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No!

Please!

AHHHHHHH

AHHHHH

AHHHHH

On November 3rd, 1957, the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik II rocketed into orbit.

Just 32 days earlier, the launch of Sputnik I and blindsided American intelligence

fired the starting pistol in the space race, but Sputnik II distinguished itself from its

unmanned predecessor with the inclusion of a passenger, Leica, a stray dog trained to be the

first living being in space. From the beginning, Soviet scientists had cruelly booked the

terrier a one-way ticket, but plans to euthanize Leica by dispensing poison food before

her oxygen ran out one away when the cooling system malfunctioned, and the terrified dog

cooked to death in her orbiting tomb. Still, the mission was a scientific triumph,

and while Sputnik is in the history books, at the time, its dogman follow up Mutnik

was an even bigger factor in motivating the Panic-US government to act, demonstrating the

advanced state of the USSR's space program versus America's non-existent one. As the Americans

formed NACA, later becoming NASA, locations were chosen for its facilities,

Cape Canaveral, Florida for its launch pad, Houston, Texas at the insistence of LBJ for mission

control, and less famously, the Los Angeles suburb of Downey, California for the construction of

modules and rockets. Downey had become one of the nation's most productive aircraft manufacturers

during World War II, and McGowan Duke assembled the craft for the Apollo program and the space shuttle.

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