Cosmic Critters: The Monkey-nauts Who Paved the Way for Space Travel

Before astronauts, there were monkeynauts. In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the bizarre and often tragic history of the first primates sent to space—Albert I, II, III, and IV.

The U.S. was determined to test the limits of space travel, and what better way than by strapping a rhesus macaque to a rocket? Unfortunately for the Alberts, early spaceflight engineering wasn’t exactly foolproof (seriously, how hard is it to pack a working parachute?!). From launch failures to unexpected explosions, these monkeys became unwilling pioneers in the quest to understand weightlessness, high-altitude survival, and just how many things can go wrong in a single mission.

Join us as we unpack the history, science, and ethics of these doomed primate test pilots. If you love space history, weird animal experiments, and questioning past scientific decisions, this episode is for you!

Transcript

Laura: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Wildly Curious, a podcast that tells you everything you need to know about nature, and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura.

Katy: And I'm Katy, and this is week four of Cosmic Critters, where we're talking about things that humans have launched into space so that we could find out if they died before we would. So,

Laura: Trigger warning, if you get upset for mammal death, this is one you should avoid. Alright.

Katy: of the Cosmic Critter ones. They're good. It's interesting stuff. It's just, yeah. 

Laura: with this one, because this is like the first, so, so, I, you know, Katy talked in the first one, we sent fruit flies up there, but then what did we do? We did monkeys. So I'm covering, I am covering, it's a four and one, because it's Albert one, two, three, and four.

I just, all of them, all the Alberts.

Katy: I was gonna say, do you go into like why they decided 4? Were they [00:01:00] just like somebody who really liked Albert and just not creative so they're like 1,

Laura: I think so. So because, well they're all the same species and they were all part of the same program, just later in time. 

Katy: So just 1, 2, yeah, 4. Easy. Great for branding. You know what I'm saying?

Laura: You just, Albert, Albert's Albert.

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: have to learn new names.

Katy: Right? Way easier.

Laura: an Albert. So, all of these were Reeses, Reeses. All of these were Reeses macaques, not Reeses. Which, real quick, for anybody who, you know, we've talked about dogs, cats, and frogs, which hopefully you all know what they look like. But if you don't know what a Reeses macaque looks like, it's also called a Reeses monkey. They're a sandy colored monkey from Central and Southeast Asia. They're around 20 pounds.

Naturally, typically, they live in forests, but they are super well adapted to humans. So they're found in tons of cities and, and towns. They're omnivores, they live in groups, and they're very intelligent and hardy in captivity, making [00:02:00] them basically one of the most popular, monkeys to be used in research.

, there's some other ones that they use, but rhesus macaques are very popular.

Katy: Very popular, yeah.

Laura: So let's start with Albert I. He was the first mammal launched on a rocket, period. Which I did not know. And I, I just couldn't believe how early we started launching things into space. 

Katy: Yes. 

Laura: 1948. Like, World, freshly, World War II freshly ended.

You know what we were like? We were like, listen, we just got out of a terrible war. But, let's, or,

Katy: just shoot things into

Laura: maybe it was just someone who was like, I don't want to be on this planet anymore. Let's start investigating space.

Katy: Listen, you and me both, buddy. You and me both, Albert. 

Laura: So, this was, he was launched on a rocket June 18th, 1948 and he was part of the Hermes program.

The 1944 with the objective of testing missiles out of White Sands, New Mexico. But that quickly turned, so what they were trying to [00:03:00] do is they were trying to, what do they call it? Recreate. A German V2 rocket, but like, our own version of that. That

Katy: engineering, but essentially, Yeah.

Laura: So, that's Reverse engineered, that's what it's called.

Katy: Reverse engineering, there you go.

Laura: it. So that, it, they, they were creating, America was creating its own version that, they were testing these missiles and then they were like, you know what, like, let's strap something to it and let's see what happens. It's very much like, Toy Story, like, Sid level person, or

Katy: Yeah, right?

Laura: So, poor Albert I. Not only was he just, you know, rhesus macaques are not very big in general, 20 pounds, like I said. He was only 9 pounds. Like, he was a juvenile.

Katy: itty bitty, yeah. Was he young, or was he just tiny? That tiny?

Laura: , He was anesthetized, thank goodness, and put in the crew capsule at the nose of the rocket.

Like,

Katy: Oh my god. He literally got a front

Laura: front row just launched that monkey. [00:04:00] They, this is terrible guys, we have to joke about this or we'll cry. Like, this is, but, our messed up sense of humor.

Katy: Yeah, right?

Laura: what they were planning on doing was tracking his respiratory system. But that immediate, that system immediately failed. Like, just, absolute failure.

Indications show that he likely died due to the cramped nature of the capsule before the even launched.

Katy: So he basically had a panic

Laura: I, or like, he suffocated. Like, they just

Katy: Yeah, they were so like, tight.

Laura: so small, died before it even took off. It's that, or the system failed and they no longer could tell whether he was alive or not.

No one knows, because the system failed eventually at some point. The, and so not only did that happen, but the turbine burned out quicker than was expected, so he only got 39 miles high. In 57. 5 seconds, so [00:05:00] not even one minute, 

Katy: Yeah. Gosh. 

Laura: And then the parachute also failed, so even if Albert had

survived takeoff, he sure wouldn't have survived impact.

Katy: Right? Engineer, a parachute is a pretty, fairly basic function here guys,

Laura: They had obviously perfected it in World War II.

Katy: Right?

Laura: a rocket, though. All in all, dud mission, zero data. This is like a depressing one, because they didn't learn anything other than how to build a better rocket that could keep a monkey alive, I guess. But like, no data,

Katy: There, that would be, that would be all the engineers staying in the room would be like, well, uh, that

Laura: Yeah, like.

Katy: but, the only place we have to go from here is up, so, you know,

Laura: just trying to spin it positively.

Katy: right? , let's try this again, let's get ourselves another Albert, and, let's do this round two.

Laura: So that's what they did. They got themselves another Albert. This was almost a year to the day. It was June 14, 1949. [00:06:00] Next year. Also a V 2 rocket. It was redesigned though to have more space in the tip of the nose.

Katy: Okay, we're getting places, we are getting 

Laura: learning, we need to make a bigger space. He was launched out of the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

Still New Mexico, just a different place. He reached 83 miles up in the air. Unfortunately, his parachute didn't work either and he died on impact.

Katy: Oh my god.

Laura: the plus side, they got all his vitals data up until then.

Katy: Okay,

Laura: Slow progress.

Katy: Bring in

Laura: Albert III! This one

Katy: the show Dinosaurs, from the Jim Henson's, and yeah, and it was based off of a show, and I can't remember what it was, but it was a spoof, but it was like, we're gonna need another Timmy!

Laura: Ha ha! 100%.

Katy: be like a burnt stump, and he'd be like, we need another Timmy!

And [00:07:00] that's what I feel like these guys are like, we need another Albert! Heh!

Laura: Well, Albert the Third came along three months later. Yeah, September 16th, 1949. They're getting faster. It took them a year to redesign this rocket. Now they're like, alright, that one was pretty successful. The parachute just didn't work. Yeah, they got the data. They got 83 miles up in the air. . This one though, when they launched, after 10.

7 seconds, the tail of the rocket exploded, and that was that. R. A. P. Albert

Katy: Ugh.

Laura: 10. 7 seconds in. Q.

Katy: wait, okay, so the first one was like less than a minute. How long was the second

Laura: The second one, it didn't say a time, it just said the height. Oh no wait, no no no, yes yes yes yes yes, 83 miles.

Katy: Okay. So we're going, we're, we're kind of going backwards here, guys. As far as

Laura: So, and then finally, and then lastly, last of the Hermes missions, Albert IV. Again, another, [00:08:00] just a few months later, December 8th, 1949. Albert IV was launched into space. He reached 79 miles, so almost as high as the first one, and they collected all his biometric data.

But another parachute failure.

Katy: Oh my gosh,

Laura: Can not get

Katy: so much on, they focus so much on fixing everything else. They're like, shit, we forgot to focus on the

Laura: They just didn't pack it. They

Katy: Right?

Laura: it wasn't even a failure. They just forgot this one.

Katy: they're so worried about everything else. They're like, oh shit, the

Laura: whoever was the person on this mission in charge of parachutes, I would not trust with anything in the future. Like, this is your one job. Create this parachute that works. Can't do

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: Metaphor for your life, perhaps? Like, don't rely on that, dude.

Katy: Especially like you said, parachutes, had been used in World War II. I mean, fairly successfully, yes, not on a rocket, but I feel 

you know, I don't want to dumb it down too much, because it's literally rocket science, but [00:09:00] parachute's a parachute.

Laura: write, I guess it's a matter of like, did it get caught inside a, like, did it ever open? If it did open, did it get caught? Or is

Katy: yeah, was it like a mechanical, yeah.

Laura: just Behind it but like nothing it's it's not it just immediately rips in half from the wind resistance like

Katy: Just, fries 

Laura: would be a hilarious cartoon horrible But also like like the perfect bugs bunny cartoon essentially, you know what I mean?

Where it's just like they

Katy: like Wiley, , Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner, like a hundred 

Laura: keeps ripping that parachute cord and crap just keeps happening to the parachute. Like, no matter what, the parachute does not work, like.

Katy: Oh my gosh. Poor Albert.

Laura: a lot from Alberts 1 through 4. Not a, well, okay, maybe not a lot, but definitely don't only launch things on a rocket.

Katy: Yes.

Laura: Probably put some more systems in place and don't only[00:10:00] 

Katy: Yes, right? Yeah, gosh. Yeah, find yourself a new parachute engineer, clearly. And. Yeah, jeez.

Laura: Sorry, that was a really depressing one. But, to be fair,

Katy: We're gonna need another Albert! Like

Laura: To be fair, it was our first I just can't I'm actually kind of surprised that the first mammals ever that U. S. was gonna send into space we were like, you know what? Were we fruit flies? Or was Russia fruit flies?

Katy: I don't know who, I don't know

Laura: Well, if it was us, we got way overconfident. We were like, you know what? Should we do mice?

Absolutely not. Send up a monkey! Like, just

Katy: It was, it was the U. S. We did the first fruit flies into space on February 20, 1947.

Laura: see and the next year over confident of being like fruit fly to monkey. That's a huge freaking jump 

Katy: right? 

Laura: not a rat.

Katy: flies?

Laura: Not a yeah

Katy: Yeah. Man. [00:11:00] Yeah. They were overconfident and I'm sure there was some like young engineer, you know, he was the one that was in charge of the parachute. He's like, yeah man, we got

Laura: It was still the capsule size made for fruit flies they just tried to jam a monkey in it

Katy: Get in there, Albert!

Laura: albert

Katy: Aww. Well, on that note, make sure you guys go check us out on YouTube. Support us on Patreon. And, uh, yeah, we could really use this board so we can, you know, keep learning about other Owlberts, I guess.

Laura: uh, we promise we're not as heartless as we sound.

Katy: I can't, we just, you have to laugh, like, again, retrospect, for science, I mean, we've, we've done, I mean, like Laura said in one of the earlier, you know, Cosmic Critters episodes, it's very much so in line with the Mad Scientist, or Madder Scientist episodes we've done, like, it is, it's horrible stuff, this, I mean, I don't want to say at least it was done to animals, because that's just as [00:12:00] bad, but, at the same time, it's like, Science had to start from somewhere with our base all the understanding that we have especially biological systems We have I mean a lot of it came from animals studying animals And then we eventually when we got comfortable blowing up Alberts That's whenever we eventually were like people, you know frogs everything else.

So

Laura: Yeah. And, and to be fair, this is nothing compared to the other things that we have talked about in our

Katy: Oh my gosh No, if you guys haven't listened to our mad scientist and matter scientist episode Dude, go back and listen to it. We talk about butt probing, and like, there's some

Laura: done some crazy things.

Katy: some like, such horrible things that humans have done to humans.

Laura: And an animal. All of

Katy: oh my gosh. Yes.

Laura: there.

Katy: Yes. But for, in the name of science, again, that's what we talked about.

Like, it's a fine line between like, Are you a really good scientist, or are you just 

Laura: [00:13:00] Well, and the ethics, right? It's

Katy: Yes, the ethics behind it.

Laura: it's a good ethical exercise to think. Is it or is it not ethical to do these things?

Katy: Yeah, they could have

definitely, they could have at least made 

Laura: those questions, 

Katy: yes, they could have at least, okay, ethically, they could have at least, at the very, very least, made sure that Albert's parachute worked. Like,

Laura: Or, I mean, they didn't, at least they never said they didn't anesthetize the first one. Actually, I think that's the most thing that we could do. The poor things, if we could just make them all go to sleep for this horrible thing that they're about to go through. But,

I guess you wouldn't get the right readings.

Katy: yeah, yeah. Hope on that note guys, again check us out on YouTube and Patreon, and next week we'll be back for another full episode the week after that. Uh, we have cosmic critters again, so till next time guys.