Geopolitical Imaginaries of the Space Shuttle Mission Patches

ABSTRACT

This paper engages with the (geo)political imaginaries of the Space Shuttle mission patches, through a consideration of the iconography they contain. Each Space Shuttle mission had a unique patch designed to represent the mission, which were typically worn on the arm of astronauts’ space suits. Drawing on visual methodologies and popular geopolitics, this paper critically engages with the patches’ iconography, their descriptions in official documentation, and the histories that frame their production. In doing so, this paper advances three interrelated arguments. First, that the mission patches of the Space Shuttle programme presented a uniquely American framing of outer space in their iconography and can thus be read as geopolitical texts. Second, that the iconography within the patches reflected the contemporary geopolitics of their time of production, but continued to subtly demonstrate American dominance in outer space. Finally, that the consumption of the patches in museums and through popular culture assist in the construction of American Manifest Destiny in outer space. This paper presents tangible examples of humanity’s engagement with outer space through the production of material cultures, while also pushing forward the agenda for further critical geographical engagement with outer space.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the special issue organisers Julie Klinger and Danny Bednar for inviting me to contribute. I would like to thank all the those involved in the special issue, Rory Rowan, Julie Saperstein, Katherine Sammler, Casey Lynch and Oliver Dunnett, for their useful comments during the workshop process which helped to develop my arguments. Franklin Ginn and Jan Penrose helped to shape this research initially, and I am grateful to them for their guidance. Conversations with Fraser MacDonald, Dan Sage, Jonathan Prior and Dan Swanton were very useful in talking through the ideas of this paper and associated research. My thanks also go to Jacob Barber, Leslie Mabon and Ross Young for comments on previous drafts related to this research, and Lorna Philip and Mags Currie for their encouragement in continuing this interest. I am grateful to the organisers, chairs and audiences of the ‘Domesticating Geopolitics’ session at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference (September 2015), at the University of Exeter, UK, and the ‘Cold War Geographies’ Symposium (January 2017), at The Eccles Centre for American Studies, The British Library, London, UK where this research was initially presented. Three reviewers, along with editorial guidance from Sarah Mills, provided enormously useful feedback in developing this paper for final production and I would like to thank them all for their generous input. I am enormously grateful, as ever, to Lily Maclaren for her keen eye in editing this document and related research at various stages of its development over the past seven years.

Notes

1. STS stands for Space Transportation System. STS + an alphanumeric would designate a mission. Although these read as 1, 2, 3 and so on, note the missions were not consecutively launched e.g. STS-28 was launched in 1989 but STS-51J was launched in 1985.

2. I use ‘American’ in this paper to refer to the United States of America, unless otherwise stated.

3. The NASA meatball is the term used for the circular style NASA logo. Formerly the agency used a design known as the worm which was ‘NASA’ written out in rounded sloping bold letters.

4. Sometimes also referred to as ‘mission insignia’ or ‘space patch’ I follow NASA’s own use of the term ‘mission patch’ throughout (NASA 2011b).

5. This material culture has also been explored by Paglen who has investigated the use of patches in the secret, ‘black’ (Paglen 2007, 1), world of the United States’ Pentagon programmes.

6. ‘Iconography’ can refer to a huge area of study with a particular approach/focus to looking at visual images/media, particularly developed in art history (for overview see: Rose 2016, p. 198 onwards). My work draws on discourse analysis within the broad understanding of ‘iconography’ and within this paper iconography should be understood to mean the visual images, symbols, or modes of representation collectively associated with a person, cult, or movement. I refer to the iconography of the space shuttle mission patches, i.e. the visual images contained within them.