Laika and Thermodynamics

This is one of these posts where I just pulled together a list of articles that I read.

• I was recommended Mark Ward's excellent reconstruction of the Space programs, Astronautix. It was intriguing to learn that the Russians were thwarted by their manufacturing capacity and competitive design principles and ended up blowing their launch pad to smithereens with the N2 17 days before Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. [MegaProjects]
• In this context I also looked into the sad demise of Laika, who supposedly lived for several days until she fell asleep for lack of oxygen, but in reality succumbed to heat exhaustion and dehydration under significant distress. [Geno Productions]
• I was also recommended David Wolpert's statistical mechanics paper on the thermodynamics of computation, originally published 2019, but reworked to Version 3 in 2025. [ArXiv]