I was rewatching History Channel's ``Sputnik Mania'', which I
quite like for its ``Victory At Sea''-like habit of just showing old
footage with nice long cuts without excessive narrating or contemporary
commentary, and noticed something odd as the storyline got to Sputnik 2:

The newscaster reported on the launch of Laika that a dog had
knocked a goat off the front page. So what goat was that? Was this an
actual goat that'd achieved human-interest status at the time, or was
it a metaphorical goat of the United States rocket program not really
working out so well as might be desired?

(I have the suspicion this may be addressed by Matthew Bille and
Erika Lishock's _The First Space Race_, but I haven't got a copy of it.)

--
Joseph Nebus
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