Cosmonauts: The Birth
of the Space Age
Science Museum, London SW7
5/5

“EARTH is the cradle of humanity but one cannot live in a cradle forever.”

Remarkably, that quote from Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Russian rocket scientist and pioneer of cosmonautics, was written in 1911.

It’s from that period on, when a fascination with the “cosmos” in Russia before and after the 1917 revolution found expression in art, design, literature and cinema, that this major exhibition traces the pioneering Soviet space exploration of the 1950s and 1960s onwards.

Thus, there is far more to this exhibition than the incredible spacecraft on show, many of which have never before left Russia. Paintings, sketches, sculpture, posters, photographs and personal items create a very human story.

Exhibits range from the number plate YG1 fixed to the open-top Rolls Royce Yuri Gagarin used on his visit to Britain in 1961 to the five-metre tall engineering model of the LK-3 lunar lander, designed to take a single cosmonaut to the Moon’s surface.

All have a story to tell and for anyone who has a keen interest in the Soviet and Russian space programmes, it’s easy to imagine the difficulty the curators faced in selecting only 150 representative items.

Divided into several sections, the exhibition begins with Into the Cosmos, featuring a late 19th-century manuscript by “cosmist” Nikolai Fedorov. “Cosmism” blended religious, philosophical and scientific ideas to ponder the origin and future of the universe and Fedorov inspired Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the first person to calculate the speed necessary to reach orbit. Sketches from his 1932 Album of Cosmic Journeys show airlocks and cosmonauts floating in space decades before they became a reality.

Birth of the Space Age has a display model of the famous Sputnik 1 satellite gleaming overhead. It’s claimed that Sergei Korolev, the man behind the early Soviet space programme, demanded that the craft should look good because it would be on display in museums in the future and the “chief designer,” as he was referred to until his untimely death in 1966, is given deserved prominence.

One of several exhibits with a British connection is the lunar globe presented by the Soviet Academy of Sciences to the BBC in recognition of the moon maps created by author and broadcaster Patrick Moore, used by Soviet space scientists when planning their own early missions.

The Space Race section will undoubtedly revives memories of the excitement of the 1960s epic cold-war battle between the USSR and the US and Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova — the first man and the first woman in space — have displays devoted to them.

Apart from the YG1 number plate, there is Gagarin’s military uniform, small gifts presented to him and the maquette for the monument which stands 40 metres above Leninsky Prospekt in Moscow.

Valentina Tereshkova, who remains the second youngest person ever to venture into space, is connected with one of the highlights of the exhibition, with Vostok 6, the actual craft in which she spent three days in outer space, on display. The scorch marks are clearly visible from its re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

As she revealed when interviewed at the exhibition’s opening, she still strokes it every time she passes by at its permanent location at the cosmonauts’ training centre near Moscow.

Though behind protective glass here, visitors can certainly get close enough to appreciate how tiny and simple the 2.4 metre-diameter craft is and perhaps wonder at the courage required to rely on it for your survival.

More up-to-date exhibits include the dining table and shower from the Mir space station, along with spacesuits and many other artefacts showing the incredible ingenuity applied to the challenges of working in outer space.

And for anyone not overwhelmed by the technical kit, there is always the art to enjoy — the main exhibition advertising incorporates elements from a 1959 poster by the artist Iraklii Toidze and this and many other striking posters from the ’50s and ’60s are on display.

The exhibition succeeds in its aims of raising public awareness of the Soviet and Russian role in the history of space exploration and perhaps restoring some balance, given the prominence traditionally given to the US space programme.

In bringing together such a rich and varied display, it is likely to be one of the landmark exhibitions of the decade. And, judging by the tremendous response so far, with extensive media coverage and a huge demand for tickets, its impact will be huge.

The exhibition runs until March 13, box office: sciencemuseum.org.uk/cosmonauts. Doug Millard, the senior curator for the exhibition, will be speaking at the SCRSS, 320 Brixton Road, London SW9 on Friday October 9 at 7pm. To book seats, visit scrss.org.uk