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How Space Exploration Shows Changing Times

16/07/2019

BBC television's long running astronomy programme, The Sky at Night marked the fiftieth anniversary of the moon landings last week. On 20th July 1969, humans walked on the moon for the very first time, with the success of the United States Apollo Mission. There are some LGBT people who adhere to conspiracy theories that hold that the moon was not reached at that time, but we should always approach conspiracies with caution. After all, many current conspiracy theorists are deeply homophobic. Nevertheless, scientific consensus is that during that heady and hot summer, which had already seen the birth pangs of a modern gay movement with the Stonewall Riots in June, human beings successfully landed on the lunar surface. Although most historians agree that it was driven by the needs of the Cold War, the lunar landings did help change human consciousness, showing people that their petty nationalisms and rivalries were as but dust against the grandeur of space. What has all this got to do with LGBT folks you might ask. Well, science and technology have often helped the cause of gender and sexual freedom, promoting a rationalist mindset over superstition and religious intolerances. Many science writers agree that the pioneering work of the gay mathematician Alan Turing, not only helped Britain win the war, but benefitted all of humanity in preparing for the space age of which we are still only at the beginning. The Sky at Night programme, hosted by Doctor Maggie Aderin-Pocock, explored the BBC's vast archive to bring to the screen rare excerpts not seen in half a century as the world prepared for the moon missions. In her quest, she met with female astronauts, retired TV announcers of the day and people who had worked in science during the groundbreaking nineteen sixties. What she found included intriguing conclusions about how society has changed since the first satellites were launched in 1957. Then, all the presentation spoke of men conquering space, with one pychologist even summarising why women were not suitable for space flight and claiming that all normal men were married with children by their thirties – something that even then, appeared to deeply offend the heterosexual, but single, television interviewer. Over the next couple of weeks, BBC television channels will air a variety of programmes to mark the half century since the moon landings. They will be joined by commercial channels, who are also showing films and documentaries around the subject.

 

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