Why do we need an archaeology of space? Haven’t we got an abundant documentary record to tell us all about spacecraft and their stories? Not, as it turns out. The documentary record is far from perfect, and even if it were, it doesn’t necessarily contain the answers to the questions we want to ask. Within a system of production, there are ideas and assumptions that are unquestioned and invisible: no-one writes about them, or records them, because they are the fabric of their worldview. It’s only later that we may look back and wonder why something was like that. So there may be no words or images that document a decision; there may only be the thing itself. And this is what makes it archaeology.
SPACE AGE ARCHAEOLOGY
In 2003 I began work on a research project that has taken me to places that I never imagined: the cultural heritage of space exploration. Now I am determined to bring to light the secrets at the heart of the Space Age.
Bibliography of Space Archaeology
Sunday, September 24, 2023
Why do we need an archaeology of space?
Monday, April 17, 2023
Space quotes by women
Recently I wanted to find a good quote about space ethics. There I hit my first problem, as there wasn't much available, short of going back to primary sources and reading through huge swathes of stuff. In this process I decided that I would also like to use a quote .... by a woman. You won't be surprised to learn that most of the space quotes out there have fallen from the cherry lips of the blokes. I thought, wouldn't it be handy to have what the women said all compiled together in one place?
So I did what any academic worth their salt does: I turned to my online friends and asked them for recommendations. This is the list that ensued. It's just a starting point, but it demonstrates a point. Thanks to everyone who contributed!
1. Dr Peggy Whitson, astronaut and former Commander of the International Space Station, Chief of the Astronaut Office, and Chairperson of the Astronaut Selection Board
I’ve been asked many times what’s the hardest thing about space flight and I say it’s learning the language. When I became Deputy Chief at the Astronaut Office it became very obvious to me that as we were moving into long duration missions, we needed to develop our communication skills and our what we call ‘soft skills’...we were finding we were having more problems in that area than we were in technical competence.
2. Sally Ride, the first US woman in space, in 2003
Studying whether there's life on Mars or studying how the universe began, there's something magical about pushing back the frontiers of knowledge.
The thing that I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun I'll ever have in my life.Contributed by Susan McMichael @SukiWinter
The stars don't look bigger, but they look brighterContributed by Megann Wilson @MoveBravely
Never be limited by other people’s imagination. Never limit other’s because of your own limited imagination!Contributed by Cameron Mackness @OzTravler
Girls are capable of doing everything men are capable of doing. Sometimes they have more imagination than men.Contributed by Megann Wilson @MoveBravely
4. Dr Anne Condon, medical education adademic
Contributed by Dr Anne Condon @skepticalmutant. I'm not sure if she means space, or space quotes by women, but I'm taking it!
And I just realised that what I love to do is to challenge myself. I didn’t actually find limits. I think they don’t necessarily exist as a solid thing.Contributed by Anne Kreger @AnneKreger
What we want you to ask yourselves is this: what is space, to you? Is it a playground? A quarry? A flagpole? A classroom? A temple? Who do you believe should go, and for what purpose? Or should we go at all?Abridged quote, contributed by Dr Emma Rehn @bluerehn
8. Ellen Ripley, alien fighter
What?
9. Roberta Bondar, Canada's first female astronaut
To fly in space is to see the reality of earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones.
Valentina Tereshkova told me that when she orbited over Australia she thought it “looked a nice place for a holiday”.
Contributed by Margaret Twomey @AusAmbRome
Space is for everybody. It’s not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That’s our new frontier out there, and it’s everybody’s business to know about space.
It’s probably not quite what you are after but @AstroSamantha's 'There’s coffee in that nebula' quote is an inspirational woman quoting an inspirational woman about a) space and b) coffee (an inspiration drink)* *well, a fundamental and inspirational drink.
Contributed by @StefantheNurse
Monday, June 13, 2022
Valentina Tereshkova and double standards in human spaceflight history
Every year on June 16, the anniversary of Dr Valentina Tereshkova's spaceflight, where she became the first women ever to leave Earth, I generally do some social media around the event. And there's always a barrage of (mostly) men trying to take her down. Many of them are Russian. All of them spout misogynist clichés as old as time. Sometimes I engage, sometimes I don't. It depends on my mood.
![]() |
Tereshkova training. Source: unknown |
I didn't really want to write this post. A man who has an equal capacity to me to investigate - well more, because he has the advantage of Russian language - asked me to provide an independent assessment of Tereshkova's mission. This is a significant amount of work, but this is how it rolls when you are a feminist: you have to be responsible for all criticisms and have all the data at your fingertips, or your arguments will be dismissed.
The only reason I'm doing this is because it may come in handy for the future, as this issue comes up so often. But I'm annoyed and slightly cranky, and I don't care if [name redacted] knows it.
Specifically, I'm going to address the claims made in a thread by [name redacted].
Who really stopped the Soviet women's space programme?
We had mixed feelings: on the one hand, there was hope, on the other, skepticism. It was clear that women's role in cosmonautics had no prospects for the future. There were no specific tasks for women. The main task - priority - was fulfilled, and men would handle the rest.
Ideology is only ideology when it isn't patriarchal
The politics of speaking and hearing
![]() |
Tereshkova with parachute, Vostok spacecraft and locals. Credit: TASS |
Even back on Earth she couldn't catch a break
4. Tereshkova was discovered only after 7 hours - a fighter pilot spotted it. She was caught sitting on a parachute and eating food from locals. Kamanin omits this episode in his notes, however, notes that Valentina handed out her products from the space stock. Korolev was furious.
Dude, where's my pencil?
7. Valentina managed to break both pencils during the flight, so she did not keep a diary in orbit. Also in her report, she notes that she was sick, but not from the state of zero gravity, but from food. Korolev after the flight "So I ever deal with women again! Never!"
Deadly sins: gluttony
![]() |
Red Lobster dragee. Image: Ruski Way Deli |
The metonymous woman
7. Valentina managed to break both pencils during the flight, so she did not keep a diary in orbit. Also in her report, she notes that she was sick, but not from the state of zero gravity, but from food. Korolev after the flight "So I ever deal with women again! Never!"
And it wasn't just Korolev; it was all the male cosmonauts too, and the military units associated with the programme.
Time-travelling: later actions invalidate earlier ones
8. Valentina Tereshkova had a very successful political carrier throughout her life. She served under all communist leaders starting from Krushev. Recently she proposed Amendment to the Russian Constitution to reset Putin's terms after his 20 years in power.
![]() |
Flowers for Tereshkova. Image; Bridgeman |
What we have here is an expectation that Tereshkova demonstrate a feminine purity that would not be expected of a male cosmonaut. She went from one arena where women are judged by double standards to another - if Russian politics is anything like UK, US, European and Australian. Her support of a dubious regime is somehow meant to invalidate her spaceflight.
Interestingly, all of the four first female cosmonauts have gone into politics. Svetlana Savitskaya was elected to Duma in 1996 and is still active. She is, apparently, a committed communist who lamented the fall of the Soviet Union. But she's allowed to receive credit for her space achievements.
The hysterical robot
Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshekova's orbital flight in 1963 has been dismissed as a political stunt, and her contributions to space exploration discounted, ostensibly because unlike the U.S. spacecraft of the era, the Russian craft were almost entirely controlled from the ground (Cunningham and Herskowitz, 1977; Oberg, 1981). The same critique has not been applied with equal force to Yuri Gargarin and other of Tereshekova's male contemporaries.
Siddiqi (2009b:71) sums it up well:
In a highly patriarchal society, the standards by which women were judged (especially when they did activities typically associated with men) were far higher than for men. Cosmonaut German Titov, for example, had suffered from some form of space sickness during his Vostok-2 flight and was unable to be fully alert during his flight, yet he was not made a pariah or penalised for such failings.
expressed the opinion that Tereshkova was 'an absolute basket case when she was in orbit', and that the Russians were 'damn lucky to get her back ... She was nothing but hysterical while she flew.'
Others in the US took up the mantra of the hysterical woman. If you're not aware of how this epithet, in currency for well over two thousand years, is weaponised against women, well, there's plenty of literature on this so you can go and look it up yourself. It's the oldest trick in the book for diminishing and demonising women across every facet of life. So tedious, so very, very tedious. And there is no evidence that Tereshkova was 'hysterical', at all.
Yeah I'm so over this bullshit
References
Babicychuk, A.N. 1979 Chelovek, nebo, kosmos. Moscow, Voyenizdat,Connors, Mary M., Albert A. Harrison and Faren A. Akens 1985 Living Aloft. Human Requirements for Extended Spaceflight. NASA SP-483
McComb, E.C., 2012. Why can't a woman fly?: NASA and the cult of masculinity, 1958–1972 (Doctoral dissertation, Mississippi State University).
Ray, C.A., 2000. Effect of gender on vestibular sympathoexcitation. American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology 279(4),: R1330-R1333.
Reschke, M.F., Cohen, H.S., Cerisano, J.M., Clayton, J.A., Cromwell, R., Danielson, R.W., Hwang, E.Y., Tingen, C., Allen, J.R. and Tomko, D.L., 2014. Effects of sex and gender on adaptation to space: neurosensory systems. Journal of Women's Health 23(11): 959-962.
Shayler, David and Ian Moule 2005 Women in Space - Following Valentina. Chichester: Praxis/Springer
Interview with Valentina Ponomareva by Slava Gerovitch, Moscow, May 17, 2002 https://authors.library.caltech.edu/5456/1/hrst.mit.edu/hrs/apollo/soviet/interview/interview-ponomareva.htm
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Between the house and the stars: the life of Varvara Sokolova who married Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
Introduction
Was there more to her story? Of course I am somewhat hampered by lack of access to the Russian literature, but it turns out there are quite a few resources in translation, as well as scholarly work. All the same, we have to read Varvara Sokolova into the spaces of the house and the gaps in the narratives which centre around her husband. Seeing her is a work of feminist enquiry.
Old Believers in Borovsk
a reputation as a town of truck farmers and traders, whose drunken fistfights and belief in witchcraft made them the laughingstock of the neighboring towns.
![]() |
The town of Borovsk (image from Wikipedia) |
It was time to marry, and I married without love, hoping that such a wife would not turn me around, would work, and would not prevent me from doing the same. This hope was justified. Such a friend could not drain my strength: firstly, she did not attract me, and secondly, she herself was indifferent and unemotional. So she retained strength and ability to mental activity until she was old. I attached only practical value to marriage. We went to marry for four miles, on foot, did not dress up, did not let anyone into the church. Then returned - and no one knew anything about our marriage. On the wedding day, I bought a lathe from a neighbor and cut glass for electric cars.
In my house, electric lightning flashed, thunders rang, bells rang, paper dolls danced ... Visitors admired and marveled at the electric octopus, which grabbed everyone with its feet by its nose or fingers, and then it got hair stood on end and sparks popped up from any part of the body. As if alive, he wandered from room to room, following the air currents, rising and falling.
The Kaluga years
His children knew when this door was closed, nobody could go upstairs to bother him. He was very strict with his children, but became much softer with the grandchildren.
![]() |
The Tsiolkovsky 'log cabin' in Kaluga. Image courtesy of https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0AQKZ |
![]() |
Varvara, Eduard and Maria's family. Image courtesy of Science Photo Library. |
Representing Varvara
Her death forces us to remember the private and family life of the Tsiolkovskys, which is very informative. Much depended on his personal life, including so much of his scientific work. His family home was also his study, office, laboratory and workshop' (Shubin 2016: 233).
She was concerned with domestic matters and daily chores, while at the same time her husband lived in outer space among the stars (Shubin 2016:234)
A dispassionate life
Tsiolkovskii’s private life was grey and monotonous. He described his choice of wife, Varvara Evgrafovna Sokolova, the daughter of a priest, as ‘unfortunate’ (neudachno) and their offspring as ‘deplorable’ (pechal’nye). The children were sick and two sons committed suicide. Tsiolkovskii fled from the depressing confinement, the feeling of humiliation and material worries into his world of inventions and creations and into the dreams of flying and eternal human happiness. On the other hand, he was indifferent towards his family, as long as they did not disturb his work. In his youth, he already regarded himself as a genius (‘I am such a great man as has never been before, nor will ever be’). (Hagemeister 2008:28)Tsiolkovsky had an ideal of married life, but reality did not align with it through the unfortunate fact that women are human and men are too:
The biblical ‘legend’ of the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary was also interpreted by Tsiolkovskii as an ‘ideal of the future woman, who will provide children, but will not be subject to animal passions’ (Hagemeister 2011:31).
Was it good: marriage life without love? Is marriage just enough respect? Who gave himself to higher goals is good for that. But he sacrifices his happiness and even the happiness of the family. I did not understand the latter then. But then it showed up. From such marriages, children are not healthy, successful and joyful, and all my life I lamented the tragic fate of children.
I put the blessing of the family and loved ones on the forefront. All for high. I did not drink, did not smoke, did not spend a single extra penny on myself: for example, on clothes. I was always almost starving, poorly dressed. I moderated mysefl in everything to the last degree. My family also suffered with me ... I was often annoyed and maybe made the life of others difficult, nervous.
In this passage, he acknowledges that the austere and passionless marriage he embraced was not a recipe for either his happiness, or that of Varvara and the children. I don't think we should be expecting a coherent or consistent view, though; and perhaps we can't also assume that Varvara experienced anything in the way Eduard imagined.
Despite his apparent belief that sexual passion sapped the intellect, Tsiolkovsky clearly was not willing to forgo the experience. Contraception was not an option in 19th century Russia. The ages of the Tsiolkovsky children indicate that the couple had an active sex life from the time of their marriage in 1880 for at least sixteen years afterwards. Tsiolkovsky pretended that neither he nor Varvara were interested, but clearly at least one of them was. We don't know what Varvara thought, but Tsiolkovsky's inner conflicts must have been another aspect of her complex tasks of household and laboratory management, along with the sick and depressed children. It was a hard life indeed.
How much of Tsiolkovsky's views about relationships and sex were shaped by his Cosmism? Tsiolkovsky was already a Cosmist by the time he arrived in Borovsk, having been influenced by Nikolai Federov who worked in the library where Tsiolkovsky spent most of his time in Moscow. Fedorov had an idea about 'positive chastity', which was 'the redirection of sexual energy towards the restoration of life to the dead' (Hagemeister 1997:193). The seven Tsiolkovsky children are firm evidence that Tsiolkovsky did not embrace this idea to the extent that Federov disciple Alexander Gorsky, who did not consummate his marriage, did.
But my aim here is not to get bogged down in Russian cosmism; I'm only interested in it to the degree Tsiolkovsky's beliefs affected Varvara's life. Clearly there is much more to be explored here.
Eyes in the Sky
Hardly any information can be found on her. My interest wasn’t so much to reconstruct her real life, but rather to create a fictional life for her. To introduce her as an authority, an eye witness, an explorer, adventurer and pioneer. To let her act out the hypothetical theories of her husband, who no doubt relied on his wife’s labour in some way or another while creating his visions. People who see Eyes in the Sky often assume that Varvara’s narrative is based on existing diaries or interviews, no matter how far fetched, fictional and body-horrific her experiences in my piece are.
She explains further:
The fact that women carried out endless calculations at the beginning of the 20th century, but were never included in the fantasy of an actual space journey, became so problematic for me that I started designing my own female space pioneer. In this work the wife of the 'Kosmist' and space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Varvara, is the first person to travel into space, where she leave behind her eyes.
![]() |
Still from Eyes in the Sky by Anna Hoetjes, 2018. |
As a feminist space scholar, my job is to interrogate the deeper story behind commonly accepted accounts. This is only a start: if only Lyubov's memoir were translated! I'd also like to re-read Tsiolkovsky's works to find more traces of Varvara. No doubt I have got much wrong in this account. All the same, the first step has been taken simply by centring Varvara in the story. Taking inspiration from Anna Hoetjes' work, I imagine evenings when Varvara escaped outside the house to gaze at the stars and dream her own dreams.
References
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/310796914_The_First_Aerodynamic_Balances_in_Russia