'A man's foot and a woman's hand': the cultural significance of the Apollo 11 bootprints

In this previous post, I considered how we might make a feminist map of the Moon. Why does a feminist map of the Moon matter? Well, soon there are going to be natural and cultural heritage sites, and Sites of Special Scientific Interest, identified as needing protection from commercial/industrial impacts on the Moon. Do we want them to only represent men, or only 'western' science?

In this post I want to follow another thread. I'm an archaeologist, so naturally I'm interested in material culture and the many, many artefacts and sites left on the Moon since the Soviet Luna 2 mission crash landed in 1959. Are any of these objects or places related to women's stories? I think we'll find the answer is yes!

Traditionally, weaving and sewing are women's work and a female skill. What women do is often derided as 'craft' rather than expertise. Well, sewing was very much an expertise needed for the Apollo missions. Women made the spacesuits which kept the men alive.

There is power in naming: in giving 'the girls' or 'the women' identities and personalities. Some of the women are known, and they are listed on the Wikipedia page about the International Latex Corporation (ILC in Dover, Delaware) seamstresses who worked on the spacesuits.

Countless words have been written about the spacesuits. I'm not going to go into details here as I'm interested in just one thing. Can we find these women in the artefacts left on the Moon?

The spacesuits came back to Earth, of course - the astronauts were wearing them. You can see Neil Armstrong's suit in the Smithsonian. The conspiracy theorists love to say the suit shows that they never landed on the Moon as the boots are smooth-soled - they don't match up to the ridges you see in the countless images of the first footprints.

This is because the astronauts were wearing overshoes. It was the overshoes that had the ridged sole that impressed bands into the lunar regolith. The bands were an important experiment to measure features of the regolith - they were never just footprints. The banded sole was made of rubber and sewn onto the overshoe, by - you guessed it.

Unknown woman making Apollo overshoe.

 Image credit: NASA/Smithsonian

At the Apollo 11 landing site, celebrated as the first place humans set foot on another planet, the famous first footprint left by Neil Armstrong was created by an overshoe made by women working for the ILC.

Armstrong and Aldrin discarded the overshoes with lots of other stuff to make sure the ascent module was light enough to take off. They have stayed on the lunar surface.

So these female-made artefacts are an important part of the cultural significance of the archaeological site of Tranquility Base. The overshoes made the hundreds of bootprints that are also a key aspect of the site.

Similar overshoes were discarded at:

• Apollo 12 - 2 pairs
• Apollo 14 - 2 pairs
• Apollo 15 - 2 pairs
• Apollo 16 - 2 pairs

Harrison Schmitt and Gene Cernan's overshoes, from the Apollo 17 mission, came back to Earth with them. Cernan's are now part of the Smithsonian's collections. He was the last person to set foot on lunar soil in 1972.

   First footprint on the Moon. Image credit: NASA

Every time you look at an image of that first foot print on the Moon, remember it was made by a man's foot and a woman's hand.