I N F L ATA B L E I M A G I N A R I E S AND THE GOODYEAR SPACE STATION by Jeffrey S. Nesbit

nologies for extraterrestrial power. One is terrestrial, while the other implicates the Earth’s orbit as political space. Both networks tend to demonstrate how the state envisions power over other states and nature itself. The activities and technological objects themselves share associations under the new political views from the Eisenhower administration, especially how those politics formed objects in American culture.

As early as 1957, the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation announced its ongoing development plans for a physical model of an inflatable structure made from patches of rubber sheets. Goodyear employees and engineers, made up of both women and men, constructed the full-scale space station model on a warehouse floor in the American Midwest town of Akron, Ohio. Measuring 24 feet in diameter, the space station test model is a dark torus shape constructed with small white patches that indicate the critical seams between the larger rubber sheets. After the construction is completed, the model is lifted with a small metal crane holding the inflatable structure with a central axis supported by eight internal rods. Not only does the space station mockup appear to be a large-scale tire, even the structural apparatus used to mount the model for display mirrors the aesthetic and technical requirements of a wheel and axis. Could it simply be a coincidence, or is the design of the Goodyear Aerospace Station the subject of American aesthetics in architectural modernity and advancing transportation? 2

It will come as no surprise that Goodyear was not the only venue for imagining life in outer space in the 1950s and 1960s. Rocket scientists, military engineers, and even filmmakers began designing and representing what could be the future of space settlements. 3 In March 1952, renowned rocket scientist Werner von Braun wrote an article for the widely read Collier’s magazine. In the essay, entitled “Crossing the Last Frontier,” von Braun outlined what both scientists and engineers needed to know in order to properly prepare for designing and constructing “a station in space.” 4 Supported by an artist illustration, von Braun describes a 250-foot-wide “wheel-shaped space station” rotating in space and circling Earth at an astonishing speed of 15,840 miles per hour. Arguing that the shape is formed based on the physics necessary for orbiting the Earth efficiently, the wheel-shaped space station implies a kind of modern rationality and optimization for living in outer space. The rise of cybernetics and systems theory in American high culture gave way for new forms of rationality and its associations in everyday living in American cities. 5

But we also find the same shape being used to describe an orbital space station appear in pop culture, such as Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. For Kubrick, the rotating space station is similarly a torus-shaped construction, but with two parallel wheels connected by a central axis. Perhaps even more aligned to the automobile wheel than von Braun’s interpretation, the station for Kubrick, nonetheless, carries over the appearance of rationality as the structure rotates around Earth. Yet neither the scientific-based proposal by Werner von Braun in 1957 or the cinematic representation of the space station for Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 render the form as an inflatable structure. Only Goodyear seems to consistently follow the company’s historical memory—from inflatable zeppelins to rubber tires. Both Kubrick’s and von Braun’s space stations appear to be constructed by hard-faceted panels to form an almost smooth torus rotating in orbit around the Earth.

By the late 1950s, Goodyear releases an advertisement for its new inflatable space station, attempting to present themselves as the new leaders for imagining and fabricating the new wave in the aerospace industry. The space station proposal is said to “inherently provide the advantages of minimum structural density, maximum volume/weight ratio, unmatched packageability on boost,” suggesting a highly rationalized approach to its form and function. In other words, Goodyear suggests by reducing the structural components, the weight and cargo space needed is also reduced, and therefore lowers the cost to launch.

Curiously, a torus form’s inherent tensile strength derives from a shape that is peculiarly similar to that of a tire—the company’s most profitable product. The tire is not only a rubber material assisting with travel, but a symbol of American postwar suburbia reaching the remote wilderness. While the aesthetic and formal qualities of infrastructure can be criticized for being too rigid, focusing on functionality and structural performance, it is these very

qualities that allow for its pervasive deployment. Built out of political interests, infrastructure projects itself as a cultural image veiled in technocratic rationality and technical elegance.

With their increased associations in the space program and new contracts initiated by NASA, the company changed its name to the Goodyear Aerospace Corporation in 1963, making it a significant player in the space industry. The company continued to invest in pressurized vessels rotating in space, and developed various spacecraft designs, including the inflated balloons used for the Apollo 7 capsule during splashdown on Oct. 22, 1968. Although the company opened up new research activities and design for experimental aerospace inflatables and enclosures, Goodyear Aerospace Corporation went under in 1987, and was later purchased by Lockheed Martin. Committed to defense systems, Lockheed Martin had little interest in continuing work on aerospace station design or materials in space.

Yet in 2006, a company named Bigelow Aerospace accelerated development on inflatable habitats and launched two demonstration modules to Earth orbit, Genesis I and Genesis II. Then in 2010, by contracting Bigelow Aerospace for further research, NASA initiated a program to continue development on expandable modules and torus-shaped stations—once again, not unlike Goodyear’s design over 50 years ago. These experiments led to the creation of the full-scale mockup of the cylindrical BEAM at Johnson Space Center facilities in Houston, and eventually its installation on the ISS six years later, in 2016.

The early inflatable space stations rotating in outer space illuminate the politics of a national imaginary, hidden away in the repeatable forms of the American manufactured landscape. Technological progress, national control, and repeatability are connected—they construct the nation’s infrastructural ubiquity. Although Bigelow Aerospace led the design and research of the expandable module for the ISS, Goodyear’s legacy doesn’t end here. Most recently, in 2018, Goodyear announced a return to space after discovering “that silica behaves differently in zero G than it does on Earth.” 6 No longer the material of enclosure housed inside the ISS, Goodyear’s products are now the subject of experiments leading to better tires rotating on our own terrestrial surface.

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6 Goodyear advertisement, 1959. Eugene Ferguson, Engineering and the Mind’s Eye (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). For more on space settlements, see Fred Scharmen, Space Settlements (New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, 2019); see also, Felicity Scott, “Securing Adjustable Climate,” in James Graham (ed.), Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary (New York and Zurich: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City and Lars Müller Publishers, 2016). Werner von Braun, “Crossing the Last Frontier,” in Collier’s, (March 22, 1952), 24- 29. See Nicholas De Monchaux, “Cities and Cybernetics,” in New Geographies, 4: Scales of the Earth (Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, 2011), 17-25. Mark Phelan, “Tires in Space? Goodyear to test rubber in zero G. Here’s why,” in Detroit Free Press, (July 20, 2019): https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/ mark-phelan/2019/07/20/goodyear-rubber-research-in-space-could-lead-to-bettertires-on-earth/1773336001/.

24-Foot Space Station Full Size Test Model Goodyear Aircraft Company NASA Langley Research Center, Virginia

THE JOURNEY CONTINUES

by Walter Cugno

From a very early age, my passion was for flight, for everything that was able to defeat gravity’s grasp and lift into the sky and beyond. On July 20, 1969, this passion for knowledge and exploration had its pinnacle when, in front of a small black-andwhite TV with my family, I speechlessly witnessed the descent of Neil Armstrong on the mysterious surface of the Moon. It was no accident that I later enrolled in studies that had aeronautics as the main subject.

In 1975, fresh out of school, I received a call that changed my life. Along with several other engineers and technicians, I was invited to join a small but determined group of people in what was then the Office of Research and Special Studies of Aeritalia in Turin, Italy. At the time, the office was managed by Ernesto Vallerani, a young, visionary engineer. His ambitious goal was to compete with the era’s big players in space research to build the first inhabited European space laboratory, Spacelab, for the European Space Agency (ESA)—an agency born that year. Against all odds, we won the contract.

The Spacelab laboratory was the beginning of a marvelous adventure that brought Italy, first with the company Aeritalia, then Alenia Spazio, and finally, today, Thales Alenia Space, to be one of the recognized world leaders in the development of inhabited orbital modules and space infrastructures in general.

Not many know that out of 135 missions carried out by the Space Shuttle, 69 saw a significant Italian contribution coming from Turin. I had the privilege of participating in almost all of them in my 40 years of work with my company. Of these 69 missions, I specifically fondly remember two unique scientific missions for the Tethered Satellite System. The idea for the Tethered Satellite System was conceived by the genial professor Giuseppe Colombo of Padua University, and then developed in scientific cooperation between the United States and Italy. This program resulted in two space missions in which not only innovative and challenging scientific theories were demonstrated through incredibly innovative and state-of-the-art technologies, but also the first Italian astronauts flew in space. It was during this project that I first met Paolo Nespoli, then a young engineer working for Proel Tecnologie, an Italian R&D lab tasked with building and testing one of the mission’s main scientific payloads.

These 69 space missions with key Italian contributions tell a story of the great ambition that motivated a small initial group of young engineers to achieve the impossible. This original group of engineers then passed this enthusiasm to a new and more numerous group of engineers and technicians, so that, in the end, hundreds of people working together created multiple ideas and products. Some of these ideas have been very fruitful; for example, the first commercial laboratory, named Spacehab, was born from a partnership between Boeing and Aeritalia. Five Spacehab modules were built and eight missions completed. The final Spacehab flew onboard Space Shuttle Columbia’s mission STS-107, which unfortunately ended in tragedy on February 1, 2003.

While projects like Spacehab were being developed, the group continued conceiving new ideas that were mainly related to solving the problems of living and operating in space and acquiring the knowledge and experience necessary to continue the exploration of other celestial bodies. The first step in this process was the building of a space station in Low Earth Orbit, and our group in Turin was very proactive in presenting several space habitation proposals to the various space agencies around Europe.