One thing that's always surprised me is how little fuss there has been about the various space programmes sending animals into space.
There is a fascinating and detailed Wikipedia article about animals in space here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_in_spaceI can see that there was usually some plan to return the dogs or monkeys safely to Earth, but I can also see that often this didn't work and the animals died during their flights. I suppose the whole point of these experiments was to make spaceflight safer for humans, which has to be a good thing if we're going to venture into space at all. Still, it seems a bit tough on Laika and co.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaikaQuote:
Sputnik 2 was not designed to be retrievable, and Laika had always been intended to die.