Space Race
On April 14 , 1958�after five months and 2,570 orbits� Laika was cremated , disintegrating along with Sputnik 2 during re-entry . A fancy way of saying that the capsule fell slowly , like we are all falling , during its last several hundred rotations around the Earth until , finally , sinking too low , it all came to an end .
Laika is a hero in Russia to this day , though in the then-Soviet Union and all around the world , she stirred discussions of animal testing and animal cruelty . Charming Laika had not volunteered to give her life . She had not signed up to be the first person in space . That she paved the way for others is without question . That it was worth it , is unlikely�or at least let us say it is still up for grabs . And all of this , of course , is not to single out the Soviets for having done the one wrong thing in the Space Race . This is all an ethical and political question , of course , but not political in the sense of seeing one side as bad . The U . S . killed its own fair number of nonhumans on the way to space , and today in the name of science we close our eyes to the untold suffering and sacrifices
We thus end our brief investigation of the space race with this story not in cynicism but to remind us that the demands of ethics and politics do not disappear when we hear the whispered promises of technology . What it means to be a humanist is to remember how complicated these things are , to remember what is occluded when other things are made visible . We who work in the arts and humanities cannot think that science is the enemy . But we must also not think that science is “ not our department ” or “ beyond our concern .” To
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