Animals in (new) space: chimponauts, cosmodogs, and biosphere II

Abstract

Like many baby-boomers, I grew up with visuals of chimpanzees being shot up into space as part of NASA' s program for space exploration; I read about Laika, the Russian dog who perished on her first space mission, involuntarily recruited from the streets of Moscow where she had lived as a stray. Biosphere II-the failed attempt to recreate earth' s ecosystems in an enclosure outside of Tucson, Arizona-similarly instrumen-talized animals, this time for food, as part of a larger project investigating the possibilities of human life beyond earth. Now, NewSpace entrepreneurs pursue techno-solutions and space escapes for elites seeking adventurous enclosures beyond earth' s climate-changing surface. An ecofeminist perspective enriches our understanding of space exploration ideology by examining how cultural narratives of gender, species, and culture play out both here on earth and beyond our biosphere. Interrogating these techno-scientific pursuits in outer space augments our understanding of contemporary environmental problems such as climate change, environmental justice, and human-animal relations. Resumen Como muchas de las personas nacidas durante la posguerra, crecí con imágenes de chimpancés catapultados al espacio como parte del programa de la NASA para la ex-ploración espacial; también había leído acerca de Laika, la perra rusa que murió en su primera misión espacial, involuntariamente reclutada en las calles de Moscú, donde había vivido como un perro callejero. La Biosfera II-el intento fallido de volver a crear