The Forgotten House Cat

On February 20, 1947, a captured German V-2 rocket roared off the launch pad at White Sands Missile Vary, New Mexico and streaked off into the sky. Inside three minutes, it reached an apogee of 109.4 kilometres – simply above the 100 kilometre Karman Line that defines the boundary of outer house. Although fully forgotten at the moment, this launch was a historic one, for the rocket carried passengers: a bunch of odd fruit flies who turned the primary complicated organisms to journey into house and be efficiently recovered. Over the following twenty years, they’d be adopted by tons of of different animals from mice and rats and guinea pigs to turtles, frogs, and beetles, who bravely paved the best way for the primary human astronauts. The American house program most popular to make use of primates like rhesus monkeys and chimpanzees, whereas the Soviets most popular canines – all of which have been thought-about even-tempered, cooperative and simple to coach. Seemingly lacking from this menagerie of early spacefarers are cats, that are notoriously none of these items. But in 1963 the French house program, apparently unaware of the expression “like herding cats”, launched a cat named Félicette into the wild blue yonder. That is the forgotten story of historical past’s first – and to this point solely – cat-stronaut.

Similar to its British, American, and Soviet counterparts, the early French house program benefited drastically from German rocket engineers and analysis captured on the finish of the Second World Conflict. In 1946, thirty German engineers employed by the French Centre d’Etudes de Projectiles Autopropulsés or Centre for the Research of Self-Propelled Missiles started improvement of a “Tremendous V-2” ballistic missile based mostly on wartime designs, which might be able to lofting a 1,000 kilogram payload over a spread of three,600 kilometres. Nevertheless, the design was plagued with technical difficulties and French authorities was reluctant to fund the undertaking, so in 1949 CEPA cancelled the Tremendous V-2 and pivoted to the event of a less complicated and cheaper sounding rocket one-tenth the scale to be used in scientific analysis. Dubbed Véronique, a portmanteau of the Vernon – the city have been the rocket was developed – and electronique, the rocket measured six metres tall, weighed 1,000 kilograms, and was fuelled by a mix of kerosene and nitric acid. Uniquely amongst sounding rockets, Véronique was wire-guided for the primary 55 metres of its flight, utilizing skinny steering wires trailing out from fold-out fins. This eradicated the necessity for the tall launch towers utilized by most different sounding rockets, holding the rocket secure till it had reached a excessive sufficient airspeed for its fastened steering fins to take over.

The primary Véronique flight happened on August 2, 1950 from Suippes in northeastern France. Check flights would proceed at varied websites in mainland France till Could 1952, when the Centre Intrerarmées d’essays d’Engins Spéciaux or Inter-Military Particular Automobiles Check Centre opened within the Sahara Desert close to Hammaguir in French Algeria. These early exams have been disappointing, the unexpectedly low thrust of the rocket giving it a scientifically ineffective apogee of 65 kilometres. Nevertheless, in 1957 a lighter model with an apogee of 135 kilometres was developed dubbed the Véronique AGI – quick for Année Géophysique Internationale or Worldwide Geophysical 12 months. The IGY was a world undertaking lasting from 1957 to 1958 wherein groups from all over the world cooperated conduct analysis on the earth and its atmosphere. It was this undertaking which prompted the Soviet Union to launch Sputnik 1 – the world’s first synthetic satellite tv for pc – on October 4, 1957, kicking off the House Race – and for extra on this wild and wacky interval in spaceflight historical past, please take a look at our earlier video ‘Kaputnik’: America’s Largely Forgotten Disastrous First Try and Launch a Satellite tv for pc.

By the early Nineteen Sixties, the USA and Soviet Union have been firmly locked in a race to launch the primary man into house, and different nations – whereas missing the assets and experience to do the identical – have been desirous to contribute to the burgeoning House Age. One of many main unanswered questions throughout this early interval was what results the alien and hostile atmosphere of outer house would have on the human physique, with many physiologists fearing that microgravity would stop astronauts from swallowing or correctly digesting foods and drinks, or so completely scramble their interior ears that they’d be fully incapacitated by vertigo and nausea. Such fears needed to be completely addressed earlier than the primary human astronaut set foot in a spacecraft.

In 1961, French President Charles de Gaulle signed into existence the Centre Nationwide d’Etudes Spaciales or CNES, formally launching the French house program. That very same 12 months, the Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherches de Médecine Aéronautique, in cooperation with the CNES, launched a program to review the physiological results of spaceflight on dwelling organisms. For this analysis, CERMA scientists selected animals whose physiology and neurology have been already well-known, beginning with rats. A batch of six laboratory-bred rats was chosen for testing, the animals having electrodes implanted in three areas of their brains to be able to monitor their neurological response. Over a interval of 30 weeks, the six rat-stronauts have been run via a battery of rigorous stress exams together with spells in isolation chambers and centrifuges. One after the other, the topics have been eradicated till just one remained: a one-year-old white male rat dubbed Hector. On February 22, 1961, Hector was launched from the Hammaguir facility aboard a Véronique AGI rocket, reaching an apogee of 110 kilometres earlier than safely reentering the environment and parachuting to earth. All through the flight, he remained alert and calm, a outcome which boded properly for future human spacefarers. This feat made France the third nation to efficiently launch an animal into house and get well it alive.

Following two extra profitable rat flights on October 15 and 18, 1961, CERMA moved on to a bigger animal for which additionally they had intensive neurological information: the widespread home cat. In 1963, the scientists bought a batch of 14 cats from a Paris pet supplier – all feminine as these have been believed to have a calmer manner. All got numbers as an alternative of names to stop the scientists from changing into emotionally hooked up. Just like the rats earlier than them, these potential cat-stronauts had monitoring electrodes implanted of their skulls and, over the course of two weeks, have been steadily acclimatized to all of the stresses they’d encounter throughout their temporary suborbital flights, together with being strapped right into a tiny, claustrophobic cat provider, being bombarded with recordings of rocket engine noises, and being spun in a centrifuge at accelerations as much as 7Gs – and to study one other actually weird experiment performed on our feline buddies, please take a look at our earlier video The Curious Case of the Cat That Was Turned Right into a Residing Phone FOR SCIENCE!!!!!!

On October 8, 1963, six cats have been chosen from the preliminary batch of 14 and transported to the launch web site in Algeria. Then, on October 17, cat C341, the calmest of the bunch, was chosen for launch. A tuxedo cat weighing 2.5 kilograms, C341 had been a stray on the streets of Paris simply weeks earlier than being picked up and bought to CERMA. Along with her mind electrodes, C341 was fitted with electrocardiogram or EKG electrodes on her hind legs to observe her coronary heart price, a microphone on her chest to observe her respiration, and two extra electrodes on her forelegs that might ship gentle electrical shocks. This allowed scientists to observe her mind’s response to stated shocks and decide if her neurological responses have been inside regular bounds.

Lastly, on October 18, 1963, C341 was loaded into the nosecone of Véronique rocket quantity 47 and, at 8:09 AM native time, blasted off from the Algerian desert. The suborbital flight reached an apogee of 152 kilometres and lasted a complete of 13 minutes, throughout which C341 skilled a peak acceleration of 9.6 Gs and 5 minutes of weightlessness. Nonetheless, telemetry from her varied bio-monitors indicated that she remained completely calm all through, exhibiting solely minor adjustments to her hear and respiration price. At apogee, the nosecone containing the world’s first astro-cat indifferent, reentered the environment, and parachuted again to the desert ground, the place it and its feline passenger have been quickly recovered by helicopter.

Upon the French Authorities’s announcement of the profitable flight, the general public instantly dubbed the hitherto anonymous C341 “Félix” after the favored cartoon character. Nevertheless, when it was revealed that C341 was really feminine, this was modified to the feminine type Félicette and formally adopted by CERMA. Six days in a while October 24, the French tried to launch one other cat into house, however a malfunction brought on the rocket to careen astray and crash into the desert ground, taking its unnamed feline payload with it.

And if all you animal lovers on the market have discovered this story upsetting up to now, then you definately may need to flip off the video now, as a result of it does not have a contented ending. For regardless of placing her life on the road for science and finishing her mission with flying colors, two months after her pioneering flight, Félicette was euthanized in order that scientists might dissect her mind. Tragically, they found nothing of scientific worth. All however one in all Félicette’s coaching cohort additionally met this destiny. The well being of the remaining cat started to deteriorate shortly after receiving her mind electrodes, so the electrodes have been eliminated and the cat adopted because the CERMA scientists’ mascot. They named her Scoubidou, after the scoubido braided collar she wore round her neck. It’s value noting that by the point of Félicette’s flight, 9 people had already efficiently flown into house, making the scientific worth of the mission considerably doubtful.

From this early begin, the French house program grew by leaps and bounds. On November 26, 1965, CNES carried out the primary profitable launch of the Diamant rocket, the primary expendable launch system to be designed and constructed solely inside France – and, certainly, Western Europe. The rocket carried Astérix, the primary French satellite tv for pc, into orbit, making France the sixth nation after the Soviet Union, United States, Canada, the UK, Canada, and Italy – and solely the third to take action utilizing its personal indigenously-developed rocket. France later spearheaded the founding of the European House Company and developed the Ariane sequence of rockets, which have efficiently launched over 250 payloads since 1979.

Nevertheless, amid these successes, Félicette has been largely forgotten, overshadowed by extra well-known astro-animals resembling Laika the canine and Ham the chimpanzee. And whereas a number of international locations like former French colonies Chad and Niger issued commemorative stamps in her honour, few of those depictions resembled the precise cat, with many even misnaming her “Felix”.

This started to alter in 2017, when Matthew Serge Man, a inventive director on the Anomaly London promoting company, unintentionally stumbled upon Félicette’s story:

“Round 6 months in the past while at work, I got here throughout a tea towel within the employees kitchen commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the cat who went to house There was no identify for the cat on the towel, nor did it resemble Félicette. After Googling it, I turned fascinated with Félicette’s story, the way it had been forgotten through the years, and misattributed. It felt like one thing huge needs to be achieved to proper these wrongs.”

That very same 12 months, Man launched a kickstarter marketing campaign to fund a bronze statue to commemorate Félicette. By April 2018, the marketing campaign met its £40,000 funding goal, and sculptor Gill Parker was commissioned to create the statue. On December 18, 2019, the completed piece, depicting Félicette standing atop a globe and staring up on the stars, was unveiled on the grounds of the Worldwide House College close to Strasbourg in jap France. Of the memorial, Matthew Man later wrote:

“It’s [important] to notice that Félicette, alongside many different animals which have braved house journey within the identify of science, was finally an unwilling participant on this experiment. For this mission alone she, alongside 13 different cats, skilled arduous coaching previous to the mission and ultimately gave her life.”

And whereas since 1963 dozens of various animals have flown into house, together with fish, newts, shrimp, worms, jellyfish, and even spiders, Félicette stays the one and solely cat to journey to the Last Frontier, maybe proving the adage that the French copy no-one, and no-one copies the French.

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