| 4.4 CIVILIANS IN SPACE
fig. 4.1 The interior architecture of space theme parks often imitates sets of science fiction films. Ever since Yuri Gagarin became the first human being to travel into space in 1962, just slightly over 700 have experienced the thrill of space travel and fewer than 20 people have set foot on the moon. As for the rest of humanity, we have observed this great adventure from a distance, patiently waiting for the day in which space travel becomes as common as flying in an airplane is today. Space agencies are well aware of the enormous economic investment required by the taxpayers to keep these programs in place. That is why their public relations departments make such an effort to make the world aware of their activities. When, in the mid-eighties, NASA chose an elementary school teacher to participate in a space mission its objective was to send out the message that anyone could become an astronaut. On January 28, 1986 the whole nation was impatiently looking forward to the beginning of mission STS 51-L. The space shuttle Challenger took off from Cape Canaveral with a seven-member crew including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, the first non-professional astronaut to be sent into space. Given that a teacher was involved thousands of schools all over the world decided to broadcast the launching of the Challenger live. However the children who were watching on that fateful day saw something very different from what was expected: 73 seconds after blastoff the Challenger turned into a colossal ball of fire, instantly killing its occupants. Witnessing the accident as it took place traumatized many children who needed psychological counseling to overcome the dramatic episode. In the weeks prior to the accident the mass media had made sure the public was informed of every detail of Christa’s life. This gave the mission a very specific identity, a human face, a face we all imagined engulfed in flames when the Challenger exploded. Mission STS 51-L offered us proof of the dangers inherent in leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and also left us with the impression that, for now, space was off-limits for the average citizen.
Cité de l’Espace is an entertainment complex that invites the public to imagine life beyond Earth. This theme-based center, inaugurated in 1997 in Toulouse, is the joint initiative of the city and the National Center of Space Studies, the CNES. Its fundamental purpose is to inform the public about the European Space Agency, whose activities are usually overshadowed by those of the better-known American and Russian space agencies. A single central building houses seven different exhibitions on the world of space exploration. The center’s installations belong to the new generation of interactive museums that, rather than display objects in glass cases, invite the visitor to interact with the exhibits. This means that the public participates intuitively by listening, touching, and on occasion, using the whole body to activate the displays. The visitor becomes psychologically involved in the adventure of space travel. For example, the public can launch a virtual satellite into space, a simulation exercise that accurately reproduces the actual launch sequences and orbit search. Perhaps the exhibit that stands out the most is Living in Space. Here the visitor can watch videos in which weightless astronauts perform such mundane tasks as eating, shaving, or showering. In addition, a section of the International Space Station has been reproduced complete with two floating astronaut dummies. Another display in the same area consists of a game of skill: the public, mainly children, has to try to dock the space shuttle onto the International Space Station. By watching a monitor and using controls that are identical to those in the real shuttle the player experiences the laws of physics governing all tasks performed in zero gravity
fig. 4.3 Astronaut suit displayed at Cité de l’Espace in Toulouse. This theme-based center allows the public to become familiar with the activities carried out by the European Space Agency The pavilion is surrounded by a park, whose design is worth analyzing. A curious amalgam of styles contribute to the landscaping, which consists of a series of circles connected by paths; seen from above they might vaguely remind us of planets and orbits. Basic elements of the classic French garden such as the parterre, the promenade and a maze formed by bushes, coexist peacefully with space-related items that seem to have fallen from the sky. Instead of trees, we find the Ariadne 5 rocket. The rose garden has been replaced by space capsules. Parks exist in our imagination as earthly paradises within an industrial society. Leo Marx explains in his book The Machine in the Garden the process by which the impact produced by novelty is often cushioned by botanical associations. Nature represents the most sacred values of Western society. In this sense, the Cité de l’Espace park adorns its space-related technological innovations with a garden. This process of naturalization could be considered paradoxical given that space technology came about as an attempt to escape from nature on Earth.
fig. 4.3 The Russian space station Mir on display at Cité de l’Espace lets the visitor imagine what a prolonged stay in space must be like. The star of this park is, beyond doubt, the Mir Space Station. It is an exact replica of the original and in its day was used as a test model. The original station weighed 143 tons and consisted of the astrophysical module Kvant, the biological research module Kvant-2, and the technology module Kristall. It could accommodate three astronauts and throughout its fifteen years of weightless existence housed a total of 104 people from 12 different nations. The station had originally been designed to stay in orbit five years but lived to triple its estimated useful existence. There were, however, a series of accidents that miraculously did not do away with any of its occupants. The high maintenance costs involved, which a has-been superpower could barely meet, contributed to the decision to take it out of orbit and allow it to fall into the Pacific in March of 2001. At Cité de l’Espace park however, its double has taken on new life as an exhibition. Supported by a series of columns, the public can examine the station close up from various angles. A catwalk serves as a circuit surrounding the space station, offering the visitor an opportunity to study its unique structure in detail. Even though the station now hovers only five meters above the asphalt, it continues to capture our imagination. We can look, touch, and walk around what was once a space habitat. We look for the basic components of a home: the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom. We try to imagine this vehicle as a home and through this act of contemplation we can begin to understand what life in orbit is like.
fig. 4.5 An upside-down dummy inside the Mir recreates a world where there is no up and no down. Cape Canaveral is located in the state of Florida, where NASA built the Kennedy Space Center, another important space-related site. Kennedy Space Center is home to the space shuttles and the launch and landing site for today’s space missions. Its public access area is run by a private company that has turned the area into a true theme park. A series of pavilions provide a choice of audiovisual shows; one pavilion houses an IMAX film, Space Station, narrated by Tom Cruise. By donning special 3D glasses the public comes to feel with their own bodies the weightlessness astronauts aboard the ISS experience. Cinematic space and cosmic space blend together so perfectly here that the public cannot separate them. After the thrill of this immersion the rest of the pavilions seem to lack dramatic tension. The public scarcely ventures into the rocket garden, and the meetings with astronauts scheduled throughout the day are largely ignored. For an additional fee the visitor can eat with an astronaut, who has been turned into a mere actor in the staging of the space adventure. The bus visit to the extensive NASA grounds is an experience that only serves to distance the visitor. From the bus window visitors can see the huge Assembly Building where the space shuttles are fitted to the launch rockets. The launch pad observation platform seems extremely far away in comparison with the close-ups shown on television during shuttle lift-offs.
fig. 4.6 Space theme parks attract ten million visitors a year.
fig. 4.7 At the Kennedy Space Center in Florida the public has the sensation that they are directly involved in the great space adventure. At another pavilion open to the public, the Apollo/Saturn V Center, the audiovisual presentations seems to capture the public’s imagination more than the space artifacts on exhibit there. A hangar reveals the Saturn V rocket, the largest flying object in the world, whose colossal shape dwarfs the public and is a testimony to the grandiloquent gigantism of another era. In the same exhibition hall there is a stand where visitors can have their faces digitally placed into an archival photo of an astronaut on the moon. Another option allows visitors to insert themselves into a photo taken on board the International Space Station. The subject lies down and adopts a weightless posture; an employee then takes the picture and through digital retouching places the body into an already prepared image. Fourteen dollars later the customer takes home a photo of themselves floating weightless on board the ISS. This type of digital trickery has its significance: it’s proof of the public’s desire to go into space and become part of an adventure that they otherwise feel excluded from. Images, once again, are what best bring the public closer to the fantasy of space flight. The space-related theme parks are, above all, visual immersion centers saturated with photos, videos, films and computer graphics that bombard the viewer’s retina. At the Kennedy Space Center space travel is tightly connected to the universe of the technological image.
fig. 4.8 At space theme parks the public comes in contact with space travel, above all through audiovisual shows.
fig. 4.9 Through the magic of digital retouching visitors to the Kennedy Space Center are inserted into NASA photos. Another space-related theme center is the U.S. Space and Rocket Center located in Huntsville, Alabama. This interactive science museum was opened in 1965 and has grown continuously since then, so much so that today it is a central institution for the popular dissemination of information on space travel. Several attractions at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center could just as well be found at an amusement park. In addition to the omnipresent IMAX theatre with its 20-metre projection dome, we can find Space Shot, built by S & S Power Inc. The ride’s vertical tower hurtles the public 40 meters into the air in two and a half seconds, subjecting them to a 4 g acceleration and two to three seconds of weightlessness. The center describes this ride as being similar to what an astronaut experiences at the moment of lift-off. Another attraction at the center is the Olympus Mons Mining Colony that consists of a climbing wall seven and a half meters high built as if it were the crater of a volcano on Mars. Here, the visitors, mainly children, have to use their strength and their imagination to climb the wall while imagining that they are living and working on Mars. There is also a film titled Mars Mission shown in a simulator. The motion of the simulator follows the action in the movie depicting a problem-plagued but in the end successful trip to Mars. What the Center achieves with this ride is the public’s acceptance of what is turning into one the greatest challenges of the present decade: a manned mission to Mars. This mission will make real the predictions of one of the most prevalent themes in science fiction, second only to traveling to the Moon.
fig. 4.10 The U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama, is a combination of theme park and interactive museum. Another attraction at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center is the G-Force Accelerator, a mechanical centrifuge ride that spins ever faster until it reaches 3 g, crushing the passengers into their seats. As the ride gathers speed the passengers are lifted up from their seats. This is another example of a gravitational ride except that in this case, as opposed to what happens at amusement parks, it is presented as a training instrument for astronauts. All of the rides involve the public physically, reorganizing sensory and motor abilities so one becomes better prepared for a future trip into space. We are witnessing a collective training of the public who is being prepared for a future escape from the Earth
fig. 4.11 At the U.S. Space Camp both children and adults learn to live in space. This training is carried out in a much more obvious way at the main educational site of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center: the U.S. Space Camp, a summer camp where kids are taught how to become astronauts. Over the five-day sessions children and teenagers learn to live and work in the International Space Station. They receive instruction on going to the bathroom in zero gravity and how to eat, sleep, and wash in space. They perform training flights in a space shuttle simulator, watch IMAX movies and experience weightlessness in the gravitational trainer that reproduces lunar gravity, one sixth that of the Earth. In addition they build rockets that they then launch into the air, and perform various scientific experiments related to space exploration. This type of training is not limited to young audiences however. Recently U.S. Space Camp has begun a new program for companies. This initiative allows executives to invite their employees to the Alabama space center as an incentive for team building. U.S. Space Camp promises to solve leadership problems, strengthen team spirit, promote effective communication, and develop creative solutions to conflicts. Currently it has two programs for these purposes, the Corporate Space Academy and the Corporate Aviation Challenge. The former sets up a team, made of members from a company department, whose job is to coordinate a simulated space mission. The second program offers executives the chance to use flight simulators to participate in combat. Furthermore U.S. Space Camp’s educational team can design programs made-to-measure in order to address more specific problems. The success of such programs is indicative of to what point the concept of the astronaut hero is an important model for American businessmen.
fig. 4.12 The G-Force Accelerator is a mechanical centrifuge ride that reproduces the acceleration astronauts are subject to at lift-off. At the U.S. Space Camp participants’ bodies are trained to withstand the rigors of space travel.
fig. 4.13 Young people performing tasks in a life-size model of the International Space Station. At the U.S. Space Camp entertainment becomes part of the educational process. At the other end of the country, in the Arizona desert, we find Biosphere II. This is a giant steel and glass greenhouse two football fields in size which houses 3,800 different plant species along with some common farm animals like chickens, goats, and pigs. Five different eco-systems are reproduced here: desert, savanna, jungle, swamp, and a seven-meter deep ocean complete with coral reef. At a total cost of 100 million dollars, construction on this gigantic greenhouse was begun in the mid-eighties and completed in September 1991. The creators of this enormous complex, engineer, ecologist, and poet John Allan, and the multimillionaire Edward Bass, originally planned to enclose eight scientists (four men and four women) inside this modern Noah’s ark. The idea was for these scientists to live for two years without receiving any food or oxygen or help from the outside world. During those two years they would study whether plants could absorb the urine, feces, and carbon dioxide that humans produce, turning them into oxygen, water and food. The publicists said that the objective of the project was to increase our knowledge of our biosphere (which they called biosphere 1) so that we could better replicate our ecosystems in future space colonies. This would help make astronauts less dependent on supply lines from Earth and allow them to travel through space freely. When the eight scientists locked themselves away in Biosphere II, the scientific community laughed at this megalomaniac project with its total lack of scientific rigor. A few months into the project some newspaper reporters caught employees passing food to the undernourished scientists who were unable to live on what their artificial ecosystem could provide for them. This was immediately picked up by the international press, thus creating a scandal that destroyed the already limited credibility the project enjoyed. As a result the project was reinvented as a study center for the greenhouse effect on the Earth and has totally distanced itself from the space colony concept of its origins. Despite this failure Biosphere II continues to be a profitable business thanks mainly to the number of tourists who visit it everyday and who pay a considerable sum to visit its installations. In addition, Biosphere II has a souvenir shop that sells T-shirts, caps, glasses, and all sorts of merchandise related to the center. The public sees the center as a theme park, an entertaining experience that is still connected to the original concept of a space colony. Biosphere II perceives the planet as something that can be copied by technological means in the same way we make a photocopy of an original document. This project is typical of a culture hooked on visual images and more used to coming into contact with the technological duplicate than the original. The plants, animals, and even the artificially produced oxygen of Biosphere II are turned into images, simulated copies of the biosphere (Biosphere I) we live in. Could these duplications of reality be preparing us for a life far removed from the planet, as was the original intention of Biosphere II? Life away from the planet is only possible by reproducing the conditions found on Earth, an act involving the simulation of the oxygen we breathe and the food we ingest here on Earth. There seems to be an evolutionary determinism in our compulsive attraction to simulated experiences. Consequently such simulated experiences appear to point us to an existence far from our planet. Only a culture like ours preoccupied with duplicating reality could conceive of space travel. This is why we should think of the presence of humans in space not only in terms of a technological feat but also as the direct result of our image culture and the simulations in which we live.
In their book Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown describe the interiors of Las Vegas casinos as space ships, in which the players live a life completely isolated from the outside. The same bright lights and jingling of the slot machines are seen and heard day and night. The maze-like architecture of these places creates a sense of spatial disorientation that hypnotically traps the individual. This all-encompassing hallucination entices us to drop our monthly paychecks on the game tables. The connection between casinos and spaceship is especially apparent in the interior of the Las Vegas Hilton that has been decorated as if it were a spaceship. The television series and movie saga, Star Trek, (a driving force behind the social acceptance of space travel since the sixties) served as inspiration for the hotel’s decoration. We can easily spot the large-scale model of the starship Enterprise floating over the restaurant, whose futuristic decoration reminds us of sets from the series. If the public tires of gaming, they can try The Star Trek Experience, a themed area complete with a ride film that immerses the viewer in the famous television series. The Las Vegas Hilton thus offers us a two-fold virtual experience: that of a spaceship and that of a television program. We come to realize to what point the origin of space travel has its foundations in the narrative structures of storytelling, both literary and filmic. These fantasies have helped us imagine a galactic life and therefore have become the seed of space travel. Genres such as the adventure story, science fiction, and the western have served as the motors that have driven us to travel to the Moon and to create floating habitats beyond the stratosphere. Anyone who wants to become a space cowboy will have to get in touch with Space Adventures. This company has developed what could be considered the ultimate tourist experience: an authentic trip into space. Their first client was Dennis Tito, a 60 year-old California financier who paid the Russian Space and Aeronautical Agency a total of 22 million euros to become the first space tourist in history. To that sum we have to add the 200,000 or so euros it cost to train and prepare this tourist for such a flight, which included exhaustive medical examinations, zero gravity flights, supersonic flights in MIG fighters and training in both neutral buoyancy tanks and a Soyuz simulator. Tito was launched into space on board a Soyuz spaceship on April 28, 2001 along with his travel companions, cosmonauts Talgat Musabáyev and Yuri Baturin. He behaved like just another member of the crew taking charge of the radio communications. Nine minutes after launch the ship separated from the rocket carrying it and went into orbit. Two days later the Soyuz docked at the ISS where Tito did what all good tourists do: take pictures and record on video. He chatted with the crew of the space station, contemplated the Earth, wrote in his diary and listened to seven opera recordings and one by the Beatles. The second space tourist was South African Mark Shuttleworth, who took a similar journey into space in 2002. A third candidate, Lance Bass, member of a pop group ‘N Sync, was unable to complete the final preparatory phase since he failed to meet the terms of the financial contract he signed with the space travel agency.
fig. 4.15 Space Adventures offers training sessions in the centrifuge at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center on the outskirts of Moscow. Taking advantage of the serious budget problems faced by the Russian Space and Aeronautical Agency, who practically rent out their installations to the highest bidder, Space Adventures offers not only trips into space but also several other more economical programs. Among these programs the following stand out: a training session in the centrifuge at the Yuri Gagarin Center, tests performed in the Soyuz simulator and sub orbital flights on the MIG-25. These supersonic flights reach speeds up to 2.5 times the speed of sound and fly so high that they provide a glimpse of the planet’s curvature. Nevertheless the most popular program offered by Space Adventures is their zero gravity parabolic flights. Tourists board an Ilyushin 76 MDK, a plane very similar to NASA’s KC-135, which is normally used by the cosmonauts to get used to weightlessness. The plane climbs to a height of 10,500 meters at a 45-degree angle as it accelerates in speed, subjecting the passenger to a force of 2 g. When it reaches the upper part of the parabola the planes suddenly decelerates and in passing through the summit of the parabolic arc creates a feeling of weightlessness lasting between 28 and 30 seconds inside the aircraft. This feeling lasts until the plane enters a 30-degree angle with its nose facing the Earth’s surface, at which point the passengers return to their normal gravitational state. The plane descends to 7,500 meters, the height at which it begins a new parabola. This process is repeated between seven and eight times each flight. Tourist pay an average of 6,000 euros for this zero gravity experience which gives us an idea of the price the more privileged are willing to pay to experience a few seconds of weightlessness.
When the Mir sank into the Pacific Ocean in March of 2001 the American television network NBC cancelled a program which they had in final stages of preparation. The show, Destination Mir, was planned as a reality show in which contestants would train as cosmonauts at Star City in Russia with one of them being eliminated each week. The winner would be launched into space on board the Soyuz in order to spend a few days aboard the Mir. For the moment there are no plans to do anything similar with the International Space Station but this type of phenomena is a cultural thermometer indicating to what point zero gravity fever has spread among the population. It’s also symptomatic of how Darwin’s law of survival of the fittest is written into any space project, to which only a minority has access. Projects like Destination Mir, products of our mass culture, are true ideological X-rays that allow us to discover the political and military motivation hidden behind the closed doors of our space agencies. In 1997 NASA published a report concluding that civilian space trips could turn into a multi-million dollar business in the not too distant future. While NASA is officially opposed to space tourism until the completion of the International Space Station in 2006, there are already several private companies that are seriously considering the possibility of investing in spaceships and hotels in space. Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Robert Bigelow who owns the hotel chain Budget Suites of America, has invested 500 million dollars in the creation of an 800-meter long space cruise ship. On board its 100 passengers would enjoy the same comforts offered by today’s sea-going cruise ships. The company has openly manifested its intention of challenging the monopoly government space agencies hold on space travel. A report prepared by Patton Boggs for the company and titled Beyond the Satellites: Stimulating a New Wave of Commercial Space Development mentions two market studies carried out on the future of space tourism. The first study was done by the Japanese National Space Laboratory and reports that 70% of those under 60 and 80% of those under 40 would be interested in visiting space at least once in their lives. The second study, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace itself, found that 20% of the adults polled would spend more than four years of their salary to take a six-day trip into space. The Bigelow Aerospace report concludes: “If capitalism works well on the ground there’s no reason to think it will fail in space”1. Another collective of weightlessness capitalists is the Space Island Group, a company that intends to build a ring-shaped space hotel by the end of the current decade. As the group’s president, Gene Meyers, explains, this could be done by recycling the 42-meter fuel tanks used to launch the shuttle into space and which are discarded at present. The final result would be something like the station shown in 2001: A Space Odyssey and which was referred to as the Orbiter Hilton. The hotel in question would rotate once every minute to create a gravity force only one third that of Earth’s but which would be sufficient to counter the negative effects of a prolonged stay in zero gravity. This space station would have all the comforts of a hotel on Earth: suites, lounges, conference rooms, and a luxuriant garden. Nor has the attraction of having weightless sex passed the company, making the hotel an especially attractive destination for honeymooners. Due to the speed at which the hotel will rotate it won’t be possible to gaze at the scenery from the hotel’s windows. To solve this problem Space Island Group is developing screens that will offer a variety of outer-space images. There are rumors that the Hilton Hotels, British Airways, and Virgin are going to invest in the project, estimated to cost between 6,000 and 12,000 million dollars. The future employees of this particular hotel will surely be graduates of the Space Tourism Development Course currently offered by the prestigious Rochester Institute of Technology in New York State. In this two-credit ten-week course, the first of its kind in the world, the students are prepared for the special needs of space hotel and catering business. Classes include discussion on what type of menu is best suited for space tourists or how to serve wine in a micro gravity environment.
Will we have to be millionaires to enjoy a vacation in space? Space Island Group intends to begin taking reservations in 2007, offering a stay at the space hotel for $10,000 a week. For this to become possible the current costs of launching a ship into orbit will have to come down considerably. At present NASA spends between 300 and 500 million dollars on each launching related to the space station. This means that each kilo put into orbit around the Earth cost approximately $22,000. Both the Russian Soyuz and the NASA shuttle use vast quantities of fuel during launchings and many feel that it’s time to retire them. For years now NASA has been looking for an acceptable substitute for the space shuttle mainly by improving the design of the X fleet. If it weren’t for the X planes perhaps we would never have ventured into space. It was an X-1 that allowed Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier in 1947. More than a hundred different models have followed, several of which perform sub orbital flights to test new flight technologies. At present scientists are studying a new type of motor for the future X-33, a lightweight space-plane which would greatly reduce launch costs; however there are a number of technical difficulties to be overcome before the project can move ahead. If in the end the X-33 is flown successfully, the target date being 2010, it would become the vehicle which would make civilian flight into space possible. Space elevators represent another door to space that space agencies are seriously considering. A cable 144,000 kilometers in length would be stretched tight connected at one end to a 50-kilometer high tower on the ground and at the other to a counterweight in orbit. A robot satellite would build the cable molecule by molecule using nanotechnology. Ships would then slide along the cable using an electromagnetic system similar to that used by the lineal induction motor found on the latest generation of roller coasters. It is expected that such a space elevator could be put into service before 2100.
Now that the idea of colonizing space is becoming more than just science fiction, a number of different organizations, sects, scientific groups, even groups of artists, are appearing who are claiming their share of the space adventure. Island One Society is a group whose political leanings places them close to the American libertarian party and who promote the creation of independent colonies far from the Earth. Lunar X is composed of a group of investors specializing in shares of aeronautical companies investing in space tourism, a sector that promises to generate thousands of millions of euros in profits in the coming decades. The Lunar Reclamation Society is an organization dedicated to producing educational programs to promote the creation of a permanent base on the Moon. According to this group a permanent presence on the Moon would help us solve the energy-related and ecological problems we face on Earth today. Organizations like the above-mentioned have proliferated especially in the United States. Their manifestos attest to the survival of the legend of the conquest of the American West. The expansion of the original thirteen American colonies toward the Pacific was a difficult and tortuous adventure but one which in the end brought enormous economic prosperity to the American population. The idea of conquering space is considered by many of these organizations as a continuation of America’s economic and territorial expansion. There are few areas left on Earth to conquer; cosmic space has become the new West to be tamed.
A number of artists have tried to leave their mark on space. In 1969 Apollo 12 carried The Moon Museum into space. This was a ceramic tile with a series of drawings by various American artists: Robert Raushenberg drew a straight line, Andy Warhol a penis, Claus Oldenberg a sketch of Mickey Mouse, and John Chamberlain a geometric figure. In 1971 Belgian artist Paul Van Hoeydonk created The Fallen Astronaut, a small sculpture that was left on the Moon’s surface by the crew of the Apollo 15. However the first work of art specifically created for weightlessness was Cosmic Dancer (1993) produced by the American artist based in Switzerland, Arthur Woods. On board the Mir space station this sculpture was designed to investigate the properties of sculpture in weightlessness and the benefits of integrating art into the life of a cosmonaut in space. However, performance art seems to be the medium that so far best adapts to the weightless environment. In 1999 the Slovenian theater director Dragan Zivadinov performed his Noordung Zero Gravity Biomechanical during a Russian parabolic flight organized by Marko Peljhan’s Projekt Aktol. Special mention must be made of the British organization Arts Catalyst, an agency that has been promoting interdisciplinary projects between the arts and science since its foundation in 1999. An important part of its activity is dedicated to establishing the presence of contemporary art in space. The group began this type of initiative through collaborations with French choreographer Kitsou Dubois who, since 1993 in cooperation with the CNES, the French space agency, has carried out studies on the control of movement in altered gravities. In 2000 Arts Catalyst organized a parabolic flight for the French choreographer along with three other dancers at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center in Russia. Following that experience they put into motion the M.I.R. 2001 and M.I.R. 2003 campaigns, an acronym that doesn’t refer to the Russian space station but stands for Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research. These campaigns, carried out in cooperation with the European Space Agency and other European artistic organizations, have provided a number of artists and scientists the opportunity to perform creative experiments in parabolic flights at Star City, Moscow. In addition Arts Catalyst organizes conferences and discussion forums that explore space art and the presence of artists in space. Due to its various activities this non-profit organization has become the leading promoter of zero gravity art.
The presence of civilians in space would appear to be an ever-closer reality. Nevertheless the democratization of space travel is not being reached fast enough for a culture that has been dreaming of intergalactic travel for centuries. All of the examples mentioned in this chapter are symptomatic of the unstoppable desire of Western civilization to leave the Earth. However, once again, our technologies have let us down. On February 1, 2003 the space shuttle Columbia turned into a ball of fire over the skies of Texas upon re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere. The scenes we saw on television showed us the multiple trails left behind by a shuttle broken into pieces. The remains of the incinerated astronauts fell to the Earth like true contemporary Icaruses. That fateful day has brought back doubts about our real possibilities of ever reaching the weightless state we so much long for. Notes
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