I was thinking about Alien/s and Ripley’s cat Jonesy. Could a cat survive liftoff in a rocket? Or would it need its own little spacesuit of some kind and presumably sedation? Assuming there’s some sort of artificial gravity, I guess it would be fine on a large ship or space-station from then on. I know dogs have been sent up, but I wasn’t sure how much else would be needed nowadays, or if the same basic materials would be enough to avoid injury.
On Oct. 18, 1963, a French cat named Félicette became the first and only feline to ever travel to space. She launched atop a Véronique AG1 rocket and flew nearly 100 miles (157 kilometers) above the Earth, where she briefly experienced weightlessness. Her rocket soared up to six times the speed of sound and exposed her to 9.5 g’s of force. Fifteen minutes later, she safely returned to Earth by parachuting down in her little space capsule — alive and well.
If it’s like our cats, judging from their behavior riding in the car, you’d have to place them in a cat carrier, and then they start meowing when the vehicle starts moving. The meowing frequency increases with the speed of the vehicle, so by the time they’re en route to orbit the cats will be emitting a continual tone and probably excreting in the carrier.
Of course, your cats may act differently.
nm – (post must be 5 chara)
Since the question has been answered, I think it’s relevant to link this video of cats in weightlessness (Vomit Comet though, not actually space):
Cucumber.
I recall some discussion once in the early days of the space program. They wanted to see what cats did in weightlessness since cats seem to be able to orient themselves while falling so they land on their feet. They couldn’t afford a big aircraft for a simple small experiment, so they got a fighter aircraft to take a cat up, with a camera rolling over the pilot’s shoulder. Once up, he was supposed to do a zero-G arc and release the cat. Apparently, they have very good footage of the cat, claws out clinging to pilot’s arm as he vainly shakes trying to get it to let go.
IIRC shuttle lift-off was at most 3G which is nothing for a cat. How they handle extended weightlessness is a question, or how sensitive their inner ear would be in a small-diameter centrifuge to simulate gravity. IMHO the issue would be the litterbox.
(Arthur C Clarke mentioned in discussing the making of 2001 that experiments showed that for 1G rotating gravity, the diameter needed to be about 300 feet to avoid human inner ear problems. Obviously in the movie, Discovery is not that big - they just fudged this and glossed over the detail.)
That cat is not happy.
(It’s not terrible to watch; but the cat is clearly not pleased.)
How to get a cat to space? Use a really big catapult!
This business of animals in space deserves more attention. It’s clearly fascinated people for a long time. An important point is animals abruptly introduced to weightlessness vs animals raised in weightlessness.
In Waldo (Heinlein 1942), IIRC, a dog raised in normal gravity was completely confused in zero-G, but a bird raised in zero g had learned how to “fly”, propelling itself like a rocket , pushing itself off and keeping its wings furled. Arthur C. Clarke, in one of his early pieces (The Other Side of the Sky ? ) imagined birds to be completely confused and helpless in a weightless situation.
I’ve often thought about the issue of cats raised in zero-G. I suspect they’d adapt to it pretty well, assuming that you gave them a suitable environment (have the walls completely lined with carpeting they could dig their claws into, for instance. And give them frequent holds they can get to with a minimum of contorting in free space. That cat at the end of the video was fine once it found a handle it could dig its claws into and hold on).
Would a chicken require a poultrypult?
I’m pretty sure at the end of the video the plane had started back up and gravity was normal or extra.
Here are birds in space:
I realize that all this doesn’t actually answer the OP. HOW does one launch a cat into space? It’s been done, but are they just put in a small cage? Special harness? Sedation? These are actually good questions we haven’t found answers for.
Whose smart idea was this? What if those birds get hit by solar radiation and develop strange new powers? Space chickens are not something the Space Force has trained to combat.
It was meowing in complaint.
I agree that a cat who was used to weightlessness might not mind it.
Weird aside. I’ve got the Gary Larson tearaway calendar on my desk, and today’s entry is “The Living Hell of Maurice, Jacques Cousteau’s Cat”
It shows the cat looking out the porthole of a submarine and freaking out.
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/294493263140530002/
https://americasbestpics.com/picture/the-living-hell-of-maurice-jacques-cousteau-s-cat-KUwlVhTz8