Iranian Space Monkey Dies

Sad for the monkey, but a relief for most of mankind.

It’s the foiled Iranian mission on all of our minds this week. Iran’s space monkey project, which aimed to send a live monkey into space this summer on a Kavoshgar-4 rocket, was not long for this world. Neither was the monkey, unfortunately. Earlier in the year, Tehran announced it would try to send the primate into space in the hopes of sending humans by 2020, just like the US sent about half a dozen monkeys back in late 1940s and '50s. Iran has already sent a rat, turtles and worms. Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has yet to condemn the mission, though it's safe to assume Canada will likely view this failure positively, since monkey flight is just one step closer to ballistic missiles in a regime that may well have just tried to bomb the Saudi embassy in Washington.