Participant Evolution: Cold War Space Medicine and the Militarization of the Cyborg Self

Abstract

This chapter explores the emergence of the cyborg in 1960s space medicine, as well as further plans to redesign human nature for the hostile environment of outer space. It seeks to situate these projects and practices within the politicized logic of evolutionary discourse at the height of the Cold War. By concentrating on this set of rather exotic ideas about adapting man for space, the chapter demonstrates that the militarization of the heavens involved not only the development of missile and satellite technology, but also the effort to discipline and control the minds and bodies of human operators. In this history, cybernetics, human engineering and evolutionary discourse came together to invent future astronauts and define the Cold War confrontation in terms of the ‘survival of the fittest.’