Page 3 - Demo

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched into orbit the world%u2019s first artificial satellite%u2014Sputnik. Weighing 184 pounds, it was powered by three silver-zinc batteries, although some news reports said it ran on a car battery. It was only a 23-inch sphere, made of an aluminum%u2013magnesium%u2013titanium alloy, but it changed the world. At first, President Eisenhower wasn%u2019t too impressed with Sputnik, but most Americans were shocked by the Soviet%u2019s obvious superiority. The ensuing rhetoric by Democratic politicians and professed cold warriors led to what soon became known as the Space Race.In the years before Sputnik, the U.S.S.R. had launched as many as nine dogs in suborbital flights. Some survived their ordeal, while others did not. In September 1951, when a mixed-breed named Smelaya ran away before her flight, it was feared she might be eaten by wolves in the nearby forest, but she returned in time to make a suborbital flight with another dog, Malyshka. The Russians really made world headlines on November 3, 1957, a month after Sputnik, when Laika, another mongrel, who was picked up on the streets of Moscow, was launched into orbit. She succumbed during her fourth trip around the Earth when her satellite%u2019s cabin overheated. The first monkeys in space were macaques, named Albert, Albert II, Albert III, and Albert IV, all of whom flew between 1948 and 1949. They were each launched in rockets based on the Nazi V-2s, which were designed in the United States by Werner von Braun and his team of American and former German rocket scientists. Launched from White Sands, New Mexico, all the Alberts died either while aloft, or during crash landings. Other space monkeys followed, with the best known Astrochimp being Ham.