The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 16: The Orphan Hero

Episode Date: May 10, 2016

She was plucked from the streets and catapulted to fame.

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This is the way I heard it. She was an orphan, living on the cold streets of a hard town, doing what she had to to get by. Unlike most runaways, she made no attempt to resist. In fact, she greeted them with a friendly smile and regarded the government vehicle without the usual suspicion. It seemed a warm place on a cold evening, which in fact it was. So she got in. Now it's hardly a secret. Orphans make great protagonists.

Hug Finn and Harry Potter, Pip and Pollyanna, Dorothy Gale, a Dineras Targaryen. These are characters who stick with us, but their adventures were rooted in fiction. This one is not. And this particular orphan from these particular streets would help change the world as we know it. 20 minutes after she was picked up, our protagonist was enjoying a hearty meal and a warm bath, both of which she needed. Then she slept. For the first time in memory, she slumbered, uninterrupted. When she finally awakened, they fed her again and brought her to the classroom, where she joined a handful of other recruits in various stages of the program. Here, the training began in earnest. To the delight of her instructors, the orphan was a natural. Her instructors described her as unusually focused and a quick study. But it wasn't her aptitude that caught their attention. it was her demeanor. In every challenge, she remained unflappable, seemingly immune to the stress and fatigue the program was designed to induce. Her instructors were impressed, and the training

was fast-tracked. Soon, it was clear she was the right candidate for the task at hand, and so the decision was made. On the big day, she was awakened before dawn and led to a small room. It was a poorly insulated and impossibly cramped room, but better than what she'd been used to. They positioned her on a drab, leather cushion, and told her to remain as still as possible. Wires dangling from machines were attached to her skin. Food and water were left with an easy reach. Our protagonist remained calm. She asked no questions and offered nothing but that same friendly smile before the men lock the door behind them. Outside, the instructors gathered around a monitor and hoped for the best. Most recruits lasted 15 or maybe 20 minutes before the claustrophobia became too much to bear.

But she was different. Unfazed, she lay there for an hour, then another. And then another after that, gazing calmly at the gray metal roof a foot above her head, smiling that same curious smile. Finally, after three days, locked inside the cold and gloomy enclosure, the waiting ended. Buttons were pressed, switches were flipped. The rumble of unfamiliar noises filled the air. Within moments, she was hurtling through the troposphere, the stratosphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, entering space at 18,000 miles per hour. She was an orphan in orbit, 4,000 miles above the streets. she used to wander, the first female, to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

Those of you who remember the first days of the space race might recall the way the world looked to the sky and held its breath, praying for her safe return. In those days, no one knew how zero gravity would affect flesh and bone, but thanks to the orphan called Laca, the world was about to find out. She circled the Earth four times in zero gravity, as the scientists far below monitored her vitals, duly recording every precious scrap of data, until there was nothing left to monitor. Truth is, Lakers had always been a one-way ticket. You see, the Russians recruited an orphan from the frozen streets of Moscow because they needed

a subject who could endure the cold of a poorly insulated capsule. And while Laca was, without question, the first female in space, she was not a woman. She was a 14-pound terrier mix with a friendly smile, a patient disposition, and two ears that bent in several directions at once. In other words, she was a dog with the right stuff. Sputnik, too, would carry her corpse another 2,56 orbits before plummeting to Earth, leaving no remains for a proper funeral. Her sacrifice, though, is still remembered by many, and if you visit the Soviet, Capitol today, you'll see her back on the streets she once called home. There, memorialized and bronze, she stands upon a rocket and looks toward the heavens. An eternal reminder to all those

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