Earth, Cosmos and Culture: Geographies of Outer Space in Britain, 1900–2020

203 Pages·2021·14.424 MB·English

by  Oliver Tristan Dunnett

Earth, Cosmos and Culture
This book traces the development of diverse British cultures of outer space,
utilizing key geographical concepts such as landscape, place, and national
identity.
It examines the early visionary ideas of writers H G Wells and Olaf
Stapledon, the ambitious British space programme of the 1960s, and nar-
rations of British cultural identity that accompanied the space missions of
Helen Sharman, Beagle 2 and Tim Peake. The exploration of British cul-
tures of outer space throughout the book helps to understand the emergence
of the British Interplanetary Society. It also explains its significance in the
pre-war and post-war periods through an analysis of the roles of influential
figures such as Arthur C. Clarke and Patrick Moore. The chapters explore
utopian and dystopian representations of space exploration, examine the
mysterious phenomenon of UFO culture, and consider plans for humanity’s
imagined future across interstellar space. Throughout the book, geography
is advocated as a home for critical studies of outer space, illuminating its
significance in terms of the reciprocal relationships between exploration
and the sublime, science and the imagination, Earth and cosmos.
As an emergent field of research in the social sciences, this book makes an
excellent contribution to the cross-disciplinary study of the outer space in
Britain and abroad developing a distinctive kind of outer spatial geography
with major implications for future teaching and research.
Oliver Tristan Dunnett is a lecturer in human geography at Queen’s University
Belfast. His research focusses on the ways in which the cultures and politics
of outer space, science and technology are connected to questions of place,
landscape and identity in a variety of local, regional and national contexts.
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Earth, Cosmos and Culture
Geographies of Outer Space in Britain, 1900–2020
Oliver Tristan Dunnett
Earth, Cosmos and Culture
Geographies of Outer Space in Britain,
1900–2020
Oliver Tristan Dunnett
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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© 2021 Oliver Tristan Dunnett
The right of Oliver Tristan Dunnett to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78
of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-0-8153-5628-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-76240-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-8153-5630-1 (ebk)
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Contents
List of Figures vi
Acknowledgements viii
1 Introduction: Geographies of outer space in Britain 1
2 Science-fictional foundations: A comparative literary
geography of H G Wells and Olaf Stapledon 12
3 Synthesising outer space: The British
Interplanetary Society 36
4 Outer space and popular culture in post-war Britain 61
5 The British space programme: Geopolitics and empire 88
6 Interstellar exploration: Project Daedalus and
the extra-solar universe 111
7 Space exploration, science and nationalism 135
8 Conclusion: Diverse cultures, possible futures 161
Bibliography 178
Index 188
Figures
2.1 Illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa, from the 1906
Belgium (French language) edition of The War of the Worlds.
The original caption stated: ‘Martian Fighting Machine in
the Thames Valley’
Source Credit: Henrique Alvim Corrêa/Public domain 28
3.1 First London meeting of the BIS in October 1936
Source Credit: British Interplanetary Society 43
3.2 Front cover of the BIS Journal displaying diagrams of
the BIS space-ship
Source Credit: British Interplanetary Society 53
4.1 Nigel Kneale on the set of Quatermass II, 1955
Source Credit: BBC Photo Library 63
4.2 Patrick Moore pointing out the position of Capella
on The Sky at Night, 1960
Source Credit: BBC Photo Library 76
5.1 Front cover of Society for Space Research (GfW) pamphlet
for the 1951 International Astronautical Congress
Source Credit: British Interplanetary Society 95
5.2 Last page of Society for Space Research (GfW) pamphlet
for the 1951 International Astronautical Congress. The captions
translate as ‘The London Congress’/‘will they all come under
one hat?’
Source Credit: British Interplanetary Society 96
5.3 Map of Australia showing the Woomera Rocket Range
Source Credit: Commonwealth of Australia Department
of Defence 100
6.1 Illustration by Bill Dillon showing the construction
of the Daedalus vehicle
Source Credit: Bill Dillon/British Interplanetary Society 122
6.2 Daedalus model (second engine stage) by Terry Regan,
commissioned by the BIS in 2011
Source Credit: British Interplanetary Society 130
Figures vii
7.1 Crew photo for Soyuz TM-12, featuring cosmonauts
Artsebarsky, Sharman and Kirikalyov
Source Credit: spacefacts.de/Joachim Becker 142
7.2 Helen Sharman’s launch couch and spacesuit, exhibited
at the National Space Centre, Leicester
Source Credit: National Space Centre 144
7.3 Andrew Birch ‘Young British Artists’ cartoon from 2002
featuring the Beagle 2 lander
Source Credit: Private Eye and Andrew Birch 149
7.4 Tim Peake at the launch of the UK Space Agency
in April 2010
Source Credit: UK Space Agency 151
8.1 LaunchUK promotional image
Source Credit: UK Space Agency 166
8.2 Katie Paterson, All the Dead Stars, 2009
Photo © Mead Gallery installation view, Mead Gallery,
Warwick Arts Centre, 2013
Source Credit: Katie Paterson Studio 171
Acknowledgements
This book has been in the making for over ten years, and a multitude of
people and organisations have provided academic encouragement, facili-
tated the research and writing process and offered moral support. At the
University of Nottingham, the supervision of David Matless and Mike
Heffernan was inspirational in terms of providing a license to consider outer
space as a subject of enquiry in cultural and historical geography, in a schol-
arly environment that provided a rich introduction to cultures of geograph-
ical enquiry. I am also grateful to the School of Geography at Nottingham
for awarding me a studentship for the duration of my doctoral studies,
without which this project would not have come to fruition. At Queen’s
University Belfast, colleagues have been incredibly supportive of this work,
in facilitating sabbatical leave, in reading various draft chapters, and in
providing company during countless coffee-breaks. Particular thanks to
Diarmid Finnegan, Nuala Johnson, David Livingstone, Merav Amir and
Tristan Sturm for this. I am also indebted to the wider academic and stu-
dent community in geography, which has provided invaluable feedback on
aspects of this research, whether through referees’ reports for academic
journals, questions and discussion at seminars and conferences, or indeed
through a generally supportive and collegiate atmosphere. The three anon-
ymous reviewers of the draft manuscript of this book offered detailed, con-
structive, and exceedingly helpful comments, for which I am very grateful.
Any omissions, mistakes, misunderstandings or other errors are, however,
entirely my own. Thanks also to all those who, working in libraries, archives
and other research organisations, have kindly allowed access to materials
and workspace to investigate key source materials, and for providing per-
mission to reproduce certain images and text. I am grateful as well to all
those at Routledge who have helped in the production of this book and for
offering me the chance to write it. On a personal level, my heartfelt thanks
to friends and family for their continued support and encouragement, espe-
cially to Felicity and Catriona.
1 Introduction
Geographies of outer space
in Britain
In my time, I’ve been very fortunate to see many of my dreams come true.
Growing up in the 1920s and 1930s, I never expected to see so much happen
in the span of a few decades. We ‘space cadets’ of the British Interplanetary
Society spent all our spare time discussing space travel – but we didn’t imagine
that it lay in our own near future.
-Arthur C Clarke, in his 90th birthday reflections
Cosmos is a thing of formal order and beauty.
-Denis Cosgrove, describing the work of Alexander von Humboldt
This is a book about outer space, its relation to British culture and poli-
tics since the start of the twentieth century, and to geographical enquiry. It
originated from a long-standing fascination with spaces of the imagination,
science and technology, provoked by many of the iconic images of space
exploration that proliferated Western culture throughout the twentieth cen-
tury. This is a fascination that has by no means been restricted to any one
time or place, as dreams of outer space are likely to be as old as humanity
itself. Yet such imaginations, no matter how expansive, are inflected by a
sense of place and associated cultures and politics, and this book aims to
understand how outer space has been understood in the specific context of
the United Kingdom, from the start of the twentieth century to the present
day, using contemporary geographical approaches.
As the writer Arthur C Clarke pointed out in his 90th birthday reflections,
uploaded to the internet in the early years of online video-sharing, the twen-
tieth century was a period that witnessed rapid technological change, and in
no area was this more apparent than in space exploration.1 Clarke had a sig-
nificant influence on British understandings of outer space, perhaps more
than any other individual, and his life-long role as someone who engaged
with both the realm of the imagination and the world of science and tech-
nology reflects the outlook of this book, which is to say that, in order to fully
understand the meanings of space exploration, it is essential to seek out
the cultural and political roots of its scientific and technological discourses.
As such, Clarke’s involvement with the British Interplanetary Society (BIS),