REMEMBERING the SPACE AGE ISBN 978-0-16-081723-6 F Asro El Yb T Eh S Epu Ir Tn E Edn Tn Fo D Co Mu E Tn S , .U S
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REMEMBERING the SPACE AGE ISBN 978-0-16-081723-6 F asro le b yt eh S epu ir tn e edn tn fo D co mu e tn s , .U S . G evo r emn tn irP tn i Ogn eciff I tn re en :t skoob t ro e .Popgenoh .vog : lot l f ree ( 0081 215 )-;668 DC a re a( 0081 215 )-202 90000 aF :x ( M4012 a215 )-202 :li S t Ipo DCC, W ihsa gn t no , D C 20402 - 1000 ISBN 978-0-16-081723-6 9 780160 817236 ISBN 978-0-16-081723-6 F ro as el b yt eh S pu e ir tn e dn e tn fo D co mu e tn s, .U S . G vo er mn e tn P ir tn i gn O eciff I tn re en :t koob s . ro t e opg . vog P noh e : lot l f eer ( 668 ) 215 - 0081 ; DC a er a ( 202 ) 215 - 0081 90000 aF :x ( 202 ) 215 - 4012 Ma :li S t po I DC ,C W a hs i gn t no , D C 20402 - 1000 ISBN 978-0-16-081723-6 9 780160 817236 REMEMBERING the SPACE AGE Steven J. Dick Editor National Aeronautics and Space Administration Office of External Relations History Division Washington, DC 2008 NASA SP-2008-4703 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Remembering the Space Age / Steven J. Dick, editor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Astronautics--History--20th century. I. Dick, Steven J. TL788.5.R46 2008 629.4’109045--dc22 2008019448 CONTENTS Acknowledgments .......................................vii Introduction ........................................... ix PART I. N ATIONAL AND GLOBAL DIMENSIONS OF THE SPACE AGE Chapter 1: Gigantic Follies? Human Exploration and the Space Age in Long-term Historical Perspective—J. R. McNeill .................3 Chapter 2: Spaceflight in the National Imagination—Asif A. Siddiqi.... 17 Chapter 3: Building Space Capability through European Regional Collaboration—John Krige ..................................37 Chapter 4: Imagining an Aerospace Agency in the Atomic Age— Robert R. MacGregor .....................................55 Chapter 5: Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War—Michael J. Neufeld ..........................71 Chapter 6: Operation Paperclip in Huntsville,Alabama— Monique Laney ..........................................89 Chapter 7:The Great Leap Upward: China’s Human Spaceflight Program and Chinese National Identity—James R. Hansen..........109 Chapter 8:“The ‘Right’ Stuff: The Reagan Revolution and the U.S. Space Program”—Andrew J. Butrica.......................121 Chapter 9: Great (Unfulfilled) Expectations:To Boldly Go Where No Social Scientist or Historian Has Gone Before— Jonathan Coopersmith ....................................135 PART II. REMEMBRANCE AND CULTURAL REPRESENTATION OF THE SPACE AGE Chapter 10: Far Out: The Space Age in American Culture— Emily S. Rosenberg ......................................157 vi Remembering the Space Age Chapter 11:A Second Nature Rising: Spaceflight in an Era of Representation—Martin Collins ...............................185 Chapter 12: Creating Memories: Myth, Identity, and Culture in the Russian Space Age—Slava Gerovitch .....................203 Chapter 13:The Music of Memory and Forgetting: Global Echoes of Sputnik II—Amy Nelson ................................237 Chapter 14: From the Cradle to the Grave: Cosmonaut Nostalgia in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film—Cathleen S. Lewis ................253 Chapter 15: Examining the Iconic and Rediscovering the Photography of Space Exploration in Context to the History of Photography —Michael Soluri ........................................271 Chapter 16: Robert A. Heinlein’s Influence on Spaceflight— Robert G. Kennedy, III ....................................341 Chapter 17:American Spaceflight History’s Master Narrative and the Meaning of Memory—Roger D. Launius.................353 PART III. REFLECTIONS ON THE SPACE AGE Chapter 18:A Melancholic Space Age Anniversary— Walter A. McDougall .....................................389 Chapter 19: Has Space Development Made a Difference?— John Logsdon ...........................................397 Chapter 20: Has There Been a Space Age?—Sylvia Kraemer.........405 Chapter 21: Cultural Functions of Space Exploration—Linda Billings .. 409 About the Authors ........................................413 Acronyms and Abbreviations ..............................425 NASA History Series .....................................429 Index.................................................441 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank the members of the conference organizing committee, including Roger Launius (National Air and Space Museum), Linda Billings (SETI Institute), Asif Siddiqi (Fordham University), Slava Gerovitch (MIT), Bill Barry (NASA Headquarters Office of External Relations), and, on the staff of the NASA History Division, Stephen Garber and Glen Asner. I also want to thank Michael Neufeld, who took over from Roger Launius as the Chair of the National Air and Space Museum Division of Space History during our planning and gave us his full support. My thanks to Nadine Andreassen in the NASA History Division for her usual good work in planning the logistics for the meeting, as well as Kathy Regul and Ron Mochinski for their logistical work. Finally, thanks to the Communications Support Services Center team at NASA Headquarters for their crucial role in the production of this book. INTRODUCTION ifty years ago, with the launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 and the Fflurry of activity that followed, events were building toward what some historians now recognize as a watershed in history—the beginning of the Space Age. Like all “Ages,” however, the Space Age is not a simple, straightforward, or even secure concept. It means different things to different people, and, space buffs notwithstanding, some would even argue that it has not been a defining characteristic of culture over the last 50 years and therefore does not deserve such a grandiose moniker. Others would find that to be an astonishing viewpoint, and argue that the Space Age was a saltation in history comparable to amphibians transitioning from ocean to land.1 There is no doubt that the last 50 years have witnessed numerous accomplishments in what has often been termed “the new ocean” of space, harking back to a long tradition of exploration. Earth is now circled by thousands of satellites, looking both upward into space at distant galaxies and downward toward Earth for reconnaissance, weather, communications, navigation, and remote sensing. Robotic space probes have explored most of the solar system, returning astonishing images of alien worlds. Space telescopes have probed the depths of the universe at many wavelengths. In the dramatic arena of human spaceflight, 12 men have walked on the surface of the Moon, the Space Shuttle has had 119 flights, and the International Space Station (ISS), a cooperative effort of 16 nations, is almost “core complete.” In addition to Russia, which put the first human into space in April 1961, China has now joined the human spaceflight club with two Shenzhou flights, and Europe is contemplating its entry into the field. 1. Walter McDougall (see chapter 18 of this volume) opens his Pulitzer-Prize winning book . the Heavens and the Earth with such a scenario. See also Walter A.McDougall,“Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age:Toward the History of A Saltation,” American Historical Review 87(1982), 1025. By the 40th anniversary of Sputnik in 1997 McDougall had revised his thesis to say “I no longer think that saltation was the right label for the chain of events kicked off by Sputnik.” But he thought in the long term, when a new launch technology had replaced the “clumsy chemical rocket,” saltation might still prove an apt term. Walter A. McDougall, “Was Sputnik Really a Saltation?” in Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite, ed. Roger D. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith (Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp. xv-xx. In chapter 4 of this volume, Robert MacGregor also challenges the view of Sputnik as a technological saltation, arguing that technocratic ideas of the relation of science to the state were already well established by this time. In particular he points to the parallels between the Atomic Energy Commission and NASA, and further argues that “NASA’s rise in the 1960s as an engine of American international prestige was rooted in atomic diplomacy, and that certain debates in Congress about the new Agency were largely approached from within a framework of atomic energy, thereby limiting the range of discourse and influencing the shape of the new Agency.” x Remembering the Space Age After 50 years of robotic and human spaceflight, and as serious plans are being implemented to return humans to the Moon and continue on to Mars, it is a good time to step back and ask questions that those in the heat of battle have had but little time to ask. What has the Space Age meant? What if the Space Age had never occurred? Has it been, and is it still, important for a creative society to explore space? How do we, and how should we, remember the Space Age? It is with such questions in mind that the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum Space History Division convened a conference on October 22-23, 2007, to contemplate some of the large questions associated with space exploration over the last half century. The conference was designed to discuss not so much the details of what has happened in space over the last 50 years, nor even so much the impact of what has happened, but rather its meaning in the broadest sense of the term.2 In doing so, the organizers made a conscious attempt to draw in scholars outside the usual circle of space history. This was not an easy task; we found that, with few exceptions, historians had not contemplated the meaning of the Space Age in the context of world history, even though the Space Age has given rise to an embryonic movement known as “big history” encompassing the last 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang.3 We therefore turned to “big picture” historians, among whom is John R. McNeill, who had recently coauthored The Human Web: A Bird’s-eye View of Human History with his father, William H.