Tribbe Dissertation
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Copyright by Matthew David Tribbe 2010 The Dissertation Committee for Matthew David Tribbe certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: The Rocket and the Tarot: The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture at the Dawn of the Seventies Committee: David M. Oshinsky, Supervisor Mark A. Lawrence Bruce J. Hunt Richard H. Pells Jeffrey L. Meikle The Rocket and the Tarot: The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture at the Dawn of the Seventies by Matthew David Tribbe, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August, 2010 I’m lost, but I’m making record time. —Apocryphal Test Pilot Acknowledgements The following people must be thanked: Vicki and her assorted circus of animals, for the patience that allowed me the time to research and write, and the impatience that thankfully forced me to occasionally stop researching and writing. My family, for a lifetime of support and encouragement and general “right raising” that ensured I would be able to eventually do something like write a dissertation. My dissertation committee: David Oshinsky was supportive from my very first semester in the program, and has since helped me slightly (but only slightly) tame my penchant for excess in all areas of life, but mostly in my writing. His enthusiasm for my work was critical at moments when the whole thing seemed pointless. Likewise Mark Lawrence, who took an interest in my work from the beginning, and has been encouraging ever since. Bruce Hunt, in his capacity as Graduate Advisor, History of Science Colloquium coordinator, and careful reader has been immensely helpful both in terms of explaining basic facts and in challenging me to sharpen my arguments. Jeffrey Meikle’s advice was equally insightful, especially his thoughts on the counterculture and on working the space program into Sixties culture more generally. The Department of History Graduate Program at the University of Texas at Austin has been very generous with its funding, allowing me ample time to complete this dissertation as well as offering invaluable teaching opportunities. Marilyn Lehman deserves special thanks for the critical help she offers to students and faculty alike on a daily basis. v This dissertation would have been much less successful without the support of several outside fellowships. A Guggenheim Fellowship from the National Air and Space Museum allowed for a summer of research in the Washington, D.C. area. At the museum, Roger Launius, Margaret Weitekamp, Martin Collins, Paul Ceruzzi, David DeVorkin, Allan Needell, and Mike Neufeld were all supportive and encouraging, and offered suggestions that helped me begin to shape my ideas at this early stage of research. At the NASA History Office, Colin Fries, Liz Suckow, and John Hargenrader asked which boxes I wanted to look at, and I replied, “all of ‘em!” They were more than helpful and patient with such requests. In Texas, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center awarded me a fellowship to look through the Norman Mailer papers, and Steve Mielke offered valuable advice on what to look at in the Mailer collection. Finally, friends and colleagues played a huge role in this dissertation’s completion. Rob Holmes, Zach Montz, and Christelle Le Faucheur all read chapters, and Paul Rubinson read the whole thing. All of their feedback was massively helpful. The frequent exchanges of verbal abuse with Yuri Campbell, which occasionally touched on relevant historical topics, were critical (as were the vast sums of money he doled out the summer I watched his kid). Andy Bussing, Shawn Sizemore, and Dave Haney supplied me with a much-needed steady stream of new music to write to, and Austin in general supplied me with a steady stream of music to ignore while writing. vi The Rocket and the Tarot: The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture at the Dawn of the Seventies Publication No._____________ Matthew David Tribbe, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2010 Supervisor: David M. Oshinsky Although the Apollo 11 moon landing was one of the most remarkable events of the twentieth century, it was also among the most abstruse—what did it mean, after all? With implications ranging from the everyday benefits of “spinoff” to the cosmic questions of existence, it seemed like it had to signify something important. But the United States was undergoing a profound cultural shift as the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, a transformative moment when the rationalist, technological optimism of the high Space Age began losing traction to the more intuitive, relativistic, neo-romantic cultural aura of the 1970s. This turn left many Americans who reckoned that Apollo should be important—somehow, in some way—unable to adequately integrate the event into their worldviews, their American mythologies. This study examines how Americans attempted to make sense of Apollo in the 1960s and 1970s. This period saw a noticeable retreat from the faith in science and vii rationalism that had driven American thought and culture in the decades following World War II, and which formed the foundation of the successful space program. In its stead emerged a new understanding of “progress” that was divorced from its previous equation with technological advancement for its own sake and reconsidered in terms of its impact on sustainability and personal fulfillment. In this environment, Apollo—an endeavor that that ultimately seemed to offer no deeper meaning that itself—provided bold evidence that the crucial answers to life’s quandaries would not be discovered through technological journeys to the near planets; indeed, that the prolonged emphasis on these sorts of materialist endeavors had only obscured humanity’s quest for true meaning and its continued sustenance on what Apollo made abundantly clear was the only planet it would inhabit for a long time to come. This cultural turn spelled doom for a space program that for all its futuristic trappings was actually firmly rooted in the past, in a mindset that had flourished throughout the middle of the twentieth century but was now falling under wide suspicion. viii Table of Contents List of Significant Apollo Missions.................................................................................. x Prologue............................................................................................................................ 1 Introduction....................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1: Talking About Apollo: Initial Reactions....................................................... 31 Chapter 2: On the Nihilism of WASPs: Norman Mailer in NASA-Land....................... 64 Chapter 3: Apollo and the “Human Condition”.............................................................. 99 Chapter 4: The Thunder of Apollo: The Moon and the American Century.................. 143 Chapter 5: A Psychedelic Moon?: Potland vs. Squareland for the Soul of America.... 193 Chapter 6: “God is Alive, Magic is Afoot”: Moon Voyaging in the Neo-Romantic 1970s......................................................................................................... 243 Epilogue........................................................................................................................ 355 Bibliography................................................................................................................. 360 Vita............................................................................................................................... 378 ix Significant Apollo missions discussed herein Apollo 7: October 1968. The first manned Apollo test flight, and the first manned space flight at all in nearly two years. Apollo 8: December 1968. The first Apollo flight to the moon. Circled the moon on Christmas Eve, and the astronauts (Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lovell) read the creation story from the book of Genesis. Supplied the world with the first pictures of Earth from the moon, including the now-iconic “Earthrise” image. Apollo 11: July 1969. The first moon landing. Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walked on the moon, while Michael Collins remained behind in the Command Module. Apollo 13: April 1970. NASA’s closest call with disaster on a moon mission. An oxygen tank ruptured on the way to the moon, and the crew was barely able to make it home alive. Served to momentarily regain the nation’s attention, which was already waning. Has since been memorialized in the popular Tom Hanks movie, Apollo 13. Apollo 17: December 1972. The last Apollo flight, and the last time humans have visited the moon. The only nighttime Apollo launch. Apollos 18, 19, 20: The last three planned Apollo missions, scrapped due to budget cuts and general public disinterest. x Prologue In the first clear sign that young Regan MacNeil may have been plagued by something unholy, her body overtaken by a power neither she nor anyone else could understand, the usually sweet, mild-mannered girl was compelled late one night to awaken from her sleep and wander downstairs into the revelry of her mother’s cocktail party. As the boisterous crowd welcomed her, she approached a famous Apollo astronaut, looked him straight in the eye, and told him, “you’re gonna die up there,” before promptly urinating on the floor in front of the startled guests. Here was something