Fruit flies strapped into a captured V-2, forced into diamond hands at 109 kilometers — fourteen years before Gagarin. The capsule came down on a parachute. They survived.
Four phases, one afternoon in the desert. Scrub through the flight the same way the ground crew logged it.
3:52 AM. A sealed glass capsule of Drosophila melanogaster is fitted into the nose cone of a captured German V-2. No training, no simulator runs — this is the first attempt.
Simulated feed for preview purposes — wire this panel up to your real price and holder data before launch.
The fruit flies flew first. Everything that came after just had better PR.
Launched from White Sands aboard a captured V-2 to study cosmic radiation. First animals to leave Earth's atmosphere.
Survived
“The original early flyers. Zero hype. Actual launch.”