"Laika was a dog, the first animal in space that we know of. She was a stray, so no one knows where she came from. The Russians picked her up off the street, stuck her in a rock, and fired her into space. There was no plan to return her to earth – they just left her out there, and she died. They lied about that. It was only after Gorbachev started perestroika or Glasnost or whatever it was, the freedom of information thing, that they revealed they were just going to kill her anyway. She became a national hero. It’s not a very nice way to treat the first thing in outer space.
“Half a pound of sugar”, and the, “Watch him throw sugar on an old blackboard” line are a metaphor for the milky way, the stars in the sky. “Dim companions of the old white dwarf” – the dim companions are the old stars in the sky which are halfway dead, they have these things that float around, like a teacher has pupils who are a bit dim, inexperienced. The whole thing idea struck me: The planet and the solar system somehow came about, and it all led up to ejecting a dog from the planet from which it was born. I mean, as far as being rejected goes, Laika copped the biggest. She was homeless, nothing went very well for her. The whole existence of this planet basically conspired against her, you know what I mean? That’s weird."
From Fasterlouder article:-
"Laika was a dog, the first animal in space that we know of. She was a stray, so no one knows where she came from. The Russians picked her up off the street, stuck her in a rock, and fired her into space. There was no plan to return her to earth – they just left her out there, and she died. They lied about that. It was only after Gorbachev started perestroika or Glasnost or whatever it was, the freedom of information thing, that they revealed they were just going to kill her anyway. She became a national hero. It’s not a very nice way to treat the first thing in outer space.
“Half a pound of sugar”, and the, “Watch him throw sugar on an old blackboard” line are a metaphor for the milky way, the stars in the sky. “Dim companions of the old white dwarf” – the dim companions are the old stars in the sky which are halfway dead, they have these things that float around, like a teacher has pupils who are a bit dim, inexperienced. The whole thing idea struck me: The planet and the solar system somehow came about, and it all led up to ejecting a dog from the planet from which it was born. I mean, as far as being rejected goes, Laika copped the biggest. She was homeless, nothing went very well for her. The whole existence of this planet basically conspired against her, you know what I mean? That’s weird."