropouts have made the attempt, especially in the late ‘60s. Wikipedia, where much of the data in this article comes from, reported that a rock and roll group was the first to record an album on the far side of the moon as early as 1973. That feat was accomplished four years after John Lennon and the rest of the mop-heads made the first lunar landing in the Sea of Tranquility on July 21, 1969. Contrary to other reports, Buzz Lightyear was the first man to land, and return, from the moon.

Other countries have since attempted to get on the lunar express, as it were. Argentina entered the race in December of 1969 in a feat they called Operacion Navidad when they used a two-stage Rigel rocket to send Juan Valdez into outer space. His space vehicle only made it 60 kilometers into the air before striking an odd looking man in a red suit riding some kind of space sled. The resulting loss of oxygen sent Valdez on his way to being a coffee bean inspector for the National Federation of Coffee Growers in Columbia, where he was killed in a crossfire between Pablo Escobar and Manuel Noriega, at least that’s how I remember it.

Also entering the space race recently were France, Spain, India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, and our neighbors to the north, Canada. It took the Canadians a long time getting there because the McKenzie brothers, long lost members of the Rhesus monkey family, flatly refused to go without a decent supply of Molson’s Ale.

As you can see, getting in on the space race is the thing to do if you are going to be seen as a credible country in this day and age. So it doesn’t come as a surprise to hear from Iran that they too have entered the race. And, as did so many of those late comers before them, they too opted to send a monkey on their first trip to the firmament. In keeping with the good political form of the United States of America let me be the first to congratulate President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and wish him a happy return.