Three weeks before Apollo 11, they sent a monkey up in space.

The experiment was to last a month, to see how the monkey handled being in space, you know, exposed to radiation, that long.

It was cancelled after 8 days. The monkey was DOA.

And STILL, they went ahead with Apollo 11 just days later. Having changed nothing! LOL

This was called Biosatellite 3, for those interested.