When asked about the relevance of sending “a woman” into space, French astronaut Sophie Adenot replied: “I don’t think exploration has a gender.” This poorly-framed, even slightly misogynistic, question gives rise to a more interesting one: what is, ultimately, the point of sending humans into space? In reading Une histoire de la conquête spatiale (“A History of Space Exploration,” 2024) by Irénée Régnauld and Arnaud Saint-Martin, six decades of orbital odysseys struggle to provide an answer to this costly question.
In the early 1960s, the first astronauts occupied a position not so different from the dogs and primates that preceded them. At one point, there was even consideration of drugging them and sending them under general anesthesia: both to spare them the jolts of liftoff and to prevent them from pressing the wrong button. The installation of a window in the first Mercury capsules was a matter of debate: engineers saw little point, since test pilots actually had nothing to pilot. Crewed flight served as a cover for the far more strategic intercontinental missile program. President Dwight Eisenhower was not fooled: When told about the Apollo project, he joked about the lack of American enemies on the Moon.
Scientists also voiced their reservations. James Van Allen, a true space pioneer and discoverer of Earth’s radiation belts thanks to the Explorer 1 scientific satellite, described the human in space in 1959 as “a fabulous nuisance.” Astronauts’ bodies move and give off heat and gases that disrupt measurements. Numerous devices that vibrate, let off heat and are very heavy are also required, reducing the rocket’s payload capacity. Compared to an automated probe, a crew requires very expensive systems and wants to return safely to Earth, further increasing the weight and the bill. In the 1970s, the Apollo program faced heavy criticism from the American scientific elite, notably from double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, both for its extraordinary cost – up to 4.5% of the US federal budget – and for the equally extraordinary weakness of its scientific results.
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