Both NASA and their Russian equivalents are notorious for their early attempts at space flights where they sent up animals in the place of human astronauts, with the Soviet Union in particular having some famous examples (like Laika, the brave canine traveller across the cosmos who was shot up into space and never came back). Eventually they got over that particular, unfortunate line of experimentation - the Russians just started shooting off people and not caring if they came back or not, whilst NASA just made sure their rockets actually worked - but that wasn't the end of animal testing in the name of space exploration. Far from it, in fact. And it was all to benefit us selfish humans once again, tsk. See, the human brain isn't particularly suited to figuring out zero gravity. We're not used to it and, from an evolutionary standpoint, simply aren't equipped to deal with it. We're living on a reasonably gravity-dense planet, so when an astronaut goes into space and suddenly has to figure out how to move about without any, they often struggle. To try and combat this NASA did a load of tests to see how different animals dealt with zero-g environments, sticking them in those "vomit comet" simulators which create a gravity-less space. They sent up frogs, birds, mammals, insects, fish and...didn't actually figure out anything. We guess the assumption was, like, flying animals, or ones that swim, move differently to us? But nope, they struggled with zero gravity just as much, and NASA wasted a lot of time at the local pet shop. We hope they remembered that a pet is for life, not just for weird research.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
