our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO SURVIVE OUR TIME SO WE MAY LIVE INTO YOURS.’
— President Carter
The time capsule is President Carter’s baby. With it he has conceptually colonised the future.
THE CEILING IN THE SKY
I nominated myself to help Larus while Urla fished for dinner because I like to sit and listen to him talk about space. I am helping group all of the sound bites that Larus has from the dolphin recordings into categories that are similar sounding. He plays them from the computer and we decide which of seven folders to put them into.
When I was little I wanted to be an astronaut up until age thirteen, when at careers day I sat with my parents and told my head of year about how I wanted to be an astronaut; they all laughed as though it were cute and he signed me up for work experience at a paragliding centre on the basis that I must have liked the idea of flying.
Larus was at Kennedy for the lift-off of the Apollo 11 mission. He was there to protest, stood in a line with its back to the launch pad, holding a sign that read ‘Meanwhile in Harlem,’ but as soon as he heard the roar from the propulsion engines he turned around and could not take his eyes away. There is a photo somewhere of the group with him turning and gaping; he did not ever cut it out of the newspaper because he had spoiled the integrity of the group’s statement. He told me this confidingly and made me promise not to tell Urla because she would never let it go.
My being an astronaut was something I did not ever doubt as a child because Mum always told me the whole world is your oyster and until that careers day I had no cause to doubt her. It did not matter to me that all the cartoon astronauts were men. I think I always positioned myself as male without actually being aware of it. Whenever I watched films or read books with a male hero I totally imagined myself as that hero. Call me Ishmael. Call me Ralf, call me John McClane. It is not fair that only the boys get the fun parts.
I said this to Mum and Dad about fun parts when they started protesting at the idea of me doing this trip after college. It took a while to dawn on them that I was being serious and had come of legal age to do it without their permission anyway. Mum said, ‘Your father and I have decided that we can’t help you financially with this trip because we are not behind it.’ I told them that was fine and I could fund it myself. ‘What if you are in an unsafe place and have one of your spells?’ (By this she means my propensity to kind of faint for no apparent reason sometimes.) Of course I have not told them the real tundra-wilderness plan and the full extent of the ‘survivalism’ experiment, because, well, that would just have been cruel when I know they would suffer for it.
When America shot a rocket to the moon, even with the sexual revolution in full swing, it was still too soon to let women have a cosmic one. Larus was telling me about an independent programme called Mercury 13 (which he agreed to talk about to the camera), which took accomplished female pilots and put them through the testing that NASA did on their own astronauts, the Mercury 7 programme, the theory being that for various biological reasons women were actually better suited to space flight. It was a success but NASA just could not have ladies on the moon before men, so they kept the requirement that all NASA astronauts be a member of the air force, and women were still not allowed to join the military. So none of the Mercury 13 pilots were taken on, although they had more air experience than a lot of the men at NASA (some of whom secretly did not have all of the requirements anyway). When Larus told me this I remembered how bitter I felt at the paragliding centre while two boys in my year got sent to Leicester Space Centre on ‘limited allocation’ work experience.
Maybe America sent a man to the moon to undermine Russia’s female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova. She was ten years younger than the youngest NASA astronaut and had spent more time in space than all Americans combined, orbiting the Earth forty-eight times. Man astronaut Neil Armstrong did not go for all of mankind and he certainly did not go for women. America only went to space in the first place to show that communism could not be more progressive than capitalism. Tereshkova worked in a textile factory before she became a cosmonaut. Her mother before her worked in the textile factory and her father was a tractor driver. What if Apollo had crashlanded? Would Russia rule the world now?
But Tereshkova was a human propaganda pawn: the Russian female programme was dissolved the year of the Apollo moon landing. Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s official birthday was moved a day so that there were no records that he was really born on International Women’s Day; Russia could not have had him as a national hero if he were born on International Women’s Day. That would make him a sissy.
MANNED SPACE FLIGHT IS THE TROPHY WIFE OF THE SUPER-PHALLUS
INT. BEDROOM CABIN — Erin and Urla sit on opposite sides of the bed, facing each other — on her head Urla has a cone with wings coloured with felt-tip pens to look like a rocket — on its side it says NASA under a penis with flames coming out from beneath the testicles — they are talking into walkie-talkies —
Erin (Jerrie Cobb) (PUTTING ON AN AMERICAN ACCENT): Oh hey, NASA. It’s Jerrie Cobb from the Mercury 13. So I did everything you said I should
Urla (NASA) (BAD AMERICAN ACCENT. DEEP FOR MALE): Mm-hmm. What’s that?
— Erin bursts into laughter —
Urla (IN HER NORMAL VOICE/LAUGHING): Hey. What? Are you laughing at my accent?
Erin: Sshhhh
— Erin clears her throat and resumes her serious-American tone —
Erin (Jerrie Cobb): I did all the tests like all the guys did. And hey, it’s funny. I actually kinda blew them out the water
Urla (NASA) (ACCENT) (THEATRICALLY SUSPICIOUS): What tests?
Erin (Jerrie Cobb) (LAUGHING): You know. All the secret tests you make the guys do so they can go into space
Urla (NASA) (PAUSE): I don’t know what tests you’re talking about
Erin (Jerrie Cobb): I’ll remind you then. I put freezing water in my ears to see what it feels like with no balance. I spent days alone inside a box. I ran on a treadmill till I thought I might die. I drank radiation
Urla (NASA) (SCOLDING): How’d you find out about the secret tests? They’re secret
Erin (Jerrie Cobb): Er, well now. We have a scientist friend. He invited us to do them. He said you didn’t have your own programme for ladies so he made one to show you that you should have
Urla (NASA) (THEATRICALLY CONDESCENDING): And why’s that?
Erin (Jerrie Cobb): Because all his evidence suggests that it is way more logical to put a woman in space than a man
Urla (NASA) (GRINNING): There is no NASA-led evidence to prove this
Erin (Jerrie Cobb) (WHINING): Oh please, NASA. I promise I won’t let you down. I coped just as well in the physical tests. I’ve got a higher pain threshold. I beat all the guys in the psychological ones. I’m so small you’ll hardly even notice me, I swear. I won’t take as much food or oxygen. I could even go up there in a smaller shuttle. And all of my reproductive organs are inside of me so I’m less likely to have radioactive children
