Given that space travel is largely a result of scientific
and technological endeavors, are there any space travel superstitions still
practiced by our space-faring brethren in this day and age?
By: Ringo Bones
For all its armored veneer of fact-based science and
technology that made all of it a technical possibility, it seems that from day
one and even this day and age, there had been since-established space travel
superstitions that had been practiced from the Cold War era on both sides of
the Iron Curtain that had been carried on until the present day. But what are
these space travel superstitions that had since became de rigueur whenever the
U.S. government or any other nation state who can afford to practices before
being launched into low-Earth orbit?
In America, the US government has since bowed down to the
“religious pressures” of the Evangelical conservative community. And since they
are a significant taxpaying portion of the U.S. citizenry, the practice of jettisoning
those so-called “Children's Letters to God” since the start of U.S. manned space flight.
Given that the “Christian God” supposedly lives in “Heaven” and “Heaven” is
supposedly located up there, the “Letters to God” are probably usually
jettisoned somewhere between the Armstrong Line and the Kármán Line whenever a
U.S. government owned rocket or the NASA Space Shuttle goes to orbit.
While in Russia, their “space travel superstitious
practices” were probably established back in the days when their first space
travel pioneer, Yuri Gagarin, was still in training in lieu to explore what was
back then the still largely unknown region of low-Earth orbit. Until this day,
male Russian cosmonauts on their way to the launch sites in the Baikonur Cosmodrome
“relieve” themselves on the wheels of the bus that transports them to the
launch pad. Given that the then Soviet Union was the first to send the first
woman to space i.e. Valentina Tereshkova - most of their cosmonauts are still
largely men. And since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian Orthodox
blessings have since become de rigueur on every scheduled spaceflight. Well, a
Russian Orthodox blessing is deemed as “superstitious” to those Russians still
harboring secular humanist viewpoints.
