Oft-repeated but rarely questioned, the notion of the 'founding father' has long been a conspicuous trope in outer space historiography. Evoking Marcel Mauss' concept of persona, originally introduced in 1938 and advanced by historians of science and technology in recent years, this panel interrogates the making, function and popularity of such space stars and 'father figures' in three different, yet interrelated national settings: China, India and Japan.

Three academic outsiders are usually credited with making the idea of spaceflight both scientifically and technologically feasible during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (1857–1935) in Russia, Hermann Oberth (1894–1989) in Germany and Robert Goddard (1882–1945) in the United States. Naming this 'three heroes' scheme the 'TGO interpretation' (for Tsiolkovskii-Goddard-Oberth), historian Michael J. Neufeld has retraced the trope's first emergence to the decade between 1957 and 1967, when the rapid acceleration of the Space Race required the creation of nationally distinct spaceflight narratives. Others have objected that such paternal honors should remain reserved for Sergei Korolev (1906–1966) and Wernher von Braun (1911–1977), who both – the argument goes – combined visionary foresight with unique engineering skills to become the masterminds behind the Soviet and American space programs. On closer inspection, however, similar authorities can also be identified elsewhere, beyond the former superpowers. Qian Xuesen (1911–2009), Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) and Itokawa Hideo (1912–1999) are credited with having played equivalent roles for launching spaceflight programs in China, India and Japan. Whether remembered as 'father of spaceflight,' 'space research pioneer' or 'Dr. Rocket,' they dominate the respective historiographies of these emerging space powers.

Drawing from a wide array of written and visual, biographical and autobiographical sources, presentations scrutinize the interweaving dialectics between the making of 'scientific' celebrities and the creation of national spaceflight genealogies from the 1950s to the 1990s. With a view to interrogating the respective patrimonies, papers ask, first, how the fame of these global space personae was established. When, by whom and to what end were these space scientists acclaimed as national heroes, complete with gendered authority? A second line of inquiry concerns the interpersonal flux of knowledge across borders. Amidst fierce international competition, to what extent did an intra-regional network of space experts emerge, comparable to or distinct from that operating in post-War Europe and the United States? Finally, papers examine the broader political investment in outer space. Does the prominence of these alternative celebrities suggest a common narrative of astrocultural foundations worldwide? And how can the co-existence of national spaceflight genealogies be integrated into a global history of outer space?

The panel brings together younger scholars from China and Japan with established space historians from Europe and the United States in order to facilitate a genuinely decentered and decolonized conversation on the transnational history of spaceflight, techno-nationalism and knowledge circulation throughout the Space Age. Rather than aiming to complement the original 'three heroes' scheme with a different set of father figures, the panel seeks to address the apparently irresistible appeal of twentieth-century astroculture from a global perspective.