Soviets design a spaceship to return Laika alive

[LeX]

I was reading about Laika and how she was pretty much starved and thirsted to death after getting to orbit—a pretty cruel way for the first Earthling into space to die. In the Wikipedia article on her it seems that some of the scientists involved in the project tried to care for Laika well, such as one guy who took her with his family on a weekend outing shortly before Sputnik 2 went up.

Would it have been technologically/politically feasible for the Soviet space program to design the vessel so that it would bring its passenger back to Earth? Or was Laika's death a necessary sacrifice on the road to manned spaceflight?

 

[Lalli]

Not sure if it was technically possible even for Americans. And I doubt that Soviets care much about health of animals. They barely care even other humans.

 

[marathag]

Not sure if it was technically possible even for Americans. And I doubt that Soviets care much about health of animals. They barely care even other humans.

Mercury-Redstone was used for Chimps, but that craft was a lot larger craft. Sputnik 2 was around 1100 pounds, a third as much weight as Mercury Capsule.
But note that the Soviet Vostok that Gagarin was far heavier, but not as capable as the Mercury.

Now had the US wanted to do a Space Stunt like Khrushchev, Modifying a KeyHole/Corona Satellite to have the film bucket return a small Dog or Monkey back to earth, alive,

But it took a year and a half of Discoverer launches, the cover for the NRO Keyhole testing, to get they system working where the bucket could even be set for attempted recovery

 

[Twin City Lines]

Probably with enough time to plan for it, but then they would have risked not being first. However, if the Americans sent an animal into space first and sacrificed it, the Soviet would definitely have found a way to send one up and bring it back alive as their "trump card".

 

[RedSword12]

Not sure if it was technically possible even for Americans. And I doubt that Soviets care much about health of animals. They barely care even other humans.

It was rather unexceptional. The Americans sent quite a few monkeys to near certain death to research how rocket launches might affect humans.

 

[MUC]

I thought Laika died because of the high temperature in the spacecraft only a few hours after the start?

 

[Resurgam]

I thought Laika died because of the high temperature in the spacecraft only a few hours after the start?

She did.

I can't see the Soviets being bothered to bring her back, honestly. Their concern about human return is certainly suggestive.