Each paragraph in this book is worthy of writing a whole book in itself. And many have done so. Here are a few more places I went to, which will expand the areas on which I’ve only briefly touched.
These notes were compiled with the help of Tamsin Edwards. All webpages were last accessed July 2017.
PREFACE
1. ‘EARTH IN THE VIEWPORT …’: The Grass Beside Our House by Zemlyane (1979). With grateful thanks to Svetlana Ivanova Poperechnaya for her kind permission to reproduce the lyrics of Anatoly Poperechny, and to Dr Iya Whiteley for agreeing to call her from the green room of the Cheltenham Science Festival. Translation by George Ross (2010), from russongs.tumblr.com/post/73998256115/zemlyane-the-grass-beside-our-home.
2. 553 HUMANS HAVE DONE IT: As of July 2017, according to the official FAI (Fédération Aéronautique Internationale) definition, or 559 according to the United States Air Force definition. See https://www.worldspaceflight.com/bios/stats.php.
3. EIGHT PEOPLE HAVE DIED EN-ROUTE TO SPACE AND 11 ON THE WAY HOME: Those people were Michael Smith, Dick Scobee, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik (Challenger, 1986); Michael Alsbury (SpaceShipTwo, 2014); Vladimir Komarov (Soyuz 1, 1967); Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov, and Viktor Patsayev (Soyuz 11, 1971); Rick D. Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Kalpana Chawla, David Brown, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon (Columbia, 2003). See ‘Health and safety’ chapter for some of those lost in training.
LET’S GO
4. ‘LET’S GO ON A JOURNEY INTO SPACE…’: Based on a conversation with astrophysicist Dr Sheona Urquhart.
5. JUNK BORN FROM JUNK AD INFINITUM: Inspired by the beautiful Project Adrift, via twitter. com/FengyunAdrift/status/826408791038103553. See ‘Adventures in Low Earth Orbit’ chapter for more.
FIRST STAGE: GROUND CONTROL
WHAT’S HOLDING YOU BACK?
THE JACOBEAN SPACE PROGRAMME
6. THE JACOBEAN SPACE PROGRAMME: A phrase coined by Prof Allan Chapman, for example in his 11 October 2004 talk The Jacobean Space Programme – Wings, Springs and Gunpowder: Flying to the Moon from 17th Century England at Gresham College. Available at www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-jacobean-space-programme-wings-springs-and-gunpowder-flying-to-the-moon-from.
7. THAT PULLED HIM ACROSS THE CIRCUMLUNAR SPACE …IN SOME 12 DAYS: For the mathematics of goose flight, see Andrew J. Simoson (2007) Pursuit Curves for the Man in the Moone, The College Mathematics Journal, vol. 38, 330-338. Available at www.maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/upload_library/22/Polya/simoson330.pdf.
8. ‘CELESTIAL DON QUIXOTE’: Prof Allan Chapman again, as above.
THE RENAISSANCE RIGHT STUFF
9. ‘WE DO NOT ADMIT DESK-BOUND HUMANS…’: From VIII: The Daemon from Levania in Somnium (1608). Translated by Tom Metcalfe for The Somnium Project. Available at somniumproject.wordpress.com/somnium/viii.
TRUE STORIES
10. ‘MY SUBJECT IS, THEN, WHAT I HAVE NEITHER SEEN…’: The Lucian of Samosata Project has many public domain translations. This one is by H.W. Fowler and F. G. Oxford, The Clarendon Press. 1905. Available at lucianofsamosata.info.
11. ‘1) BY SPIRITS, OR ANGELS…’: From the start of Chapter VII, Concerning the Art of Flying. The several ways thereby this hath been, or may be attempted, in Book II, Daedalus of Mathematical Magick (1648). Also known as: Mathematical Magic, or, The Wonders that May By Performed by Mechanical Geometry. In Two Books. Concerning Mechanical {Powers. Motions.} Being one of the most easy, pleasant, useful (and yet most neglected) Part of the Mathematics. Not before treated of in this Language. Which is rather nice.
CROSSING THE LINE
12. VON KÁRMÁN ESTABLISHED THE DEMARCATION LINE: See 100 km Altitude Boundary for Astronautics by Dr Sanz Fernández de Córdoba, on the FAI website. Available at www.fai.org/icare-records/100km-altitude-boundary-for-astronautics.
GRAVITY WELLS
13. FOR THOSE ATTEMPTING TO DEFY ‘GRAVITAS’: From p123 of Allan Chapman (1991) ‘A World in the Moon’: John Wilkins and his Lunar Voyage of 1640, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 32, 121–132. Available at adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1991QJRAS..32..121C.
14. POTATO RADIUS: An estimate published in conference proceedings by Charles Lineweaver and Marc Norman (2010) The Potato Radius: a Lower Minimum Size for Dwarf Planets, Australian Space Science Conference Series: Proceedings of the 9th Australian Space Science Conference, edited by Short and Cairns, National Space Society of Australia, April. Available at arxiv.org/abs/1004.1091.
15. HAMMER AND FEATHER: For details of the mission profile, see Al’s website. Available at alworden.com.
16. HAFELE-KEATING: In this experiment, the effect is actually about half due to General Relativity (gravity of the earth) and half to Special Relativity (going really fast).
FALLING AROUND THE EARTH
17. ‘HOW ABOUT THAT? MR GALILEO WAS CORRECT IN HIS FINDINGS’: Dave Scott (1971), NASA Apollo 15 film archive. Available at nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_15_feather_drop.html.
HOW TO BUILD A ROCKET
18. ‘WHEN YOU WANT TO BUILD A SHIP…’: Widely attributed to Antoine de Saint Exupéry, but it’s a mistranslation in a particular edition of Citadelle (1948). This rather nice variation is from the Antoine de Saint Exupéry section of Wikiquote.
19. ‘DESTINATION: THE MOON, OR MOSCOW. THE PLANETS, OR PEKING…’: James Burke in Eat Drink and Be Merry, episode 8 of the BBC documentary series Connections. First transmission 5 December 1978.
1. THE RUSSIAN MYSTIC VISIONARY OF ROCKETRY
20. ‘THE EARTH IS THE CRADLE OF HUMANITY…’: From The Exploration of the Universe with Reaction Engines (1911), published in Herald of Aeronautics. This translation was used in the wonderful Science Museum exhibition Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age in 2015/6.
21. ‘FIRST, INEVITABLY, THE IDEA, THE FANTASY…’: Source of translation unknown.
2. THE AMERICAN BACKYARD ROCKET ENGINEER WHO LIKED TO CLIMB TREES
22. MORE A MAN OF ACTION: Robert H. Goddard made the case for transporting humans by rocket in ROCKETING to the Moon, p47 of Modern Mechanix, January 1930.
23. ‘SET OFF RED FIRE AT A PREARRANGED TIME…’: From his diary, cited in David P. Stern (1999) Remembering Robert Goddard’s Vision 100 Years Later, Eos, vol. 80, issue 38, 441–2. doi: 10.1029/99EO00322. Available at onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/99EO00322/full.
24. ‘THE GREAT ROCKET…’: From ROCKETING to the Moon, as above.
3. THE CHIEF DESIGNER
25. OFFERED THE NOBEL PRIZE TWICE: According to Korolev’s daughter interviewed in The Red Stuff (2000), directed by Leo De Boer, Netherlands, Pieter Van Huystee Film and Television. ‘Everything was so secret that my father was even denied the Nobel Prize twice. The Nobel Committee had approached our government to give him the Nobel Prize for the Sputnik and later for Gagarin. Khrushchev then said: “Our whole people has created these techniques.” He did not win the Nobel Prize.’ Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQL9kUCdsu4 [31:00].
4. HERMAN OBERTH, A WOMAN IN THE ‘MOONE’ AND THE NAZI FLYING SAUCERS
26. ‘ “NEVER” DOES NOT EXIST FOR THE HUMAN MIND…’: The opening title card of Fritz Lang’s Frau im Mond (1929), Universum Film. Reproduced with permission of Murnau-Stiftung.
27. NAZI FLYING SAUCERS: See Hermann Oberth (1955) They Come From Outer Space, Flying Saucer Review, vol. 1, no. 2, May-June.
5. DR SPACE AND THE VENGEANCE WEAPON
28. ‘THIS THIRD DAY OF OCTOBER, 1942, IS THE FIRST OF A NEW ERA…’: In a speech at Peenemünde.
29. WERNHER VON BRAUN: Sheet music via MusicNotes.com. Reproduced with the very kind and charming permission of Tom Lehrer.
YOUR FUTURE RIDE TO SPACE
30. UPWARDS OF $5 MILLION: The classic number quoted for the Space Shuttle is $10,000 per pound ($22,000 per kg), which would be $10M. Estimates for more current and future rockets abound, but Harry W. Jones (2015) gives a potential range for the SLS of $7140 per kg to double that, so $3.2M to $6.4M for the paint job, in Estimating the Life Cycle Cost of Space Systems, ICES-2015-041, 45th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 12-16 July 2015, Bellevue, Washington. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20160001190.
CAN I TAKE MY DOG?
31. ‘ALL THE UNIVERSE IS FULL OF THE LIVES OF PERFECT CREATURES…’: From The Scientific Ethics (1930). Source of translation unknown.
32. ‘ARDAN WISHED TO CONVEY A NUMBER OF ANIMALS OF DIFFERENT SORTS…’: From p291-292 of my copy of Jules Verne (1865), From the Earth to the Moon, in: Around the World in Eighty Days; From The Earth to the Moon Direct; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Octopus Books Limited, London (this edition 1978).
33. ‘WEIGHTLESS RABBIT FLIES…’: From The Marfusha Haiku, written and read by John Talley-Jones. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU_fqMeaLQw.
34. LIVING OUT ITS DAYS IN THE PERSONAL ZOO OF MARIE ANTOINETTE: From p12 of S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler (2011), Ballooning: A History, 1782-1900, McFarland, Jefferson, North Carolina, USA.
MOSS PIGLETS
35. A 400G RAT WILL COST YOU AROUND $9000 TO GET INTO SPACE: Estimate of $8800 for an average weight rat by commenter ‘Arcane’ using classic NASA payload estimate above, under Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan (2014) NASA’s Space Rats Are Checking Into This Swanky New Rodent Hotel, Gizmodo, 27 May. Available at gizmodo. com/nasas-space-rats-are-checking-into-this-swanky-new-rode-1582002930. But some rockets might cost you less, some more.
36. MANY SURVIVED AND WENT ON TO REPRODUCE: K. Ingemar Jönsson and others (2008) Tardigrades survive exposure to space in low Earth orbit. Current Biology, vol. 18, 729–731. Available at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982208008051.
BLOSSOMING – FRUIT FLIES
37. PROJECT BLOSSOM: See Project Blossom 1 - AMC Pictorial Review 1 V-2 Rocket from the Periscope Film LLC archive. Uploaded online 30 August 2014. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5PWjS131cs.
38. THE FLIES RETURNED SAFE AND SOUND: From p31 of Colin Burgess and Chris Dubbs (2007) Animals in Space: From Research Rockets to the Space Shuttle, Springer.
39. YOUR FLIES ARE 728 GENERATIONS AWAY: According to Dr Adam Rutherford’s back of the envelope reply to my flippant question: ‘Average annual temperature in Santa Fe is only 10°C, which increases Drosophila melanogaster development time to a whopping 50 days, so life cycle is much longer. But let’s say 5 weeks, as they won’t have stayed in Santa Fe for 70 years. So that makes around 728 generations.’
SATELLITE DOGS
40. SATELLITE DOGS: This phrase taken from p203 of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
41. ‘THE DOG WILL DIE, WE CAN’T SAVE IT’: The Daily Mirror (1957), as reported by TIME Magazine (1957) ANIMALS: The She-Hound of Heaven, 18 November. Available from content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,868018,00.html.
42. ‘LAIKA, SWEET LOYAL LAIKA…’: From Tyapa, Borka and the Rocket, a 1962 story book for children by Marta Baranova and Yevgeny Veltisov, quoted on p111 of Olesya Turkina’s beautiful book Soviet Space Dogs (2014), Fuel, London.
43. THE SPACE TO COCK THEIR LEGS: From p107 of Soviet Space Dogs, as above.
44. SUFFERING FROM MASSIVE STRESS AND OVERHEATING …BY THE THIRD OR FOURTH ORBIT: D.C. Malashenkov (2002), Some Unknown Pages of the Living Organisms’ First Orbital Flight, IAF (International Astronautical Federation) abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, The Second World Space Congress, held 10-19 October, 2002 in Houston, TX, USA., p.IAA-2-2-05. Available at adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2002iaf..confE.288M
45. ANOTHER 2570 REVOLUTIONS OF THE EARTH …LAIKA’S RETURN HOME: From p164 of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
46. STRELKA’S PUPPIES: From p207 of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
47. 48 DOGS HAD BEEN LAUNCHED. 20 HAD DIED. ALL WERE LOVED: BBC4, Space Dogs, www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lkvtp. Available via UKAstronomy at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL03G46J-CM.
HAM – PRELUDE TO MAN
48. PROJECT ALBERT: From p40 onwards of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
49. FRUIT FLY LARVAE, HUMAN BLOOD …AND SPERM: From p136 of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
50. HAM HAD HIS PRE-FLIGHT BREAKFAST: From p249 of Burgess and Dubbs, Animals in Space, as above.
51. HAM’S POST-FLIGHT CELEBRITY AND CULTURAL ICONIC STATUS: There are mentions of TV appearances, but he definitely didn’t star in a movie with Evil Knievel, despite the references to this in many books due to a misunderstanding of an old internet article.
52. ENOS’ UNFORTUNATE NICKNAME: According to Mary Roach, who cleared his name in her 2010 book Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, W. W. Norton & Company.
53. ‘IN ADDITION, THE SUBJECT HAD BROKEN THROUGH…’: From p54 of James P. Henry and John D. Mosely [editors] (1963) Results of the Project Mercury Ballistic and Orbital Chimpanzee Flights: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA Special Publication SP-39, Washington. Available at history.nasa.gov/SP39Chimpanzee.pdf.
54. HAM’S REMAINS: Henry Nicholls (2013) Ham the astrochimp: hero or victim? The Guardian, 16 December. Available at www.theguardian.com/science/animal-magic/2013/dec/16/ham-chimpanzee-hero-or-victim.
ASTROCHAT AND ASTRORAT
55. ‘HARDLY HAD THE SHELL BEEN OPENED…’: From p282 of Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, as above.
56. HAVING BEEN WELL TRAINED ON THE RAT CENTRIFUGE: You can see a video of Hector training in the short video Hector, rat français de l’espace, Institut national de l’audiovisuel (INA), 18 January 1961. Available at www.ina.fr/video/AFE85008962.
IVAN IVANOVICH – THE RUSSIAN DOLL
57. ‘PHANTOM COSMONAUT’: Megan Garber (2013) The Doll That Helped the Soviets Beat the U.S. to Space, The Atlantic, 28 March. Available at www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/the-doll-that-helped-the-soviets-beat-the-us-to-space/274400.
58. EIGHTY MICE, GUINEA PIGS [AND] A RECIPE FOR BORSCHT: Megan Garber, The Doll That Helped the Soviets Beat the U.S. to Space, as above.
ZOND 5 – THE TORTOISES WHO THOUGHT THE WORLD WAS FLAT AND THEN SAW IT WAS ROUND
59. INTERCEPTED A MYSTERIOUS HUMAN VOICE: Sven Grahn (2008) Jodrell Bank’s role in early space tracking activities - Part 2. Available at www.jb.man.ac.uk/history/tracking/part2.html
60. RUSSIAN COSMONAUT VALERY BYKOVSKY: From p186 of Brian Harvey (2007) Soviet and Russian Lunar Exploration, Springer Praxis, Chichester, UK.
61. ANOTHER 70KG HUMAN MANNEQUIN… A PAIR OF RUSSIAN STEPPE TORTOISES: NASA (2017) Zond 5, 21 March. Available at nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1968-076A.
HOW TO GO INTO SPACE WITHOUT LEAVING HOME
62. ‘A PERSON OR THING SEEN AS COMPARABLE TO ANOTHER…’: Oxford Dictionary.
MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE: LUNAR MIGRATION BIRD FACILITY
63. ‘WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MOON GEESE IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY?’: Agnes Meyer-Brandis in THE MOON GOOSE ANALOGUE - documentation, 22 March 2012. Available at vimeo.com/38986659. For more on this project, commissioned by Arts Catalyst and FACT Liverpool, see www.blubblubb.net/mga. Visiting this extraordinary installation in 2014 was, in many ways, the seed of this book. Thank you Agnes.
SPACE STAYCATION
64. SAGAN’S ORANGE JACKET: Jon Lomberg (see ‘Envoys’ chapter) told me this story over dinner with Chris Riley.
LONG DURATION MISSIONS
65. HAND-WRITTEN LETTER TO THE MINERS: Romain Charles of the Mars 500 project told me this story at the European Astronaut Centre, 3 March 2017.
WHITE MARS
66. ‘POLAR EXPLORATION IS AT ONCE…’: From page xlix of Apsley Cherry-Garrard (1922), The Worst Journey in the World, Picador, London (this edition 2001). Another important book in my life.
67. THE BEST PLACE ON EARTH FOR ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATIONS: According to Will Saunders and others (2009) Where Is the Best Site on Earth? Domes A, B, C, and F, and Ridges A and B, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, vol. 121, no. 883, 976–992. Available at iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/605780.
68. WHERE THE ‘STRATOSPHERE COMES TO THE GROUND’: From Steward Observatory Radio Astronomy Laboratory (2013) The High Elevation Antarctic Terahertz Telescope. Available at soral. as.arizona.edu/HEAT.
TRAVEL GUIDE: THE HIVERNAUT
69. BETH HEALEY: Interviewed at the Royal Geographical Society, 31 January 2017. Thanks for the many space chats Beth.
SECOND STAGE: CLEARING THE TOWER
70. ‘BETWEEN YOU AND INFINITY THERE ARE BILLIONS OF STARS’: From p87 of Leonard de Vries (1963) The Second Book Of Experiments, Jarrold & Sons Ltd, Norwich. Translated by Eric G. Breeze. A writer (and translator) who continues to take my breath away. A children’s book that takes beauty and wonder seriously.
DO I HAVE THE RIGHT STUFF?
AL WORDEN, APOLLO 15 COMMAND MODULE PILOT, ON THE MOMENT OF LIFTOFF …
71. AL WORDEN: Interviewed at Alton Towers, 3 October 2016. Transcribed by Tamsin Edwards.
72. ‘BETWEEN THE STIMULUS AND THE RESPONSE…’: Frequently attributed to Viktor Frankl, but actually anonymous via Stephen R. Covey. See Franz Vesely, Alleged quote: ‘Between stimulus and response…’, The Official Website of the Victor Frankl Institute Vienna. Available at www.viktorfrankl.org/e/quote_stimulus.html.
73. ‘THAT INDEFINABLE, UNUTTERABLE INTEGRAL STUFF’: From p30 of Tom Wolfe (1979), The Right Stuff, Vintage Books, London (this edition 2005).
74. ‘DEAR GOD. PLEASE DON’T LET ME FUCK UP’: Alan Shepard, as misquoted on p249 of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, as above. He apparently said ‘Don’t fuck up Shepard’, according to various sources, e.g. p34 of Mike Fuller (2014), Our Beautiful Moon and its Mysterious Magnetism: A Long Voyage of Discovery, Springer, London.
THE RIGHT ORIGAMI
75. 1000 ORIGAMI PAPER CRANES: From Mary Roach (2010) The trials of the modern-day astronaut, The Telegraph, 14 September. Available at www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/7968400/The-trials-of-the-modern-day-astronaut.html. See also p277 of Carol Norberg [editor] (2013) Human Spaceflight and Exploration, Springer Praxis, Chichester. I practiced making these with Dr Iya Whiteley in the Cheltenham Science Festival green room.
THE RIGHT START
76. NASA OPENED ITS DOORS FOR BUSINESS: From p26 of Colin Burgess (2011), Selecting the Mercury Seven, Springer-Verlag, New York.
77. ‘1. TO SURVIVE…’: From p45 of Mae Mills (1965), Space Medicine In Project Mercury, NASA Special Publication-4003. Available at history.nasa.gov/SP-4003.pdf.
THE RIGHT SEARCH
78. 1500 HOURS FLIGHT TIME …AND HOLD A UNIVERSITY DEGREE: From p45–47 of Mae Mills, Space Medicine In Project Mercury, as above.
79. 32 PASSED …AND WERE DISPATCHED TO THE INFAMOUS LOVELACE CLINIC: From p48 of Mae Mills, Space Medicine In Project Mercury, as above.
THE RIGHT CLINIC
80. HIS LEFT HAND …FROZE INSTANTLY: From p69 of LIFE (1943) Army Doctor’s Record Parachute Jump, 9 August.
81. HE BROKE THE WORLD PARACHUTE ALTITUDE RECORD: From p29 of Margaret A. Weitekamp (2004) Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program, The John Hopkins University press, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
THE RIGHT TESTS
82. ‘RIDING THE STEEL EEL’: From p214 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
83. EVEN A SPERM SAMPLE HAD TO BE GIVEN: From p216 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
84. ‘YOU WISHED TO KNOW ALL ABOUT MY GRANDFATHER…’: See for example p217 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
85. THE 31 CANDIDATES …WERE NOW ASSIGNED LETTERS: From p233 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
86. STRESS TESTS: Mostly taken from Charles L. Wilson (1959) Project Mercury Candidate Evaluation Program, Wright Air Development Center Technical Report 59-505. Available at www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/234749.pdf.
87. A HEAT CHAMBER TEST …WITH A RECTAL THERMOMETER: From p238 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
88. THE ‘IDIOT BOX’: From p243 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
89. PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS: From p83 of Charles L. Wilson (1959), Project Mercury Candidate Evaluation Program, as above.
90. FROM 508: From p260–1 of Colin Burgess, Selecting the Mercury Seven, as above.
91. ‘OUTSTANDING, WITHOUT RESERVATIONS’: From p89 of Charles L. Wilson (1959) Project Mercury Candidate Evaluation Program, as above. In fact only 6 of these 7 were chosen. The 7th was from the list of three candidates judged ‘Outstanding with reservations’. Perhaps it was the candidate for whom the reservation was not medical but that he ‘was not entirely sure that he desired to continue on in Project Mercury’.
92. ‘…PSYCHOLOGICALLY HEALTHY MEN…’: From p265 of Patricia Santy (1994), Choosing the Right Stuff. Source for quote given as George Ruff on p241.
‘SHOULD A GIRL BE FIRST IN SPACE?’
93. ‘…A FLAT CHESTED LIGHTWEIGHT…’ From p119 of my copy of Look (1960), Should A Girl be First in Space? 2 February, vol. 24, no. 3, p112–119.
94. ‘EXPERTS IN OUR SPACE PROGRAM PREDICT WOMEN WILL BE CONSIDERED…’: From p116 of Look (1960), Should A Girl be First in Space?, as above.
95. ‘ASTRONAUTRIX’, ‘FEMINAUT’, ‘ASTRONETTE’: From p78 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
96. WOMEN HAD VARIOUS PHYSIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES: From p64–65 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
97. JERRIE COBB STORY: From p76–77 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
98. ‘BEYOND EXPECTATIONS’: From p77 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
99. TWENTY-FIVE WOMEN COMPLETED THE LOVELACE TESTS, WITH THIRTEEN PASSING: From p95 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
100. THE FIRST LADY ASTRONAUT TRAINEES (FLATS) OR THE MERCURY 13: From p178-9 of Margaret A. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex America’s First Women in Space Program, as above.
AM I AN ASTRONAUT?
101. NASA CANDIDATE QUALIFICATION REQUIREMENTS: Based on NASA (2011) Astronaut Selection and Training, FS-2011-11-057-JSC. Available at www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/606877main_FS-2011-11-057-JSC-astro_trng.pdf. And also Astronaut Candidate Program, applications open 14 December, 2015. Available at astronauts.nasa.gov/content/broch00.htm.
TRAVEL GUIDE: THE STEELY EYED MISSILE MAN
102. ‘…THE FLIGHT RULES DICTATED AN ABORT…’: From p158 of Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger (1994), Lost Moon, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, USA.
THE AFRONAUTS
103. ‘ZAMBIANS ARE INFERIOR TO NO MEN…’: Edward Makuka Nkoloso (1964) We’re going to Mars! WITH A SPACEGIRL, TWO CATS AND A MISSIONARY, as reported by Lusaka Times (2011) Zambia’s forgotten Space Program, 28 January. Available at www.lusakatimes.com/2011/01/28/space-program.
104. AFRONAUT STORY: See Namwali Serpeli (2017) The Zambian ‘Afronaut’ Who Wanted to Join the Space Race, 11 March. Available at www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-zambian-afronaut-who-wanted-to-join-the-space-race.
105. ‘WHERE FATE AND HUMAN GLORY LEAD…’: From Peter Collett (2009) Zambia boldly goes, New Statesman, 30 July. Available at www.newstatesman.com/africa/2009/08/nkoloso-zambia-moon-astronauts.
106. ‘BY PRIMITIVE NATIVES’: Reported by Lusaka Times, Zambia’s forgotten Space Program, as above.
107. ‘LOOK AT THAT TREE….’: From Peter Collett, Zambia boldly goes, as above,
WHAT SHALL I WEAR?
108. ‘IT IS AN ORDINARY MAN…’: Narration from NASA/ILC Dover promotional film, probably mid-1960s. Archive footage used in Survival In The Skies by Arrow Media on which I worked, commissioned by the Smithsonian Channel, broadcast on the Discovery Channel (UK) May-June 2017. Thanks to Chris Riley.
SUITS OF ARMOUR
109. A = APOLLO: From p99 of Lillian D. Kozloski (1994) U.S. Space Gear: Outfitting the Astronaut, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, USA.
110. STITCHING...BOXING GLOVES: From NASA (ca. 1970) Clip from Moonwalk One, ca. 1970: Space Suit, Headquarters’ Films Relating to Aeronautics, US National Archives, uploaded 16 July 2014. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BlVRLTuCfU.
111. MICHELLE TICE, JULIA BROWN, DELEMA AUSTIN, DELORES ZEROLES, DORIS BOISEY, DELEMA COMEGYS: From p82, p83 and p89 of Lillian D. Kozloski, U.S. Space Gear: Outfitting the Astronaut, as above.
112. [WE LIVE] AT THE BOTTOM OF AN OCEAN OF AIR: I have often used this phrase, but apparently Evangelista Toricelli used it first: ‘Viviamo nel fundo d’un pelago d’aria elementare’ in 1644, via Prof Andrea Sella in BBC Radio 4 Mercury - Chemistry’s Jekyll and Hyde, first broadcast 1 May 2017. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n2ltx.
UNDER PRESSURE
113. ‘IT WAS NATURE’S CRUELLEST TORTURE….’: From William R. Rankin (1960), The Man Who Rode the Thunder, pages 150–63, reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster in Joseph J. Corn [editor] (2011) Into the Blue: American Writers on Aviation and Spaceflight, The Library of America.
114. THE FATE OF THE RUSSIAN CREW OF A SOYUZ SPACECRAFT: NASA (2010) Descent into the Void, System Failure Case Studies, vol. 4, issue 9, 1-4, September. Available at spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/SignificantIncidents/assets/descent-into-the-void.pdf
115. ATMOSPHERIC DATA TABLE: U.S. Naval Flight Surgeon’s Manual, Naval Aerospace Medical Institute, Third Edition, 1991. From p19 of Dennis R. Jenkins (2012) Dressing for altitude: U.S. aviation pressure suits – Wiley Post to space shuttle, NASA. Available at www.nasa.gov/pdf/683215main_DressingAltitude-ebook.pdf.
116. YOU’VE GOT ABOUT TEN SECONDS OF CONSCIOUSNESS: From p5 of NASA (1973) [editors Parker Jr. and West] Bioastronautics data book: second Edition, NASA SP-3006. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19730006364.
SPACESUIT HISTORY
117. ‘MY IDEA IS TO EMPLOY A SUIT, SOMETHING LIKE A DIVER’S OUTFIT…’: From p493 of my copy of Wiley Post (1934) Wiley Post Seeks New Record, Popular Mechanics, October, 492-495.
118. ‘THE FIRST TAILOR OF THE SPACE AGE’: A phrase often used, for example on p64 of Colin Burgess (2016), Aurora 7: The Mercury Space Flight of M. Scott Carpenter, Springer International Publishing.
SILVER SUITS
119. SILVER BOOTS STORY: Various, e.g. Smithsonian (2017) The Mercury 7 Caper, Air & Space/Smithsonian Magazine, June. Available at www.airspacemag.com/as-next/mercury-7-caper-180963427.
EVA
120. LEONOV STORY: From p42 of David Baker (2014) Soyuz: Owner’s Workshop Manual, Haynes Publishing, UK.
121. ‘CAUCASUS! CAUCASUS!…’: From The Red Stuff, as above.
122. FOR IDENTIFICATION ON LANDING: From p48 of Isaak P. Abramov and A. Ingemar Skoog (2003) Russian Spacesuits, Springer Praxis, Chichester.
A BETTER MAN THAN ME
123. TANG …HAD LEAKED OUT: From p96 of Lillian D. Kozloski, U.S. Space Gear: Outfitting the Astronaut, as above. There are lots of stories about Tang in space.
124. ‘THO’ I’VE BELTED YOU AND FLAYED YOU…’: Rudyard Kipling (1892) Gunga Din.
SPACE SUITS, THE NEXT GENERATION
125. ‘SHE WILL NOT BE BOSOMY…’: From p119 of Look, Should A Girl be First in Space?, as above.
126. MACES WITH A LIMITED DEGREE OF EVA CAPABILITY: Richard D. Watson (2014) Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit Intravehicular Activity Suit for Extravehicular Activity Mobility Evaluations, 2014-ICES-194, 44th International Conference on Environmental Systems, 13-17 July 2014, Tucson, Arizona. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20140010572.pdf.
DO I NEED A VISA?
127. DR JILL STUART: by email and lots of fun conversations, February 2017. Thanks Jill.
SHOULD I BRING A PACKED LUNCH?
128. ‘THEY DID SO, READILY ENOUGH, AND BROUGHT ME VERY GOOD FLESH AN FISH…’: From Part IV of Francis Godwin (1638) The Man in the Moone. Quotes are taken from the public domain version, but I highly recommend the annotated edition by William Poole (2009), Broadview Press (this quote from p89).
HOW TO MAKE A SANDWICH IN SPACE
129. GEMINI III TRANSCRIPT: NASA (1965) Gemini III Composite Air-to-Ground and Onboard Voice Tape Transcription, April, 107 pages. Available at www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/mission_trans/gemini3.htm
LIVING OFF THE LAND
130. SPACE LETTUCE: Alan Yuhas (2015) Nasa astronauts take first bites of lettuce grown in space: ‘Tastes like arugula’, The Guardian, 10 August. Available at www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/10/nasa-astronauts-lettuce-vegetables-grown-space.
131. POTATOCAM: Available at potatoes.space/mars.
132. SPACE ROCKS RECIPE: With huge thanks to Thorsten Schmidt. Website mallingschmidt.dk. Sorry for the endless emails. You are a true star.
HEALTH AND SAFETY
133. ‘WHEN MAN STEPS INTO HIS ROCKET SHIP AND LEAVES THE EARTH BEHIND…’: Walt Disney, Man In Space, directed by Ward Kimball. First broadcast on ABC on 9 March, 1955. A wonderful film.
RISK ASSESSMENT
134. VALENTIN BONDARENKO: From p100-102 of Dominic Phelan [editor] (2013) Cold War Space Sleuths: The Untold Secrets of the Soviet Space Program, Springer Praxis, Chichester.
135. A CRATER ON THE MOON IS NOW NAMED AFTER HIM: From The Red Stuff, as above.
136. VLADIMIR KOMAROV: Amazing reading by one of his wives in The Red Stuff, as above.
137. GEORGY DOBROVOLSKY, VLADISLAV VOLKOV, AND VIKTOR PATSAYEV: NASA, Descent into the Void, as above.
STAYING HEALTHY – A NOTE FROM YOUR DOCTOR
138. DR OLEG KOTOV: by email, 4 June 2017. Translated by Dr Iya Whiteley, Director of the Centre for Space Medicine, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL.
CAN I BUY A TICKET TO SPACE?
139. ‘MAY BE OUT OF THIS WORLD’: Various sources, e.g. Jeff Gates (2016) I Was a Card-Carrying Member of the “First Moon Flights” Club, 20 October. Available at www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/i-was-card-carrying-member-first-moon-flights-club-180960817.
ASTRONAUT WANTED: NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY
140. ‘ASTRONAUT WANTED. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY.’: Various sources but one is BBC News (2008) 1991: Sharman becomes first Briton in space. On This Day. Available at news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/18/newsid_2380000/2380649.stm.
141. ‘LIKE LISTENING TO AN ORCHESTRA OF COLOURS’: From Tomoko Otake (2013) Toyohiro Akiyama: Cautionary tales from one not afraid to risk all, The Japan Times, 3 August. Available at www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/08/03/people/cautionary-tales-from-one-not-afraid-to-risk-all.
BUYING YOUR OWN TICKET
142. GALL BLADDER STORY: Richard Garriott told me this in the pub.
143. SEVEN PRIVATE, SELF-FUNDED ASTRONAUTS: With grateful thanks to Wikipedia user Rillian, who I believe first compiled this table of information from other sources in June 2014, and other contributors since.
INCENTIVES – THE X PRIZE
144. ‘BUILD AND LAUNCH A SPACECRAFT…’: From the Ansari X Prize website. Available at ansari.xprize.org.
145. ‘IT WAS LIKE BEING HIT WITH A SLEDGE HAMMER…’: BBC (2006) Space Tourists, Horizon.
VIRGIN GALACTIC – WHITE KNIGHT/SPACESHIPTWO
146. ‘BY TICKING THIS BOX YOU ARE CONFIRMING…’: Virgin Galactic (2017) Future Astronaut Application Form. Available at www.virgingalactic.com/human-spaceflight/fly-with-us/application.
BALLOON – THE ORBITAL PERSPECTIVE
147. ‘COMFORTABLE, STYLISHLY-APPOINTED SPACECRAFT’: World View Enterprises, Inc. (2017) The Experience. Available at www.worldview.space/voyage.
148. AL WORDEN: Interviewed over Skype, 12 May 2017. Transcribed by Louise Crane.
THIRD STAGE: THE OTHER SIDE OF SKY
149. THE OTHER SIDE OF SKY: The title of a song by Rachel Robinson, from her eponymous album in 2003. A hugely important song in my life. Rachel knows why.
150. ‘THERE WAS A TIME WHEN MEN STARED LONGINGLY…’: From p87 of Leonard de Vries, The Second Book Of Experiments, as above.
ADVENTURES IN LOW EARTH ORBIT
THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION – YOUR HOME AWAY FROM HOME
151. EXPLORING THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: You can now explore the real thing yourself, starting from the Cupola, on Google Street View. Available at www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/cupola-observational-module.
HOW TO JUMPSTART A DEAD RUSSIAN SPACE STATION
152. ‘I LOOK AROUND THE STATION…’: From the 1 September 1982 diary entry of Valentin Lebadev on Salyut 7 Expedition 1, via p93-4 of David S. F. Portree (1995) Mir Hardware Heritage, NASA Reference Publication 1357, March. Available at ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/RP1357.pdf.
153. ‘ONE OF THE MOST IMPRESSIVE FEATS…’: From p99 of David S. F. Portree, Mir Hardware Heritage, as above.
154. SPIT WOULD FREEZE TO THE WALLS AND ICICLES HUNG FROM THE PIPES: From p3 of Nickolai Belakovski (2014) The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station, Ars Technica, 16 September. Available at arstechnica.com/science/2014/09/the-little-known-soviet-mission-to-rescue-a-dead-space-station. A superbly written article.
155. ‘IT FELT LIKE BEING IN AN OLD, ABANDONED HOME…’: Savinykh in his flight journal. From p3 of Nickolai Belakovski, The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station, as above.
156. ‘THAT DAY WAS THE FIRST HAPPY SPARK OF HOPE…’: Savinykh in his flight journal. From p3 of Nickolai Belakovski, The little-known Soviet mission to rescue a dead space station, as above.
CONFLICT
157. ‘WE GOT ALONG TOGETHER JUST FINE…’: At a post-mission debriefing, as reported by Michael Hiltzik (2015) The day when three NASA astronauts staged a strike in space, Los Angeles Times, 28 December. Available at www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-that-day-three-nasa-astronauts-20151228-column.html.
158. SKYLAB 4 STORY: From Mary M. Connors, Albert A. Harrison and Faren R. Akins (1985) Chapter VIII. ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT – External Relations, in LIVING ALOFT: Human requirements for extended spaceflight, NASA SP-483, 1 January. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=19850024459.
159. SPACE MUTINY: Emily Carney summarizes this story from two sources: a 2008 book by David Hitt and others (Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story, University of Nebraska Press) and an October 1974 National Geographic article by Thomas Y. Canby (Skylab, Outpost on the Frontier of Space, vol. 146. issue 4, 441-469). See Emily Carney (2016), Space Myths Busted: No, There Wasn’t A “Mutiny” On Skylab, This Space Available, 3 January. Available at this-space-available.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/space-myths-busted-no-there-wasnt.html.
160. POGUE’S SPACE SICKNESS: From p183 of Bryan Burrough (1998) Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, HarperCollins, New York.
161. ‘PUT ON YOUR BLINDERS AND HEAD NORTH’ From p184 of Bryan Burrough, Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir, as above.
SHUTTLE–MIR AND THE THIRD MAN
162. ‘WHO IS THE THIRD WHO WALKS ALWAYS BESIDE YOU?…’: T.S. Eliot (1922), The Waste Land. Faber and Faber Ltd.
163. JERRY LINENGER STORY: Reported by Abbie Bernstein (2011), The Angel Effect – An Interview with Dr. Jerry Linenger, Buzzy Mag, 26 April. Available at buzzymag.com/the-angel-effect-inteview-with-dr-jerry-linenger.
164. ‘IT WAS MY DAD, IT WAS HIM AND I HAVE NO DOUBT…’: Interviewed in National Geographic Explorer’s The Angel Effect, first broadcast 26 April 2011. See also Abbie Bernstein, The Angel Effect – An Interview with Dr. Jerry Linenger, as above.
165. MICHAEL FOALE’S FAVOURITE FILMS: These were two of the three films he mentioned in his talk 20th anniversary of the Mir space station collision, hosted by Pint of Science at the Greenwood Theatre in London, 25 June 2017.
166. ‘IT WAS FULL OF MENACE — LIKE A SHARK…’: From [32:16] of BBC (1998) Mir Mortals, Horizon, first broadcast 23 April 1998. Available at www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p02863gw/horizon-19971998-mir-mortals.
167. ‘MICHAEL, TO THE SHIP!’: Various sources, e.g. [31:38] of BBC, Mir Mortals, as above. (‘Michael! Va korabl!’).
168. ‘LIKE A DOG’: Michael Foale quoting Sasha, 20th anniversary of the Mir space station collision, as above.
169. APOLLO 13 FILM STORY: Michael Foale, 20th anniversary of the Mir space station collision, as above.
END OF LIFE – SPACE DEBRIS AND THE RETURN TO EARTH
170. ‘DEVILLS AND WICKED SPIRITS…’: From Part IV of Francis Godwin, The Man on the Moone, as above (p88-89 in William Poole edition).
171. 3600 STILL REMAIN UP THERE: European Space Agency reported by Associated Press (2013), e.g. David Rising (2013) Satellite hits Atlantic—but what about next one? Phys.org, 11 November. Available at https://phys.org/news/2013-11-satellite-atlanticbut.html.
172. SUITSAT: You can immerse yourself in the ‘secret world of space junk’ in Nick Ryan and Cath Le Couter’s Project Adrift, an online project that reimagines the life of some of the litter now flying above our heads. Available at www.projectadrift.co.uk.
173. ‘A PIECE OF THE ABANDONED SOVIET SPACE STATION SALYUT-7…’: Various, e.g. p10 of The Canberra Times (1991), A piece of Salyut-7 crashes on to patio, 9 February. Available at trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/129095216.
THE SPACE CRAFT CEMETERY. THE OCEAN POLE OF INACCESSIBILITY
174. ‘AH, SIR, LIVE IN THE BOSOM OF THE WATERS!…’: From p360 of Jules Verne (1865), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, in: Around the World in Eighty Days; From The Earth to the Moon Direct; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Octopus Books Limited, London (this edition 1978).
DESTINATION: MOON
175. ‘AFTER THE TIME I WAS ONCE QUITE FREE…’: From Part V of Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moone, as above (p97 in William Poole edition).
TOURIST INFORMATION
176. ‘STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK’: From the opening of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood.
GETTING THERE – SATURN 5 AND N1
177. ‘…IF YOU DRIVE A CAR WITH AN AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION…’: Al Worden interviewed at Alton Towers, 3 October 2016. Transcribed by Tamsin Edwards.
178. CREATING ONE OF THE BIGGEST NONNUCLEAR EXPLOSIONS EVER: For example see p22 of Michel van Pelt (2017) Dream Missions: Space Colonies, Nuclear Spacecraft and Other Possibilities, Springer Praxis, Chichester.
FINDING YOUR WAY – KNIT YOUR OWN SATNAV
179. ‘STAR PATTERNS ARE VERY IMPORTANT…’: Al Worden interviewed at Alton Towers, 3 October 2016. Transcribed by Tamsin Edwards.
180. THE MEMORY OF A MUSICAL GREETING CARD: Estimates and comparisons abound. This one uses the brilliantly thorough book by Frank O’Brien (The Apollo Guidance Computer Architecture and Operation, Springer), which says on p31 that the core rope read only memory (ROM) was 36,864 15-bit ‘words’, and a byte is 8 bits, so that’s 36,864 words x 15 (bits per word) / 8 (bits per byte) bytes, or 69.1 kilobytes of ROM (along with 4.1 kilobytes of magnetic read/write memory). The idea for comparing with a musical greeting card came from a talk I saw by Dr James Bellini. They only need read only memory, and the amount is about right: in Examples 5.13 and 5.14 of Roman Kuc’s textbook The Digital Information Age: An Introduction to Electrical Engineering, the musical greeting cards need 30-40 kilobits per second of recording, so the Apollo Guidance Computer’s core rope 553 kilobits would give you a decent 13 to 18 seconds.
WHO, WHAT, WHEN AND WHY OF APOLLO MISSIONS
181. APOLLO MISSION NOTES: Several facts courtesy of the excellent Timothy B. Benford and Brian Wilkes (1985) The Space Program Quiz & Fact Book, Harper & Row, New York. Thanks for the recommendation Chris.
MAN IN THE MOONE, FRAU IM MOND
182. ‘I AM THE VINE…’: See p25 of Buzz Aldrin with Ken Abraham (2009) Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Home from the Moon, Harmony Books, New York.
183. MOON MAIDEN: So argues Françoise Launay from the Observatoire de Paris, in his 2003 letter The Moon Maiden of Cassini’s map, Astronomy & Geophysics, vol. 44, issue 1, 1.7-1.7, February. Available at adsabs.harvard.edu/full/2003A%26G....44a...7.
TREAD LIGHTLY
184. RECOMMENDATIONS TO SPACE-FARING ENTITIES: NASA (2011), Recommendations to Space Faring Entities: How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of U.S. Government Lunar Artefacts, 20 July. Available at www.nasa.gov/pdf/617743main_NASA-USG_LUNAR_HISTORIC_SITES_RevA-508.pdf.
185. LONG-TERM DEGRADATION: T.W. Murphy Jr. (2010) Long-term degradation of optical devices on the Moon, Icarus 208, 31-35.
186. ‘PUSH BIGGEST POSSIBLE ROCK…’: From p52 of NASA, Recommendations to Space Faring Entities, as above.
187. LIST OF ITEMS ON THE MOON: From p82-85, Apollo 15 table, in Appendix E of NASA, Recommendations to Space Faring Entities, as above.
LUNAR XPRIZE
188. ‘SUCCESSFULLY PLACE A SPACECRAFT ON THE MOON’S SURFACE…’: From the website Lunar.xprize.org.
189. ‘WE CHOOSE TO GO TO THE MOON…’: From Kenneth Chang (2013), Florida Company Gets Approval to Put Robotic Lander on Moon, New York Times, 3 August. Available at www.nytimes.com/2016/08/04/science/moon-express-faa.html.
190. AMERICAN MOON EXPRESS TEAM: From Kenneth Chang, Florida Company Gets Approval to Put Robotic Lander on Moon, as above.
191. WE HAVE LEFT TONNES OF STUFF ON THE MOON: A widely cited number is 187,400 kilograms, e.g. p8 of Jamie Carter (2016) The Moon is a tech museum, Tech Radar, 5 March. Available at www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/the-moon-is-a-tech-museum-1316285.
192. JAVELIN CRATER: A photo of the crater, javelin and ball is at www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/a14det9337.jpg, which is a detail of AS14-66-9337 described in the Apollo 14 Image Library at www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a14/images14.html#9337.
ART ON THE MOON
193. ‘MY HOMO SAPIENS, MY CYBERNETIC MAN…’: From p30 of William Wertenbaker (1972) Only Artist on the Moon, The Talk of The Town, The New Yorker, 20 May.
194. FALLEN ASTRONAUT STORY: For more see Rick Mulheirn and Danny Van Hoecke (2015) Honour to the Fallen Astronauts, Spaceflight, The British Interplanetary Society, vol. 57, no. 10, 382-388, October.
195. ‘LARGEST EXHIBITION SPACE…’: Corey S. Powell and Laurie Gwen (2013), The Sculpture on the Moon, Slate, 16 December. Available at www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/12/sculpture_on_the_moon_paul_van_hoeydonck_s_fallen_astronaut.html.
ANDY WARHOL’S TINY PENIS
196. WHY WOULD AN ENGINEER RISK EVERYTHING: PBS (2010) Moon Museum, Episode 1, Season 8 of History Detectives, PBS, broadcast 21 June. Video available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppJGiw6mCxk. Transcript available at www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/investigation/moon-museum.
197. THE MYSTERY WAS INVESTIGATED: PBS, Moon Museum, as above.
BACK TO THE MOON
198. ‘MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION’: Buzz Aldrin’s book, as above, named after his first impression of the moon.
199. ‘THE MOON’S RICHES…’: Around [57:28] of Fritz Lang, Frau im Mond, as above. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHcazI9PgNg.
200. ‘SOLVE THE WORLD’S BIGGEST PROBLEMS’: From [1:32] of Naveen Jain interview within article Lori Ioannou (2017), Billionaire closer to mining the moon for trillions of dollars in riches, CNBC, 31 January. Available at www.cnbc.com/2017/01/31/billionaire-closer-to-mining-moon-for-trillions-of-dollars-in-riches.html.
STONED MOON
201. YOUR COUNTRY’S MOON ROCKS: A list of lunar displays is at curator.jsc.nasa.gov/lunar/displays/index.cfm#history.
202. THAD SPENT AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD NIGHT: Ben Mezrich (2011) Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, DoubleDay, New York.
MOON VEXILLOLOGY
203. ‘AS FOR THE YANKEES…’: From p213 of Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon, as above.
204. KINZLER STORY: From Sandra L. Johnson (2008) Red, White, & Blue: U.S. Flag at Home on the Moon, Houston History, vol. 6, no. 1, Fall. Available at houstonhistorymagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/red-white-and-blue-US-flag.pdf.
205. ‘HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH…’: See for example NASA (2017) July 20, 1969: One Giant Leap For Mankind, 20 July. Available at www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html.
WHOSE FLAG IS IT ANYWAY?
206. ‘THE STARS AND STRIPES TO BE DEPLOYED ON THE MOON …’: NASA Press Release 69-83E, 3 July 1969 via Anne Platoff (1993) Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon, NASA Contractor Report 188251, August. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19940008327.pdf.
207. FLAG MYSTERY: Anne Platoff has done much of the heavy lifting in Where No Flag Has Gone Before, as above. Jeremy Markovich looked into this more recently in his 2016 article Apollo 11, an American Flag, a Small Town, and a Mystery, Our State: Celebrating North Carolina, June. Available at www.ourstate.com/rhodiss-american-flag-mystery. See also Annin’s version of the story at Marian Calabro (2013) Annin Flagmakers: An Illustrated History. Available at www.annin.com/downloads/Annin_History_Book.pdf.
208. ‘ANNIN HAS PRODUCED ALL THE FLAGS…’: From p4 of Rotary International (1971), The Rotarian, vol. 118, no. 6, June.
209. ANNIN HAVE CONFIRMED TO ME: From Mary E. Repke (2017), Annin Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, by email, 5 January.
LET’S GO TO MARS
210. ‘YET ACROSS THE GULF OF SPACE…’: From p1 of H.G. Wells (1898) The War of the Worlds.
MARTIANS WANTED
211. ‘MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY…’: See for example Colin Schultz (2013) Shackleton Probably Never Took Out an Ad Seeking Men for a Hazardous Journey, Smithsonian Magazine, September. Available at www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/shackleton-probably-never-took-out-an-ad-seeking-men-for-a-hazardous-journey-5552379.
212. OPPOSITION-CLASS AND CONJUNCTION-CLASS: Estimates and diagrams from Bryan Mattfeld and others (2014) Trades Between Opposition and Conjunction Class Trajectories for Early Human Missions to Mars, Space, San Diego, United States, 4-7 August. Available at ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20150001240.
A STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND
213. WAR OF THE WORLDS STORY: From Martin Chilton (2016) The War of the Worlds panic was a myth, The Telegraph, 6 May. Available at www.telegraph.co.uk/radio/what-to-listen-to/the-war-of-the-worlds-panic-was-a-myth. See also Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow (2013) The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic, Slate, 28 October. Available at www.slate.com/articles/arts/history/2013/10/orson_welles_war_of_the_worlds_panic_myth_the_infamous_radio_broadcast_did.html.
214. ‘FAKE RADIO WAR STIRS TERROR THROUGH U.S’: In the New York Daily News (1938), 31 October, according to Jefferson Pooley and Michael Socolow, The Myth of the War of the Worlds Panic, as above.
ADJUSTING THE FOCUS
215. ‘ALL PHILOSOPHY, SAID I, IS FOUNDED ON TWO THINGS…’: From Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle (1686), First Evening from Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. Translated by Miss Elizabeth Gunning (1803).
216. ‘I HAVE OFTEN NOTICED OCCASIONAL CHANGES…’: From the final page of William Herschel (1784), On the remarkable Appearances at the Polar Regions of the Planet Mars, the Inclination of its Axis, the Position of its Poles, and its spheroidical Figure; with a few Hints relating to its real Diameter and Atmosphere, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, vol. 74, 233-273.
LOST IN TRANSLATION
217. ALCOHOL, NARCOTICS AND COFFEE: From p84 of Edward S. Morse (1906), Mars and its Mystery, Little, Brown and company, Boston. Available at archive.org/details/marsitsmystery00mors.
218. ‘WHERE WE HAVE STRONG EMOTIONS…’: Carl Sagan (1977), Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, Royal Institution of Great Britain.
GETTING YOUR ASS TO MARS
219. ‘IT’LL BE REALLY FUN TO GO. YOU’LL HAVE A GREAT TIME’: From [42:29] of Elon Musk (2016), Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species, 67th International Astronautical Congress, 27 September. Available at www.spacex.com/mars.
220. ‘WHERE THERE’S A WILL THERE’S A WAY... ’: From [15:35] in Robert Zubrin (2017) The Tools for the Task, On the Launchpad: Return to Deep Space, Atlantic Live. 16 May 2017. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLwj46yNDLyTU0_Mk58F72t0urwIjgrsw-&v=iZKAqSZnA4.
BEYOND…
10 EXCITING PLACES TO VISIT IN THE UNIVERSE
221. ‘ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS – EXCEPT EUROPA…’: Arthur C. Clarke (1982), 2010: Odyssey Two.
222. DR LOUISA PRESTON: By email, April-June 2017.
ENVOYS: EXTENDING OURSELVES
223. ‘THE ONLY TRUE VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY…’ From Marcel Proust (1923) La Prisonnière from À la recherche du temps perdu, translated by CK Scott Moncrieff. Misquotes of this abound.
MARINER 4
224. MARINER 4 STORY: From Blaine Baggett’s 2013 documentary The Changing Face of Mars, of which the Mariner 4 part is shown in the second half of NASA (2015), 1965: Discovery at Mars, von Kármán lecture series, first broadcast 16 July. Published online by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 20 June 2015. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5dzDWjN7Z4.
225. $3.8 MILLION A PICTURE: Dividing the mission cost of $83.2 million by 22 pictures. Mission cost from NASA (2017), Mariner 4, 21 March. Available at nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1964-077A.
226. NEARLY THREE WEEKS TO TRANSMIT: From NASA, Mariner 4, as above.
227. A HOST OF OTHER SCIENTIFIC EQUIPMENT: From NASA, Mariner 4, as above.
228. BETWEEN 9846 AND 12,000 KM: Andrew LePage (2015), Mariner 4 to Mars, Drew Ex Machina, 14 July. Available at www.drewexmachina.com/2015/07/14/mariner-4-to-mars
PAINTING BY NUMBERS
229. PAINTING BY NUMBERS STORY: See the excellent article by Dan Goods, First TV image of Mars: Interplanetary color by numbers. Available at www.directedplay.com/first-tv-image-of-mars. See also from around 59:00 in NASA, 1965: Discovery at Mars, as above.
MESSAGES IN BOTTLES
230. COMMEMORATIVE PENNANT: Anatoly Zak (2014) Zond-2: An early attempt to touch Mars? Russian Space Web, 20 November. Available at www.russianspaceweb.com/3mv_Zond-2.html.
231. ‘WHOEVER IS INHABITING EARTH IN THAT DISTANT EPOCH…’: From the LAGEOS press release, 4 May 1976. See NASA (2016) Message to the Future, 2 May. Available at lageos.cddis.eosdis.nasa.gov/Design/Message_to_the_Future.html. See also Appendix A of Carl Sagan (1978) Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record, Random House, USA.
232. THERE WAS ALSO CRITICISM: From p59 of Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth, as above.
THE FURTHEST WE’VE EVER SAILED
233. ‘I MUST GO DOWN TO THE SEAS AGAIN…’: From John Masefield, Sea Fever. Reproduced with permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of John Masefield.
HELLO FROM THE CHILDREN OF PLANET EARTH
234. ‘HELLO FROM THE CHILDREN OF PLANET EARTH’: is one of the greetings on the Golden Record.
235. ‘I GET A GASP OF SURPRISE AT TWO NUMBERS THAT I GIVE OUT …’: Jon Lomberg, via Chris Riley.
236. JOHN CASANI APPROACHED CARL SAGAN: Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth, as above.
237. A HUNDRED AND TWENTY-TWO IMAGES: From p12 of Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth, as above.
238. ‘PAZ E FELICIDADE A TODOS’: Peace and happiness to all, spoken by Janet Sternberg on the Golden Record.
239. ‘ “WILL THEY LIKE MY MUSIC ON VENUS?…’: Paraphrased in Dallas Campbell and Chris Riley (2012) Voyager: the space explorers that are still boldly going to the stars, The Observer, 21 October. Available at www.theguardian.com/science/2012/oct/21/voyager-mission-leave-solar-system. Original interview from BBC Radio 4 (1983), Music From A Small Planet, produced for BBC Scotland by Martin Goldman and R. Carey Taylor, broadcast 29 July.
240. ‘IMAGINED SELF-IMPORTANCE’: From Carl Sagan’s famous ‘Pale Blue Dot’ speech at Cornell University, 13 October 1994.
241. ‘MURMURS OF EARTH’: The name of Carl Sagan’s book, as above.
242. ‘I CAN SENSE STARS…’: NASA Voyager 2 Twitter account, by Dr Paul Filmer. Shown in an online extra for BBC4 (2012) Voyager: To the Final Frontier, 24 October. Clip available at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00zwbl7.
243. JAN WOERNER: Interviewed over Skype, 8 May 2017. Transcribed by Louise Crane.
DESPERATE MEASURES
HOW TO GET ABDUCTED BY ALIENS
244. FIVE POINT PLAN ON HOW TO LEAVE THE PLANET: See Douglas Adams, Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide edition for this lovely bit.
HERE I AM
245. ‘IMAGINED SELF-IMPORTANCE’: Carl Sagan, as above.
LANGUAGE
246. ‘THE DIFFICULTY OF THAT LANGUAGE IS NOT TO BEE CONCEIVED…’: From Part VIII of Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moone, as above (p108 of William Poole edition).
CODA
247. ‘A YOUNG AND IMPRESSIONABLE MOTH ONCE SET HIS HEART ON A CERTAIN STAR…’: From The Moth and The Star from Fables For Our Time & Famous Poems. Illustrated by James Thurber. Copyright ©1940 by Rosemary A. Thurber. Reprinted by arrangement with Rosemary A. Thurber and The Barbara Hogenson Agency. All rights reserved. Can be found in The Thurber Carnival, one of my favourite books I studied at school.
248. SHALL WE GO? YES, LET’S GO: One for the Beckett fans. How appropriate that the last words of Waiting for Godot were also Yuri Gagarin’s first words as he left the earth. <They do not move>.
RETURN TO EARTH
249. ‘NATURE, THAT FRAM’D US OF FOUR ELEMENTS…’: The closing words of The Restless Sphere: The Story of International Geophysical Year, the wonderful documentary by the BBC and Royal Society presented by HRH Prince Phillip The Duke of Edinburgh, first broadcast 30 June 1957. Details at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00yt7l6. Uploaded online by Stephen Smith, 13 May 2016. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD5ale35jc4.
