They sent up a dog in the Sputnik, once
in the interests of science.She didn’t know that there was only
six days air inside.
And so what – dogs die everyday. Give one over.
Put down in kennels. Neglected.
So why, now, am I so haunted by
this whimpering canine, locked in a cab,
and shot into space?
Did they give her a window, at least?
Some evidence of where all that blasting rocket fuel was taking her?
Did it break the heart of the scientist who had told her
to sit nice and still – and did his training work?
Or when the rubbish dropped back to earth,
was the inside of the ship covered In deep grooves
and marked with scratches?
– Excerpt from the play Ear to the Edge of Time
BBC Science in Action podcast (22:54)
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/scia/rss.xml