[HN Gopher] Felicette - The Space Cat
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       Felicette - The Space Cat
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2021-10-17 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stuartatkinson.wordpress.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stuartatkinson.wordpress.com)
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Placing a cat in zero-gravity for a prolonged time is just cruel.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_righting_reflex
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _Placing a cat in zero-gravity for a prolonged time is just
         | cruel_
         | 
         | Do we have evidence they wouldn't be able to adapt?
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | Looks like they had a contingency plan[0]. I'd argue that the
         | more-cruel action was euthanizing her when several other
         | animals had already been dissected to see the impact of
         | spaceflight on their bodies.
         | 
         | [0]https://stuartatkinson.files.wordpress.com/2020/04/feli3.jpg
         | ...
        
       | nn3 wrote:
       | From the wikipedia page.
       | 
       | Felicette was euthanized two months after the launch so that
       | scientists could perform a necropsy to examine her brain.[29]
       | 
       | Doesn't pay to be a hero.
        
         | nsonha wrote:
         | What scientific hypothesis could they possibly be trying to
         | confirm?
         | 
         | I read the story of how Einstein's brain was preserved and
         | couldn't help but thinking this is pseudo science.
        
       | nsonha wrote:
       | Why did they send dogs and cats, coundn't pick a dumb animal like
       | a chicken?
        
       | janpot wrote:
       | We have a tuxedo cat that is named after her.
        
       | sneak wrote:
       | Her memorial statue:
       | 
       | https://www.space.com/felicette-first-cat-in-space-statue-un...
       | 
       | More at wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicette
       | 
       | She had electrodes implanted inside her brain, received electric
       | shocks to her muscles, and endured 9.5 Gs on ascent. :(
       | 
       | She survived, but was put down two months after the flight so
       | that they could analyze her brain.
        
         | robbedpeter wrote:
         | Yeah... "What happens when we shock a cat in space" sounds more
         | like a serial killer's idle daydream than legitimate science.
         | 
         | I'm gonna say they were assholes with that one.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | > Brazilian Army colonel Manuel dos Santos Lage planned to
         | launch a cat named Flamengo aboard the Felix I rocket on 1
         | January 1959, but the flight was cancelled over ethical
         | concerns regarding the use of a cat
         | 
         | Appropriate naming.
         | 
         | EDIT: Actually, this was probably deliberate mission naming,
         | not the name of the actual rocket. Given the timing, it would
         | presumably have been one of these or some relative:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonda_(rocket)
        
         | rob74 wrote:
         | If that's the statue the author is referring to with the phrase
         | "a bronze statue of her was recently unveiled in Germany", I
         | hope this didn't make it into the book, because Strasbourg was
         | indeed part of Germany once, but is now French...
        
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       (page generated 2021-10-17 23:01 UTC)