Over the course of six months, I spoke thousands of words about Cosmonauts:
Birth of the Space Age. Many of those
words were repeated over and over again for visitors who were, on the whole,
very interested; and it was hugely rewarding to see some of them clearly
infected by my enthusiasm! This essay is based on notes which I wrote just
after the Exhibition closed, in an attempt to preserve some of the memories,
some of the passion, some of the inspiration. I am, in effect, giving myself a tour
of the Exhibition; and in doing so am telling much about the development of the Soviet and Russian Space programme.
Welcome to Cosmonauts: Birth of the Space Age! The Exhibition sets out to tell
not simply the story of the incredible technological achievements which the
Russians achieved in Space, but also the human stories behind these
achievements, from the dreams of a hundred years ago, through the incredible
feats achieved by those who went into Space – and, indeed, those who made it
possible for them to go there.
The Exhibition was the brainchild
of a very modest curator at the Science Museum, who had dreamt for 20 years of
having an exhibition which would tell the story of the Soviet and Russian
achievement in Space. The permanent Space Gallery in the Museum largely tells
the story of the successes of the USA. Yet it is the Russians who hold most of
the records: first object in Space; first animal in Space; first man in Space;
first woman in Space; first crew in Space; first spacewalk; first Space
station.
Most people thought that such an
exhibition would be impossible to put on. The Soviet Union was inherently
paranoid and secretive; and even today, surely the Russians would be unlikely
to agree to sending previously (and, in some cases, still) classified objects
to London to be put on public display. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get…and
if you do ask, you might just get.
An important moment came in 2011.
The fiftieth anniversary of Yury Gagarin’s Space flight saw a number of events
taking place in London to mark the occasion, and Gagarin’s daughter, Yelena,
who is now in charge of the Kremlin Museums, came here for many of these. The
serious conversations began at this point.
To many people’s surprise, there
was interest from the Russian side in holding an exhibition. Yes, there was
some reluctance (“Gagarin’s medal is made of solid gold; how do we know you
won’t send back a cheap replica?” was one concern which was voiced); but a more
common response from the scientists and engineers was bafflement. For them, these
objects are simply what they work with every day; would people really be interested to look at them in
an exhibition? Well…yes!
Thus began a four-year journey involving
Science Museum staff in many trips to Russia; problem-solving (one of the talks
which accompanied the Exhibition was called, “How do you get a rocket into a
museum?”); and bureaucracy. It was all worth it.
As you walk through the doors of
the Exhibition immediately ahead of you is the painting, Red Planet, by Konstantin
Yuon, from 1921 (right). This
symbolises the excitement, nervousness, even fear which held many in its sway
at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. There was a real belief that
people could create a new world, a fairer, more just place for ordinary folk.
Posters shown by Julia Richers in her presentation, The Cosmic Dimension in Early Revolutionary Visual Culture, at the
Symposium on 5 February also bore out this idea: the new Russian man (the term
“Soviet” did not come into usage until the Soviet Union was declared in 1922) could
build not just a new life but a new planet.
This tied in also with the
“Cosmist” movement in Russia, which had gained adherents in the late nineteenth
century. This brought together ideas of mysticism and spirituality (especially
the belief in the Russian Orthodox Church that it was the one true church), and
a desire to reach out into the cosmos: man could connect the whole universe.
The philosopher, Nikolay Fedorov,
was a great believer in this. He held long and deep discussions with his
friend, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a teacher of Mathematics at a school In Kaluga,
some 120 miles south west of Moscow. Tsiolkovsky began to look at the question
from a rational, scientific point of view; and worked out that man would,
indeed, be able to travel into space.
Incredibly, a hundred years ago
Tsiolkovsky came to the mathematical conclusion that multi-stage rockets would
be needed to break out of the Earth’s atmosphere; that in Space there would be
weightlessness; men would need to wear spacesuits; they could go for spacewalks
(and they would need to go through an air-lock to leave the capsule); and
plants could be grown on spaceships. The
amazing drawings which Tsiolkovsky made in 1933 to help the Director of the
film, Cosmic Journey (Космический рейс), and which illustrate these ideas, form one of the more
surprising exhibits. Tsiolkovsky was decades ahead of his time.
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| Tsiolkovsky anticipated that man would be weightless in Space. |
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| Cosmonauts gazing out from the spaceship at the stars. Tsiolkovsky's vision has been realised on the International Space Station, which has a viewing area specifically for this purpose. |
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| Death of a Cosmonaut. Tsiolkovsky understood that it would be possible to walk in Space; but that if the tether to the spaceship broke, the Cosmonaut would float off into Space. |
Like many geniuses, Tsiolkovsky was
an eccentric – albeit a supremely practical one. The enormous ear trumpet which
he made to cope with his deafness, and the photograph of him using another one
he made, are testimony to this. Indeed, not being a wealthy man hemade all of his own tools which are still displayed in his workshop in his house in Kaluga.
There is a delightful photograph of Tsiolkovsky on the wall of
the Exhibition, tugging thoughtfully on his beard; and next to it there is a photograph
of the brilliant engineer who
brought to fruition the Mathematician’s ideas: Sergei Korolev. Born on 30 December 1906 (according to the
pre-Revolutionary Julian Calendar; 12 January 1907 by the Gregorian Calendar),
Korolev was destined to be the hidden genius behind the Soviet rocket
programme. (An engineering model of a
cluster of his fundamental rocket engines, the RD-107, towers over the
start of the Exhibition - below.)
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