Fredagen 21 oktober kl 13.15 - 15.00 kommer Teasel Muir-Harmony från MIT att tala över ämnet: "Friendship 7’s Fourth Orbit: The International Exhibition of America’s First Human Spaceflight Program" i rum T340 på Olof Wijksgatan 6 (Gamla hovrätten).
Teasel Muir-Harmony är doktorand på MIT närmare bestämt på HASTS (Doctoral Program in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society) ooch är för tillfället gästdoktorand på Avdelningen för teknik- och vetenskapshistoria vid KTH.
Abstract: The Friendship 7 space capsule was designed to orbit the earth. On February 20, 1962, with John Glenn, Jr. on board, it circled the globe three times before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean. In May, Friendship 7 began its second journey around the earth but this time the capsule had a different mission: to represent the United States’ space program in nearly thirty cities around the world. This paper examines the capsule’s second mission. Historians have analyzed the significance of the Friendship 7 mission in relation to the early space program, the extensive resources and manpower that went into the flight, the scientific and engineering information gained from the flight, and the flight’s political implications in the context of the Cold War and the space race. This paper, in contrast, will focus on the implications of what the capsule came to symbolize after the flight, as well as how NASA and the United States Information Agency (USIA) harnessed this symbolism to promote America and its human spaceflight program abroad during the Cold War.
Om du vill komma till seminariet och den efterföljande middagen, eller om du vill träffa och prata med Teasel under tiden hon är här kontakta Mats Fridlund på mats.fridlund@gu.se