Stephen Bayley

Stars in their eyes | 24 September 2015

And how Russian mysticism powered the Soviet Union’s dreams of space exploration

issue 26 September 2015

‘The dominant narrative of space,’ I was told, in that strange language curators employ, ‘is America.’ Quite so. Kennedy stared at the moon and saw a promotional opportunity. Nasa’s logo was designed by the flamboyant Raymond Loewy. A PR man wrote Neil Armstrong’s unforgettable lines. Every event at Cape Canaveral (later the Kennedy Space Center) was televised, while, in the USSR, Star City was built in furtive secrecy just outside Moscow.

Tom Wolfe glorified the US space programme in The Right Stuff, his boisterous 1979 masterpiece of reportage where the cowboy mentality of the fly-boys co-mingled with the technical marvels of California aerospace, myth-making the while. But the Soviet Union’s space effort was at least as ambitious and just as romantic. It was the Left Stuff.

Cosmonauts is an engrossing new exhibition at the Science Museum. The presentation has a certain clunkiness not inappropriate to the subject, but alert visitors will enjoy a curious mix of pleasures.

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