Da future was here

Science Museum’s Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age reviewed

The exhibit is a striking testament to the oft-overlooked Soviet space program.

Cassandra Khaw – Sep 21, 2015 3:32 pm | 10

I didn’t grow up dreaming of space. The year the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 into orbit, my country had only just won its independence. Malaysia didn’t establish a space program until 2002—decades after America placed a man on the Moon. But standing in the entrance for the Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age exhibit at the Science Museum in London, I felt a little bit of that wonder; that wrenching, viscera-deep longing that leads a nation to the stars.

Open to the public until March 13, 2016, the exhibit is a vivid reminder that while America’s contributions might echo loudest in collective memory, it was the Soviet Union that initially opened the route. The collection on display is billed as the greatest of its kind to be seen outside of Russia. It includes historic relics such as a Sputnik 1 display model; paintings from Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space; and the actual Vostok-6, the capsule that brought Valentina Tereshkova—the first woman in space—home to Earth. More fascinatingly, perhaps, Cosmonauts also points a spotlight on the socio-political influences buried in the bones of Soviet cosmic exploration.

Swathed in reds and cold silver, the first section of the exhibit could pass for a futuristic memorial—and in a fashion, that’s exactly what it is: a testament to the human passion behind it all. Long before the idea was anything more than a fairy tale, Russian cosmists spoke about how humanity’s future laid outside of Earth’s atmosphere. Chief among them was Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a recluse and a scientist who many regard as one of the founding fathers of astronautics. His body of work spanned philosophical texts, designs for spaceflight technology, and even science fiction, the last of which can be seen in the Science Museum.

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, was reunited with the Vostok 6. Credit: Cassandra Khaw

Tsiolkovsky’s research was instrumental shaping the USSR’s space program. They helped inspire Sergei Korolev, a Soviet engineer who nearly perished during Joseph Stalin’s Great Purge. Despite the privations he suffered, Korolev would later spearhead many of the nation’s astronautical feats. It was he who developed Sputnik 1, he who orchestrated the first space walk, he who launched Yuri Gagarin into space—and all in obscurity until after his death.

Like Korolev’s identity, much of the Soviet Union’s astronautical accomplishments during the period were swaddled in secrecy. But that did little to slow the propaganda machine. The exhibit area is littered with numerous triumphant posters depicting a utopian vision of tomorrow. They’re a striking accompaniment to the more tangible relics from the Soviet space program. The claustrophobic Vostok-6 capsule, its hull battered and burnt by re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere, is a chilling sight. Similarly, the LK-3 Lunar Lander, a closely guarded secret until President Gorbachev’s leadership, in the Secret Moon section is almost ominous in its immensity.

But for all the grandeur of the larger pieces, it is, perhaps, the smaller ones that best sell the idea behind Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age. There is Yuri Gagarin’s military uniform, a letter from Maria Trofimova beseeching the government to put her into space, a Japanese doll that helped confirm to ground control when a spacecraft was in orbit. A wall of specifically designed suits and equipment, including garments used to counter the negative health effects of weightlessness, also helps show the complexity of life in space. The penultimate segment is a wealth of details; nascent technologies that allude to how mankind might one day live in the heavens.

“Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” Credit: Cassandra Khaw

Which is why, perhaps, the final room of the exhibit is such a jarring contrast. Drenched in a hard, eerie blue, it houses only a single scientific mannequin, and a quote on the wall: “Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever.” In a sense, the abruptness of the transition embodies both the preceding section—a dream of Mars that the Soviet Union shared with the rest of the world—and what happened next.

As Neil deGrasse Tyson said in 2011, we stopped dreaming. No longer hounded by the spectre of war, governments slowed their pursuit for the stars and our forward-looking vision of tomorrow lagged behind the problems of today. There was no longer a point to the space race. America won. Russia’s shuttle program, Buran, was mothballed after a single launch. War, civil unrest, terrorists, an unstable global economy—these down-to-Earth issues became more important. Where before it looked upwards, Earth had to turn its gaze to the ground.

But there’s more hope now than ever before. Even as the ESA’s Rosetta sends close-up images of its comet back to Earth and NASA’s Curiosity rover continues its photographic voyage across Mars, private firms like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic fight technological mishaps to send the common man into orbit. Humanity is stuttering forward again, in bits and bounds, perhaps, put it feels like we’ve regained momentum. And the Cosmonauts exhibition is a reminder of what it was like before we lost it.

Cassandra Khaw Contributing Reporter

Cassandra Khaw enjoys Muay Thai, neural networks, street dance, video games, reading, and balletic executions of electronic malice.

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