UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE IMAGES OF PLACE IN AMERICAN SPACEFLIGHT, 1958 - 1974 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By ANNA RESER Norman, Oklahoma 2019 IMAGES OF PLACE IN AMERICAN SPACEFLIGHT, 1958 - 1974 A DISSERTATION APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE BY Dr. Katherine Pandora, Chair Dr. Suzanne Moon Dr. Peter Soppelsa Dr. Robert Bailey Dr. Margaret Weitekamp © Copyright by ANNA RESER 2019 All Rights Reserved. Table of Contents Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………..………...v Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………………………………………………….vi Chapter 1: Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………………..……..... 1 Chapter 2: “What was before is eclipsed by what is becoming…”: The Entangled Places of Spaceflight …………………………………………………………………………………..…..…………. 32 Chapter 3: “Loose in some real tropics”: Images of Nature, Technology, and Time at Kennedy Space Center …………………………………………………………………………………..………..……. 66 Chapter 4: Temporary Facilities and Interim Places: Creating the Manned Spacecraft Center ……………………………………………………………………………………….…………. 96 Chapter 5: “People and wives”: Women out of Place at Kennedy Space Center …………………………………………………………………………………….……......… 131 Chapter 6: “An honored female ritual”: Life in the Homes of the Astronaut Families …………………………………………………………………………………….………..… 162 Chapter 7: Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………….…………..…… 200 Bibliography .…………………………………………………..…………………………..……………..... 211 Appendix : Figures ……………………………………………………………………………………….……..… 224 iv Abstract This project is a cultural history of images of place in the American space programs of the 1960s, focused on images of Kennedy Space Center (KSC), where the actual launches of rockets took place, and the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), where mission planning and astronaut training, and eventually mission control, were located. I consider images of KSC and MSC both in terms of the information they contain about the cultural meaning of a NASA center and of such places, but also as representations of a larger cultural geography of spaceflight places. The idea of a NASA center was not a recognizable entity in the early 1960s. Kennedy Space Center, for example, was in some ways an outgrowth of Air Force and Army launch facilities on Cape Canaveral, from which it borrowed some of its physical facilities and operational practices. The Manned Spacecraft Center was very similar to the suburban corporate campuses that began to be built in the post war period, and the community that grew up around it followed the familiar pattern of middle class suburban developments elsewhere in the country. In the history of spaceflight buildings are prominent loci of activity and meaning –– but so also are tracts of land, wildlife refuges, turning basins, stadiums, freeways, archaeological sites, swamps, lakes, office parks, suburban neighborhoods, and swimming pools. In short, both the places where spaceflight activities take place, and the images that document and constitute those places matter. In the history of space exploration, both placemaking and imagemaking, two processes that are intimately intertwined, contribute to the making of larger cultural meanings about human spaceflight in the 1960s. v Acknowledgements I am grateful to my advisor, Dr. Katherine Pandora, and the members of my committee for their generous mentorship throughout my years as a graduate student, and for so ably guiding me into the thicket of the erstwhile. Lauren Myers at the University of Houston, Clear Lake Archives and Shane Bell at the National Archives in Atlanta were both exceedingly kind and patient in helping me locate archival material for this project. I am grateful for their expertise and skill, and for their enthusiasm. Dr. Jennifer Ross-Nazzal gave generously of her time to conduct a private tour for me when I visited Johnson Space Center. It was a dream and a genuine honor to see the site for the first time with her as my guide and interpreter. Dr. Kate Sheppard read drafts of this project when I was most unsure of myself, and lent me her expertise in interpreting documents related to archeological sites. Dr. Nathan Kapoor and I began, and ended, this process together as we promised to do when we met as newly-recruited graduate students. I simply wouldn’t have made it without him. Leila McNeill is the scholar I strive most to be like. I am grateful for the privilege of collaborating with her on my most important projects, her generous editing of my work, her constant support, and most of all for her friendship. My parents have seen me through every difficult turn of the last few years with grace and humor and love, and it is to their unwavering support that I owe my success in all my endeavors. vi 1. Introduction Rocket gantries, their iron oxide red painted planes and pipes corroding in the sun and salt air, laying on their sides like massive skeletons, sink slowly into the swamp. Vines tangle around the beams and spill onto the floor of a concrete cable way. The rusted, empty eye of the launch ring of Launch Complex 34 gazes up a clear blue sky. These images of decay and dereliction were made by photographer Roland Miller at Cape Canaveral, the site of the American space program’s most spectacular launches. Miller published in Abandoned in Place: Preserving America’s Space History in 2016, as a document of the abandoned and decommissioned places and technologies of spaceflight in the United States.1 The book testifies to both the ceaseless innovation and change that animates technology, and the inescapable entropy of the landscapes which consume the discarded infrastructure of cancelled and completed programs. Abandoned in Place he project provides access to many of the unseen places of spaceflight, as most are closed to the public or within secure military installations, but as a document of the antiquity of the space program, it is not without precedent. In the late 1960s, the Real Estate Office at Kennedy Space Center began its own documentation of the decaying facilities of the then decade-long American space program. Initiated by a Real Estate Officer named Joseph Hester, the Ad Hoc Committee on Temporary Facilities was tasked with evaluating all of the structures NASA had appropriated when it acquired the land for KSC, and determining what to do with each. Most of the buildings had been homes, purchased or condemned during 1 Roland Miller, Abandoned in Place: Preserving America’s Space History (The University of New Mexico Press, 2016). 1 acquisition, and were used by NASA as interim facilities for laboratories, management training, and storage.2 A large multi-level concrete block structure surrounded by intersecting power lines and fronted by a broad sand street “was a former restaurant [...] now used by Public Affairs for storage.” “Clark’s Restaurant” was slated by the committee for disposal as soon as the material stored there could be relocated.3 (Figure 1.1) The committee’s earlier documentation of decaying structures shares none of Miller’s aesthetics, and in fact much of Hester’s original justification for disposing of the buildings was to “improve appearance” at Kennedy Space Center as the climactic Apollo missions to the moon approached and the center’s public visibility increased considerably. These “unsightly” buildings no doubt also represented to NASA the center’s infancy, in the years before permanent facilities could be constructed and every sound structure on the site had to be utilized to accomplish its mission. Like Miller’s photographs, images of the temporary buildings at the Cape are both a record of the places and infrastructures of spaceflight in the United States and a document of their impermanence. Filed with Hester’s request to convene the committee and its associated documents are photographs of each structure and brief descriptions of what each building was originally, what it became when NASA arrived and took it over, and what it should become at the close of the first decade of American spaceflight. 2 Joseph Hester, to Director of Administration, March 11, 1969; Ad Hoc Committee on Temporary Facilities January-March 1967; Ad Hoc Temporary Facilities, False Cape Data Collection Annex, Archaeological sites; Directorate of Design Engineering, Real Estate Branch 1963-1970; Kennedy Space Center Files; Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Archives and Records Administration-Southeast Region (Atlanta). 3 Photograph, NASA K8-998, n.d.; Ad Hoc Committee on Temporary Facilities January-March 1969; Ad Hoc Temporary Facilities, False Cape Data Collection Annex, Archaeological sites; Directorate of Design Engineering, Real Estate Branch 1963-1970; Kennedy Space Center Files; Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; National Archives and Records Administration-Southeast Region (Atlanta). 2 These records contain both visual information and information about vision--a history of each place, and a vision for its future role within the space program. They are representations of place, proof of the physicality and terrestrial geography of the space program, and evidence that this geography has a history. In short, both the places where spaceflight activities take place, and the images that document and constitute those places matter. In the history of space exploration, both placemaking and imagemaking, two processes that are intimately intertwined, contribute to the making of larger