Australian space icon: Mr Squiggle, the Man from the Moon

The impact of the Space Age was not just in science and technology - it was also in popular and everyday culture. If you were a kid growing up in Australia from the 1960s until the the 1990s, you would have been familiar with a children's television icon: Mr Squiggle, the Man from the Moon. Mr Squiggle is a huge part of Australian television history, but I'm more interested in what the programme says about how space travel was perceived in the 1960s and after.

Squiggle basics

This is Mr Squiggle's theme tune:

Here's Mr Squiggle
With lots of fun for everyone
Here's Mr Squiggle, sing a happy tune
You can see we're as happy as can be
Mr Squiggle, the man from the Moon.

Mr Squiggle was the brainchild of political cartoonist and puppeteer Norman Hetherington. The pencil-nosed puppet's television debut was in 1959. At first Mr Squiggle was part of a six week stint on the Children's TV Club on the ABC, but soon gained his own stand-alone programme. Margaret, who married Norman in 1958, wrote the scripts for the show while Norman performed all the character voices. (Note that while Norman has his own Wikipedia page, Margaret doesn't).

Children would send in their 'squiggles', and Mr Squiggle used his pencil nose to make them into pictures, accompanied by a female sidekick. Other characters included Bill Steamshovel, Gus the snail, Merv Wallop and his nephew Wayne, Reg Linchpin, Doormat, the grumpy Rocket and a talking Blackboard.

Mr Squiggle lived at 93 Crater Crescent on the Moon and travelled to Earth every week in his rocket or by going for a 'space-walk'. He could also break out into gravity-defying 'space-walks' spontaneously in the middle of shows. Sometimes, if Rocket was very grumpy, Mr Squiggle would use an umbrella for the descent. 

The action takes place in a very ordinary, regular backyard, with gum trees, in the fictional location of Bandywallop. (The Collins dictionary defines Bandywallop as 'Australian informal: noun. An imaginary town, far from civilization'). There's a rainwater tank where Bill Steamshovel hangs out, and old, weathered yards surrounded by bush. I guess part of the appeal of Mr Squiggle, as we got so much US and UK children's television, was that it was set in Australia with Australian accents and culture. 

Mr Squiggle's female sidekicks were:

Miss Gina (Curtis) (1959-1960),
Miss Pat (Lovell) (1960-1975),
Miss Sue (Lloyd) (1975),
Miss Jane (Fennell) (1975-1986),
Roxanne (Kimmorley) (1986- 1989).
Rebecca (Hetherington) (1989-1999)

Notice a change? Somewhere in Miss Jane's tenure, those pesky feminists [sarcasm font] got in the ABC's ear about the sexism of the female titles, which classify women according to age, marriageability, and ownership by a man.  'A few years ago, the ABC told us to start using Ms instead of Miss,' Norman said in a news interview. 'But Ms Pat doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? It sounds like it's short for miserable. So since 1986 we've simply had Roxanne and now Rebecca.'

Miss Pat is the one I remember most. She was played by Patricia Lovell, who went on to become an influential movie producer (eg Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli).

Miss Pat helps Mr Squiggle out of his rocket

The science fiction writer Terry Dowling was a resident guest on Mr Squiggle, from 1979 to 1982. He wrote songs and performed them on the programme with his guitar.  Comedian and radio personality Mikey Robins played Reg Linchpin for a year in 1989-1990. The programme ended in 1999. 

Two books were spin-offs from the series. Margaret Hetherington wrote them, and Norman did the illustrations. They were Mr Squiggle and the Great Moon Robbery (1980) and Mr Squiggle and the Preposterous Purple Crocodile (1992). There was also a colouring book in 1989 - Mr Squiggle and His Rocket Activity Book. 

Mr Squiggle won Penguin awards in 1984 and 1989. He was the guest of honour at two science fiction conventions, and been part of two exhibitions at the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne. The Mosman Art Gallery, in the suburb where Margaret and Norman lived, had an exhibition called Mr Squiggle: Who's Pulling the Strings? in 2005. In February 2019, the Royal Australian Mint, in collaboration with supermarket chain Woolworths, issued a special release of Mr Squiggle $2 coins to commemorate the puppet's 60th anniversary. They also held an exhibition to go with the launch.

I was living in Sydney when Mr Squiggle was on his 30th anniversary tour. I was determined to go. Me and my friends (who were mostly colleagues from the icecream shop where I worked part-time) were the only unaccompanied adults there!

Squiggle space

Space wasn't really the point of Mr Squiggle - after all, most of the action took place on Earth, in the bush setting of Bandywallop. Space was more the backdrop. All the same, it's an indication how deeply entangled space became with everyday life in the 1960s. Mr Squiggle was launched only two years after the first satellite reached orbit, Sputnik 1 in 1957. Many people were talking about lunar exploration being just round the corner, and indeed, in 1959, the USSR has a major success with the Luna 2 probe becoming the first human object to land on the Moon (or crash land, at any rate). In the meantime, the UK and Australia had already launched the first rockets from the Woomera launch range in South Australia.

In the opening sequence of the show, you didn't see Mr Squiggle's home on the Moon, at 93 Crater Crescent - just his rocket descending through the atmosphere. It was a ratty old rocket which had been patched up. Mr Squiggle was sealed inside as if it were a coffin; his tall pointed hat peeked through the nose cone and his pencil nose had a porthole allowing it to poke out too. While it's grey in the animation, the puppet rocket was a lovely shiny silver on set.

Still from the animated opening sequence

Rocket didn't speak, but conveyed his feelings through his whistle (which you can see on the side) and a blower of the kind you have at children's parties. Rocket's whistle calls resembled birds you might hear in the bush.

Children really believed that Mr Squiggle lived on the Moon - and, apparently, that Australia Post delivered there. The Mosman Art Gallery's exhibition, Mr Squiggle: who's pulling the strings?, showed an envelope addressed in a child's hand to 'Mr Squiggle, The Moon'.

Children have always had a special relationship with the Moon. A turn-of-the-century study looked at the feelings and beliefs of North American white children. Many felt the Moon to be very close, and they looked on it as a confidante who would keep their secrets. Many of them talked to the Moon or to the man/woman in the Moon. It was part of their universe in an intimate way. (You can find out more in my recent book).

It's interesting that we never see the Moon in the programme. Mr Squiggle is not the only inhabitant; after all, he has a suburban street address. Occasionally he would mention different activities such as cultural festivals (eg Settler's Week!) taking place there. There may have been a reason behind this. With so much lunar science going on, perhaps it was safer to avoid being locked into one vision of it. Perhaps it was preferable to leave the Moon in the children's imagination, as fluid and creative as their squiggles.

We might also ask what kind of being lives on the Moon. In Margaret and Norman Hetherington's vision, Mr Squiggle had particular characteristics. As Richard Bradshaw (2010) described it, he was imbued with 'the qualities of a blessed child: kindness, vulnerability and resourcefulness'. He was happy to ask Miss Pat or Miss Jane to hold his hand while he drew. The gentle Mr Squiggle was a contrast to the sinister space of Cold War politics and the shadowy aliens with their elusive UFOs.

Mr Squiggle was never presented as an alien. To the contrary: as Norman's friend, the cartoonist Steve Panozzo, remarked, Margaret and Norman 'even went to a science fiction convention as special guests because Mr Squiggle is considered Australia's first astronaut.' If Squiggle was the first astronaut, then the Bandywallop back yard was Australia's second rocket launch site, as Woomera had been operating for a decade already when Squiggle made his television debut.

Squiggle space vs real space

Rocket was very different to the sleek rockets colonising playgrounds in this period (Gorman 2017). The trend in the US to build metal rockets as climbing apparatus for children was brought to Australia in the 1960s and 'took off', so to speak. One of my favourite playground rockets is in Ulverstone, Tasmania (home of Tastrofest). This geocaching location has reconfigured the Ulverstone rocket as Mr Squiggle's back-up. I don't know how common this connection was, but at least one person made it.

Mr Squiggle's ramshackle rocket was also a contrast to the hi-tech missiles, sounding rockets and satellite launchers that made Woomera one of the busiest launch sites in the world throughout the 1960s. There was much overlap and category confusion between weapons and space rockets; my colleague Fraser MacDonald has argued that children's toy rockets do something similar in confusing the categories, a way of dulling the sinister aspects of this technology, inculcating them into a set of values.

Unlike the Cold War missiles of the time, Rocket was quirky and mostly harmless. 

While it doesn't emerge in the show, Norman and Margaret were certainly aware of the Space Age events unfolding around them. Norman drew a map showing Rocket travelling from the Moon to Earth and back again. In a 1989 interview by Melissa Jones in the Australian Women's Weekly, Norman said 'Did you know he has clocked up more interplanetary travel, with his backwards and forwards, than the American and the Russians together?'

The Apollo astronauts did not encounter Mr Squiggle's lunar suburb, but Mr Squiggle certainly noticed what they were doing to his habitat. According to Jones (1989), he was extremely concerned by the litter the astronauts left behind. Squiggle was an early space environmentalist. In an interview with journalist Clive Robertson on television that year, he alluded to the problem of space junk:

Mr Squiggle: 'Do you know, the traffic problems up there are something terrible.'
Robertson: 'What, the satellites, you mean?'.
Mr Squiggle: 'That's it! You never know who you're going to bump into. And they have parking meteors everywhere, and then there's the Milky Way - there's so much traffic it's turning sour!'

This was quite prescient - now there is a field called Space Traffic Management which is devoted to figuring out how to safely co-ordinate satellite launches and operations among the growing population of junk created from defunct and exploded spacecraft. This small exchange indicates that awareness about environmental issues in space were starting to seep into popular consciousness.

More than one character had a space connection. Talking and having attitude weren't the only characteristics which made Gus the Snail unusual: he also didn't have a shell. In the early shows, he had a television on his back in a nice meta sort of way. This was replaced with a flowerpot in later years.  But the idea that Gus had the capacity to pick up radio signals remained. He had a satellite dish and his own satellite, which could be used to communicate with Mr Squiggle on the Moon. The satellite dish looked like a colander painted silver with some knobs on it: more improvised, domestic-scale space technology.

The Australian space conundrum

Mr Squiggle is very typical of a theme I've noted in how Australians conceive space - as a backyard activity (Gorman 2011). It's low key, low scale. Although Australia was the third nation in the world to launch a satellite from within its own national borders, this achievement has never really been celebrated. In general Australians have been content to boast about collaboration with the US, particularly in the Apollo missions. Honeysuckle Creek tracking station and the Parkes radiotelescope were key facilities in all the Apollo landings from 1969 to 1972.  Their roles are conflated in the very popular film The Dish (2000). The dramatic re-entry of Skylab in 1979 is fondly remembered by Aussies, and celebrated in Western Australia - but few people know about the amateur Australis Oscar 5 satellite launched in 1970 (celebrating its 50th anniversary this year), or the second Australian scientific satellite, FedSat 1, launched in 2002. Until 2018, Australia didn't even have a space agency. The way I see it, there's something that makes us uneasy about high technology.

I guess what I find interesting about Mr Squiggle is that this theme of backyard space is already in place in 1959, and it never develops further. Squiggle doesn't get a bigger and better rocket. Miss Pat doesn't make a trip to the Moon. Events in Australian space aren't incorporated into the show, in the way that they were for US Sitcom I Dream of Jeannie (also very popular on Australian television). I don't want to speculate too much about cause and effect; but Mr Squiggle is an exemplar of this uneasy relationship: a reluctance to leave the bush behind. High technology is translated into something gentle and safe. Perhaps this is a form of risk aversion.

I'm not saying Australians were not interested in space - far from it. In the 1950s, there were speculations about commercial spaceports at Woomera and post delivered by rockets. People flocked to see full-scale models of Russian spacecraft at the Sydney Trade Fair of 1961. Children dreamed of being astronauts, and so did the grown-ups. Newspapers reported on scientific advances and space events all round the world. And every night, from the 1959 to 1999, Mr Squiggle brought a little bit of the Moon to Australian living rooms. Space was associated with humour, not a political existential crisis such as the US faced. Maybe Aussies were too complacent. I don't know. I've been tugging at this thread for a while now, trying to understand how Australia understood itself as a space identity.

But it's always possible that Squiggle would have rejoiced in recent developments, such as the establishment of the Australian Space Agency in 2018. He might have upped sticks from the safe old Moon and moved further afield too. 'If he [Norman] was doing it [Mr Squiggle] now, he’d go to Pluto or Mars,' Rebecca Hetherington told a reporter in 2016.

If Mr Squiggle made the bush backyard into a space scenario, he also followed Australian bush traditions in his residence at 93 Crater Crescent. I think his statement to Roxanne (1987) captures something very charming about life in our little neck of the solar system:

'That's one of the nice things about the Moon. It's always afternoon tea time'.

Fun Squiggle stories

In 1993, the musician Prince changed his name to a symbol. Some called him Mr Squiggle. Richard Wilkins relates an interview he did with Prince in 2003:

'What about when you changed your name? That was all a bit weird. What was that all about?' 'I was both having fun and at war with the record label. They said to me, "Prince is contracted to us. You can't change your name and just be somebody else". They owned me. That's when I came up with the symbol thing'. 'We used to call you Mr Squiggle', I told him. 'That's funny', he said generously and half-heartedly. He probably didn't get the connection, since Mr Squiggle was only on TV in Australia'.

In 2009, opposition politician Christopher Pyne used 'Mr Squiggle' to insult Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Prime Minister wasn't phased and commented: 'Many of us on this side of the House would always stand up for the integrity of Miss Pat and the entire crew out there on Mr Squiggle'.

PS: sorry about the weird font changes, I couldn't fix it!

References

Bradshaw, Richard 2010 Eulogy for Norman Hetherington 1921 - 2010. OPEN: Oz Puppetry Email Newsletter Issue 11

Gorman, A.C. 2018 Gravity's playground: dreams of spaceflight and the rocket park in Australian culture. In Darran Jordan and Rocco Bosco, ed. Defining the Fringe of Contemporary Australian Archaeology. Pyramidiots, Paranoia and the Paranormal. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 92-107.

Gorman, A.C. 2011 The sky is falling: how Skylab became an Australian icon. Journal of Australian Studies 35(4):529-546

Jones, Melissa 1989 Mr Squiggle chalks up 30 years. The Australian Women's Weekly p 65 (reproduced at http://members.optusnet.com.au/kringunny/squiggle.htm)

Solman, Peter 2010 Norman Hetherington Remembered. A personal recollection by Peter Soloman. OPEN: Oz Puppetry Email Newsletter Issue 11

Wilkins, Richard 2011 Black Ties, Red Carpets, Green Rooms. Chatswood: New Holland

Wilson, Peter J. and Geoffrey Milne 2004 The Space Between: The Art of Puppetry and Visual Theatre in Australia. Sydney: Currency Press

Stone Age to Space Age in 1960s and 70s American sitcoms

One weekend I was idling at home watching cheesy American sitcoms from the 1960s and 1970s, and I chanced across a very interesting episode of The Brady Bunch. I was arrested by a theme that I've written about often before: the trope which places the 'Stone Age' and the 'Space Age' in opposition. The Brady Bunch was a pretty unlikely place to stumble across a critique of this, but stranger things have happened.

This led me to recall a double episode of my favourite Space Age sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie, set in Hawai'i. I watched this again just as I was beginning to feel my way around my space research over a decade ago, and it's been in the back of my mind ever since. Its themes are similar to the Brady Bunch episodes, and it's interesting to see how they appear to the contemporary eye.

From buffalo to blast-off

In the Brady Bunch episode Grand Canyon or Bust (1971), Cindy and Bobby wander off during a family holiday and get lost. They meet Jimmy, a Hopi boy who has run away from his grandfather.

This is in the midst of the Apollo human spaceflight program: Apollo 14 had been launched in January 1971, and Apollo 15 in July.

Cindy and Bobby meet Jimmy

In the third episode of this story arc, The Brady Braves, Mr Brady rescues the three children. Jimmy says he loves his grandfather, but ran away because his grandfather talked about the past all the time. He says, 'Mr Brady, I'm tired of being an injun [sic]. I want to be an astronaut'. In his mind, the two are mutually exclusive. The 'Stone Age' cannot meet the 'Space Age'. 

When he is reunited with his grandfather, the grandfather says to Mr Brady, "He thinks because I speak of buffalo, I don't understand blast-offs". There are generational dilemmas in this phrase. The implication is that knowledge is lost in simply three generations between the grandparents and grandchildren. The youngsters don't want to know their heritage; the connection between the past and the future is not obvious to them. The grandfather thinks differently, however: for him the buffalo (a term commonly used for North American bison), a species which had been decimated by European invasion, is still the present, not the past. The buffalo symbolises the impacts of colonialism which young Jimmy wants to forget, but the grandfather sees the connections between the 'Space Age' and 'Stone Age'.

Later there's a ceremony in which the Brady Bunch are inducted as members of the tribe and given new names. There is an exchange of values flowing between past and present, invader and vanquished. Of course none of this is as fluffy and light in reality as in Brady Bunch world, but the episodes attempt to break down the idea that there should be a division between buffalo and blast-off - the Hopi boy can have his American Dream without giving up his heritage. It's a hopeful message about the reconciliation between Stone and Space Ages.

'Pity the Indians of Outer Space'

There's quite a few stories of American Indian reactions to the Apollo missions. They centre around the themes of Indigenous knowledge vs 'scientific' knowledge.

In series of stories (I heard one account first-hand from a US anthropologist), American Indian people tell anthropologists who ask their opinion of the Apollo lunar landings that they already knew the Moon was just a grey dusty rock. There was no need to spend billions on a mission to find out what was already known!

Another set of stories has a tribe sending a message to the lunar inhabitants, or the lunar spirits, to watch out for the visitors. They will only steal their land, or ruin the environment as Europeans have on Earth (eg Young 1983: 273).

These stories place Indigenous knowledge and scientific knowledge in opposition, and are told with the intention of mocking Western science - but the 'superstitious' knowledge of the First Nations people is also satirised. The 'Stone Age' and 'Space Age' still define the encounter. Like all good urban legends, the stories stop short of telling you what happened next. The conflict is not resolved but left hanging in the air.

As Young (1983:274) argues, however, these are different registers of knowledge. Although they are juxtaposed in the metaphor, they are not commensurate. Each requires a different class of action. And First Nations people are not, by these stories, positioned as the first astronauts. They are still excluded. The Space Age is seen as unnecessary for them.

I dream of a terra nullius

There's an interesting parallel in the on-location Hawai'ian episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, which are basically US propaganda to justify the illegal annexation of the islands. Hawai'i was an independent sovereign kingdom until the monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, was overthrown by an American conspiracy in 1893. In the 1960s, an independence movement was emerging in Hawaii just at the time when tourism was becoming a big industry. The IDOJ episodes represented space as soft diplomacy.

Hawaii was quite an important place in the US space program. NASA built a tracking station on the island of Kauai, in Koke'e State Park, in 1961 to support their first human spaceflight program, Project Mercury. The station went on to support Gemini and Apollo. Neil Armstrong himself was posted to the Kauai tracking station in 1965 when he was the CAPCOM (capsule commander) for Gemini 3. It's now called the Koke'e Park Geophysical Observatory.

The tracking station on Kauai in 1965. Image credit: NASA

The returning Apollo astronauts dropped into the sea; and the Pearl Harbour naval base, near Honolulu, was where the recovery fleet was stationed. (You might remember that astronaut Tony Nelson finds Jeannie's bottle on a tropical beach with palm trees when he steps out of his capsule). The Apollo 11-14 crew were quarantined in Honolulu.

NASA also used the stark volcanic landscapes of Hawaii to familiarise the Apollo 11 astronauts with lunar geology. In January 1965, the crew traipsed over terrain shaped by lava in training exercises, including a hike to the summit of the Mauna Loa volcano.


But of course, these uniquely Hawai'ian landscapes were not a terra nullius, the legal fiction of a land belonging to no-one. They were only a lunar analogue if you stripped away all history and culture; reduced them to a narrow geology where people had never set foot before.

'Oh, you don't think he's serious about this invasion business, do you?'

Oh, you don't think he's serious about that That invasion business, do you?

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=i-dream-of-jeannie-1965&episode=s03e15

Oh, you don't think he's serious about that That invasion business, do you?

Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=i-dream-of-jeannie-1965&episode=s03e15

In Jeannie Goes to Honolulu (December 19, 1967), Tony and his comedic sidekick Major Roger Healey are on a 'working holiday' in Hawai'i when Jeannie joins them. The second part is The Battle of Waikiki (January 2, 1968). Tony expresses the desire to meet King Kamehameha, who founded the Kingdom of Hawai'i in 1810, and of course Jeannie summons him up.

Tony and Roger chat to King Kamehameha in downtown Honolulu.
Image courtesy of Sitcomsonline

The script is so entangled with colonial metaphors it would take a whole essay to pull them apart.  I'm not going to do it now! But there are some key points. Famously, Kamehameha was in power when Captain Cook came through and 'discovered' the islands in 1778.  There's a whole narrative of space exploration which co-opts the colonisation of the Pacific by intrepid seafarers, followed by the European colonial voyages, into a supposed universal human 'urge to explore' which leads to space. Thus Hawai'i's subjugation by the US is subsumed into an arc of inevitability. The connections in this narrative are so strongly embedded in space culture that the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals were created in emulation of Cook's journals during his Pacific voyages.

Part of the humour resides in King Kamehameha's reactions to modern technology. 'He has a chance to see what civilization has done for his country' says Roger. The king surveys the office buildings, hotels, sidewalks and motorcycles, but he's not impressed. He insists that they are removed. The astronauts are confused. Isn't it obvious that this is better? 'He's got to be made to see that civilization has helped, and the progress that's been made here', Tony says.

Once again, Indigenous knowledge and western scientific knowledge are brought face to face. Kamehameha performs a dance and causes it to rain (with intervention from Jeannie). Dr Bellows sees an opportunity:

Dr Bellows: Don't you realize if he went to Washington with us, have you any idea what it would mean? 

Tony:  It would certainly shake up the boys in meteorology.

Dr Bellows: Well I think so! Predicting the weather is one thing, but making the weather? Why, we're just beginning to experiment!

Interestingly, Dr Bellows prefigures the current trend to incorporate Indigenous knowledge in land management. Of course, the joke's on him: as Tony points out, no-one would believe him about the rainmaking.

The King is in no mood to be trifled with, and proposes to raise an army to take back the islands. But the only canoes he can find are rented at $2.00 an hour to tourists, and the only spears are souvenirs for purchase in the hotel gift shop. His soldiers are the staff at the 'Living Hawai'i' museum.

While King Kamehameha plans his moves, the NASA staff all head off for a grand luau with roasted pigs and tropical fruits. Kamehameha's attack is interpreted as a performance and his army desert to participate in the luau. The King gives up in disgust.

By the end of the program, he has been brought to heel. 'I do not understand your way of life but my people seem happy. Perhaps this progress is good for them', he says. 'You make sure your civilization take care of my people.' An interesting statement in light of the social divisions unremarked upon in the episode: the local Hawai'ians are employed to serve food, sell souvenirs, hire out war canoes to white American military personnel and tourists looking for authentic tiki culture.

And so by the end of the episode, all conflict is resolved neatly, delivering political stability in advance of the Apollo 11 mission.

Conclusions

The episodes are both blunt instruments and nuanced in ways you don't expect. The Brady Bunch episode has so many cliches and stereotypes, and yet it is basically promoting the idea that the Stone Age and Space Age are not opposed: the young Hopi boy CAN become an astronaut. The buffalo and blast-off can co-exist, neither erasing the other.

The Battle of Waikiki is a reverie on the continuity of colonial manliness, a theme analysed by Anne McClintock in Imperial Leather. King Kamehameha conquered and united the Hawai'ian islands, just like the astronauts are going to conquer space. And like the cannibal mythos, the astronauts have absorbed some of King Kamehameha's heroic qualities. They become his symbolic heirs in conquest. In doing so, they retrospectively bestow value on Indigenous cultures, which are not excluded but incorporated into the narrative while staying firmly fixed in the past.

Hawai'i is still a battleground of Stone Age/Space Age values. It's the location of the Hi-SEAS (Hawai'i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation) habitat, meant to simulate the experience of isolation on a long-duration space mission to Mars. The colonial refiguring of the landscape has morphed with changing USA space aspirations.

More recently, there has been controversy about the construction of a new telescope on the mountain of Mauna Kea.  The easy resort of placing 'Stone Age' in the past while 'Space Age' represents the future is being challenged by protectors resisting a manifestation of colonialism masked in science. It's complex and I don't pretend to understand enough about the issues to explain them here. One commentator, however, has called the protests 'one of the largest uprisings of Native Hawaiians in modern history'.

There are no Indigenous people in space, I have heard stated many times. Space is up for grabs with clean hands as no humans will be displaced, alienated, subjected to genocide. Space is the colonialist's wet dream.

But I would argue that it's a false framing to say that the lack of space Indigenes creates a carte blanche, a tabula rasa, a terra nullius. It's just that we don't recognise how deeply space is now inscribed with white, male, capitalist and colonialist values, as these are the default, invisible to the scientific and military cadres of which the space community is mainly composed. But because these things are defined by what they exclude, the exclusions are already present. You need a different perspective to perceive their power.



References
McClintock, Anne 1995 Imperial Leather. Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge

Young, Jane 1983 'Pity the Indians of outer space': Native American views of the space program. Western Folklore 46(4):269-279

Cat-Women of the Moon: ideas of space travel in the 1950s.

Introduction

No woman has yet set foot on the Moon in reality; but in science fiction there have been plenty of female lunar explorers.

This 1953 black-and-white science fiction classic is credited with introducing the genre of female-only enclaves in space. It starred Marie Windsor as astronaut Helen Salinger, Carol Brewster as Alpha, leader of the cat-women, and Susan Morrow as Lambda.

The remaining cat-women were played by the Hollywood Cover Girls: Betty Arlen, Suzann Alexander, Roxann Delman, Ellye Marshall and Judy Walsh. The Hollywood Cover Girls seem to have been a vaudeville act.

I'm interested in this film for how it represents views of space and space travel in the early 1950s, four years before the launch of the first object into Earth orbit, and fifteen before humans really landed on the Moon. And also, because cat-women.

Why must we wait?

The movie opens with with a thrilling declaration. The Freudian symbols in this passage are not subtle.

The eternal wonders of space and time, the faraway mysteries and dreams of other worlds, other life, the stars, the planets. Man [sic] has been face to face with them for centuries, yet is barely able to penetrate their unknown secrets. Some time, some day, the barrier will be pierced. Why must we wait? Why not now?

The scene then cuts away to a pale rocket ascending vertically - a very visual reinforcement of the symbolism! The rocket appears to have been launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, and this is certainly where their mission control is. In the early 1950s, White Sands was one of just a few locations in the world where rockets could be launched into space.

Surely it can't be just me who sees the resemblance.

The propulsion method isn't entirely clear, but it has an 'atom chamber' and some kind of acid fuel.  At this time, there was a lot of interest in nuclear-powered rockets. The US Atomic Energy Commission (remember there was no NASA in those days) started developing a Nuclear Thermal Rocket in 1955. While we've gone on to have numerous nuclear-powered spacecraft, this method has not been used for Earth-to-space rocket propulsion, although it seems that there is renewed interest in this technology at the moment.

'White Sands calling Moon Rocket 4 Code 63. Can you hear us?', says mission control. Looking through the window to the outside, the crew see raw space - an inky blackness dotted with stars.

This is not a stunt!

Helen is the navigation officer. Upon waking up from the sleep of launch (they recline on banana lounges), her first action is to take a comb and hand-mirror from a drawer. 'Remember', says the manly blond captain Laird, 'this is a scientific expedition and NOT a stunt!', looking very pointedly at Helen combing her hair. This implies that her presence is regarded by some as gimmicky - that is, she doesn't belong there, and was only included for the sake of publicity.

Helen of Troy?

So much to pick apart here! There's the implication that a woman couldn't have got there for her skills alone; that science and femininity are opposed (so Helen should be 'one of the boys' and pay no attention to her appearance). These were certainly issues later in the rocky road to US women getting access to space. In 1978, when they were finally admitted to NASA's astronaut programme, the lads obligingly made a make-up kit for the girls. Even in space we have to be beautiful! But like, not too much, or you can't be taken seriously as a scientist.....

Public consumption and commercial space

Laird makes their first report to White Sands. 'Over and out', he says. 'Wait a minute, commander', says White Sands. 'There's a world full of people listening in. Are you alright - could we have a few words from the crew?' 'No!' says Laird, but Helen persuades him to let them talk to the people of Earth. This foreshadows an important part of the Apollo missions, and later the International Space Station - engagement with the public. The television broadcast of the Apollo 11 landing has become legendary. However, it wasn't a priority for NASA in the planning, as cameras would add weight, and the filming was a whole work sequence that would take up time. In 'Cat-Women' we see a similar tension between satisfying the public curiosity and getting on with the job.

Each of the crew introduces themselves and speaks a few words for the radio audience. The engineer Walt Walters is exercised by the opportunities for a space side-hustle. When he talks to Earth, he seizes his chance. 'We're humming along folks!' he says. 'That new lubrication by the Delphite Oil Company sure turned the trick. [off air] That plug ought to make a couple of grand, huh?' This stunt establishes Walt's character as a venal money-grubber and also introduces a new theme into the film: the commercial exploitation of space. I think it's very interesting that this aspect of space - making profit from it - is evident even before the launch of the first satellite.

Finally they arrive! As the navigator, Helen chooses the landing site. To the surprise of the other crew, it's on the dark side of the Moon. Unbeknownst to them, the cat-women have telepathically guided her here.

Walters is still on the take: prior to their moonwalk, he pulls out a box. 'What are those?' asks radio operator Doug. 'First letters from the Moon; I've even got my own cancellation stamp. Ought to be worth a couple of hundred bucks apiece'. This amused me no end, as there's a long and slightly bizarre relationship between space and philately. In 1972, the Apollo 15 astronauts took unauthorised postal covers with them for later sale. It turned into a scandal, with much discussion about whether astronauts should seek to personally profit from their profession. You can read more about the incident here. (Also see update at the end of this post).

Where does a city end?

Doug has a sign from the Los Angeles Police Department that he wants to leave on the surface of the Moon. Note that this is a local symbol, not a national one: there is no US flag proposed here. The sign says "Los Angeles City Limits". It's not explained, but the visual reference is clear. The placement of this sign on the Moon extends the limits of the city of Los Angeles into space, making the Moon part of its geography. There's obviously a humorous element to this, but it's also serious: a territorial claim, the extension of a terrestrial jurisdiction. In 1953, you could technically make a territorial claim in space, as there were no international conventions forbidding it. The Outer Space Treaty was not signed into being until 1967.

I thought I had better look into the US concept of city limits, which I have to confess I've only paid attention to before in the context of the Tina Turner dance classic 'Nutbush City Limits'. This is an American local government concept. The area within the city limits is governed by the Mayor of Los Angeles and the City Council, who provide services and collect tax. The city limits, however, can extend over county lines.

Why Los Angeles, though? In the early 1950s, White Sands was a focus of military space activity, but Los Angeles was the centre of aerospace industry, with CalTech in nearby Pasadena. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was established in 1944 and became a key institution in developing space technology. You can read more about its fascinating history in Escape from Earth, by Fraser MacDonald. We might presume that Doug came from one of these organisations.

Spiders and dust

The astronauts suit up and venture outside. Here's the first step on the Moon, 1953-style:

Prompted by the telepathic cat-women, Helen encourages them to enter a cave. Inside they are attacked by GIANT MOON SPIDERS. It's not the first time the Moon has been inhabited by giant insects - Dr Dolittle in the Moon (one of my all-time favourites) has giant moths and grasshoppers. The reduced gravity allows them to grow far larger than on Earth.

No you can't have a picture, just watch the movie for yourself.

Of course the GIANT MOON SPIDERS go after Helen and then get slaughtered by the men.  Despite this setback, Helen wants to keep going. 'We don't know what's ahead', says one of the crew. 'Well I'll tell you then', says Helen. 'Adventure, discovery, knowledge! Isn't that why we came?' I like that that a woman gets to own these qualities.

They find, to their surprise, that the cave has breathable air, and take off their spacesuits. The enterprising Walters immediately leaps to a new idea for lunar industry: 'Maybe we can bottle this stuff for sale: Moon Mist for chronic coughs and asthma'. Moon mist would be pure and uncontaminated by terrestrial toxins!

It's not as far-fetched as it sounds. Of course there is no atmosphere to provide mist, but there is plenty of dust to be had. Not great for human lungs; but I could imagine a time in the future where people are making remedies out of lunar dust. What claims will be made for its healing properties? At the moment, you can buy basalt dust at plant nurseries to put on your garden. The dust comes from quarries, but it's similar to the lunar dust in its chemical and mechanical properties. Perhaps people will salt their garden beds with lunar dust instead and grow moon gardens!

I have seen advertisements for lunar mineral make-up (Note: not containing actual lunar minerals). Perhaps the very wealthy will drink champagne with lunar dust in it, just as they once did with gold. Lunar mineral waters will be a thing! Indeed conceptual philosopher and artist Jonathon Keats has already done this. By extension, you may be able to go to a spa and have an exfoliating skin treatment in which the abrasive qualities of lunar dust are put to good use. If lunar missions become more common in the decades to come, there may be all kinds of terrestrial commercial ventures making use of the one thing the Moon has plenty of. Probably I should get in first with the spa thing before Gwyneth Paltrow does.

Polity and politics among the cat-women

On the other side of the cave, the astronauts find themselves in a sort of bubble with a microclimate, a sky with clouds above them. They enter the city of the cat-women, with its architecture of columns, statues and black-and-white tiles. It's a little bit Aelita Queen of Mars, and also kind of classical culture - indeed, the cat-women have Greek names like Alpha, Beta and Lambda. The women themselves are slinky and sexy, dressed in one-piece catsuits. All have black hair, curled up in a big bun behind their head. They have pale faces with dark eyebrows and a curved hairline - they look a little like the Thermians in Galaxy Quest.

Bit by bit we piece together the story of the cat-women (incidentally a derogatory name applied to them by one of the crew, who is suspicious of them) and a glimpse into how their world came to be. 'We have no use for men' says cat-woman Beta, scornfully. The more diplomatic Alpha explains: 'What Beta means is that we have no contact or control over them as we do among ourselves. It seemed rather difficult to get a crew composed entirely of women.' Huh! Then as now..... this is interesting though. Their telepathic powers work only on other women; men are immune. Perhaps this is an extension of the much-vaunted and mythical quality of feminine intuition, which does not work on men because they lack it. Pure speculation on my part, and of course there is no need to explain all these plot devices, which do not need to be logical.

So how did the cat-women get on the Moon? Their ancestors, men and women both, travelled there two million years ago, when the Moon still had an atmosphere. I'm wondering here if the classical Greek complexion of their culture is meant to be a reference to Atlantis.

At a certain point the atmosphere started thinning, and they had to do something to conserve oxygen. It was not pleasant. Planned genocide was one of the strategies they employed. The other was to wait for a spaceship to arrive.

We find out more about the genocide when the gentle Doug falls in love with cat-woman Lambda. 'Incidentally', Doug asks her, 'where are your menfolk?'. 'Ours died off when I was still a child' replies Lambda. The implication here is that they were the subject of the genocide - a gender-cide, in fact.

Alpha has a plan to steal the spaceship to travel to Earth. There, she says, 'We will get their women under our power, and soon we will rule the whole world'. Before you might be tempted to think this could be a good thing for the future of Earth, Alpha disabuses Lambda of the idea that she can make a life with Doug. 'There is no room in your life for love. We will choose your man eugenically'.

I interpret this as an indictment on the cat-women's culture. By the 1950s, eugenics, which had a long history in the US, was becoming unacceptable.

The moral of the story

The Moon has other resources that would be valuable on Earth, as Walt discovers. Over a meal, he converses with Beta. 'Say, you wouldn't have any small works of art that I could take home with me as a souvenir, would you?', he asks her. Beta gives him her silver arm band. Walt says that on Earth such jewellery would often be made of gold, and Beta says 'but it's so common'! Walt's greed is aroused. Beta reveals the existence of a cave of gold, 'with more gold than you could carry away in your rocket ship in 100 years'. Naturally, he wants to see it, so they sneak off without the others. In the cave of gold, Beta kills him.

Perhaps there is a moral here: that looking to profit from the Moon will end badly.

This film, as cheesy as it is, covers a number of themes that become important in the later reality of space travel, such as lunar mining and profiteering in space; territorial claims; gender relations; and public engagement. It's remarkable prescient in this regard. 

Update, June 2020: City limits and stamps

I was reading Robert A. Heinlein's classic novella The Man Who Sold the Moon, written in 1949 and published in 1950, when this caught my attention.

'How are things going in Florida, Monty?' 

'I thought we were going to have to buy the whole damn legislature until we got the rumour spread around that Los Angeles had contracted to have a City-of-Los-Angeles sign planted on the Moon for publicity pix. Then they came around'.

This, as it turned out, wasn't the only similarity with Cat-Women of the Moon. Delos Harriman, star of Heinlein's story, also sends first day covers to the Moon. As already mentioned, there is a bizarre space-philately thing, and it seems this emerged very early on.

Coincidence? The Los Angeles City Limits does seem very specific. If there is a connection here, then Cat-Women was cleverly playing with science fiction references and it does make one wonder what else is hidden in there.

Heinlein was not involved in Cat-Women, but he was kicking around the film industry in the early 1950s. Probably there is some deeper story here if anyone had the time to pursue it.

You can watch the whole movie here:

All artefacts are anthropomorphic

I was reflecting on the phenomenon of anthropomorphising space technology.

Two social media-mediated incidents are central to my personal experience with this. From my early days on Twitter, I've followed Voyager 2. The account was not an official NASA account: it was run by scientist Dr Paul Filmer. During the now-forgotten US government shutdown in 2013, NASA closed it down. He was allowed to continue tweeting as the spacecraft, but using a different handle - @NSFVoyager2.

I found the impact of this quite informative. I woke up one morning to find people messaging me, wondering why Voyager 2 was silent on Twitter. We figured it had something to do with a recent tweet in which the spacecraft expressed a - very mild - opinion. We tried to reach Paul. I cried. I felt that I was cut off from the solar system, closed in like a fish caught in the ocean and transferred to a glass bowl on a table in the vestibule.

The second is the Rosetta/Philae mission to Comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The European Space Agency's public outreach campaign was designed to get people emotionally invested, and it sure as heck worked on me. In 2016 the equipment used by the Rosetta orbiter to communicate with the Philae lander was turned off. As I've written here, knowing that Philae could no longer speak and be heard made me quite emotional, as if a friend had died.

Some are critical about this anthropomorphisation. They would say it's wrong to attribute our agency to things instead of letting them have their own, almost an oppression of things. 

Musing on my bus ride in this morning, it struck me that all artefacts are anthropomorphic, if only because they are made, shaped, used and discarded by humans. They're a non-flesh shadow, the reverse of our obverse, the mirror of our discontent. If they were not, how could we possibly use them to speak to us about absent humans?

Space Age Suds: women, washing machines and the astronautics of everyday life

'Space Age Suds' is a charming and slightly alarming little vignette which is about the seeping of the Space Age into domestic life, machines and technology and how they structure social relationships, and gender roles in the Space Age. It's meant to be humorous, of course, but there is so much going on here!

The author isn't just anyone - it's beloved South Australian writer and journalist Max Fatchen. I found the article on Trove and now can't relocate it, but it seems likely it was published in the Advertiser, Adelaide's daily broadsheet. The date is a bit uncertain but it's clearly Apollo era.

I like that the Space Age reverses gender roles and that by the analogy of the washing machine with the space capsule, the wife is accorded the power of technology. After some searching I was able to find her first name but not her original surname, so we will have to call her Jean Fatchen here.

Because the image is a little fuzzy, here is the text.

Space Age Suds: the script

So the Russians are developing a low-orbital bomb. Well, it's just one more complicated space-age development, like our washing machine.

Our washing machine has a shape like a capsule and it is computer programmed and uncanny.

I was never much of a one with technology, and as a member of the avant garde laundry set, I'm all washed up.

There's no longer the simple meshing of gears as with our old washing machine. The cheerful days when I got my tie caught in the wrangler are past.

Our washing machine is automated in a cold, impersonal way, and my wife now calls herself a laundry technician.

She subscribes to advanced scientific journals, keeps up with the Apollo space project and runs off at the mouth on everything from transistors to laser beams.

I have been given the title of junior wash and garment line adherer, which means I hang out the clothes. I suppose I should be grateful.

Yet I dread washing mornings. I belong to a generation of boiling coppers and copper sticks, the hot sudsy smell of saturated sheets, and of bars of yellowed soap.

Now there's an air of bristling technology in the laundry, with split-second timing and ruthless efficiency.

"Load", my wife rasps. I stuff the clothes into the washing machine.

She consults her watch. "Four minutes to wash off," she says.

She looks at the console. "Close hatch," she orders. I shut the washing machine. She begins the countdown, "Five.....four.....three..."

"Look, dear," I interrupt, "I've forgotten a couple of my shirts...."

"Clear the complex", she says icily. "Two.....one.....". She throws a switch.

I humbly take up my position.

"Motor running", I report.

Strange, uncanny sounds come from the interior of the machine.

'Hot water entering,' I chant, consulting my check sheet.

"All systems are go," says my wife.

I sit back and light a cigarette with clammy hands.

Time goes by. The washing machine murmurs, thumps, sighs and gurgles. Its programme goes its relentless way.

"Check machine and report," rasps my wife from the kitchen.

"Machine on course, entering spin-dry period," I say.

"Check systems," she says.

"Check, check, check," I cry. "Hoses running. Pump stops ... four...three...two ....one...NOW."

"Clothes touch down, five minutes," says my wife. "Stand by."

"Machine spinning," I cry.

"Fire retro-rockets," she says absentmindedly.

At last the machine is silent.

My wife climbs to her feet.

"Open hatch!" she orders. "Alert clothes waggon".

She begins unloading the washing machine.

She lets out a shriek. "These clothes still look dirty".

"You didn't," she says, "put in the washing powder, did you?".

"Well," I bluster, insubordinate and defiant to the last, "this machine is supposed to think of everything. If it hasn't enough brains to use washing powder....."

"That's all," she snaps. "We'll have to do another orbit. Get the powder".

No, I haven't been on the moon but there are times when it sounds attractive!

Exegesis

So much to say about this little piece! I'm only going to scratch the surface here.

There's the idea that the Space Age changes how we do small domestic things on Earth: more like machines than messy humans. Both the wife and the washing machine are now operating as Space Age robots (it's a little bit Stepford Wives-ish tbh). It shows how the public interpreted the machine-human interfaces of space technology, down to checklists just like those that the Apollo astronauts used. It's also very cybernetic, getting status updates and adjusting the conditions.

The washing machine drum is a little gravity machine in itself, spinning like a space station or a centrifuge such those astronauts train in. Front loading washing machines with a glass porthole resemble spaceships too. 

The countdown has permeated into the domestic level: precision timing is the key to Space Age efficiency. As a domestic astronaut in her small domain, Jean has assumed power: she commands and Max obeys. She is a robot herself, icy and distant, intolerant of human foibles like forgetting a few shirts - and also the washing powder. (Thanks a bunch, Max. I would have been far more annoyed were I Jean).

The irony is that the power of astronaut Jean is illusory. While Max is pretending to help, he's actually demonstrating a typical trope of the inept male. He boasts about hanging out the clothes, but in this scenario, he forgets the washing powder and sits about smoking a casual ciggie (as people did in those days) while Jean multitasks, back in the kitchen. He finishes with that golden oldie, the nagging wife. It's a perfect illustration of the separate gender spheres of the 1960s, when women were excluded from being astronauts in the US.

'Fire retro rockets,' Jean says, absentmindedly. Doesn't this seem at odds with the ruthless robot housewife, all hard, streamlined efficiency? It took me a few reads before I realised what the subtle Max was implying with this sentence. She is absent-minded and talking about retro-rockets - which the washing machine does not have - because she is dreaming. Standing in her apron at the kitchen sink washing the breakfast dishes, while Max lounges around in the laundry, she is an astronaut. She is in command of a space mission, brave and true. The washing machine is as close as she can come to realising this dream. It makes me feel a little sad.

Once upon a time in France (well probably about 2005), I saw a washing machine advertisement in which a rather attractive nude man crouched in front of the washing machine's porthole, presumably waiting for the spin cycle to finish. The caption read 'One small step for man, one giant leap for women' or something to that effect in French: the idea was that is was a bloody big leap to get a bloke to do any housework, so nude dude's efforts at laundry were going to emancipate women and allow them to leave the house, even go to space! In effect, the effort involved in getting a man to do the laundry was equivalent to landing on the moon!

Gallery of Space Age Suds

As it turns out, there are quite a few connections between washing machines and the Space Age. Here's a small sample.

A space-age shop front in Sheffield, UK. Used with permission, from
https://shopfrontsofsheffield.com/2013/09/30/apollo-appliances-ltd-12-meadowhead/

Look at those rocket portholes lined up outside this charming shop!

https://www.doorsteps.com/search/carson-city_nv?property_id=1004635807

A rental property in Carson City, NV, USA, was advertised with a Space Age Laundry!

From Freaking News,
http://www.freakingnews.com/Tom-Hanks-in-Washing-Machine-Spaceship-Pictures-110109.asp

This is a reference to the Apollo 13 mission.

Source: unknown

This advertisement from 1900 explicitly references the gravity of spinning.


















I'm sure I could find many more examples if I kept searching. Le me know if you find any!

And I'd like to finish by saluting astronaut Jean Fatchen. Here she is with Max in 2004.

Jean, with Max. Picture: Grant NowellSource:adelaidenow

Sputnik 1 lives on in models of the world's first satellite

In 2017, I was lucky enough to be part of a UN workshop on the theme of women in space. Most of it was run at the offices of UN Women, but one session was in UN HQ in New York City.

I was delighted to see a model of Sputnik 1 suspended from the ceiling in the lobby. The model was presented to the UN by the USSR in 1959. 

The satellite itself of course no longer exists, having re-entered after three months in orbit in January 1958. I wonder what you would find if you made a catalogue of all the Sputnik models that existed in the world - a footprint of its cultural influence? The catalogue would include the model that usually resides on my office desk, for example. You'd never be able to track them all - there must be so many small ones produced as models or toys dispersed throughout the world. Some would be in museums; some in public institutions like the UN; others in universities. The rest would be in schools, people's houses and who knows where else.

Models don't have to be accurate, either. Perhaps there are some that are larger than the original satellite, which was 58 cm in diameter. Many would be smaller. They may use different materials, or get the angle and size of the antennas wrong. But they'll all have a shiny sphere with four long legs, the essential features of this space object which have come to symbolise the early Space Age.

Space junk: collection is easy, direction is hard to find.

My Twitter friend Stuart Palmer alerted me to this space junk song I didn't know about! It's a good one too. The Bats are a New Zealand band who have been around since the 1980s.

Here are the lyrics, which I have transcribed myself for your pleasure. Apologies if I have got some of them wrong. The cruisy tones sometimes made words difficult to distinguish!

Space junk is flying

And I'm goin' to go and get me some

It will be so easy

And I'll have a beautiful pile

Collection is easy

Direction is hard to find

Time is the healer

Somewhere I'll hide it

Maybe on the mellow moon

Someday I'll go and find it

Sell it for a fortune back home

Collection is easy

Direction is hard to find

Time is the healer

In the end of course I never made it

Cos I could never find a hollow moon

Space junk junk is still flying

And I'm waiting just for you to be

Collection is easy

Direction is hard to find

Time is the healer

And I'm still stuck out here

Searching for a better world

And I'm still stuck out here

Searching for a better world

And I'm still stuck out here

Searching for a better world

The song draws on the idea that space junk is collectible and valuable, just like the pieces of Skylab which scattered itself over Western Australia in 1979. It's junk in orbit, but a precious souvenir of space back on Earth. 

This makes me think about the definition of space junk and how it varies depending on where the fragment or defunct satellite is located between Earth and Earth orbit. For example, a returned spacecraft in a museum is not seen as junk because it is performing a function - communicating space science to the public.  A collected piece of junk also has a function for the person who owns it. It's a physical object that evokes the vastness of space and makes the person feel connected to it. Anything spaceflown has a magical pull for the Earthbound.

In the song, the space junk is also a compass for finding one's way in the universe. It's come to a final resting place, and its collector looks to it to provide a thread to the sky where perhaps a better world awaits. The space junk can't fulfil this role, though.

I like the way the song moves from the slightly facetious idea that a fortune can be made from selling space trash to the more melancholy reflection of being stuck on Earth still searching for a path.

I've been humming this song for days. Go Bats!

'Some people don't worry, baby': Skylab blues and space junk anxiety

I do love the music inspired by the re-entry of the US space station Skylab in 1979. This one is by Grimsdell, a person or band about which I can find out almost nothing. Like several other space junk songs, it is rather grim, focusing on junk falling on people and houses. Skylab is almost drawn into some kind of karmic economy - it is coming for YOU, as if the guilty will die and the virtuous be saved. Or perhaps it's that virtue won't save you, and this is what's most frightening. Be apathetic, like the couch-potato Coors-sippers, or don't; it won't matter when the end comes.

You could also say that Skylab here is just a metaphor here for a general apocalypse, standing in for nuclear devastation

They say Skylab's fallin' out of the sky
They say some people may have to die
Could fall on my house, could fall on yours

Some people don't worry baby
They just sit back, watch TV, sip on their Coors
But each day now that passes by
Death and destruction come closer from the sky

They say it'll rain tons of scientific trash
The camera vault, a one mile-crater it'll mash
One supersonic bolt or one supersonic screw
May be fallin' out of orbit straight for you

But each day now that passes by
Death and destruction comes closer from the sky
They say the scientists don't know where it will fall
But people you know, it's gonna fall on y'all

They say there's no place, no place to run
They say there's no place, no place to hide
When it's all over baby, don't you know,
Many people gon' die

But each day now that passes by.
Death and destruction come closer from the sky

Skylab blues
Skylab blues
Skylab blues
Skylab blues

Outer space hats: inspiration for a drab Monday.

Who knew space millinery was a thing?

Below are two 'outer space hats' by the French designer Hubert de Givenchy (who died in March 2018). They're less space hats than space agey, though.

Image courtesy of  Conde Nast

Pierre Cardin loved a space hat. This one was made in 1965 and exhibited in Paris Refashioned 1957-1968, at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City.

According to the exhibition catalogue,

Molded felt hats that resembled space helmets became a signature of Cardin’s work during the 1960s, yet the designer had introduced the style as early as 1958. Vogue described a hat from that year as 'a unique Cardin projection into outer space,' underscoring the couturier’s early interest in futuristic design.

These Pierre Cardin sun and moon helmets are pretty groovy too.

Pattie Boyd and  Celia Hammond model the helmets. Photo by John French.

What, I wonder, is space fashion for the era of commercial and private space?