IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB376351173

Andean Man & the Astronaut: Race and the 1958 Mount Evans Acclimatization Experiment (2021)

Bimm, Jordan (Author)

Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Volume: 51
Issue: 3
Pages: 285-329
Publication date: 2021
Language: English

URI: https://online.ucpress.edu/hsns/article/51/3/285/117359/Andean-Man-amp-the-AstronautRace-and-the-1958

DOI: 10.1525/hsns.2021.51.3.285

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Mountaineering Space programs Astronauts Indigenous peoples; indigeneity Science and race Space research and exploration Acclimatization 20th century, late Colorado (U.S.) United States Air Force (USAF)

In 1958, Bruno Balke, a former German Luftwaffe doctor working for the United States Air Force (USAF), led a team of airmen up Colorado’s Mount Evans. Could acclimatization to the thin mountain air boost the oxygen efficiency of future astronauts living in artificial low-pressure spacecraft environments? To judge their improvement, Balke, an expert in the nascent field of space medicine, compared their performance not with military test-pilots, but with high-altitude Indigenous people he had studied in the Peruvian Andes. This article expands discussions of race in space history beyond Black scientists, mathematicians, and pilots in the Civil Rights era to this earlier case of the permanent residents of Morococha, Peru, who participated in efforts to define an ideal spacefaring body. More than recovering the story of a nearly forgotten group of astronaut-adjacent test-subjects, this article shows how racial discrimination in space medicine functioned by inclusion. Balke studied and even celebrated the bodies of Morocochans, but never considered them potential astronauts. This article begins with Balke’s participation in the 1938 Nazi-funded expedition to summit Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas, and his follow-on work acclimatizing Luftwaffe pilots during World War Two. Then it focuses on his USAF work in the 1950s studying miners living and working in Morococha, Peru, and his attempt to replicate their altitude tolerance in American airmen on Mount Evans. Recovering Balke’s work places the high-altitude Indigenous person and the mountaineer alongside the familiar figure of the pilot in the genealogy of the early American astronaut.

...More

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB376351173

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book David N. Spires; (2021)
Assured Access: A History of the United States Air Force Space Launch Enterprise, 1945-2020 (/p/isis/citation/CBB078667094/)

Book Colin Burgess; (2022)
Soviets in Space: Russia’s Cosmonauts and the Space Frontier (/p/isis/citation/CBB334591827/)

Article Neufeld, Michael J.; (2005)
The End of the Army Space Program: Interservice Rivalry and the Transfer of the von Braun Group to NASA, 1958--1959 (/p/isis/citation/CBB000660279/)

Book Brian C. Odom; Waring, Stephen P.; (2019)
NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement (/p/isis/citation/CBB430573888/)

Book Michael D. Leinbach; Jonathan H. Ward; Robert L Crippen; Eileen Collins; (2018)
Bringing Columbia Home: The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew (/p/isis/citation/CBB519313177/)

Article David P. D. Munns; Kärin Nickelsen; (2017)
To live among the stars: artificial environments in the early space age (/p/isis/citation/CBB144915707/)

Book Karin Hilck; (2019)
Lady astronauts, lady engineers, and naked ladies: women and the American space community during the Cold War, 1960s-1980s (/p/isis/citation/CBB885312377/)

Book Colin Burgess; (2021)
The Greatest Adventure: A History of Human Space Exploration (/p/isis/citation/CBB522094008/)

Book Andrew Jennks Andrew Jenks; (2021-11-02)
Collaboration in Space and the Search for Peace on Earth (/p/isis/citation/CBB262469655/)

Article Lamy, Jérôme; (2011)
What Management Does to Space Projects: The Franco-Soviet Project ARCAD 3 in the Late 1970s (/p/isis/citation/CBB001230581/)

Book Launius, Roger D.; (2013)
Exploring the Solar System: The History and Science of Planetary Exploration (/p/isis/citation/CBB001253037/)

Book Impey, Chris; Henry, Holly; (2013)
Dreams of Other Worlds: The Amazing Story of Unmanned Space Exploration (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213137/)

Book Slotkin, Arthur L.; (2012)
Doing the Impossible: George E. Mueller and the Management of NASA's Human Spaceflight Program (/p/isis/citation/CBB001213211/)

Article Grachev, Sergey; (2012)
The Little-Known Facts of the Creative Activities and Life of Chief Designer of Aero-Space Systems Gleb Yevgenievich Lozino-Lozinsky (/p/isis/citation/CBB001321286/)

Article Launius, Roger; (2010)
Astronaut Envy? The U.S. Military's Quest for a Human Mission in Space (/p/isis/citation/CBB001221391/)

Article C. P. Sonett; (1994)
Romancing the Solar System (/p/isis/citation/CBB931920918/)

Article Volland, Nicolai; (2014)
Comment on “Let's Go to the Moon” (/p/isis/citation/CBB001214667/)

Book Chris Gainor; (2001)
Arrows to the Moon: Avro's Engineers and the Space Race (/p/isis/citation/CBB503675113/)

Book Piers Bizony; Chaikin Andrew; Dr Roger Launius; (2019)
The NASA Archives: 60 Years in Space (/p/isis/citation/CBB413019874/)

Article Russo, Arturo; (2011)
Europe's Path To Mars: The European Space Agency's Mars Express Mission (/p/isis/citation/CBB001220818/)