I think I'm going to start a third thread of the feminist map of the Moon, because you know what I haven't done yet? The literary resonances, all the ways women writers have imbued lunar places and landscapes with meaning, not to mention the whole of the Moon. #FeministMoon 🧪 📚
What about all the Soviet lunar sites? Sadly I don't read Russian, and it is a bit harder to find out the kind of information available by trawling though the NASA archives. But I am sure if we looked behind the accepted stories we would find Russian women on the Moon too. #FeministMoon
So at this point I can't say if the Apollo thermal blankets had any connections with women, but I'm sure there's someone out there who knows more about this than me! 🧪 #FeministMoon
Let's have a look at the metallised kapton films used for thermal insulation on the Apollo spacecraft, and practically everything since. In the 1960s, NASA was experimenting with plastics stuck to metal sheets for spacecraft like the Echo balloons. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project...#FeministMoon
I've written a significance assessment of the Apollo 11 bootprints, but I hadn't actually joined these dots between the seamstresses and the overshoes until now. I'll have to update it! You can read it here, excerpted from the full report. 🏺🧪 #FeministMoon
This case study shows how the Burra Charter (2013) significance criteria can be applied to a heritage feature on the Moon, the astronaut bo...
At the Apollo 11 landing site, celebrated as the first place humans set foot on another planet, the famous first footprint left by Neil Armstrong was created by an overshoe made by women at the International Latex Corporation (ILC) in Dover, Delaware. 🧪 #FeministMoon
Traditionally, sewing is women's work and a female skill. What women do is often derided as 'craft' rather than expertise. Well, sewing was very much an expertise needed for the Apollo missions. Women made the spacesuits which kept the men alive. 🧪 #FeministMoon
Hazel Fellows has come to represent the group of women pattern cutters, seamstresses, and assemblers who made the spacesuits for the Apollo program.
Two other technologies where women were key (also mentioned by @alantielrainne.bsky.social#FeministMoon 🧪
When you're looking for women in early space history, they're often hidden in photographs, where it can be difficult to find their names, or in footnotes. Some people have done some amazing sleuthing on this. So keep an eye out for the women. Those 'hidden figures' are always there. #feministmoon
What does this mean? Well, when the cultural significance (historic, scientific, aesthetic, social, spiritual) of the impact sites of the Apollo 12, 14, 17 modules is assessed, the presence of this technology gives them extraordinary historic and social significance. 🧪 #FeministMoon