Header image: Lupinus albus (altramuces o chochitos), by Calapito via Wikimedia Commons.
21.08.2023 - 11:48 / theunconventionalgardener.com / guest
Header image: Glenn, in the NASA mailroom, received letters from fans of all ages. John Glenn Archives, The Ohio State University, CC BY-ND
Roshanna P. Sylvester, University of Colorado Boulder
Pioneering spacefarer John Herschel Glenn Jr. would have turned 100 on July 18, 2021.
When Glenn died in 2016, the famed astronaut was lauded as “the last genuine American hero.” NASA, the U.S. Marine Corps, President Barack Obama and many others posted tributes on social media.
Hundreds of nostalgic fans testified to Glenn’s impact on their own senses of youthful possibility. One woman recalled being a fifth-grader in February 1962, listening to coverage of Glenn’s orbital flight at school on a transistor radio: “This was the definition of the future … I wanted to do hard math with slide rules and learn hard languages and solve mysteries. I wanted to be like John Glenn.”
Glenn’s life and legacy continue to be widely celebrated. Yet recent scholarship on the early Space Age has reawakened questions about the ways gender, race, ethnicity and class shaped the human space flight program in the U.S.
Was America’s first starman really everybody’s hero?
As a historian undertaking a major research project called “A Sky Full of Stars: Girls and Space-Age Cultures in Cold War America and the Soviet Union,” I have analyzed hundreds of fan mail letters written by girls in the U.S. and USSR to the spacefarers Yuri Gagarin, John Glenn and Valentina Tereshkova. I set out to discover how young people experienced the early triumphs of human space flight, and how the dramatic events they witnessed influenced their own senses of what they could aspire to and achieve.
My research in the John H. Glenn Archives at The Ohio State University revealed that the
Header image: Lupinus albus (altramuces o chochitos), by Calapito via Wikimedia Commons.
Header image: Tokyo Bekana Chinese cabbage leaves prior to harvest aboard the International Space Station. Photo credit: NASA
One of the nerdy things I enjoy doing in my spare time is researching the first seeds to have made it into space. This is what I have found so far:
Clive Phillips, The University of Queensland and Matti Wilks, The University of Queensland
Header image: Chimpanzee Ham with Trainers. Image credit: NASA
Header image: The future of agriculture? Nick Dragotta
Header image: Blue Origin
Header image: Richard Bord/Getty Images
The role downunder played in helping track the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon.
Header image: Virgin Galactic’s Carrier Aircraft VMS Eve and VSS Unity Take to the Skies (Virgin Galactic)
Join Emma the Space Gardener as she explores gardening on Earth… and beyond! Emma’s guest on this week’s show is Dr Gioia Massa, a Project Scientist at the NASA Kennedy Space Center, working on the Veggie growing system on the International Space Station. Gioia talks about the challenges of growing plants in space, those blooming space zinnias, and when we might see astronauts eating their first space tomato!
Join Emma the Space Gardener in the Gardeners of the Galaxy time machine to learn about the time that NASA encouraged schoolchildren all over the world to grow killer mutant space tomatoes. That can’t be right, can it?