Cyborg - the word that left earth.
How a space medicine footnote became a theory, a threat, and a life support system
root/ CYBORG
You’ll see the term cyborg in Signal+Static’s thesis. And scattered throughout this publication.
I use it heavily. The image it conjures is an iconoclast. It applies to our lives in ways that leverage juxtaposition as a perceptual hack. I love the origin—and it might surprise you. It wasn’t born in science fiction, but in speculative science.
(Is there really a difference?)
// term “cyborg” queried for origin. results…Term: cyborg (cybernetic organism)
Coined: 1960
Publication: “Cyborgs and Space”
Published in: Astronautics (September 1960)
Authors:
Manfred Clynes: engineer, neuroscientist, cyberneticist
Nathan S. Kline: psychiatrist, psychopharmacology pioneer
The article laid out a radical proposal: instead of building fully Earth-like environments in space, adapt the human body itself. Create internal, self-regulating systems that could unconsciously manage the body’s survival in hostile extraterrestrial conditions.
Not a metaphor; this was systems engineering for off-planet life.
// quote — definition origin moment“For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term ‘Cyborg.’”
— Clynes & Kline, 1960
THE SPREAD OF CYBORG
After its coinage, cyborg remained mostly in aerospace, biomedicine, and systems physiology. It didn’t explode right away. It just floated, quietly orbiting within academic and engineering circles.
Still, it leaked.
Writers in speculative fiction began experimenting with the concept throughout the ’60s. Sometimes explicitly, sometimes not, but always referencing this hybrid techno-being.
Frank Herbert’s The Eyes of Heisenberg (1966) features genetically manipulated humans integrated into life-sustaining systems.
Anne McCaffrey’s The Ship Who Sang (1961–69) is centered around a brain-ship hybrid: a human mind permanently wired into a spacecraft.
Samuel R. Delany’s Nova (1968) envisions socketed bodies interfacing directly with starship drives.
The comic Space Man (1962) is one of the earliest uses of the word “cyborg” in fiction.
The film Cyborg 2087 (1966) made the term cinematic.
Most of these examples stretch and shape the cyborg into narrative possibility. Always augmenting bodies and entangling human agency with cybernetic feedback systems. Even when the term isn’t present, the logic is.
By the 1980s, the cyborg would notably rupture into culture. Twice.
First, it was radicalized by feminist theory: Donna Haraway’s 1985 essay “A Cyborg Manifesto” repurposed the term as a theoretical tool. A political subject. A boundary transgressor. Neither wholly natural nor fully artificial. The cyborg became an icon of resistance to essentialism and purity narratives.
Second, it surged into cyberpunk fiction and media. Neuromancer (1984), RoboCop (1987), Ghost in the Shell (1989 manga, 1995 film). All trafficked in flesh-metal junctions and neural jacks. But beyond aesthetics, they pushed the deeper questions of system dependence, memory, autonomy, and identity.
And like any good signal — it split.
Some use cyborg to mean full biomechanical modification. Titanium limbs, brain implants and neural links. Others apply it more broadly: anyone entangled in technosystems. Offloaded cognition, augmented perception, and compromised autonomy.
I’d argue both are valid; one follows the blueprint, the other shows how widely that blueprint applies.
// spread — cultural relay beginsCyborg escaped its origin.
Left Earth.
Left rigid definition.
Entered language.
CYBORG SYSTEMS IN REAL SPACEFLIGHT
While I often use the term to describe our terrestrial techno-entanglements, we shouldn’t lose sight of the original directive:
Modify the human to survive space.
That vision still pulses through real-world astronautics. And while we’ve leaned heavily on environmental controls like pressurized capsules and orbital stations, we’ve also pursued many of the exact adaptations Clynes & Kline implied.
A) Spacesuits as Externalized Organs
The suit is not just clothing. It’s an extension of physiology.
Oxygenation, thermoregulation, radiation shielding. Prosthetic homeostasis
Apollo suits were mechanical marvels; today’s xEMU suits include internal feedback systems and real-time biometric monitoring
NASA calls it a “portable ecology”[^1]
B) Pharmacological Intervention
Space alters biology.
Drugs behave differently in microgravity: absorption, efficacy, and metabolism all shift[^2]
Astronaut kits now include cognition stabilizers, antiemetics, sleep aids
Long-duration missions require preemptive pharma: bone-density drugs, radiation prophylaxis, mood stabilizers
What you ingest becomes part of your life-support loop.
C) Simulation & Systemic Training
Astronauts train in analogs: Mars domes, underwater habitats, vacuum chambers
Performance data is fed back into hardware redesign and personal preparation
The Human Research Program at NASA tracks these variables longitudinally[^3]
D) Embedded Feedback Loops
Continuous biometric telemetry
Environmental adaptation systems
Experimental robotic interfaces (e.g. Canadarm2, robotic surgery concepts)
Our systems are aware of us. And they act in response.
Feedback is no longer metaphorical.
We may not be fully autonomic, self-regulating post-human hybrids yet.
But we are cybernetic in function.
EARTHBOUND CYBORGS
“The cyborg is no longer in space. It’s (I’m) on the subway. Holding a phone. Adjusting a smart insulin pump. Refreshing a feed.”
This isn’t speculative anymore. The homeostatic logic that defined the cyborg is now distributed across terrestrial networks.
We live within ambient systems:
GPS constellations regulate our location
Atomic clocks in orbit anchor our time
Submarine cables route our cognition
Neural interfaces manage our health
Predictive algorithms shape behavior
We don’t just use these systems.
We move through them, just map it.
We’re co-dependent, but where we can: we should build them.
That’s entanglement.
That’s cybernetic identity.
Cognition is offloaded.
Behavior, altered.
Location: triangulated.
You don’t need a space suit to be a cyborg.
You just need a signal.
THE TERM THAT LEFT EARTH
“Cyborg” began as a literal engineering concept—born in a footnote, in a science journal, in a decade racing to escape gravity.
But like any cybernetic system, it evolved through interaction.
It moved from:
lab → body politic
feedback loop → philosophy
orbit → interface
astronaut → everyday user
We didn’t send cyborgs to space.
We became them waiting to go.
// end tramsmission
References & Links
Clynes, M., & Kline, N. (1960). Cyborgs and Space. Astronautics.
NASA Human Research Program: nasa.gov/hrp
xEMU Suit Research: CHUT Design Report
Pharmacological Behavior in Space: SpringerLink Article
The Ship Who Sang: Wikipedia
Nova (Delany): Wikipedia
Science Fiction Encyclopedia – Cyborgs: sf-encyclopedia.com
