ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Semipalatinsk to Baikonur: The Earthly Myths of the Space Age

• In Event: Shifting Narratives in Space Science and Technology (2)

English Abstract

Since its inception in 1957, the space age has been understood as a state of soon-to-be-leaving Earth, generating a profound uncertainty of experience between technology and utopianism. This paper intervenes in that uncertainty by focusing on the myth that merges human and technological progress. Transcending the Cold War and high modernity, the space age demonstrates the vitality of this myth: once it is “condemned in one configuration,” to borrow from Susan Buck-Morss, it is “redeemed in another.” To retrace this cyclical dynamic, this paper turns to social and environmental histories long eclipsed by hegemonic narratives of Soviet heroic technoscience – those of the Baikonur Cosmodrome, the cradle of the space age – and draws a parallel with the development of the atomic age at the former Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, also in Kazakhstan. Juxtaposed in this way, these two former Soviet proving grounds highlight the shared origins – and perhaps the shared destinies – of the atomic and space ages, underscoring the earthly nature of the space age: whatever new achievements may come in astronautics, its origins, labors, and consequences have always remained firmly anchored to the ground.

Author

• Saulesh Yessenova