5 Soviet Space Programs That Prove Russia Was Insane

The thing about the Iron Curtain is that we'll never fully know what crazy shit went on behind it during the Cold War. And that's too bad, because the little hints that leak out really make it look like these people just did not give a shit. Take the Soviet space program. We know they were the first to get both a satellite and a human in orbit, which were both pretty admirable accomplishments. What they kept hidden from the world was that maintaining even minimal levels of safety was a completely foreign concept to them. And that the cosmonauts who flew their rickety ass spaceships must have had balls made of elephant tusks. Here are five spectacularly audacious Soviet space programs that prove that in Soviet Russia, space goes into you. #5. Between 1951 and 1966, the USSR sent over twenty dogs into the cosmos, but to be fair, they weren't the only ones who tested the viability of human space travel by sending animals up first. We're guessing PETA never had a Soviet equivalent. #4. #3. Related: