By Jeffrey the Barak

In 2016, Sam the Space Dog, a lovable little stuffed animal, rode a balloon into space, reaching an altitude of 25 kilometers.

He was the hero of a lot of British schoolchildren who excitedly watched the fascinating high definition video transmission from their little buddy’s adventure.

Alas, upon his descent something went wrong and Sam got lost. I was so worried about Sam and would search the news for an update, always hoping someone would find him and know who he was.

I set up a Google News Alert and waited. Occasionally the keywords Sam, Space, Dog would trigger a false alarm and an unrelated story would feed in.

Just the other day I was thinking about Sam, somewhere all alone in the harsh outdoors. Would the kids even recognize him after such exposure in wild England?

Then today I got quite a fright. There was Sam preparing for a second mission, to ride a super-fast rocket up to around 4,000 feet in 20 seconds. They had found Sam! Or had they? The first article I read was on something called “the bay”. It offered no explanation of how Sam had been found.

So I looked further, as usual finding nothing about his rediscovery and rescue, and then I found more articles, including one in “The Visitor” which revealed the hard truth: “The lost Sam was never found – but being a cuddly toy, thankfully there is more than one of him!”

So Sam #1 is still out there in the cruel countryside somewhere on the other end of his parabola from Morecambe Bay, but his spirit, personality and love are now inside Sam #2 who will be riding inside a Skybolt 2 Research Rocket, and hopefully landing unharmed where he can be easily found and recovered.

I still hope that Sam #1 will come home one day.

Update: Sam #2 made it back just fine. Sam #1 is still missing.