Part II. 

remembrance and 

cultural rePresentatIon 

of the sPace age 

~
 

 

Chapter 10 

Far Out:
 

the Space age in american Culture
 

emily S. rosenberg 

Space has long provided a canvas for the imagination. For me, the early 

Space age intertwined with a sense of youth’s almost limitless possibilities— 

the excitement of discovery, the allure of adventure, the challenge of competition, 

the confidence of mastery. as a girl in Montana, I looked up into that Big Sky 

hoping to glimpse a future that would, somehow, allow my escape from the 

claustrophobia of small towns separated by long distances. 

But the Space age was also bound up with the encroaching cynicism of 

my young adulthood: the fear of a future driven by thoughtless fascination with 

technique and a Vietnam-era disillusionment with the country’s benevolence 

and with the credibility of its leaders. the night that the first american landed 

on the Moon, I was in the audience at the Newport Folk Festival. Someone from 

the audience yelled “What were the first words on the Moon?” the announcer 

replied, “they were: ‘the simulation was better!’” a cluster of people grumbled 

that the Moonwalk was probably faked, a suspicion that my barely literate 

immigrant grandmother—and a few others in the country—shared. 

the new Space age could promise giant leaps and also threaten hal of 

2001: A Space Odyssey. Space could be far away or “far out.” 

anyone who has been around for the past half century harbors private 

memories of the early Space age. a toy, a tV program, a book, a painting, 

a school science fair project can each touch off remembrance of a place, an 

emotion, the person we once were. For each individual, the Space age offered 

an array of visual representations and symbolic threads that could, intimately 

and personally, weave a unique tapestry. 

But the Space age was not simply an infinitely personalizable canvas for 

individual memories. It also offered national and global imaginaries that projected 

assumptions about, and debates over, national identities and global futures. 

the Space age, of course, is in one sense as old as historical time— 

humans have long looked to the heavens for meaning. and it is also an age 

still of the present as the current schemes to militarize space and the renewed 

public visibility of public and private missions into space remind us. But this 

essay addresses that shorter moment of the Space age, the couple of decades 

beginning in the early 1950s when transcending earth’s atmosphere and 
158 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

gravitational pull so stirred emotions that space exploration became an intense 

cultural preoccupation. 

Focusing on representations that comprise collective, not individual 

memory, this essay seeks to suggest some of the diverse symbols and narratives 

of the Space age as they circulated in american culture. as a complex of 

collective signs and symbols, the Space age intertwined with other rival 

designations for the postwar era: the Cold War, the Media age, what Zbigniew 

Brzezinski called the technetronic age, and the age of a Mid-century 

Modernist aesthetic. Space exploration augmented the Cold War with the space 

race, enhanced the Media age with truly amazing dramas and visual 

spectacularity, heightened the technetronic age’s moral and philosophical 

concerns over the implications of technocracy and a so-called “Spaceship 

earth,” and inspired Mid-century Modernist impulses that emerged as googie 

and abstract expressionism. refracting aspirations and fears, the Space age held 

multiple meanings for foreign policy, politics, media, engineering, morality, 

art, and design.1 

1. the COld War: SpaCe raCe 

In October 1957, Sputnik I became a media sensation. hurled into orbit 

by a massive rocket, the Soviet-launched space satellite, circling earth every 

95 minutes, appeared to demonstrate urgent strategic dangers. this “Sputnik 

moment,” in which fear mingled with fascination, prompted significant changes 

in america’s Cold War landscape. It by no means, however, began america’s 

fascination with a new Space age. 

a vibrant spaceflight movement comprised largely of science fiction writers 

and engineers had preceded Sputnik and helped set a tone for the space race that 

emerged in Sputnik’s wake. a team of mostly german rocket-scientists headed 

by Wernher von Braun had worked for the U.S. army since the summer of 1950 

under order to develop a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon.2 

On the side, von Braun had energetically promoted popular interest in spaceflight, 

and his efforts during the mid-1950s became part of a boom in both science and 

science fiction writing about space. a group that the scholar de Witt douglas 

Kilgore has called “astrofuturists”—writers who based their tales of an 

intergallactical future on new scientific breakthroughs in physics—included 

Isaac asimov, robert heinlein, arthur C. Clarke, Willy ley, and others.3 

1.	 the author wishes to express special thanks to Norman l. rosenberg for his contributions to 

this essay. 

2.	 tom d. Crouch, Aiming for the Stars:The Dreamers and Doers of the Space Age (Washington, dC: 

Smithsonian Institution press, 1999), p. 118. 

3.	 de Witt douglas Kilgore,Astrofuturism:Science,Race,and Visions of Utopia in Space (philadelphia,pa: 

University of pennsylvania press, 2003) examines the major scientific and literary productions. 
Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 159 

these astrofuturists offered especially powerful images and narratives about 

a new “age of discovery” in which brave individuals would guide interplanetary 

explorations. Walt disney employed von Braun and ley, both powerful advocates 

of human piloted spaceflight, as consultants to help design rocket ships and 

Moon rides for disneyland’s tomorrowland, which opened in 1955, and a series 

of tV episodes such as “Man is Space” (March 1955), “Man and the Moon” 

(december 1955), and “Mars and Beyond” (december 1957). Chesley Bonestell 

carved out a specialty as a spaceflight artist, illustrating in colored ink during the 

1950s much of the equipment and procedure that later NaSa scientists would 

construct for real. Bonestell’s collaboration with ley in The Conquest of Space, for 

example, exuded technological authority in both words and illustration, moving 

the subject of space travel away from the interwar Flash gordon style and into 

scientific respectability.4 likewise, comics and popular magazines frequently 

featured human-piloted space travel, and hollywood also filled screens with 

visions of space. Destination Moon (1950), a film whose images and messages 

influenced a generation of movie makers as well as scientists, celebrated the idea 

of a Moon landing.5 In the realm of popular music, songwriter Bart howard’s 

Fly Me to the Moon (1951) became such a hit, especially after peggy lee sang it 

on the Ed Sullivan Show in the mid-1950s, that howard was able to live out his 

life on its royalties. 

Fiction writers and rocket scientists such as von Braun, in elaborating their 

dreams of manned flight and space stations, implied that control of the Moon 

and of outer space by any other nation would leave the United States abjectly 

defenseless. hollywood’s Destination Moon had especially contributed to this 

idea. In addition, the well-developed popular fears associated with atomic 

power led credence to the idea that an enemy’s penetration of space might pose 

an existential threat. Might the rockets that launched Sputnik indicate that 

the Soviet Union’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) had the power to 

send a nuclear weapon to the United States? Might Sputnik signal the enemy’s 

capability of mounting a pearl harbor-style attack from the skies, this time 

with atomic bombs coming from orbiting satellites? 

Many scholars have argued that the ideas and literary productions of the 

astrofuturists “prepared the american public for the conquest of space with 

elaborate visions of promise and fear” and helped shape the nation’s cultural 

and political responses.6 as Sputnik orbited overhead, these space-exploration 

4.	 Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 72-74;Willie ley, The Conquest of Space (New York, NY:Viking, 1951). 

5.	 Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 52, 56-58; howard e. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination 

(Washington, dC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1997), pp. 41-43. 

6.	 Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, pp. 118-121; Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 31-48; McCurdy, Space, 

pp. 54-74 [quote p. 54]. roger e. Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts 

(Baltimore, Md: Johns hopkins University press, 1984) traces the development of interest in 

early aerospace flights. 
160 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

boosters, who had long advocated more energetic efforts, fused their previous 

visions of human-piloted voyages of discovery together with the heightened 

Cold War national security concerns to frame the parameters of an urgent new 

international competition—the space race. 

president dwight david eisenhower tried to calm the alarm. his scientific 

experts saw no ICBM gap or even any parity in missile know-how between the 

United States and the Soviet Union. had the White house pushed a program 

similar to that which produced Sputnik, they advised, a U.S. satellite could 

already have been aloft. While von Braun pressed for a crash program, promised 

that his team could launch a satellite in 90 days, and called for building a space 

station, eisenhower embraced a measured approach with lower costs and greater 

focus on scientific and military applications. the chair of eisenhower’s science 

advisory committee, James r. Killian, issued a short Introduction to Outer Space 

that downplayed manned flight and advocated carefully constructed scientific 

projects that employed automation and robotics. eisenhower ordered the 

government printing office to distribute Killian’s pamphlet to the public for 15 

cents a copy.7 

as a seasoned military strategist, the president had always been his own 

most-trusted national security adviser. By 1957, eisenhower believed he 

could see Soviet capabilities and likely military intentions more clearly than 

ever before. the public did not know that he recently had gained access to 

reconnaissance photographs taken by cameras carried on the newly operational 

U-2 spy plane. U-2 flights over the Soviet Union, begun during the summer 

of 1956, secretly confirmed the president’s judgment that military necessity 

required no sudden change in strategic course. the U.S.S.r. had not raced 

ahead in military might. Moreover, a U.S. satellite-based surveillance system 

designed to replace the U-2 flights already had Ike’s full support. (Satellitebased cameras would take their first pictures of the Soviet Union several months 

before Ike left office in 1961.) as a general, eisenhower understood the value 

of aerial reconnaissance, and his backing of scientific satellites before 1957 had 

aimed to establish the precedent of free access in space—a principle that could 

then be adapted to the advantage of military intelligence. Sputnik, ironically, 

established this precedent, and eisenhower thus saw advantages to Sputnik that 

military secrecy kept shrouded from the public.8 

7.	 McCurdy, Space, pp.56-58; Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, pp.143-150. Matthew a. Bille and erika 

r. lishock, The First Space Race: Launching the World’s First Satellites (College Station,tX:texas 

a&M press, 2004) provides a history of satellite development before 1958. 

8.	 McCurdy, Space, pp. 58-59; robert a. divine, The Sputnik Challenge (New York, NY: 

Oxford University press, 1993), pp. 11-12; On the background to and aftermath of Sputnik, 

see especially Walter a. Mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space 

Age (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1985), and paul dickson, Sputnik: The Shock of the Century 

(New York, NY: Walker and Company, 2007). 
 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 161 

the more eisenhower tried to reassure the nation about the implications of 

Sputnik,however,the more his critics could portray him as inept and out of touch 

with Cold War dangers.9 Ike’s popularity declined as an avalanche of scientific 

reports, newspaper editorials, and political speeches warned that the United States 

was losing its military lead because of Moscow’s presumed technical superiority. 

the democrats especially smelled blood in the water, and most republican 

politicians joined in the alarm over Sputnik lest they become its victims.10 

as the Soviet’s 184-pound sphere circled the earth, Sputnik’s beeps, 

which people could hear on most home radios, appeared to dramatize Soviet 

technological expertise and military power. appearances, of course, comprised 

a significant part of foreign policy calculations during the Cold War era, as 

capitalist and communist worlds vied for international prestige and waged a 

global contest over hearts and minds in developing nations.11 

the war of appearances turned even worse for americans. On November 

3, 1957, the fortieth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, Moscow launched 

a second Sputnik. Weighing more than 1000 pounds, this satellite carried 

scientific instruments and temporary life-support equipment for a dog named 

laika, the first mammal to orbit earth. In early december, the U.S. answer to 

Soviet missilery, a Vanguard tV-3 rocket, lifted a full four feet off its Florida 

launch pad before toppling back to earth. In response to the Sputniks, media 

wags quipped, the U.S. offered “Flopnik” and “Stayputnik.” Soviet leader 

Nikita Khrushchev, recognizing his opportunity, gleefully ridiculed U.S. 

missile capability. 

the New York Times saw the United States as entering a “race for survival” 

against the U.S.S.r., and the democratic Speaker of the house, John McCormick 

of Massachusetts, claimed that the country faced “virtual extinction” if it failed 

to achieve dominance of outer space. Senator John F. Kennedy also endorsed a 

crash program to advance U.S. capabilities in space. and lyndon B. Johnson, the 

democratic majority leader in the Senate and head of the defense preparedness 

Subcommittee, judged Sputnik to be a disaster comparable to pearl harbor. 

he opened hearings into why the Soviets had beaten the United States into 

9.	 david Callahan and Fred I. greenstein, “the reluctant racer: eisenhower and U.S. Space 

policy,” in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, eds. roger d. launius and howard 

e. McCurdy (Urbana, Il: University of Illinois press, 1997). divine, The Sputnik Challenge also 

emphasizes eisenhower’s reluctance to join an expensive space race. 

10. McCurdy, Space, pp. 62-63; divine, The Sputnik Challenge, pp. 74-78. 

11. Important works on the space race, in addition to those already cited, include rip Bulkeley, The 

Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy:A Critique of the Historiography (Bloomington, 

IN: Indiana University press, 1991), alan J. levine, The Missile and Space Race (Westport, Ct: 

praeger, 1994), Matthew Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Hidden Rivalries that Ignited 

the Space Age (New York, NY:times Books, 2007),and Von hardesty, Epic Rivalry:The Inside Story 

of the Soviet and American Space Race (New York, NY: National geographic, 2007). 
 

162 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

space.12 Time made Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev its “Man of the Year,” and 

its editors wrote that “the U.S. had been challenged and bested.”13 

as “space race” and “crisis” became the dominant media frames of the 

Sputnik moment, eisenhower recognized that his assurances, even if secretly 

informed by surveillance photographs and knowledge of america’s own 

reconnaissance and military satellite programs, offered insufficient response. 

the publicity value of U.S. rockets blasting from launch pads, of american 

satellites circling earth, and of homegrown adventurers cruising outer space 

was inescapable. eisenhower endorsed a speeded-up space program and 

supported the creation in July 1958 of NaSa. the president, in effect, entered 

a seven-person team, the Mercury astronauts, into the manned-flight event of 

the space race. NaSa and manned spaceflight—featuring astronauts with “the 

right stuff”—became the public focus of the space race.14 

the establishment of NaSa placed the human piloted space program 

in the spotlight and under civilian control, but the outcry over Sputnik also 

strengthened the military’s case for stepped up offensive and defensive systems. 

less visible to the public than NaSa, the Strategic air Command (SaC) 

successfully promoted a great acceleration in the ballistic-missile arms race. and 

deploying military reconnaissance satellites took on greater urgency. Moreover, 

spending increased for many other unmanned satellites that specialized in 

weather, communications, and scientific investigations.15 Strong disagreements 

over the proper emphasis of space spending (scientific vs. military; manned vs. 

unmanned) persisted. Still, the Sputnik moment of 1957 intensified both the 

civilian and military aspects of superpower competition in space. 

the responses to the two Sputniks reverberated far beyond bankrolling 

programs for space exploration. Who could run such programs? Were the 

american schools failing to produce the scientists and engineers of the future? 

a great fever of education reform gripped post-Sputnik america. In September 

1958, Congress passed the National defense education act, which authorized 

the allocation of one billion dollars over seven years to develop “those skills 

essential to the national defense.” eisenhower had earlier opposed the principle 

12. divine, The Sputnik Challenge, pp. 62-65. Some prominent scientists broke with the eisenhower 

administration by seizing on the Sputnik crisis to argue for increased federal spending on 

scientific research. See allan a. Needell, Science, Cold War, and the American State (australia: 

harwood academic publishers, 2000), p. 148. 

13. McCurdy, Space, pp. 75-76; Time, January 6, 1958. 

14. linda t. Krug, Presidential Perspectives on Space Exploration: Guiding Metaphors from Eisenhower to 

Bush (Westport, Ct: praeger, 1991), pp. 23-42 examines the metaphor of a space race. For a 

compact overview, annotated bibliography, and set of documents on the U.S. space program 

generally, see roger d. launius, ed., Frontiers of Space Exploration (Westport, Ct: greenwood 

press, 1998). 

15. Crouch, 	Aiming for the Stars, pp. 148-166; divine, The Sputnik Challenge, pp. 34-42, 69, 

84-85, 110-127. 
Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 163 

of federal aid to education, but he reluctantly bowed to space-race clamor and 

backed this new extension of governmental funding.16 

even so, eisenhower’s sense of caution distanced him from the strident space 

race rhetoric adopted by future presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—all 

already maneuvering to succeed him. after hearing the news in early 1958 that the 

United States had finally orbited its own satellite, eisenhower characteristically 

advised his press team not to “make too great a hullabaloo” of the event. 

John Kennedy had few reservations about “hullabaloo.” he shaped his 

presidential campaign of 1960 around a critique of national complacency. 

eisenhower was by now an aging figure whose stroke that occurred just seven 

weeks after Sputnik’s launch attracted much media attention. By contrast, 

Kennedy offered youth and vigor (one of his favorite words). he warned against 

a supposed “missile gap” vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and he portrayed the presumed gap in space technology as a visible sign of the Cold War challenge facing the United States. 

Once in the White house, Kennedy drew effectively on the themes already 

well established in astrofuturist writings and the pervasive space race rhetoric. On 

april 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri gagarin became the first human into space. 

NaSa followed up by rushing alan Shepard into his five minute ride in space. 

the popular media went wild over america’s achievement and its new astronaut 

hero. Building on the excitement, Kennedy’s famous message to Congress on 

May 25, 1961, set the goal “before this decade is out, of landing a man on 

the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.” On September 12, 1962, 

a presidential address at rice University, given during a trip to tour NaSa 

facilities, elaborated the rationale for his lunar objective. Space was a “new 

frontier,” a “new sea” in the next great age of discovery. the conquest of space, 

a historic and strategic imperative, would challenge americans to show their 

greatness and would signal national prestige and global leadership. Invoking 

the competition of the space race, the speech nevertheless transcended the 

Cold War by emphasizing a romantic and visionary national quest. It stressed 

how practical and technological greatness could mix with the noblest goals 

of human aspiration. It provided a chronology of urgency: “We meet in an 

hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both 

knowledge and ignorance.”17 

16. Barbara Barksdale Clowes, Brainpower for the Cold War:The Sputnik Crisis and National Defense 

Education Act of 1958 (Westport, Ct: greenwood press, 1981); John a. douglass, “a Certain 

Future: Sputnik, american higher education, and the Survival of a Nation,” in Reconsidering 

Sputnik: Forty Years since the Soviet Satellite, ed. roger d. launius, et al., (amsterdam: harwood, 

2000), pp. 327-362; Juan C. lucena, Defending the Nation: U.S. Policymaking to Create Scientists and 

Engineers from Sputnik to the “War Against Terrorism,” (lanham, Md: University press of america, 

2005), pp. 29-53; divine, The Sputnik Challenge, pp. 89-93. 

17. John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” May 25, 

1961, at John F. Kennedy Moon Speech, http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm (accessed
164 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

as in so much of his political rhetoric, Kennedy appealed to (and helped 

construct) notions of “manly” virtues: risk, adventure, difficulty, competition. 

he decried opponents as those who wanted “to rest, to wait.” he constituted 

space travel within an inevitable trajectory of america’s historic mission to 

move forward, to rise to challenges, to expand.18 JFK’s exhortations to greatness 

in individual character and in national purpose appear to have motivated many 

americans on a personal level as well as a national one. “a lot of people worked 

day and night” on NaSa projects, observed one aerospace executive. “We 

were all swept up in it.”19 

John Kennedy’s inspirational phrase that americans would “pay any price” 

in their struggle against communism applied quite literally to the early space 

race. From 1961 to 1963, the NaSa budget soared from 1.7 billion to 3.8 

billion to 5.7 billion; funding for NaSa surged to make its budget the fourth 

largest among all government agencies. at the height of the apollo program, 

NaSa and its contractors employed 430,000 people.20 

When Senator William proxmire (d-WI), a well-known budget hawk, 

was asked about the huge expenditures for NaSa, he replied that government 

revenues were increasing because of economic growth and “there was a feeling 

that we wanted to maintain those revenues and not cut taxes. It was argued 

what we should do, in order not to slow the economy by running surpluses, 

was give a substantial amount back through revenue sharing. therefore, there 

was funding available.”21 Kennedy, of course, also sponsored a tax cut, pleasing 

business both by tax-cutting and by offering new contracting opportunities 

from government-financed projects. In the economic thinking of the postwar 

years, such governmental expenditures would stimulate greater levels of 

growth that would, in turn, promote still higher levels of government revenue. 

September 28, 2007). For background, see John M. logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: 

Project Apollo and the National Interest (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1970) and gretchen J. Van 

dyke, “Sputnik: a political Symbol and tool in 1960 Campaign politics,” in Reconsidering 

Sputnik, eds. launius, et al., pp. 363-400. 

18. John W. Jordan,“Kennedy’s romantic Moon and Its rhetorical legacy for Space exploration,” 

Rhetoric and Public Affairs,6 no.2 (2003):209-231.Krug, Presidential Perspectives on Space Exploration, 

pp. 30-42 and James lee Kauffman, Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media, and Funding for Project 

Apollo, 1961-1963 (tuscaloosa, al: University of alabama press, 1994) examine Kennedy’s 

metaphors for space exploration. 

19. Quoted in Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, p. 203. 

20.house Committee on Science and technology,Toward the Endless Frontier:History of the Committee 

on Science and Technology (Washington, dC: government printing Office, 1980), pp.171-172 on 

budget. Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, p. 203 on employees. James r. hansen, The Spaceflight 

Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center From Sputnik to Apollo (Washington, dC: NaSa, 

1995) provides a rich history of the technological and organizational challenges of spaceflight by 

focusing on one of NaSa’s space centers. 

21. Quoted in Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, p. 203 from Wayne Biddle,“a great New enterprise,” Air 

and Space Smithsonian 4 no. 7 (June/July, 1989): 32-33. 
Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 165 

representative Olin “tiger” teague (d-tX) proclaimed in 1963 that space 

spending “started the blood coursing a little more fervently through the 

arteries of our economy.” It would, teague predicted, spark “a new industrial 

revolution.”22 

Space Keynsianism thus joined military Keynsianism as a justification for 

pumping governmental spending into the economy and, thereby, besting the 

Soviets in both economic growth and technological prowess. the space race 

also introduced a new competitive element into the strategy of containment. 

as the Soviet leaders placed a high priority on winning the race to the Moon, 

their underdeveloped and increasingly stressed economy struggled to match 

america’s lavish expenditures. the space race appeared to fulfill the hopes of 

democrats that enlarged government spending would simultaneously bring 

benefits to their party, stimulate prosperity while returning revenue to the 

treasury in the form of a growing tax base, and help win the Cold War by 

weakening the Soviet economy. 

the excitement and the rapidly mounting appropriations for the space 

race, however, did not last. the chastening effect of the Cuban Missile Crisis 

of October 1961 spawned a series of accommodations in both the U.S. and 

Soviet governments. the Kennedy presidency had demonstrated that Cold 

War competition could have its rhetorical thrills, but it also risked unspeakable 

dangers. With the Soviet pullback in the Missile Crisis, the superpowers’ highpitched competitions abated somewhat. Moreover, after celebrating the flights of 

alan Shepard (1961) and John glenn (1962), and witnessing the other Mercury 

and gemini missions of the early and mid-1960s, few americans continued to 

maintain that the United States seriously lagged the Soviet Union. the Sputnik 

moment was quickly passing. 

drawing on the political skills of NaSa administrator James e. Webb, 

president lyndon Johnson managed to continue Kennedy’s legacy by procuring 

for NaSa a nearly blank check from Congress for awhile longer. gradually, 

however, the public and their representatives tired of the costs and grew more 

confident about america’s ultimate successes in space. Moreover, the great 

Society and the War in Vietnam vied with space programs over spending 

priorities, and the country spiraled into a paroxysm of dissent over national 

direction. as Kennedy’s soaring political rhetoric about “paying any price” to 

best Soviet communism slowly came down to earth, other concerns challenged 

the imperatives of the space race. 

republican budget-cutters had sheaved their blades in the shadow of the 

Sputnik moment, but they gradually grew bolder in attacking governmental 

spending and taxation. as early as 1962, representative h. r. gross (r-Ia) 

voted for Kennedy’s request for a greatly enlarged NaSa appropriation while 

22. Quoted in Kauffman, Selling Outer Space, pp. 125-126. 
166 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

also asking pointed questions about why so much money was going to the 

Southern States and California, and why space contractors were paying their 

executives such high salaries. “It would be my hope that if and when we do get 

to the Moon,” he remarked, “we will find a gold mine up there, because we will 

certainly need it.”23 In early 1963, former president eisenhower sent a letter of 

protest, printed in the Congressional Record in april: “I have never believed that a 

spectacular dash to the Moon, vastly deepening our debt, is worth the added tax 

burden it will eventually impose upon our citizens . . . . having made this into 

a crash program, we are unavoidably wasting enormous sums.”24 the Saturday 

Evening Post in September 14, 1963, proclaimed that “the space program stands 

accused today as a monstrous boondoggle.”25 amitai etzioni summarized much 

of the developing critique in a book called The Moon-Doggle (1964).26 

Objections also emerged from those opposed to NaSa’s emphasis on 

human piloted spaceflights. Some scientists and their allies advocated less costly 

and potentially more scientifically valuable robotic exploration. Others, such as 

representative donald rumsfeld (r-Il), stressed that emphasis should be placed 

on the military aspects of space—the control of the space closer to earth—and 

less on NaSa’s manned explorations into far space. Such views grew out of, and 

also fed, the rivalry between the military services and NaSa. 

In addition, some politicians, scientists, and businesses began to question 

the regional tilt of NaSa installations. In 1959, NaSa selected Cape Canaveral, 

Florida, as the site to train the first group of astronauts. It opened as NaSa’s 

launch Operations Center in 1962 and was renamed for Kennedy just after his 

death in 1963. Observers of Johnson’s legislative career noted that an expanded 

space effort brought texas lucrative government contracts. Complementing the 

center at Cape Canaveral, the Johnson Space Center (JSC), established in texas 

in 1961, assumed the lead in human space exploration. the regional tilt of space 

spending, pouring into the newly expanding “sunbelt,” became controversial 

because of its evident political ramifications.27 

Influenced by the various doubts and by changing priorities, Congress 

began trying to reduce NaSa budget requests after 1963. the space race 

remained a useful frame that spaceflight promoters could call on, but its 

metaphorical power weakened, and it no longer connoted an unchallenged 

agenda or an open-ended flow of appropriations. 

23. house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier, p. 124. 

24. Ibid, p. 171. 

25. Kauffman, Selling Outer Space, pp. 116-125 summarizes the critics. [quote, p. 53]. 

26. amitai etzioni, The Moon-Doggle (garden City, NY: doubleday, 1964). 

27. house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier, pp.185-190 discusses 

political maneuvers behind the positioning of NaSa sites and some of the controversy. 
Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 167 

*** 

the Sputnik moment of 1957 had telescoped fear and mobilized resources 

in response to a seemingly imminent enemy threat. Space exploration had 

been underway before Sputnik, of course, and had been driven by many 

factors: the nationalism inspired by World War II; frontier nostalgia for new 

lands to discover; public relations campaigns by scientists such as von Braun, 

entertainment moguls such as disney, corporations interested in aerospace, 

and astrofuturist writers. But the Cold War’s international rivalry shaped 

its character and accelerated its tempo into a space race. the space race was 

exhilarating because it seemed dangerous and character-defining. Boring things 

such as careful deliberation, cost-consciousness, and safety could be effaced 

as exciting “new frontiers” of risk and daring beckoned. advocates of Space 

Keyesianism saw political and economic advantages—at least until arguments 

about “big government” and “Moon-doggles” gained traction. a remarkable 

conjuncture of popular culture, pressure from techno-scientific elites, and 

political imperatives may have initially produced the space race, but, over time, 

they also sparked contention over priorities. 

after america’s lunar landing in 1969, the space race abated and provoked 

neither the intense fear nor the vaunted inspiration of a decade earlier. But the 

race had made a lasting imprint. It helped deeply embed a rhetoric of peril 

into the nation’s foreign policy and the practices of large-scale governmental 

contracting into the nation’s political economy. 

2. the MedIa age: SpaCe SpeCtaCUlarItY 

the postwar Media age fed the dynamics of the space race. New media 

forms—visible in photography, film, and television—helped project the beauties, 

mysteries, and dangers of space. Space was a star of this historical moment in 

which media spectacularity still seemed really spectacular. 

the mass media of the era provided an ideal milieu for coverage of 

the Space age, a term that suddenly circulated everywhere. a few weekly 

magazines and news services dominated the print media, and photography and 

television images—sometimes live—played a growing role in news delivery. 

It could be argued that Sputnik prompted little initial popular uproar until 

techno-scientific elites and politicians teamed with these influential media 

outlets to frame the event as a Cold War crisis.28 the space race, after all, 

provided the attractions of a rich storyline punctuated by stunning images. the 

initial sensationalized sense of crisis flowed into the breathless score-keeping of 

28. For example, amitai etzioni, “Comments,” in The First 25 Years in Space, ed. allan a. Needell 

(Washington, dC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1983), pp. 33-36. 
168 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

a race and finally found triumphant resolution in the nationalistic pageants that 

celebrated the dangers and successes of america’s astronauts.29 

NaSa’s public affairs officers provided regular interaction with the 

media and carefully nurtured certain images and narratives. they controlled 

the media’s access to astronauts and coached its people on making public 

appearances, regularly drawing up talking points for such occasions. they 

sponsored high-profile events that would attract media and developed close ties 

with congressional supporters. One study has concluded that NaSa shaped its 

messages around the themes of nationalism (national pride, prestige, strength, 

and security), romanticism (heroism, individualism, glamour, frontier heritage), 

and pragmatism (economic, educational, scientific returns on investment). In its 

sophisticated public relations techniques and its central messages, NaSa both 

exemplified and helped shape the new media strategies of the Space age.30 

NaSa crafted an image that united individual heroism with a competence 

arising from teamwork. Certainly there were plenty of failures, but the successes, 

especially of alan Shepard in May 1961 and of John glenn in February 1962, 

became spectacular national dramas that celebrated both individual bravery 

and group accomplishment. Both the intangibles of strong character and the 

practicalities of seemingly flawless engineering were on display. the media 

coverage of space in the early 1960s was all in the superlative, and when articles 

critical of the costs of manned flight began to appear after late 1963, NaSa 

redoubled its efforts to put out positive news.31 

astrofuturists had attracted a devoted but limited following in the mid1950s, but by the early 1960s the popularity of space themes had expanded 

into a broad-based cultural obsession. Kennedy’s telegenic presence, exhorting 

americans to reach the Moon, fused together politics and media culture and 

helped place the Space age at the center of american life. reported UFO 

sightings jumped sharply, and the new awareness of space permeated all kinds 

of cultural discussions and representational forms.32 

Life magazine, the famously image-laden staple of american living rooms, 

lavished attention on space themes and developed an especially close relationship 

29. dickson, Sputnik, pp. 22-27, summarizes press reaction based on a collection of press clippings at 

the NaSa history Office in Washington, dC, and also summarizes public opinion polls.Writer 

for Newsweek, edwin diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Space Age (garden City, NY: doubleday, 

1964) discusses the media’s manipulative coverage. Jay Barbree, “Live from Cape Canaveral”: 

Covering the Space Race from Sputnik to Today (New York, NY: Collins, 2007) presents another 

firsthand account from a reporter. 

30. Kauffman, Selling Outer Space; Byrnes, Politics and Space. 

31. McCurdy, Space, pp. 89-92; Kauffman, Selling Outer Space, pp. 50-66. 

32. Carl Sagan and thornton page, eds., UFOs: A Scientific Debate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 

press,1972),and Curtis peebles,Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (Washington, 

dC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1994) examine the debate over visits by extraterrestrials. See 

also McCurdy, Space, p. 74, and dickson, Sputnik, pp.164-167. 
 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 169 

with NaSa. a weekly publication that surveyed worldwide events through 

glossy pictorial features, Life heralded the space race. Normally supportive of 

eisenhower, Life had greeted Sputnik with a warning that it seemed time for his 

administration to get “panicky.” It later paid the Mercury-7 astronauts the thenhefty sum of $500,000 for exclusive rights to their life stories. although Ohio’s 

John glenn emerged as the star of the astronaut contingent, Life highlighted 

the entire Mercury team’s small-town, protestant backgrounds and photogenic 

families. One story featured the “Seven Brave Women behind the astronauts.” 

Life’s competitors in middle class living rooms, such as Collier’s, the Saturday 

Evening Post, and Look, followed suit as NaSa and the press groomed the image 

of the astronauts as models of strength, honesty, and strong family values. to 

help wage an ultimately losing battle against the moving images carried on tV, 

Life and the other magazines faithfully monitored, through still pictures, the 

operations and personnel of the Moon-landing competition.33 

television inexorably became the medium-of-record for the space race. 

Covering the potentially lethal spectacle of propelling all-american astronautheroes into space seemed a sure-fire ratings booster and a money-maker for the 

television industry. Space travel perfectly suited tV. heroic dramas of triumph 

and tragedy could attract and hold viewers, and television generated a voracious 

demand for ever-more-sensationalized stories. Journalists of the new tV age 

who wedded themselves to the space program saw their careers flourish. Still 

smarting from being overshadowed by NBC’s Chet huntley-david Brinkley 

duo during the 1956 political conventions, CBS tV’s star journalist Walter 

Cronkite made outer space his personal beat. While seven young pilots, including 

John glenn and Neal armstrong, retrained to be astronauts, this veteran war 

correspondent retrofitted himself as tV’s premier space journalist. displaying 

his grasp of the technical details of satellite-rocketry and of NaSa’s jargon, 

Cronkite made his mark covering John glenn’s flight in 1962 and continued 

to become almost the quasi official voice of the apollo program. honing his 

image as the “eighth astronaut,” Cronkite reassured tV viewers that the United 

States would emerge as the ultimate victor in the space race.34 By the mid-1960s, 

Cronkite had become known as “the most trusted man in america.” 

as part of the Cold War’s competition of appearances, NaSa became adept 

at promoting the astronauts as international, as well as national, celebrities. the 

giantstep-apollo 11 presidential goodwill tour in 1969, for example, touted 

the willingness of the United States to share its space knowledge with other 

nations and carried the apollo 11 astronauts and their wives to 24 countries and 

27 cities in 45 days. Indeed, especially from 1969 on, U.S. accomplishments 

in the space race often provided a public relations cover or counterweight to 

33. McCurdy, Space, pp. 89-93. 

34. CBS News, 10:56:20 PM EDT, 7/20/69:The Historic Conquest of the Moon as Reported to the 

American People (New York, NY: CBS, 1970) reproduces reporting on the apollo 11 mission. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

170 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

the generally negative news from Vietnam. In april 1969, president richard 

Nixon’s participation in a celebration for the apollo 13 astronauts in hawaii 

quite literally offered public cover for a secret high-level war meeting about 

stepping up pressure in Cambodia.35 Space accomplishments projected the 

United States as cooperative, technologically superior, and successful in this 

era when news from Southeast asia often marked the country as high-handed, 

technologically threatening, and wedded to a failed policy. 

If the highly visual media helped promote Space age projects, so the new 

technologies looped back to accelerate transformation in the media environment. 

In 1962, Congress created the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), 

a public-private venture to manage an international system, Intelsat. Comsat 

paid NaSa a fee for use of rocket and launch facilities, and within five years 

communication satellites had become a commercial success. In august 1964, 

a satellite telecast the opening ceremonies of the Olympic games in tokyo. 

By 1969, with sixty countries belonging to Intelsat, geosynchronous satellites 

served the pacific, atlantic, and Indian Oceans.36 live space spectaculars, which 

the United States displayed but the Soviet Union concealed, could now go 

global—in real time. 

NaSa worked especially closely with representative Olin teague, 

who became the space program’s primary rainmaker and one of its most 

effective publicists. a democratic representative from texas, the chair of the 

Manned Space Flight Subcommittee, and one of Congress’s most decorated 

combat veterans, teague was in charge of convincing members of Congress 

to lavish funding on the space program. he kept them aware of how much 

space spending was going into their districts; brought models of spacecraft 

and rocketry to the house floor; and stressed the spinoffs of space spending 

for medicine, computerization, and fabrication of various kinds. like other 

space race supporters, he emphasized that putting a man on the Moon was 

not an end in itself. the real benefit from the program would be to push the 

nation forward “in many important fields: science, engineering industrial 

development, design, mathematics, biology—the whole spectrum of scientific 

and technological accomplishment.”37 the media enthusiastically embraced 

this teague/NaSa message, which helped translate space accomplishments 

into the everyday realm of audience interest. 

35. robert dallek, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (New York, NY: harper Collins, 2007), pp. 

191-192. 

36. Wernher von Braun and Frederick I. Ordway, III, History of Rocketry and Space Travel (Chicago, 

Il: J. g. Ferguson publishing, 1966), p. 186. hugh r. Slotten, “Satellite Communications, 

globalization, and the Cold War,” Technology and Culture 43 no. 2 (2002): 315-350 provides a 

basic history and cites the relevant literature on this issue. heather e. hudson, Communications 

Satellites:Their Development and Impact (New York, NY: Free press, 1990) is a thorough history. 

37. house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier, pp. 163-172 [quote 

p. 172]. 
 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 171 

In cooperation with NaSa, the Science Committee in the house of 

representatives, beginning in 1960, published “the practical Values of Space 

exploration,” a series of frequently updated studies that detailed productive 

new spinoffs (a NaSa-coined word) from the space program. a few of the 

most celebrated included miniaturized electronics, spray-on foam insulation, 

microwaves, freeze-dried dinners, and teflon. Magazines often featured 

these down-to-earth bonuses from the space program, and perhaps left the 

misleading impression that robust consumer innovation ultimately depended 

on governmental expenditures in space.38 

NaSa’s Office of public affairs also used film to publicize NaSa activities, 

taking advantage of NaSa’s advanced satellite imagery from research facilities 

and space flight centers around the country. Some of the most widely viewed 

titles from the first two Space age decades included The John Glenn Story (1963), 

a film biography; Assignment Shoot the Moon (1967); America in Space—the First 

Decade (1968), a history of NaSa; The Eagle Has Landed (1969), on the manned 

lunar landing; Who’s Out There? (1975), on the possibility of extraterrestrial 

life; and Planet Mars (1979). these films (some award-winning for their cinema 

graphic technique), in addition to rich photographic collections, provided 

then, and preserve now, a stirring visual record of space program history. the 

National archives currently holds 250 “headquarters Films” made between 

1962 and 1981.39 

hollywood-produced films also found a congenial partner in NaSa. 

Movies filmed at the space centers included Apollo 13, Contact, Space Cowboys, 

Armageddon, The Right Stuff, the 12-part hBO series From Earth to the Moon, and 

a variety of other tV special productions. 

the visitors’ centers at the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers likewise 

worked with the media. teague had pushed NaSa to construct visitors’ centers, 

providing money for them in the federal budget. he argued that public support 

was essential to sustaining NaSa’s appropriations, and he understood the 

tourist potential of space exploration. the centers quickly proved to be popular 

destinations, with the one at the Kennedy Center topping one million visitors 

in 1969.40 the centers also hosted many foreign visitors and dignitaries, thereby 

serving the Cold War purpose of exemplifying the United States as a country of 

great prosperity, amazing technological achievement, and unparalleled power over 

heavens and earth. In 1966, Congress authorized construction of the National 

air and Space Museum, which became one of the most popular destinations on 

the National Mall and sponsored programs that attracted media attention. 

38. house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier,“ p. 173; Mark e. 

Byrnes, Politics and Space: Image Making by NASA (Westport, Ct: praeger, 1994), p. 101. 

39. NaSa	 history of Space Flight Motion pictures, http://video.google.com/nara.html (accessed 

September 15, 2007). 

40. house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier, pp. 177-178. 
 

 

 

 

 

172 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

*** 

a clear synergy developed between the space program and the highly 

competitive world of image-based media. NaSa projected itself to be an agency 

involved in science and technology, but it proved also to be skilled at imagemaking and public relations. Sensational stories generated by human-piloted 

flights meant publicity for NaSa, larger audiences for the media networks, and 

positive projections of america’s power in the Cold War world. Many of the 

themes that had structured both popular science fiction and popular western 

tales echoed in the Media age’s presentation of the space race: danger, heroism, 

competition, suspense, and problems overcome through ingenuity. Yet the 

dramas that played out at Cape Canaveral and houston, as exciting as fiction, 

had the added attraction of being “real.” the spectacularity of the space race 

helped sustain the older print-pictorial media, pioneered a compelling early 

version of “reality tV,” and proved attractive to filmmakers and space center 

visitors. and this fast-changing and competitive media environment, in turn, 

boosted the visual spectacularity of the Space age. 

3. the teChNetrONIC age: teChNOCraCY 

aNd SpaCeShIp earth 

the complexity of research and development in the Space age raised 

moral and practical questions. how might new technologies change life and 

politics? how might people manage the interrelated systems that comprised 

the planet earth within its solar system? Issues about technology and global 

management were not new to the Space age, but the rapidity of scientific and 

technological change made them seem more urgent. Moreover, the penetration 

of space, by helping to focus attention on earth’s future, provided new terrain 

for reimagining age-old concerns about the ultimate fate of humans and their 

planet. “technocracy” and “Spaceship earth” became key words in Space ageera discussions. 

although a technocracy Movement, which envisioned greater prosperity 

and social progress through the systematic application of technical expertise, 

had flourished during the 1930s, the word “technocracy” became a muchdiscussed concept of the Space age.41 techno-scientific and governmental 

elites seemed fused together as never before, as NaSa’s budgets soared and 

41. On the pre-World War II technocracy movement, see henry elsner, Jr., The Technocrats: Prophets 

of Automation (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University press, 1967);William e. akin, Technocracy and 

the American Dream:The Technocrat Movement, 1900-1941 (Berkeley, Ca: University of California 

press, 1977); and howard p. Segal,“the technological Utopians,” in Imagining Tomorrow: History, 

Technology, and the American Future, ed. Joseph J. Corn (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1986), pp. 

119-136. 
 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 173 

government embraced the funding for research and development (r&d). panels 

of experts, paid through government grants, became a regular feature of defense 

and space planning.42 Steering the enormous space bureaucracy and its complex 

contracting processes even spawned a new management style called “systems 

engineering.” Just after Sputnik’s launch, Newsweek pointed out a “central fact” 

that had to be faced: “as a scientific and engineering power, the Soviet Union 

has shown its mastery. the U.S. may have more cars and washing machines 

and toasters, but in terms of the stuff with which wars are won and ideologies 

imposed, the nation” now had a frightful opponent.43 But what might be the 

impact of the fusion between government and technical/scientific expertise in 

creating this stuff? Could technocracy, which the Soviet system seemed able 

simply to impose, be reconciled with democracy? 

In films, comics, and literature of the pre-Sputnik 1950s, space travel had 

provided an ideal venue for elaborating various utopian and dystopian visions 

of a technological future directed by techno-scientific and political elites. Films 

such as Destination Moon presented a positive view, but others, such as Rocketship 

XM, predicted that technology (and the life in space that it sustained) would 

ultimately fail, bringing death and destruction as the primary outcome.44 

the same year that Sputnik prompted calls for building new cadres of space 

scientists and technicians the film The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) presented 

a dark fantasy about a man who, after exposure to radioactivity, became 

gradually smaller and more insignificant until he disappeared entirely. drawing 

on fears of atomic power, the film advanced a thoroughly alarming vision of the 

inexorable prospects of man’s “shrinkage” in an expanding universe, a victim of 

his own technology. (a few years later the Jetsons brought this theme to tV in 

“the little Man,” an episode in which a faulty compression technique reduces 

george Jetson to six inches tall.) the theme of human insignificance resulting 

from an almost god-like technology and an awareness of earth’s smallness in a 

vast cosmos ran through Space age culture. 

It was within this broad debate over technocracy, of course, that NaSa’s 

own public affairs offices weighed in. By emphasizing group competence and 

the good individual character of those in the space program, NaSa depicted 

science and technology as being under control and debunked popular worries 

of shrinking men and overbearing machines. Moreover, NaSa’s stress on the 

innovative products and better living arising from space research aimed to 

diffuse the darker fears of technology’s impact. 

42. See, for example,ann Finkbeiner, The Jasons:The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite (New York, 

NY: penguin Books, 2006). 

43. Quoted in lucena, Defending the Nation, p. 29. 

44. Frederick I. Ordway, III, and randy leiberman, eds., Blueprint for Space: From Science Fiction to 

Science Fact (Washington dC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1992) deals with the popular culture 

of spaceflight. 
 

174 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

popular culture’s consideration of technological themes had counterparts 

in political philosophy and religion, in literature and history. Major works 

contributed thoughtful, yet highly diverse, elaborations of the cautions and 

promises of the Space age. lewis Mumford’s book The Pentagon of Power, for 

example, disparaged colonization of space as a waste of resources and, like 

the building atomic weapons, a pathological use of technology. Zbigniew 

Bzrezinski’s book Between Two Ages examined the dawn of the “technetronic 

age,” a new era that would reorient the customary relationships of the industrial 

age and bring inevitable dislocations and challenges. One of the most popular 

science writers of the Space age, Carl Sagan, extolled space exploration but at 

the same time warned that the siren song of “sweet” science and engineering 

projects could also turn sinister if pursued with single-mindedness. these 

works, and so many others, prompted broad consideration of the new role that 

science and technology assumed in the Space age.45 

In religious thought, the “Is god dead?” controversy contained subtexts 

about the spiritual meanings of the Space age. Was the total secularization of 

the modern world bringing about the death of god “in our time, in our history, 

in our existence?” the exaltation of science and rationality, many theologians 

agreed, was helping to fuel a reexamination of the doctrine of god, which in 

such a secular world stood as an almost empty and irrelevant idol. Still, might the 

mysteries and infinity of the cosmos provide proof of a divine being with creative 

powers of unfathomable magnitude and splendor? appearing in theological 

treatises, in pulpits of every faith, and even on a highly controversial cover of 

Time, the “death of god” controversy laced the Space age with momentous 

philosophical questions about faith and its connection to social action.46 

Many of the most memorable portrayals of the Space age similarly centered 

on the consequences of technology and technocracy. Stanley Kubrick’s film 

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)—developed along with a novel by arthur C. 

Clarke that was based on some of Clarke’s earlier stories—presented the wonders 

of space, the potential hazards of technology, and the inevitability of humans’ 

pursuit of new techniques and new modes of being. Norman Mailer in Of a Fire 

on the Moon (1970), an account of the apollo 11 flight, stated “that he hardly 

knew whether the Space program was the noblest expression of the twentieth 

Century or the quintessential statement of our fundamental insanity.”47 In 1985, 

45. Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 54-56; lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: The Pentagon of 

Power (New York, NY: harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1964); Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between 

Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era (New York, NY: Viking press, 1970); Carl 

Sagan, The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective (garden City, NY: anchor press, 

1973), and ray Bradbury, arthur C. Clarke, Bruce C. Murray, and Carl Sagan, Mars and the 

Mind of Man (New York, NY: harper and row, 1973). 

46. “the ‘god Is dead’ Movement,” Time, (October 22, 1965); cover photo, Time, (april 8, 1966). 

47. Norman Mailer, Of A Fire on the Moon (New York, NY: little Brown, 1969), p. 15. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 175 

Walter a. Mcdougall’s prize-winning history of the Space age examined the 

dilemmas raised by the nation’s expensive and expansive networks of scientific 

and technological expertise. the space program, he argued, led americans 

to accept a greater concentration of governmental power and the enlistment 

of technological change for state purposes. Mcdougall ended with a plea to 

neither worship nor hate technology; to neither expect utopia nor fear distopia. 48 

In Kubrik’s, Mailer’s, and Mcdougall’s very different kinds of representations 

that occurred years apart, humans had no choice but to continue to embrace 

technology and confront its challenges. 

like “technocracy,” the phrase “Spaceship earth” echoed in a broad 

range of cultural products during the Space age. In 1963, Buckminster Fuller 

published Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth; in 1966 Kenneth Boulding wrote 

Human Values on the Spaceship Earth. Both aimed to map a new consciousness 

for a sustainable environment that would abandon reliance on fossil fuels and 

develop sources of renewable energy. along with so many other works of 

the era, they sought to unite science, engineering, humanities, and art in an 

integrated effort to focus upon ameliorating human problems. Some connected 

the current fears of overpopulation and the “population bomb” with the 

prospects of space colonization.49 

the apollo crews in 1968 and 1969 captured from outer space the now 

famous images of a Spaceship earth. perhaps the best known photo, called 

“earthrise,” showed earth ascending over the Moon. Such visions of a whole 

earth, drifting in space, became among the age’s most meaningful icons. On 

the front page of the New York Times, poet archibald Macleish wrote that these 

images might transform human consciousness. “to see the earth as it truly is, 

small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves 

as riders on the earth together.”50 to many people, especially the young who 

were beginning to call for a counterculture—a new way of living and relating— 

such images signified a global consciousness that might spur transnational and 

global networks of non-governmental organizations (NgO) to work beyond 

48. Walter a. Mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, and Joseph N.tatarewicz, Space Technology and 

Planetary Astronomy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University press, 1990) examine the interaction 

between government and “big science.” 

49. r. Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 

1969); Kenneth Boulding, Human Values on the Spaceship Earth (New York, NY: National Council 

of Churches, 1966).the idea that technocratic skills needed to be wedded to more humanist 

values was a common theme of Space age writers. See, for example, r. Buckminster Fuller, eric 

a.Walker, and James r. Killian, Jr., Approaching the Benign Environment (auburn,al: University 

of alabama press, 1970). Norman Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon explored the tension between 

NaSa’s appeal to nationalism and the countercultural humanism of the 1960s. 

50. archibald Macleish,“a reflection: riders on earth together, Brothers in eternal Cold,” New 

York Times, (december 25, 1968); discussed in Finis dunaway, Natural Visions:The Power of Images 

in American Environmental Reform (Chicago, Il: University of Chicago press, 2005), pp. 207-208. 
 

 

176 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

nation-states. they also, to some, signified a new ecological awareness about 

the interrelatedness of planetary systems and called for greater stewardship of 

the Spaceship earth on which humans live. Steward Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog 

and its famous cover, which came out in 1968, powerfully expressed the goal of 

linking the stewardship of earth to individual empowerment. It opened with 

the words “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” the catalog, a kind 

of Bible for the counterculture including many of those innovators who would 

later magnify Brand’s ideas in creating the Internet, promised a broad access to 

whatever tools might save earth and foster self-improvement. If technology was 

to be the future, it should be a technology that empowered everyone, not just 

technological elites and their political masters.51 

In the early 1980s, the disney Corporation opened an exhibit called 

“Spaceship earth” as the center of its new epcot exhibit in Florida. advised by 

ray Bradbury and presumably inspired by Fuller’s ideas about the advantages 

of geodesic dome architecture, the disney Spaceship reached 18 stories tall. Its 

intricate system of some 11,000 triangles formed cladding that absorbed rainwater 

and channeled it into a lagoon. Upon its opening, “Spaceship earth” presented 

a story of human enlightenment beginning with early cave dwellers and ending 

with a spacecraft launch. disney’s rendition of civilization as a linear arc of 

progress flattened the complexities of many of the era’s other representations of 

earth as a spaceship, but it surely attracted the largest crowds. 

Images of earth in space raised complex questions about the future role 

of nations and nationalism on a Spaceship earth. Such tensions between nation 

and planet, of course, preceded Sputnik and recalled the astrofuturist visions 

of the pre-Sputnik years. In the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, for 

example, the dangerous combination of atomic power, rocketry, and nationalistic 

competition prompted a visit from a superior civilization from outer space. 

the emissary, Klaatu, issued a warning that unless nations of earth began to 

live peacefully, superior beings would blow up their planet. Nationalism and 

international conflict, this early Space age movie suggested, were obsolete and 

threatened the extraterrestrial order. 

Other science fiction scenarios, especially those from Star Trek, which 

debuted in 1966, played imaginatively with the idea that space exploration might 

provide new configurations of power and authority. the 23rd century “starship,” 

the Enterprise, cruised space to explore rather than to dominate other worlds 

through violence. the creation of gene roddenberry, Star Trek aired for three 

years, after which it went into syndication, developed a global following of loyal 

fans, and ultimately spun off five television series and nearly a dozen movies. In its 

much-quoted introduction, Captain James t. Kirk (William Shatner) presented 

the Enterprise’s purpose in traditional astrofuturist and Kennedyesque terms: “to 

51. andrew g. Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism 

(lawrence, KS: University press of Kansas, 2007). 
 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 177 

explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly 

go where no man has gone before.” the show revolved around thinly veiled Cold 

War themes, as the Federation’s Enterprise dealt with rivalries with the Klingon 

and romulan civilizations. Would new kinds of policing be able to enforce rules 

within a new kind of intergalactic, or internationalist, order? 

the more practical minded turned to forging international space law in 

the real world. development of international norms might create precedents for 

turning space-race competition into Spaceship earth cooperation and reconfigure 

the landscape of the Cold War. the United Nations Committee on the peaceful 

Uses of Outer Space (COpUOS) worked to develop international space law, 

and the U.S. Congress undertook various cooperative initiatives.52 the Outer 

Space treaty of 1967, for example, banned weapons of mass destruction from 

space, demilitarized the Moon and other non-terrestrial bodies, and promised 

peaceful international cooperation in space. In 1975, apollo astronauts and 

Soyuz cosmonauts orchestrated a symbolic handshake in space.53 

In 1969, U.S. astronauts posed for a much-debated iconic image in 

which they planted an american flag on the Moon. they also left behind a 

gold olive leaf and a plaque that stated “We came in peace for all mankind.” 

throughout the Space age, a multitude of such representations persistently 

and unproblematically mixed rhetoric of a national “conquest” of space with 

invocations of peace and cooperation; they embedded calls for national greatness 

within universalistic justifications. the tensions between serving the nation 

and humanity as a whole may have seemed insignificant, indeed even invisible, 

to most americans because such juxtapositions sounded so familiar. a long 

rhetorical tradition avowing america’s unique national mission to and for the 

world, after all, stretched from the puritans through america’s long experience 

of frontier expansionism to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin roosevelt and 

into Kennedy’s New Frontier. In classic american tradition, Space age 

representations both raised and quieted or masked the tensions between serving 

the nation and representing all of humanity. 

another question implied in the concept of Spaceship earth concerned the 

social make-up of its denizens. how, for example, might earth-bound racial 

and gender differences appear when rendered in outer space? Some historians 

have seen science fiction (like early space travel itself) as a rather exclusionary 

52. eilene galloway, “Organizing the United States government for Outer Space, 1957-1958,” in 

Reconsidering Sputnik, ed. launius, et al., pp. 309-325; Joan Johnson-Freese, Changing Patterns of 

International Cooperation in Space (Malabar,Fl:Orbit Books,1990) examines cooperation in space. 

house Committee on Science and technology, Toward the Endless Frontier, pp. 367-450 details 

congressional efforts. 

53. the text of the Outer Space treaty of 1967 may be found at the NaSa history division, http:// 

history.nasa.gov/1967treaty.html (accessed September 15, 2007). 
 

178 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

preserve of white males, but imagined forays into space often provided a forum 

for envisioning and confronting assorted futures. 

Stories about interplanetary space travel often featured encounters with 

alien “others.” as U.S. leaders and experts projected their nation’s power into 

areas of the world that required dealing with the dilemmas of cultural and racial 

differences, imagined encounters with aliens living outside of the planet earth 

could mirror the complexities of addressing the problem of “otherness.” The 

Thing, The Blob, Invaders from Mars, and War of the Worlds, among many others, 

presented aliens as monsters. But Forbidden Planet, one of the most acclaimed films 

in the space genre, went beyond the simplistic formula, probing the monstrous 

ineffectiveness of good intensions and of presumably benevolent interventions. 

the film features a protagonist (Walter pidgeon) who tries to understand the 

alien Krell but, despite his high-minded motives, ultimately fails. 

Moreover, the interrelationships within groups of people on small 

crafts hurtling through space raised issues of gender, race, and class, allowing 

discussions related to the contemporaneous civil rights and feminist movements. 

In the much analyzed Star Trek, for example, the Enterprise has a multiracial 

crew of women and men and aliens (the half-human First Officer Mr. Spock, 

leonard Nimoy) who live and work in a spirit of (mostly) cooperation. the 

program literally took its crew into new territory when it offered audiences 

a highly controversial, if compelled, interracial kiss. Star Trek, of course, 

has attracted an enormous amount of analysis and commentary, and some 

commentators have seen the centrality of white men and the marginality of 

others as a reinforcement of existing hierarchies. deWitt douglas Kilgore, 

however, makes a compelling argument that Star Trek, like other astrofuturist 

imaginings of life in space, invites “speculation about alternatives” and can 

operate as a “liberatory resource” for those who wish to stake a claim in a 

more egalitarian future. astrofuturist narratives, he argues, are multivalent and 

“unusually porous, with consumers regularly seizing the reigns of production.” 

Star Trek both reflected and also scrutinized contemporary issues of gender, 

race, and class by safely projecting them into an imagined future.54 

*** 

In america’s Space age imaginings, the present seemed poised to 

make an unprecedented leap, and the future came in many styles. the terms 

Technocracy and Spaceship Earth, appearing and reappearing in diverse contexts, 

raised seemingly urgent moral and practical questions that revolved around 

three interrelated concerns: the political and moral impact of technocracy; the 

54. Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 28-29. In making this argument he draws effectively on the racial 

politics that surrounded george takei’s and Nichelle Nichols’s participation in the show and an 

analysis of class in homer h. hickam, Jr.’s Rocket Boys and the film October Sky. 
 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 179 

problems of managing the health of the planet; and the national or international 

(or intergalactic?) government of and social relationships in space. Would 

extraterrestrial travel become a terrain for renewal and betterment, or for 

hubris and subsequent failure? Would spacecrafts and space colonies transcend 

or simply transplant the divisions that beset humans on earth? Space exploration 

brought no answers to dilemmas over technology, planetary consciousness, and 

nationalism—versions of which had long preceded spaceflight—but it did refresh 

imaginations and reignite philosophical, religious, and practical controversies. 

4. MId-CeNtUrY MOderNISM: gOOgIe deSIgNS 

aNd “Far OUt” art 

the term Space age, in addition to signifying a Cold War competition, 

a media sensation, and a debate over future political and social structures, 

signified the look called Mid-Century Modernism. Space age design—in 

architecture, signage, decorative arts, and painting—elaborated an aesthetic of 

risk, individualism, and confidence. It emphasized eclecticism, mixing retro 

primitivism with futuristic styles. It juxtaposed calm, planet-shaped curvatures 

with abrupt, spaceship-style thrust. If the science of space penetration suggested 

sleek exactitude, the wonder of the cosmos encouraged unpredictable pastiche.55 

Space age modernism brought spherical and angular motifs into a cacophony of the unexpected. american automobiles sprouted their storied tailfins, 

suggesting rocket propulsion. Manufacturers redesigned children’s playground 

equipment: Space age kids ascended ladders into rockets, played house in 

spaceships, and scrambled around on faux Moon surfaces. toys, coloring books, 

wallpaper, and storybooks adapted space themes. Space mania revolutionized 

the design of household items. Chandeliers resembled space platforms; dinnerware assumed the elliptical shape of a satellite orbit; vases, ashtrays, and 

appliances disguised their functions within new forms and facades. 

French designer andré Courreges launched his Moon girl Collection in 

1964. It featured angular, geometric shapes; space-style hats; short skirts in 

white and silver; and high, shiny-white plastic “go-go” boots. his 1968 Space 

age Collection continued to display simple, stark lines with metallic silver as 

the design color of the age. the look of these “moon fashions” swept through 

the worlds of famous designers and of street faddists. they adorned covers of 

Vogue and percolated into the sew-it-yourself pattern catalogues that set the 

styles on Main Street. 

55. thomas hine, Populuxe (New York, NY: alfred a. Knopf, 1986); george h. Marcus, Design In 

The Fifties:When Everyone Went Modern, (New York, NY: prestel, 1998). For background, see John 

h. lienhard, Inventing Modern: Growing Up with X-rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins (New York, NY: 

Oxford University press, 2003). 
 

 

180 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

New theme parks, especially disneyland, popularized the look of Space 

age modernism as belonging to the future. popular entertainment (and 

education) in america had long been structured around a trajectory from past 

to future: the Buffalo Bill Wild West Shows replayed the popular clichés about 

the transition from barbarism to civilization; the 20th century World’s Fairs 

displayed visions of progress extending from the drudgery of the unenlightened 

past into the pleasures of the technologically driven future. reprising, but 

always improving upon, these culturally embedded narratives, disneyland 

offered two of its Kingdoms as “Frontierland” and “tomorrowland.” true to 

cultural archetypes, an imagined future derived definition from an imaged 

past: tomorrowland enacted the new comforts and ease offered in the Space 

age, yet it also extended the individual heroism of the legendary frontiersman 

into the new era. at disneyland, as in so much of the era’s political rhetoric, the 

“new frontier” of space and the “endless frontier” of science could confirm the 

national and personal virtues that popular culture of the 1950s and early 1960s 

still associated with the winning of the West. 

the two international exhibitions held in america during the Space 

age—in Seattle and New York—also emphasized space themes expressed in the 

look of Mid-century Modernism. the Seattle Century 21 exposition’s Space 

Needle set the tone for an exhibition that claimed to represent the summit 

of human (well, really American) accomplishment. the Seattle World’s Fair 

Commission sought some kind of restaurant in space as a central symbol and 

engaged an architect, John graham, Jr., who had created a revolving restaurant 

in honolulu. graham joined with other partners to design a slim steel tower 

anchored to earth by 74 32-foot-long bolts topped by a large rounded structure 

containing a revolving restaurant, which stood eight hundred thirty-two 

steps away from the base. Built in a year and opening slightly before the Fair 

began in april of 1962, the Space Needle’s color scheme included “Orbital 

Olive,” “reentry red,” and “galaxy gold.” NaSa had its own exhibit at 

the exposition, including John glenn’s space capsule that was then touring the 

world rather than soaring above it.56 

the 1964 New York World’s Fair centered around a Unisphere, a large 

sculpture of earth circled by orbiting bands. the Space park displayed america’s 

aerospace superiority, and corporate pavilions had futuristic themes. general 

Motors’s “Futurama” featured an extraterrestrial-looking building holding 

models of futuristic cities built on land, under the sea, and in space. Monsanto 

showcased a Space age home. at the end of the World’s Fair, some of the 

exhibits migrated to become features at disney’s tomorrowland. 

these international exhibitions helped promote an architectural style that 

has become popularly known as “googie.” Space evocations predominated in 

56. “history of the Space Needle,” http://www.spaceneedle.com/about/history.asp (accessed September 

15, 2007); McCurdy, Space, p. 93. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 181 

googie styles, which reached their apogee in the slice of southern California 

that stretched between hollywood and disneyland. In 1949, the architect 

John lautner had designed a building for googie’s Coffee Shop on Sunset 

Boulevard in los angeles. architecture critic douglas haskell wrote an article 

in House and Home Magazine in 1952 in the form of a playful interview with a 

ficticious expert on “googie” architecture. “It seems to symbolize life today,” 

his imaginary expert explained, “skyward aspiration blocked by Schwab’s 

pharmacy.” the article closed with the rumination that seemed to be at the 

heart of Cold War googie: “It’s too bad our taste is so horrible; but it’s pretty 

good to have men free.”57 

googie quickly moved beyond coffee shops. architect John lautner’s 

own 1960 home, the Cemosphere (recently saved and rehabilitated by the 

german book publisher Benedikt taschen) shimmered above the horizon like 

some extraterrestrial hovercraft. Built in the hollywood hills off Mulholland 

drive, lautner’s design responded to the challenge of building on a 45-degree 

slope. erected on top of a 30-foot concrete pole, it appeared to defy not just 

conventional forms but gravity itself. 58 googie, douglas haskell wrote, “was 

an architecture up in the air.” 

googie’s influence flowed out into highways and towns throughout the 

nation. “Serious” architects picked up the googie designation as a slur, but it 

became the roadside look of a Space age nation-on-the-go. Just as the space 

race defied gravitational laws, so representations of space offered suggestive 

mixtures of lines and curves that flaunted the conventions of earthbound 

realities. travelers in the late l960s could stay in the Space age Inn or the 

Cosmic age lodge. after taking in disneyland (a googie paradise), they might 

shop in Satellite Shopland and cruise by the fabulous anaheim Convention 

Center. gas stations might rest in the shade of characteristically upswept roofs 

and aerospace-inspired flying buttresses. In googie, domes hugged earth as 

spires and starbursts (see las Vegas and holiday Inn) transcended terra firma. 

the original Mcdonald’s golden arches projected a Space age ellipse. If googie 

had any rules of form, they were the embrace of abstraction and surprise.59 

as in other Space age representations of the future, googie’s futuristic elements often mixed anachronistically with primitivist motifs: tiki-hut roofs, South 

sea island-style lava rock walls, frontier themes. long before the postmodern 

architecture of the end of the twentieth century self-consciously (and 

57. douglas haskell, House and Home Magazine, (February 1952) http://www.spaceagecity.com/googie/ 

index.htm (accessed September 15, 2007). 

58. alan hess, The Architecture of John Lautner (New York, NY: rizzoli International publications, 

1999). 

59. alan hess, Googie: Fifties Coffeehouse Architecture, (San Francisco, Ca: Chronicle Books, 1985), and 

philip langdon, Orange Roofs, Golden Arches:The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants (New 

York, NY:alfred a. Knopf, 1986). 
 

182 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

controversially) conglomerated elements of style, Space age avatars were already 

jumbling together time and geographic space. they were stage-setting the future 

within the past and, with a wink, presenting fantasies of both to the present.60 

googie not only brought the excitement of a jet-propelled look into 

the everyday activities of american life, but it also colonized the new “fast” 

medium of television. true to the age’s most popular entertainment formula— 

the toying with both past and future—the creators of The Flintstones, hannaBarbara productions, introduced The Jetsons. this animated series of 24 episodes 

played in the prime Sunday night spot from September 1962 to March 1963. 

after that, it became a staple of Saturday morning cartoon reruns for decades. 

(additional episodes were made between 1985 and 1987, followed by movies 

and television specials.) Over the years, merchandise spinoffs from The Jetsons 

continued to attract a market. 

the life of the Jetsons fairly bristled with googie style. their neighborhood 

boasted houses raised high above the ground on poles—suggesting the Cemosphere 

and anticipating the Seattle Space Needle. the family flew around the air in its 

private rocket-ship and traversed the ground in individual people movers that 

look just like today’s Segways. Sets were spare, brightly colored, modernistic. 

the Jetson’s googie world of spheres and angles and turquoise and pink 

projected an automated future. george Jetson worked three hours a day, three 

days a week for Mr. Spacely of Spacely Space Sprockets. he mostly pressed 

buttons. although the Jetsons enjoyed the standard fare of family sitcom mixups, 

frustrations, and travails, labor-saving devices of all kinds provided abundant 

leisure. Space references abounded in this future: a Moon Side Country Club, a 

space-club trip to the Moon, an auto shop called Molecular Motors. Football 

was played by robots. the family dog, astro, was acquired after a comparison 

with an electronic, nuclear-powered dog. a used robot maid, rosie, made a 

couple of appearances, but the future, after all, was fairly work-free. 

googie was one highly popular part of a broader aesthetic that had emerged 

along with abstract expressionism in high art. the abstract expressionists during 

the 1940s and 1950s, too, explored the modern as a statement of freedom, an 

acceptance of risk, and a willingness to shock. the connections between the 

mid-century visions of space and postwar art seem almost too obvious, as so 

many artists of the age employed lines, spheres, and vast canvasses to project 

enigmatic representations of unknowability. Both artists and astronauts drifted 

beyond the rules that governed their atmospheres; both projected a kind of 

outlaw masculinity that combined an extraordinary endurance for the regularity 

of hard work with a confident ability to improvise and transcend boundaries. 

60. Stephen lynch,“excursion roadside retro Be It Space age, Cocktail or tiki: Orange County 

has gobs of googie,” Orange County Register, (June 27, 1998) Id# 1998178044, http://www. 

ocregister.com/ocregister/archives/ (accessed September 15, 2007). 
 

 

 

 

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre 183 

In some cases the trajectory of vision for abstract expressionist painters 

seemed quite directly in synch with space exploration, even if the connections 

often stood largely unnoticed or unarticulated at the time. richard pousette-dart, 

for example, brought to canvass Space age motifs in Night Landscape (1969-71), a 

blue, black, white, and yellow sky dense with layered planets and rotations; Starry 

Space (1961); and Earth Shadow in Time (1969). Other artists also explored Space 

age concerns. robert rauschenberg, for example, produced his “Stoned Moon” 

cycle of paintings after being invited by NaSa to witness the launch of apollo 

11.61 there were many, many more artists who drew from new understandings in 

physics and astronomy to fashion commentaries on perspective, on the fungibility 

of matter and energy, and on the universe’s enigmatic proportions. Fascination with 

the “far out” provided the ethos of the era, in art as well as in science and politics. 

*** 

For a couple of decades, googie design and its many offshoots shined as 

brightly as the Moon and stars. googie was a style of optimism, an exemplar of 

free and unregimented spirits who broke the rules, an effervescence of populist 

self-confidence. If the Space age coincided with an increasingly powerful 

american imperium, then googie represented the imperial signature of what 

one historian has termed america’s “empire of fun.” Its bold and shiny surfaces 

revealed few dark sides. 

5. CONClUSION 

From the 1950s to the 1970s, space held many meanings: it was a symbolladen arena in which people and nations staged Cold War competitions, a “star” 

in the media firmament, an ultimate challenge for scientists and engineers, and 

an inspiration for artists and designers. 

In 1966, Wernher von Braun ended his book on the history of space travel 

with a vision of what steps would follow after the projected apollo Moon 

landing. he asserted that there would soon be semi-permanent bases on the 

Moon, growing vegetables and chickens. he then predicted a flyby to Mars or 

Venus by the late 1970s, landings on Mars in the 1980s, and the exploration of 

other planets and moons until the process of discovery became routine.62 

61. robert rauschenberg; Stoned Moon, http://www.orbit.zkm.de/?q=node/277 (accessed September 

15, 2007). 

62. Von Braun and Ordway, History of Rocketry, p. 222. For a well-illustrated, recent attempt to 

reimagine the past and future of space exploration, see roger d. launius and howard e. 

McCurdy, Imagining Space: Achievements, Predictions, Possibilities, 1950-2050 (San Francisco, 

Ca: Chronicle Books, 2001). 
 

184 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

even by the time of these breathless predictions, however, the most storied 

days of the Space age were already coming to a close. an image-saturated 

public seemed to be tiring of spectacles in space. Only a major triumph, such 

as the walk on the Moon in 1969, or a major disaster—such as the death of 

three apollo astronauts in January 1967, the apollo 13 travails in april 1970, 

or the Challenger explosion in January 1986—could reclaim a large viewing 

public. Between 1969 and 1972, the United States landed six sets of astronauts 

on the Moon. the successes of the Moon program, first amazing and then 

routine, became its greatest burden. Media attention ebbed along with the 

public’s investment of emotional and monetary assets. In 1979, tom Wolfe’s 

The Right Stuff seemed the stuff of nostalgia. Wolfe recalled the early 1960s 

fascination with the buccaneer days of space and concluded with the epitaph 

“the era of america’s first single-combat warriors had come, and it had gone, 

perhaps never to be relived.”63 

even as the exuberant high of the Space age slipped away, it nonetheless 

left an enduring array of creative and rhetorical resources in american culture. 

like any star celebrity, the legacy of meanings for national identities and global 

futures were complex and multiple. Space exploration in this era—entangled 

in Cold War rivalries, magnified by the explosion of new image-based media, 

intertwined with discussions over the role of technology and planetary 

stewardship, and expressed through innovative artistic products and designs— 

anchored diverse images and representations. 

the Space age boosted national pride—and placed it under threat. It 

forged pipelines to pump money into fantastic new projects—and prompted 

warnings about the size of a “Moon-doggle” and an enervating dependence 

on government largesse. It promoted techno-science—and stimulated new 

fears about “technocracy.” It encouraged the triumph of rational endeavor— 

and a mystical faith about the meanings of the heavens. It promised peace and 

social justice—and more frightening forms of hierarchy and war. It offered the 

excitement of new modes of living—and apprehensions about the unknown. It 

inspired creativity—and created bureaucracies that could stifle it. 

In its intersections with the Cold War, the Media age, the technetronic 

age, and Mid-century Modernism, the Space age provided a canvas for many 

visions, a setting for multiple narratives about who “we” were and could be. 

loaded with so many meanings, space indeed seemed infinite. and in its 

undefinability and semiotic expansiveness, space was—and still is—far out. 

63. tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, giroux, 1979), p. 436. 
 

 

Chapter 11 

a Second Nature rising: Spaceflight in an 

era of representation 

Martin Collins 

INtroduCtIoN 

recently novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver began a reflection on 

the virtues of the local food movement with the following sentence: “In 

my neighborhood of Southwest Virginia, backyard gardens are as common 

as satellite dishes.”1 She casually invokes then subverts the cultural notion— 

vestigial and romantic—that the garden, backyard or otherwise, stands as the 

“natural” against which ubiquitous communications and its machines might be 

defined and measured. She makes clear our contemporary tendency to grant 

priority to the human made in creating our sense of what the world is.2 even 

in rural southwest Virginia, it is the garden that is the surprising presence, one 

that needs to be placed in relation to an alternate ontology represented by the 

satellite dish. Media and machines, she implies, have become the embodiment 

of a new natural, the tip of a vast, globe-connecting system of technology, 

of capital, of first world and other world cultural transactions, of a condition 

of semiotic super-abundance as “in your face” and compelling existentially 

as beans, corn, and garden dirt. Indeed, the new natural is more so. In this 

cultural condition, the semiotic realm enabled by globally connected satellite 

dishes frames the very way in which we think about intimate rituals of local 

food cultivation and consumption. 

her matter-of-factness in this regard offers incidental proof of a thesis initiated in the humanities in the late 1960s and regnant in sociology, anthropology, 

geography, and literary theory since the late 1970s: that representation—the 

signs of things, rather than things themselves—had over-spilled its pre-World 

War II channels of circulation, spread luxuriantly, and established a new order of 

experience. to put this in the passive voice, of course, is deceptive. Kingsolver’s 

satellite dish, as thing, media conduit, and symbol situated in one locale and 

1.	 Barbara Kingsolver,“the Blessings of dirty Work,” Washington Post, September 30, 2007. 

2.	 of course, to be accurate the “backyard garden” also is human made, a particular construct of 

what counts as nature, a symbol of a romantic notion of nature that is apart from the human. 
 

 

 

 

186 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

standing in relation to other very different locales elsewhere in the world, arrived 

through a specific process of historical agency. distilled, this humanities literature 

makes two deep claims. First, that our regime of representation is ontological, 

that semiotics perform and act—as discourse and signs, especially as instantiated 

in commodities and the ever expanding presence of electronic media. they touch 

nearly all geographic nooks of the globe and order our experience: there is, if you 

will, a there there. Second, this literature claims that this semiotic-ness coincides 

with a historic transformation of capitalism in the post-World War II period.3 

thus, it is an argument about historical basics: about the way the world is 

structured, operates, and feels. It is, too, if semiotics may be taken to perform 

and act, about fundamental sociological categories: of how individuals constitute 

themselves and are constituted by ambient cultures, about identity and politics. 

and it presents a rousing challenge: it places at the center of the historical 

playing field two conjoined and reinforcing vectors of agency—representation 

and capitalism—that many historians of the Cold War and spaceflight sort 

might see as inferior or ancillary to two other organizing concepts, state 

action and elite politics. the title of this paper comes from this literature— 

Frederic Jameson, preeminent literary theorist and exponent of historicizing 

the relations between capital and culture coined the phrase “second nature” 

to describe this remapping of the human experience in the postwar years.4 

3.	 a range of authors have advanced these points, in varying combination and degree of 

emphasis. Most important are the works of Jean Baudrillard, Francois Lyotard, and Frederic 

Jameson, referenced in succeeding notes. also crucial is david harvey, The Condition of 

Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (oxford, uK: Blackwell, 1989), 

as well as various works by Zygmunt Baumann, e.g., Culture As Praxis (London: Sage 

publications, 1999). a sampling of additional works includes arjun appadurai, Modernity 

at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: university of Minnesota 

press, 1996); Marc augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (London: 

Verso, 1995); ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage publications, 

1992); pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, Ca: Stanford university press, 

1990); Judith Butler, ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: 

Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000); Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in 

Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, Ca: university of California press, 2005); 

guy debord, Society of the Spectacle (detroit, MI: Black & red, 1983); Michael denning, 

Culture in the Age of Three Worlds (London: Verso, 2004); terry eagleton, The Idea of Culture 

(oxford, uK: Blackwell, 2000); paul N. edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics 

of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1996); Mike Featherstone, 

Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage, 1990); Scott Lash, The End of Organized 

Capitalism (Cambridge, uK: polity, 1987); edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New 

York, NY: Vintage Books, 1994); graham thompson, The Business of America: The Cultural 

Production of a Post-War Nation (London: pluto press, 2004); anna Lowenhaupt tsing, Friction: 

An Ethnography of Global Connection (princeton, NJ: princeton university press, 2005); and 

reinhold Wagnleitner and elaine tyler May, eds., Here, There, and Everywhere: The Foreign 

Politics of American Popular Culture (hanover, Nh: university press of New england, 2000). 

4.	 Jameson is the focal point for the literature (loosely grouped under the rubric of critical theory) 

making this claim. See variously: Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a SeCoNd Nature rISINg: 187 

SpaCeFLIght IN aN era oF repreSeNtatIoN 

the subtitle raises a question: What are the implications of this literature and 

its associated historical claims for our understanding of the development of 

spaceflight, its cultural meanings, and its integration into the broader field 

of history? even so, why should this question merit our curiosity? Because 

the changes mapped and claimed by this swath of literature are coeval and 

intimately bound to the development of spaceflight in its many dimensions—as 

significant genre of postwar technology; as site of knowledge creation; as state 

activity, business undertaking, military venture, and global utility; as a cultural 

zone for contesting the era’s values and beliefs; and as national and international 

trope extraordinaire. 

First, an admission: What I am offering is an analytic sketch—of period 

history, of a diverse group of theoretical literatures and positions—and proceeds 

primarily by feeding off of theory rather than empirical data. despite such 

simplifications, I think one can argue for an alternative perspective on the 

field’s historiography and research problematic. Let me first historically situate 

the question of representation in slightly more detail, and then offer a couple 

of thumbnail case studies to suggest the historical stakes when we juxtapose 

capitalism, semiotics, and spaceflight.5 

the ChaLLeNge oF repreSeNtatIoN 

Based on the theoretical literature already cited, almost all a product 

of the 1970s and after, one might offer a periodization of the postwar years 

that traces the trajectory of representation and its cultural importance. In the 

1950s and 1960s, the image and semiotics take on a stronger, more pervasive 

cultural function, with emphasis on their phenomenological everywhere-ness 

and density—especially in the media-rich West—resulting in an incipient 

problem on a transnational scale. think of McLuhan’s global village and 

his Western-centered geopolitical perspective reflected in his 1964 thought 

Capitalism (durham, NC: duke university press, 1991); The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and 

Space in the World System (Bloomington, IN: Indiana university press, 1992); The Cultural Turn: 

Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983-1998 (London: Verso, 1998); A Singular Modernity: 

Essay on the Ontology of the Present (London:Verso, 2002); and Jameson and Masao Miyoshi, eds., 

The Cultures of Globalization (durham, NC: duke university press, 1998). For a discussion of 

Jameson’s importance to this discussion and his centrality to the related issue of postmodernity as 

a descriptor of the postwar condition see perry anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (London: 

Verso, 1998); as regards the argument for a “second nature,” see especially p. 53. 

5.	 this essay is a companion to two earlier explorations by the author on space history and its 

historiography, see: Martin Collins, “Community and explanation in Space history (?),” in 

Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight,edited by Steven J.dick and roger Launius (Washington, 

dC: NaSa, 2006); and “production and Culture together: or, Space history and the problem 

of periodization in the postwar era,” in Societal Impact of Spaceflight, by Steven J. dick and roger 

Launius (Washington, dC: NaSa, 2007). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

188 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

that “in the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin.”6 By the 1970s, 

changes in capitalism and technology intensified these developments and made 

representation a (perhaps the) central problem of the human condition—an 

analytic perspective one might trace through seminal authors Jean Baudrillard, 

Francois Lyotard, and Jameson.7 

Let’s venture into this postwar circumstance, though, by considering a 

scholar firmly in the center of the historical profession, daniel Boorstin.8 In 

1961, Boorstin published The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream, a 

book-length disquisition on the ascendance of the image and its consequences 

for the american experience. after presenting the reader with a broad inventory 

of the image’s ubiquity and modes of use in contemporary life, he offered a 

first-pass assessment: 

In nineteenth-century america the most extreme modernism held that man was made by his environment. In twentieth-century america, without abandoning the belief that 

we are made by our environment, we also believe our environment be made almost wholly by us. this is the appealing 

contradiction at the heart of our passion for pseudo events: 

for made news, synthetic heroes, prefabricated tourist attractions, homogenized forms of art and literature (there are no 

“originals,” but only the shadows we make of other shadows). We believe we can fill our experience with new-fangled content. everything we see and hear and do persuades 

us that this power is ours.9 

6.	 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media; the Extensions of Man (New York, NY: Mcgrawhill, 1964), p. 56. 

7.	 on Jameson’s work,see prior note.on Baudrillard,see Jean Baudrillard,Selected Writings (Stanford, 

Ca: Stanford university press, 2001).the introduction by Mark poster provides useful insight 

on the arc of Baudrillard’s thinking. he began publishing on these issues in 1968 and continued 

through his death in 2007. Lyotard’s writings have been equally seminal; see, as his best known 

example, Jean François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis, 

MN: university of Minnesota press, 1984). 

8.	 on Boorstin and the u.S. historical profession in the first decades after World War II, see 

peter Novick, That Noble Dream:The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession 

(Cambridge, uK: Cambridge university press, 1988). 

9.	 daniel J Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America (New York, NY: atheneum, 

1971), pp. 182-183. It must be noted that Boorstin changed the subtitle of the book within the 

first years after publication. originally published in great Britain as The Image, or,What Happened 

to the American Dream (London:Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1961), the book was reissued with the 

revised title The Image:A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America, harper Colophon Books (New York, 

NY: harper & row, 1964).the change is indicative of the tensions in Boorstin’s thought on 

how to integrate the problem of the image into his notions of political economy.also, note that 

Boorstin’s analysis was roughly contemporaneous with Marshall McLuhan’s first articulations of 

the notions of the global village and the medium as message in the late 1950s and early 1960s. 
 

 

 

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the cultural condition that Boorstin described as different-than-modern 

quickly became identified with a name—postmodernity—that grew in usage 

and application in the years to follow. In writing this passage he carefully 

sidestepped a narrative common in american history, the people versus the 

interests. this decades-old motif dominated immediate postwar critiques of 

advertising and consumer culture, and included prominent instances such as 

theodor adorno’s “the Culture Industry” and defined the early work of 

McLuhan.10 Yet Boorstin made clear that the condition he found so unsettling 

was a consensual creation: of the masses and elites, of consumers and producers, 

a field of experience that all inhabited and in which all participated, a basic 

reorganization of the perceptual and social order. 

the stakes were high. the image or pseudo-event gave a new cast to a 

problem as old as philosophy: how do we know what we know? the social 

practices Boorstin detailed through rich example had a powerful consequence: 

they undermined the idea of the real as an independent referent for human 

thought and action and as a fundamental motivation for human engagement 

with the world.11 the former had a long contested history in epistemology; in 

the context of post-enlightenment thought, the latter seemed a newly emerged 

view and the heart of Boorstin’s concern: it was not merely the coexistence of 

the real and pseudo, it was our avid preference for the pseudo. the image was 

a challenge in collective ethics. he did not belabor these implications in his 

main text, tucking his strongest concern in a concluding bibliographic note. 

here he neatly combined the ethical and ontological implications: “the trivia 

of our daily experience are evidence of the most important question in our 

lives: namely, what we believe to be real.”12 the rise of the image was not just 

a lament but a foundational shock. 

Why did Boorstin put the most concise, potent statement of his thesis in 

the back-matter of his book? the simplest answer is that he was uncomfortable 

with two broad issues raised by the real-to-image turn. one concerned politics. 

For him, the question of the real was not a mere philosophical problem à la 

10. adorno’s seminal essay “the Culture Industry” was published in 1947; around the same time, 

McLuhan began a long run of media and advertising critiques. See: theodor W. adorno, The 

Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (New York, NY: routledge, 2001) and, as one 

example, Marshall McLuhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (New York, NY: 

Vanguard press, 1951). 

11. the absence of any foundation (e.g., “reality”) or of access to a priori truths became a leitmotif 

of the postmodern. the nearly contemporaneous work of thomas Kuhn on the role of nonscience in establishing scientific knowledge became an intellectual touchstone of this 

position. See thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL: university 

of Chicago press, 1962). the most relevant discussion of issues of epistemology in relation to 

the literatures covered here is Bruno Latour, We Have Never Modern (Cambridge, Ma: 

harvard university press, 1993). 

12. Boorstin, The Image, p. 265. 
 

190 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

plato’s allegory of the cave (an allusion he invokes with his “shadows of other 

shadows”). It was a genuine problem of the everyday, a particular historical 

condition of american life. If the real and unreal, the actual and simulations, 

coursed through the polity without distinction and with equal status, then how 

could citizens be rational actors, sorters, and evaluators of the world around them 

and serve as the bedrock of political life? But Boorstin’s use of the word “trivia” 

signaled the problem was not about politics in isolation but in its americanstyle bred-in-the-bone connection with market capitalism. Image-ness posed a 

conundrum for the culture in full. his american “dream” assumed individual 

rational actors as an essential foundation, yet the robust pursuit of this ideal 

over the 20th century created a condition—the turn to the pseudo-event—that 

threatened the possibility of making and nurturing such actors, and thus the 

dream itself. the ethics of the image mirrored the ethics of the system of which 

it was a part. Still, Boorstin could not bring himself to a vigorous analysis of a 

main engine of this change—market capitalism—and made the emergence of 

image-ness seem only a causeless development or a collective shift in taste.13 

this set of issues led to a second—the intellectual basis of history and the 

organization of knowledge in the academy. Boorstin held to a view of history 

compatible with his notion of the ideal citizen—an instrumental view in 

which nations, institutions, and individuals acting as purposive, rational agents 

provided the best means for describing and accounting for historical change. 

But the image and its semiotic kin, Boorstin concluded, stood as a new form 

of agency, structural and diffuse rather than localized, a tide of the trivial and 

the serious that only loosely and imperfectly fit with an instrumental view of 

the world. among his reflections in the book’s back matter, Boorstin confided 

it had been his personal, in-the-moment experience with everywhere-ness that 

stimulated this insight. he sketched a day-in-the-life, from waking to sleep, 

in which he found the semiotic ever-present—billboards, radio and television 

programs, newspapers, magazines, movies, advertisements, commodities in 

stores, sales pitches, street conversation and the “desires I sense all around me”— 

and entering into the very constitution of the world. he saw the limitations of 

his intellectual framework and the disciplinary organization of the academy, 

which, he averred, when confronted with new phenomena “continues to 

pour almost exclusively into old molds.” his epiphany-stimulated study, he 

concluded, “might offer a rough map of some too little known territories in the 

13. this concern received fuller expression just over a decade later in daniel Bell, The Cultural 

Contradictions of Capitalism, 20th anniversary ed./with a new afterword by the author (New York, 

NY: Basic Books, 1996) [originally published 1976]. Boorstin’s notion of rationality should be 

situated in the postwar environment; see S. M. amadae, Rationalizing Capitalist Democracy:The 

Cold War Origins of Rational Choice Liberalism (Chicago, IL: university of Chicago press, 2003). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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new american wilderness. It might suggest how little we still know, and how 

slowly we are learning of the inward cataclysms of our age.”14 

Yet Boorstin’s reflections on the “inward cataclysms of our age” were not 

original, and perhaps provided an unwitting commentary on the limitations 

of the consensus school of history then dominant in the academy. the “too 

little known territories” long had been part of Marxist critique (centered on 

Marx’s notion of the fetish of the commodity). Boorstin’s emphasis on the 

everyday phenomenology of the semiotic was a decades-later echo of german 

critical theorist Walter Benjamin’s arcades project, begun in the 1920s, 

which examined the effects of early 20th century urban commercial-media 

environments on the Western experience.15 Benjamin argued that this new 

condition, distinguished by a kinetic and overlapping environment of signs, 

reoriented vision and perception, diminishing the ability of individuals to 

separate out and contemplate the constituents of experience—whether, to 

use Boorstin’s terminology, such constituents were real or pseudo events or 

objects.16 Benjamin’s analytic made clearer the intellectual task of analyzing 

underlying cultural structures as embodied in and expressed through dayto-day immersion in things and images associated with industrialization, 

new forms of consumption, and modernity.17 Benjamin and later critical 

theorists argued that these fields of experience, new and fundamental, shaped 

the behavior of individuals and groups in ways that were bound yet distinct 

from the purposive ideologies and actions connected to elite politics or the 

institutions of capitalism. 

Boorstin’s hybrid fascination-worry about an image-culture was a descriptive 

statement overlaid with misgivings—not a theory. the Marxist tradition, which 

Benjamin exemplified, advanced in the 1960s new ways of looking at this postWorld War II phenomenon—by linking it to (not surprisingly) a transformation 

in the basis of capitalism. daniel Bell’s 1973 The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: 

A Venture in Social Forecasting helped make the case that, as Cold War modes of 

14. Ibid., p. 264. 

15. on the history of the semiotic and the importance of Benjamin, see two valuable works 

by Jonathan Crary: Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the 

Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass: MIt press, 1990) and Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of 

Perception:Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1999). 

16. See Crary, Techniques of the Observer, pp. 19-20. 

17. this analytic line became an academic growth industry in the 1960s, leading to new fields of 

study such as material culture.as a partial measure of these developments, see pierre Bourdieu, 

The Logic of Practice (Stanford, Ca: Stanford university press, 1990); daniel Miller, ed., Materiality 

(durham, NC: duke university press, 2005); and Mark poster, Information Please: Culture and 

Politics in the Age of Digital Machines (durham, NC: duke university press, 2006), especially 

chapter 10. For the post-World War II period, a particularly useful treatment of the theoretical 

issues is patricia ticineto Clough, Autoaffection: Unconscious Thought in the Age of Teletechnology 

(Minneapolis, MN: university of Minnesota press, 2000). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

192 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

knowledge production moved from the state to the market and became more 

closely connected to the world of commodities, representation and practices of 

representation became a more integral part of capitalism.18 By the early 1980s, a 

range of authors came to see this complex of changes as the seedbed of globalism 

(conceived as the relative enhancement of the power of markets in relation to 

states across the transnational landscape) and postmodernism (conceived as a 

new cultural condition associated with this mode of production).19 With this 

turn, Boorstin’s argument was reframed: Yes, images and semiotics broadly 

conceived existed as a quasi-ontological fixture of life, but they operated in 

and through the power-relations of this emerging thing called globalization.20 

18. to be clear: Bell did not advance this argument himself; others, such as the authors cited 

here, did. the best delineation of the shift from “organized” to “disorganized” capitalism 

(and in the Marxian tradition correlating this change to distinctive cultural orders) is Scott 

Lash, The End of Organized Capitalism; also see Nick heffernan, Capital, Class and Technology 

in Contemporary American Culture: Projecting Post-Fordism (London; Sterling, Va: pluto 

press, 2000). For a dense, contemporaneous account, less attuned to the enhanced status of 

knowledge seen by galbraith and Bell, see ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism (London: NLB, 

1975) [First published as Der Spätkapitalismus, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972]. For an overview of 

changes from the 1960s in corporate structure and strategy as firms moved from primarily 

national to broadly transnational modes of operation, see Naomi r. Lamoreaux, daniel M. 

g. raff, and peter temin, “Beyond Markets and hierarchies: towards a New Synthesis of 

american Business history,” American Historical Review, 108 (april 2003): 404-433. on the 

rise of private market ideology and accompanying policy reorientation in this period see 

daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, The Commanding Heights: The Battle Between Government 

and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster: 

1998). on changes in modes of production from the perspective of history of science and 

technology, see paul Forman, “the primacy of Science in Modernity, of technology in 

postmodernity, and of Ideology in the history of technology,” History and Technology 23 

(2007): 1-152; and philip Mirowski, The Effortless Economy of Science? (durham, NC: duke 

university press, 2004). 

19. See, as a range of examples:arjun appadurai, ed., Globalization (durham, NC: duke university 

press, 2001); Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, NY: perennial, 

2002);anthony giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, Ca: Stanford university press, 

1990); harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Jameson, Postmodernism; Jonathan Xavier Inda 

and renato rosaldo, eds., The Anthropology of Globalization: A Reader (Malden, Ma: Blackwell 

publishers, 2002); and Frank Webster, Theories of the Information Society (London: routledge, 

2002). Several case studies in space history engage these changes. See Martin Collins, “one 

World one telephone:Iridium, one Look at the Making of a global age.” History and Technology 

21(2005): 301-324; Lisa parks, Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual (durham, NC: duke 

university press, 2005); and peter redfield, “the half Life of empire in outer Space,” Social 

Studies of Science 32 (2002):791-825.More broadly,in the historical profession these changes have 

given new life to the transnational (in contrast to the long-standing preference for the “national”) 

as a key unit of analysis. See thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age 

(Berkeley, Ca: university of California press, 2002). 

20. In this analytic sketch one needs to be careful not to assume a unitary global capitalism. For 

deeper discussion of this point see Varieties of Capitalism:The Institutional Foundations of Comparative 

Advantage, eds. peter a. hall and david W. Soskice (oxford, uK: oxford university press, 2001), 

and Varieties of Capitalism, Varieties of Approaches, ed. david Coates (New York, NY: palgrave 

Macmillan, 2005). 
 

 

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Spaceflight mapped onto this tangle of production and culture in particular 

and seemingly contradictory ways. earth-serving satellites (communications, 

meteorological, remote sensing, science—civilian, commercial, military) served 

as a prominent institutional and material element of this regime of production 

and consumption, exemplifying in the postwar period the robust capabilities 

of state-market collaborations. these arrangements enlarged and amplified 

the very condition of image-ness examined by Boorstin. Benjamin’s work 

focused on the early 20th century urban experience; Boorstin’s on the u.S.; and 

subsequent critical theory (using, say, Baudrillard’s 1968 The System of Objects as 

a starting point) began to see semiotic immersion as a transnational condition.21 

as such, spaceflight, mostly in tacit and un-remarked ways, became bound to 

the politics of globalization and the myriad points of contestation that gave 

new weight to terms such as local and identity. however, in u.S. culture in 

particular, spaceflight also operated as an explicit, widely circulating symbol 

bearing important, transcendent connotations. as exploration, as frontier, as a 

place apart from the corruptions of earth, spaceflight suggested the possibility 

of individuals and humanity collectively achieving enlightenment ideals 

of universal values fulfilled, either via travel beyond earth or drawing space 

experience and knowledge back into worldly experience. 

as a window onto this set of issues, consider any of the late 1960s or 

early 1970s earth-as-seen-from-space images, such as apollo 8’s earthrise or 

selected covers from the Stewart Brand-created Whole earth catalog. Such 

images invigorated a romantic discourse in which humanity via spaceflight 

perspectives and machines might find harmonious balance with nature. this 

discourse served as a powerful counter narrative to a century-plus series of 

writings in european and american critical thought about the machine in the 

garden—a critique that reached a crescendo in 1950s and 1960s in the work of 

authors such as hannah arendt, herbert Marcuse, and Lewis Mumford.22 

But such space-based earth images, too, in other contexts, could 

be consistent with notions of the machine run rampant, of bureaucratic or 

corporate control on a planetary scale—a level of technological hubris that 

Lewis Mumford railed against in his nearly contemporaneous The Myth of the 

Machine. and such iconography helped make concrete a uniquely important 

practical Cold War ambition: that the totality of earth could and should serve 

as a stage of action. this ambition, made possible by numerous, discrete civilian 

21. Jean Baudrillard, Le Système Des Objets (paris: gallimard, 1968). 

22. See, for example, hannah arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed. (Chicago, IL: university 

of Chicago press, 1998) [originally published 1958]; herbert Marcuse, One-dimensional Man: 

Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston, Ma: Beacon press, 1964); and 

Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine, 1st ed. (New York, NY: harcourt, Brace & World, 

1967) and The Pentagon of Power (New York, NY: harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974) [Volume 

2 of Myth of the Machine]. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

194 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

and military accomplishments over the 1960s, followed the main lines of force 

in the Cold War assemblage of politics, knowledge, and institutions. total 

war, in its u.S. Cold War incarnation, assumed the notion of complete action 

across the globe, even if it had not yet been realized. With the shift to marketdriven economic policies in the 1980s, multinational corporations stood ready 

if the military (as a source of scientific and technical tools and as a guarantor 

of security) and international regulatory regimes made planetary-scale markets 

possible. While one might squirm at a hackneyed invoking of classic explanatory 

“go-to” guys, the story of the last 30 years—the drama of globalization—is 

intimately bound to the elaboration and working out of national, military, 

and business interests in making the planet an honest-to-god, no-messingaround stage of action. and a new tighter integration between military and 

business was a significant part of that undertaking.23 as a matter of historical 

framing, the emphasis is properly u.S.-centric—for it is u.S. actors who are 

most motivated and most able to effect this planetary ambition, to pursue, as a 

growing body of literature argues, a distinctly u.S. form of empire, hegemony, 

dominance—choose your word.24 

But let us return to those apollo-era earth-from-space images and their 

connotations of universal ideals and an abstract, collective humanity. In a 

recent study, historian Frederic turner argues that Whole earth creator Stewart 

23. this was an unstated thesis of Bell’s, The Post-Industrial Society; it was the institutional basis for 

observations on the emergence of scientific and technical knowledge communities as a distinct 

and important sociological formation. a number of works in 1950s and 1960s pointed to the 

close collaboration between the military and business;the most sustained argument regarding this 

collaboration as an economic system is John Kenneth galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston, 

Ma: houghton Mifflin, 1967). 

24. the argument for u.S. centrism as a valid historiographic angle is present in several literatures— 

and, of course, not without contestation. It is a prominent thread in the critical theory literature, 

reflecting Jameson’s influence. on this, see anderson, Origins of Postmodernity, chapter 3. From 

the perspective of “empire,” see Charles S Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its 

Predecessors (Cambridge, Ma: harvard university press, 2006). In the globalization literature, 

the assumption is rife, but with attention to the countervailing or resistive effects of the local. 

a sample of this literature is in note 3. as an indicator, consider how reinhold Wagnleitner 

and elaine tyler May, eds., Here,There, and Everywhere, frame their study of the global reach of 

u.S. popular culture:“It could easily be argued that the products, icons, and myths of american 

popular culture represent the single most unifying and centripetal cultural force for the global 

triumph of the american century. on the other hand, in many areas of the world, american 

cultural products are potentially among the most disruptive and centrifugal cultural forces of the 

twentieth century.” (p. 1) either way it is the “american” that is at the center of their analytic. 

to apply this argument to the 1970s and 1980s seems more problematic given the antagonistic 

positioning of the u.S. and u.S.S.r. But several authors point to relevant similarities between 

the two as inheritors of a modernist ideology that linked politics, technology, and notions of 

global control. See, for example, david C. engerman, et al., ed., Staging Growth: Modernization, 

Development, and the Global Cold War (amherst, Ma: university of Massachusetts press, 2003); 

and odd arne Westad, The Global Cold War:Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times 

(Cambridge, uK: Cambridge university press, 2005). 
 

 

 

 

 

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Brand saw post-industrial capitalism, rooted in Cold War knowledge and 

technological practices, as the means to transport counterculture values into the 

large society and to invigorate enlightenment beliefs in the individual as the 

measure of all things—one instance of how the global construct emerging in 

the 1970s provided a home for seemingly contrary belief systems, for the megamachine, and for its fundamental transformation.25 the distinctive feature of 

the u.S. style of empire was to perform that very conflation—to conjoin the 

enlightenment heritage of abstract universals with an actual, rubber-meetsthe-road total global everywhere-ness of state and market actors. Courtesy 

of space-based capabilities, idealism and practice now confronted each other 

literally everywhere. this twist on old colonial and imperial modalities gave 

rise to different and nuanced intersections of the local and global—as suggested 

by Kingsolver’s view from southwestern Virginia—whether as sites of contrast 

and difference, of acceptance or rejection, or of absorption and transformation— 

whether of music, film, television, hamburgers, or IMaX space adventures. 

IN the era oF repreSeNtatIoN, tWo eXaMpLeS: 

gpS aNd IrIdIuM 

Let’s shake this mix of semiotics, capitalism, spaceflight, the global and the 

local, and consider a couple of examples. In public discourse on globalization, 

capitalism—restless, u.S. and european-centric, with asia on the rise—has 

drawn the most attention. But the u.S. military, as already inferred, has played 

an essential part, creating seemingly strange linkages between national security 

and a rampant transnational consumer culture. Consider the example of the 

global positioning System (gpS), a network of satellites designed and operated 

by the u.S. air Force (uSaF). Conceived in the early 1970s and only becoming 

fully operational in 1995, gpS’s history straddled the Cold War and its marketoriented aftermath. the system provided a soldier, ship, airplane, or missile 

with information on their exact position anyplace on the planet via signals 

encoded with highly accurate time data, its profound effects symbolized by its 

use in guiding “smart” bombs and missiles with deadly, precise accuracy in the 

post-September 11 conflicts in afghanistan and Iraq.26 In recent years, satellite 

photographic images of these “smart” actions have been a staple of television 

news and are widely available on the Internet.27 

25. Fred turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the 

Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago, IL: university of Chicago press, 2006). 

26. a useful account of gpS to 1995 is Scott pace, et al., The Global Positioning System: Assessing 

National Policies, Mr-614-oStp (Santa Monica, Ca: raNd Corporation, 1995). 

27. as one example, see this “before and after” account of a strike in afghanistan from the 

aerospace Corporation: http://www.aero.org/publications/crosslink/summer2002/05.html (accessed 

on February 10, 2008). 
 

 

196 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

In the 1990s, though, gpS became not just a tool for the u.S. military, but 

for anyone, anywhere in the world—for a hiker in the rocky Mountains, for 

mom and dad driving the family car, as well as for past and present adversaries 

such as a Chinese soldier or a terrorist. In its posture toward users, the system 

became egalitarian in the extreme. Not surprisingly, in the go-go market-driven 

post-Cold War world, business and consumer use of gpS vastly outstripped that 

of the military. Imagine a use for location, tracking, or accurate time information and one found gpS there, often in the intimate contours of daily life— say, 

tracking a spouse suspected of having an affair. Indeed, one can “google” a 

phrase such as “cheater tracker” and find gpS products marketed for that purpose. Combined with a geographic information system (such as satellite-based 

google maps), one can track and visualize the itinerary of an errant mate.28 Such 

uses are not just confined to the u.S.: as the New York Times observed, “the 

world has incorporated our gpS into its daily life as rapidly as americans took 

up the atM banking network.”29 Nothing, perhaps, speaks more to the distinctive conjunction between production and semiotics in the global era, to the 

total, actual, not merely metaphorical, planetary scale of this conjunction, than 

gpS, its radio signals equally available to friends and foes, to weapons in flight, 

and to off-the-shelf products offering to meet every consumer need. 

the gpS story is not the same as that by-gosh, by-golly story of the origins of the Internet—of “isn’t it strange that a research project into maintaining 

command and control during a nuclear holocaust gave us this wildly diverse, 

unpredictable, electronic social universe.” It is different and more revealing of 

the transformation in the world order since the early 1970s. It still is, in essence, 

controlled by the u.S. military, and in a way unprecedented in u.S. history 

unites a classic function of empire—controlling and maintaining its perimeters—with the churning demands of capital and consumer appetites. and not 

just those based in united States, but everywhere. gpS has become a militaryconsumerist hybrid, in which each political-cultural domain has continually 

redefined the other. We—a transnational we—know the precision bomb blast 

from afghanistan or Iraq and the “cheater tracker” originate in and depend on 

the same system of production, yet in our everyday cultural frame of semiotics, 

we allow them to maintain their separateness. It is tensions such as these that 

continually redefine the global and the local, geographically and in time, and 

keep the united States—and its preeminence and exploitation of spaceflight— 

in the center of this dialectic. 

Consider another example, drawn from my current research that tracks 

Boorstin’s concern about semiotics and the structuring of our sense of the real. 

Like gpS, Iridium was and is a satellite constellation that completely embraces 

28. a fun example may be seen here: http://www.brickhousesecurity.com/catch-a-cheater.html (accessed 

on February 10, 2008). 

29. James hitt,“Battlefield: Space,” New York Times Sunday Magazine, (august 5, 2001): 63. 
 

 

 

 

 

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the planet—but with a different purpose, to provide telephony and data services, 

and with a different institutional actor in the lead, a multinational corporation. 

Conceived in 1987 at Motorola, a Fortune 500 company and a leading firm 

in cellular phone equipment and systems business and in semiconductors, the 

Iridium satellite project seemed to epitomize the historical moment: as the 

Cold War waned and collapsed, markets rather than government would lead 

into a techno-democratic future, and corporations rather than nations would 

articulate the pathways through which the local and the global took shape. 

the largest privately-financed technology project ever undertaken, and with 

an array of international investors, including the newly constituted russian 

Federation and the people’s republic of China, Iridium stood as symbol of this 

fusion of technology, corporations, markets, and international politics. In 1998, 

as the system neared completion, Wired magazine proclaimed, “It’s a bird, it’s a 

phone, it’s the world’s first pan-national corporation able to leap geo-political 

barriers in a single bound.”30 

part of my challenge in untangling this story has been to understand 

the varied ways in which semiotics functioned in a multinational corporation 

(MNC). You might expect that a MNC, deep-pocketed, well-connected 

politically, at home and internationally, with tens of factory and sales sites around 

the world would be an instrumental historical actor extraordinaire, a big “them” 

guy able to exert power in ways unavailable to all the little “us” guys. and, of 

course, that crude truth is there. But so is another one, one in which Motorola 

regarded the semiotic realm as real, a reality that required substantive corporate 

responses that intermingled culture, politics, and identity. as a literally planetary 

project, incorporating flesh-and-blood actors from around the world, Iridium 

dramatically highlighted the problem of semiotics—local, global, multiple, 

contesting, and not readily controlled—and the need for solutions. 

the Motorola’s response to this condition can be glimpsed in a 1998 book 

entitled Uncompromising Integrity: Motorola’s Global Challenge.

31 the concept of 

culture stood as organizing precept. the narrative provided definitions of culture 

and related concepts that showed it as a structure, but varied in place and time, 

and as a process—national culture, subculture, host culture, enculturation, and 

transcultural. two key additional notions situated the discussion in the corporate 

context: “Motorola culture” and “home culture.” the first made clear that the 

organization had a semiotic sphere, derived from its own history and as a u.S.­

30. Keith Bradshear,“Science Fiction Nears reality: pocket phone for global Calls,” New York Times, 

(June 26, 1990): pp. a1 and d7; david S. Bennahum, “the united Nations of Iridium,” Wired 

6.10 (october 1998): pp. 134-138, 194-201. 

31. r.	 S. Moorthy and robert galvin, Uncompromising Integrity: Motorola’s Global Challenge 

(Schaumberg IL: Motorola university press, 1998). as a measure of the importance Motorola 

attached to this issue, note that robert galvin was the son of Motorola founder paul galvin and 

Ceo of the company at the time Iridium was initiated. 
 

 

 

198 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

centered capitalist institution. the second that that sphere was permeable and 

in flux because employees hailed from many localities around the world and 

because, as a multinational, the corporation always was operating in someone 

else’s backyard. Culture was something around which a company had to define 

itself (Motorola culture). Yet, in the global age, “home” was complex and 

mobile, reflective of the world’s many diasporas—of people, individually and 

en masse, following the flow lines of capital. home inhered in individuals even 

as they moved (with Motorola employees themselves an example) and in those 

places from which they came. Motorola and home cultures were oppositional 

and profoundly interpenetrating.32 

Uncompromising Integrity’s preoccupation with culture—perceived as 

variegated and everywhere, in specific geographical places, in institutions 

(including Motorola), in individuals, and pulsing through the many channels 

of the media—had a corporate history. It encapsulated more than 15 years of 

high-level managerial attention to the global. It led executives in the late 1980s 

to create a hybrid academic-corporate institution—Motorola university—to 

engage and comprehend the fauna and flora of culture-world. this book was 

a product of that—a Motorola university press publication! Lest this example 

seem quirky and isolated, note that it exemplified a larger trend: over a decade, 

from the mid 1980s to mid 1990s, more than a thousand corporate universities 

were created in the united States—all of which were a response, in one fashion 

or another, to the perceived challenge of culture and semiotics to transnational 

business practice.33 

the biography of the lead author—r. S. Moorthy—makes concrete some of 

the issues of identity and politics embedded in these developments. Born into an 

Indian family and raised in poverty in Malay, as a young man he found work in a 

Motorola facility in that country. his professional life at Motorola became one of 

reconciling his origins in a place with a specific history, one tied to colonialism 

and the new globalism, with the purposes and outlooks of a multinational firm. 

he found a way to marry his interests with Motorola’s culture preoccupation 

and he came to play a major role in establishing Motorola university, creating a 

subunit of that enterprise, the Center for Culture and technology. 

this vignette only is meant to suggest the complicated and non-obvious 

ways in which social boundaries got created and negotiated and how semiotics 

constrained and enabled this process at different levels of corporate activity. as 

one instance, consider this graphic (see figure) outlining the manufacturing flow 

for the Iridium project, one that required a transnational “virtual factory”— 

32. a particularly cogent analysis of culture in its post-1970 global dimensions is Zygmunt Baumann, 

Culture As Praxis, pp. vii-lv. 

33. For an overview of this trend from a policy perspective, see Stuart, Cunningham, et al., The 

Business of Borderless Education (Canberra:Commonwealth of australia,department of education, 

Youth, and training, 2000). 
 

 

a SeCoNd Nature rISINg: 199 

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200 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

Motorola’s own phrase. In the lower right corner, we find included in the 

virtual factory Baikonaur, Kazakhstan and taiyuan, China. that Kazakhstan 

and China could be integral, functioning elements of a u.S.-based business 

project made sense only in the context of this belief in the everywhereness of culture and the reality of semiotic structures—whether in dealing 

with transnational elites or with questions of politics and identity in specific 

geographic locales. But as the project moved from planning and manufacturing 

execution to marketing, the instrumental view—think the way I, Iridium, want 

you to think, buy my phone—comes to the fore and you find a different way of 

presenting geographical specificity and cultural accommodation, bleached and 

abstracted back to the aims of the corporation and neo-liberal capitalism, and 

using enlightenment universals to facilitate those aims.34 

CoNCLuSIoN 

Where do these examples leave us? What might we draw from this mix of state 

action and capitalism, of semiotics and on-the-ground practice, of geographical 

specificity, local meanings, and the meta-narratives of the West? and where does 

spaceflight fit into this contested field of action? I would point to two things. 

First, my recitation here advances a particularly modest claim: deep 

and important issues become visible when we recalibrate our interpretive 

lens and see spaceflight in history, rather than expecting it to be sui generis. 

Spaceflight—especially those near-earth applications cited here—has been a 

major element in creating the incarnation of the global we have experienced 

over the last 40 years. It has provided images and practices that have made the 

category of the global, natural and insistent, even when different actors give it 

different meanings. It has been a primary site in which prior categories of the 

modern—the nation state, the military, civil society, capitalism—have been 

refashioned and given new meanings. and in helping to elevate the importance 

of the global—to distribute its effects across regions and places, to recalibrate 

our sense of distance and time, of identity as a creation of community or the 

flows of transnational semiotics—it has helped to invigorate the meaning of the 

local. this has led to an intensified scrutiny of globalism’s origins in the West— 

emanating from its military, economic, political and cultural institutions—and 

in its ideological underpinnings, the legacy of the enlightenment, of universal 

values inhering in universal humans. Spaceflight thus has enabled the dominant 

vectors of the global and its critique.35 

34. advertising images and language conveyed corporate aims through use of universals. Language, 

in particular, served this function.two of the most widely used taglines, at different times, were 

“one world, one telephone” and “Freedom to communicate.” 

35. I don’t think it is a coincidence that in the post-1970s literatures of critical theory, postcolonialism,and globalization some of the most influential work is coming from scholars in India 
 

 

a SeCoNd Nature rISINg:
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Second, this essay grapples with the problem of the image and semiotics 

identified by Boorstin. Is the question “what is real” as transformative as he 

suggests? does it stand as a fundamental change in the relation of citizens to 

politics? of what politics means and makes possible when interest-driven actors 

and cultural structures are taken as historical agents? these musings are not mere 

abstractions; they filter down to the everyday—in what we take to be credible, 

in what we trust, and in what we question rather than give assent. If they have 

historical weight, they represent a reorientation of existential and value structures 

in the postwar period. Is that not a historical problem of the first rank, a deep 

argument for placing spaceflight in the broadest frames of analysis? 

For spaceflight itself, there is a perhaps surprising blowback in this cultural 

condition. In exposing the contingency of the global, as a product with a 

geography and history in the West, of universal values as a specific cultural 

creation not as given absolutes, one can find some empirical oomph behind 

two of those tenets of the postmodern that some love to hate. one is Lyotard’s 

claim about the “death of meta-narratives,” principally those enlightenment 

universals. What Lyotard meant is not the disappearance of such narratives but 

skepticism as to their truth and general applicability. they still run wild in 

the semiotic transnational landscape. and with this skepticism, comes the 

second tenet, the one from which Boorstin recoiled: the end of that abstract 

enlightenment individual enacting enlightenment values. 

and the blowback is this: spaceflight as application helped make this world. 

But spaceflight as exploration, particularly human exploration, encountered and 

encounters this condition somewhat differently. granting human spaceflight’s 

grounding in Cold War real politik, that experience gained credibility because 

exploration as a culture trope drew strength from Western meta-narratives 

and explorers as universal human subjects. If human exploration is only a 

narrative and not a meta-narrative in competition with other narratives, then 

space exploration as an exemplification of enlightenment values fades. the 

exploration narrative still resonates, but in a much diminished way. and this 

ties back to Boorstin’s concern that image-ness threatened to change the very 

nature of politics—from a field of experience built on elite actions, metanarratives, and enlightenment rationality to one in which these elements 

are transformed and conjoined with the ontology of everywhere semiotics. 

this insight offers an analytic hint: traditional explanatory modes that rely on 

interest groups and elite power to account for the history of human spaceflight 

in the last 40 years miss the changed foundations (as presented in critical theory 

and other literatures) of politics and culture. the Moon journeys, it may be 

argued, exemplify the modern temperament; the subsequent years of human 

spaceflight illustrates the intrusion of the postmodern into the modern, a marker 

or the Indian diaspora. See as one important example dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: 

Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (princeton, NJ: princeton university press, 2000). 
202 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age 

of “second nature,” of the complex ways in which spaceflight and culture have 

been mutually reconfigured. 

at the beginning of the Space age, applications stood as the stepchild of 

the more glamorous meta-narrative of human exploration. over the 1970s and 

1980s she came to supplant her parent and helped make a new realm of meaning 

and experience—her own world, a second nature, a new chapter in the saga of 

the machine and the garden. 
 

 

 

 

Chapter 12 

Creating Memories: Myth, Identity, and 


Culture in the russian Space age1
 

Slava Gerovitch 

the Nobel prize laureate Orhan pamuk’s novel, The White Castle, is a subtle 

reflection on the power of memory. Living in 17th-century Istanbul, two 

main protagonists, an Italian scholar and a turkish noble, share their most 

intimate memories and gradually adopt each other’s memories as their own. 

their distinct identities begin to blur until they (and the reader) can no longer 

recognize who is who. eventually they switch their original identities as the 

power of memory overwhelms them. the turk becomes a scholar and leaves 

for Italy, while the Italian abandons science to enjoy luxurious life at the sultan’s 

court.2 Our memories determine who we are, and manipulating these memories 

affects the very core of our identity. 

Key events in the Space age are especially memorable—this is why it 

is called “the Space age” in the first place. the triumphs of Gagarin’s first 

flight and armstrong’s first step, and the tragedies of apollo 1, Gagarin’s death, 

Challenger, and Columbia are among recent generations’ most vivid and emotional 

memories. But what do we really remember when we remember the Space age? 

In 1986-1988, the cognitive psychologist Ulric Neisser conducted a study of 44 

student subjects, who were asked how they first heard the news of the Challenger 

disaster. the first round of questioning took place the next morning after the 

event, the second round—with the same participants—two and a half years 

later. It turned out none of the later accounts fully coincided with the original 

report, and over a third were, as Neisser put it, “wildly inaccurate.” Moreover, 

even when confronted with their own earlier written reports, the subjects were 

convinced that the later memory was true. the original memories quite simply 

disappeared from their minds.3 

1.	 the author wishes to thank asif Siddiqi for his insightful comments on an early draft of this 

article. research for this article has been supported by Fellowship in aerospace history from the 

american historical association. 

2.	 Orhan pamuk, The White Castle, trans.Victoria holbrook (New York, NY: Braziller, 1991). 

3.	 Ulric Neisser and Nicole harsh,“phantom Flashbulbs: False recollections of hearing the News 

about Challenger,” in Affect and Accuracy in Recall: Studies of “Flashbulb” Memories, ed. eugene 

Winograd and Ulric Neisser (New York, NY: Cambridge University press, 1992), pp. 9-31. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

204 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

recent research in cognitive, social, and clinical psychology and in cognitive 

neuroscience indicates that our memory is a much more dynamic and malleable 

process than previously thought. Our memories are not stored in a fixed form; 

we do not pull them out of a permanent storage and then put them back intact. 

according to the constructivist approach to memory, every act of recollection is 

re-creation, reconstruction of a memory.4 every time we “recall” a memory, we 

relive the event that caused it, we emotionally relate to it, we remake that memory, 

and we store a new version, totally overwriting the old one. at the moment 

of recollection, memory becomes unstable, and it can be modified and even 

“erased,” or a false memory can be planted.5 recalling something is essentially 

similar to making a new, original memory. In the language of neuroscience, 

“reconsolidation . . . is qualitatively strikingly similar to consolidation”;6 in the 

psychology parlance, “recollection is a kind of perception, . . . and every context 

will alter the nature of what is recalled.”7 as a result, we do not really remember the 

original event; we remember only our last recollection of that event. the more 

we remember and the more often we recall something, the more we rebuild and 

change that memory and the farther we get from the original event. 

according to the school of “narrative psychology,” linking individual 

memories into a coherent narrative, which supplies meaning to past events, 

plays an essential role in the formation of one’s self.8 as the neurologist Oliver 

Sacks has put it, “We have, each of us, a life story, an inner narrative—whose 

continuity, whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs 

and lives a ‘narrative,’ and that this narrative is us, our identities.”9 When our 

4.	 the idea of memory as a dynamic and constructive process goes back to Frederic C.Bartlett’s book 

Remembering (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 1932). For overviews of recent studies, 

see Daniel L. Schacter et al., “the Cognitive Neuroscience of Constructive Memory,” Annual 

Review of Psychology 49 (1998): 289-318; Daniel L. Schacter, “Memory Distortion: history and 

Current Status,” in Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, ed. Daniel 

L. Schacter (Cambridge, Ma: harvard University press, 1995), pp. 1-43; and Daniel Schacter, 

Searching for Memory:The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1996). 

5. On experiments with “erasing” fear conditioning in rats, see Karim Nader, Glenn e. Schafe, and 

Joseph e.Le Doux,“Fear memories require protein synthesis in the amygdala for reconsolidation 

after retrieval,” Nature 406 (august 17, 2000): 722-726. On experiments showing the possibility 

of implanting false memories in humans, see elizabeth F. Loftus and Katherine Ketcham, The 

Myth of Repressed Memory (New York, NY: St. Martin’s press, 1994). 

6.	 Karim Nader,“Memory traces Unbound,” Trends in Neurosciences 26:2 (February 2003): 70. 

7.	 Israel rosenfeld, The Invention of Memory:A New View of the Brain (New York, NY: Basic Books, 

1988), p. 89 (emphasis added). 

8.	 See Jerome S. Bruner, Acts of Meaning (Cambridge, Ma: harvard University press, 

1990), chap. 4, “autobiography and Self”; and Ulric Neisser and robyn Fivush, eds., The 

Remembering Self: Construction and Accuracy in the Self-Narrative (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge 

University press, 1994). 

9.	 Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York, NY: 

Summit Books, 1985), p. 110. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 205 

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present self constructs and distorts our memories of the past, the very fallibility 

of these memories serves a purpose—to establish a continuity between our 

present and past selves. the literary scholar paul eakin has argued that memory 

is “not only literally essential to the constitution of identity, but also crucial in 

the sense that it is constantly revising and editing the remembered past to square 

with the needs and requirements of the self we have become in any present.”10 

We are what we remember, and this is equally true for individuals and 

societies.11 By focusing on the notions of “collective memory” and “social 

memory,” cultural history draws on the metaphor of society as a remembering 

subject, which constructs its identity based on collective remembrance and 

can go through a psychological “trauma” profoundly distorting collective 

memories.12 Collective memory—culturally sanctioned and publicly shared 

representations of the past—shapes social identities and provides narratives 

through which individuals publicly describe their selves, remember the past, 

and interpret the present.13 

10. paul John eakin, “autobiography, Identity, and the Fictions of Memory,” in Memory, Brain, 

and Belief, ed. Daniel L. Schacter and elaine Scarry (Cambridge, Ma: harvard University 

press, 2000), pp. 293-294. On the “false memory syndrome” as an adaptive mechanism, see 

Daniel L. Schacter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers (New York, 

NY: houghton Mifflin, 2001). 

11. For recent attempts to bring together specialists from cognitive psychology, psychopathology, 

psychiatry, neurobiology, social psychology, sociology, and history to discuss the phenomenon 

of memory from different disciplinary perspectives, see thomas Butler, ed., Memory: History, 

Culture and the Mind (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1989); Schacter, ed., Memory Distortion; 

Schacter and Scarry, eds., Memory, Brain, and Belief; and the newly established academic 

journal Memory Studies. 

12. For recent general works on collective memory in social and cultural history, see alon Confino 

and peter Fritzsche, eds., The Work of Memory: New Directions in the Study of German Society and 

Culture (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois press, 2002); paul Connerton, How Societies Remember 

(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 1989), John r. Gillis, ed., Commemorations: 

The Politics of National Identity (princeton, NJ: princeton University press, 1994); pierre Nora, 

ed., Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, trans. from the French, gen. ed. Lawrence D. 

Kritzman, 3 vols. (New York, NY: Columbia University press, 1996-1998); pierre Nora, ed., 

Rethinking France: Les Lieux de mémoire, trans. from the French, gen. ed. David p. Jordan, 2 vols. 

(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago press, 2001-2006); Jeffrey Olick, The Politics of Regret: 

On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York, NY: routledge, 2007); Jeffrey 

Olick, ed., States of Memory: Continuities, Conflicts, and Transformations in National Retrospection 

(Durham, NC: Duke University press, 2003); and eviatar Zerubavel, Time Maps: Collective 

Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago press, 2003). among 

the recent works that examine “traumatic” events in american historical memory are edward 

tabor Linenthal and tom engelhardt, eds., History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for 

the American Past (New York, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1996); edward tabor Linenthal, The 

Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory (Oxford, UK: Oxford University press, 

2001); and emily S. rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory 

(Durham, NC: Duke University press, 2003). 

13. More precisely, “collective memory” in this article is understood as both a set of cultural 

norms that regulates practices of remembrance and a body of texts and other types of symbolic 
206 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

When the constructivist model of individual memory is applied to cultural 

history, the implications are profound. Like individual memory, collective 

memory is continuously recreated, supplanting original memories with later 

versions. Cultural memory thus becomes self-referential: it feeds on itself 

and recollects its own recollections. the more a particular society or group 

remembers an event, the more intensely collective memory is at work, the more 

we mythologize and the more we forget. remembering and mythologizing are 

the same thing. Just like false private memories reinforce the continuity of the 

individual self, cultural myths shore up national or group identity. 

taking seriously the view that culture is the myths we live by, historians 

have focused on the cultural functions of collective myths—to structure and pass 

on historical memory, to create the basis for a dominant “master narrative,” and 

to shape social identities. In this context, whether the myth is literally true or 

not is not particularly significant. What is important is the political and cultural 

force of collective myths—ethnic, religious, ideological—their ability to act, 

to create a public appeal, to tell a story to identify with and an ideal to imitate. 

Most recent studies have shifted the focus toward the historical origins—the 

genealogy—of myths, their deliberate construction by political elites, and their 

repressive power to marginalize alternative stories and identities.14 

the institutionalization of memory by nation states—the establishment 

of national archives, the public celebrations of various anniversaries, the 

dissemination of favorable historical narratives—often serves the political 

purpose of reinforcing national identity and marginalizes individual memories 

and other social identities. private memories become “contaminated by 

national projects of remembrance,” writes the historian peter Fritzsche.15 the 

French cultural historian pierre Nora even argues that the old age of memory 

and tradition gave way to the new age of history and conscious narrativeconstruction. “Memory is constantly on our lips,” he writes, “because it no 

longer exists.”16 

Space history has its own recurrent myths. the historian asif Siddiqi has 

identified four cultural archetypes, or “tropes,” structuring master narratives 

of space exploration in different countries: the myth of the founding father, 

representations that a particular culture produces based on these norms.the most authoritative 

texts function as instantiations of the “master narrative,” setting an effective norm for a wider 

discourse of remembrance.the term “collective” here does not imply uniformity of individual 

memories or a monolithic character of culture. Different groups within a larger society may have 

distinct collective memories that reinforce their group identities; narratives produced by these 

groups may come into conflict with the “master narrative” prevalent in larger culture. 

14. peter Fritzsche,“the Case of Modern Memory,” The Journal of Modern History 73 (March 2001): 

87–117. 

15. Ibid., 107. 

16. pierre Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and history,” in Realms of Memory, 

vol. 1, p. 1. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 207 

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the myth of exclusively domestic space technology, the myth of spaceflight 

as expression of national identity, and various stereotypical justifications 

for spaceflight—the destiny of humanity, the glory for the nation, national 

security, economic development, scientific exploration, and benefits to the 

ordinary people.17 every nation develops its own variations, such as the “myth 

of presidential leadership”18 and the “astronaut myth” in the United States. the 

historian roger Launius has identified several key elements of the popular image 

of apollo astronauts as a “cultural icon”: the astronaut represented “everyman” 

and yet personified the american ideal, embodying the image of a masculine 

hero, a young, fun-loving, vigorous warrior, guided by an older, wiser leader, 

and showing the nation the path of progress toward utopian future.19 

Like the turk and the Italian in pamuk’s novel, who change their identities 

by listening to each other’s stories, the astronauts could hardly remain unaffected 

by their image in popular culture. a recent documentary, In the Shadow of the 

Moon, is made entirely of interviews with apollo astronauts illustrated with 

fragments of archival footage.20 the film is not organized as a collection of 

separate stories of individual missions; instead, it weaves together bits and 

pieces of astronauts’ stories to create a meta-story that blurs distinctions among 

different missions and even among different astronauts. It is as if a composite 

image of the astronauts is telling a composite story of lunar landings. another 

recent documentary, The Wonder of It All, uses a similar technique, interleaving 

commentaries from seven astronauts who walked on the Moon.21 as one 

reviewer has noted, “the editing has been done so skillfully that instead of seven 

individuals talking, it seems more like one—each of them often continues a 

sentence that the other started.”22 Individual stories—and individual astronauts’ 

identities—blend together seamlessly. how did this blending occur? Is this 

a trick of the filmmakers or a fundamental cultural mechanism at work in 

real life, squeezing individual identities to conform to the dominant cultural 

stereotype of an astronaut? What happens to alternative memories? What are 

the mechanisms by which a culture decides which memories to erase and which 

to write over them? 

17. See Siddiqi’s article in this volume. 

18. See roger D. Launius and howard e. McCurdy, eds., Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential 

Leadership (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois press, 1997). 

19. See roger D. Launius, “heroes in a Vacuum: the apollo astronaut as a Cultural Icon,” 43rd 

aIaa aerospace Sciences Meeting and exhibit, January 10-13, 2005, reno, Nevada. aIaa 

paper No. 2005-702 (available at http://klabs.org/history/roger/launius_2005.pdf). 

20. In the Shadow of the Moon, directed by David Sington (Discovery Films, 2007). 

21. The Wonder of It All, directed by Jeffrey roth (Jeffrey roth productions, 2007). 

22. ronald a.Wells,“review: The Wonder of It All,” The Space Review, (accessed November 12, 2007). 

(available at http://www.thespacereview.com/article/996/1). 
 

 

208 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

the SpaCe aGe IN aMerICaN CULtUre 

the cultural historian emily rosenberg has set up an appropriate system of 

coordinates to analyze the role of the Space age in american culture:a four-dimensional space of politics, the media, philosophy, and the arts.the Sputnik shock and 

the perceived “missile gap” boosted Cold War anxieties, and these anxieties, in turn, 

gave a spur to the space race.the media were enrolled in the ideological “battle of 

appearances,” turning astronauts into international celebrities and making spacecraft launches and television broadcasts from space into spectacular public events. 

the idea of technocracy gained support, and technological elites gained economic 

and political power, while “counterculture” chose the Spaceship earth image to 

promote environmental consciousness and a new global identity, which transcended the political boundaries of a nation state. In architecture, product design, 

and abstract expressionist painting, new space-inspired shapes and color palettes 

captured the spirit of a “new frontier” of space in the aesthetic of self-confident 

progress, futuristic automation, and individual adventure.23 

the dynamics of the relationship between spaceflight and the media, 

outlined by rosenberg, stresses the active, instrumental role of culture 

in shaping the Space age. NaSa skillfully used the media to create and 

disseminate a favorable public image of the U.S. space program, and at the same 

time space technologies engendered a technological revolution in visual media, 

making electronic communications truly real time and global. emerged what 

rosenberg has called a “synergy” between the Space age and the Media age: 

spaceflight acquired its spectacular character while the media thrived on new 

popular subjects of interest and on the advanced technologies. Wider culture 

did not simply reflect developments in the space program; it became a vehicle 

for specific agendas within the space program. 

rosenberg’s analysis highlights tensions and contradictory trends in 

different aspects of the Space age culture. the Space age both threatened the 

sense of national pride and was enrolled to boost it. It gave birth to mammoth 

technological projects and raised concerns about uncontrollable government 

spending. It created a cult of technology and awoke suspicions about the attempts 

to find technological solutions to political problems. It trumpeted rationality 

and gave rise to various forms of spirituality. It was wrapped in the rhetoric of 

global unity and peaceful cooperation, and it led to the militarization of the 

heavens. It unleashed fantasy in the arts and regularized engineering creativity 

with systems engineering management techniques. It gave rise to both exciting 

and frightening visions of the future. 

What are the cultural mechanisms that select specific iconic images, prominent figures, and big ideas that end up occupying a central place in the public 

23. See rosenberg’s article in this volume.
 

 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 209 

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memory of the Space age? recent literature begins to tackle the question of 

how, of all the variety of different visions of the Space age, only a few survive as the dominant symbols of the era, while others are marginalized and 

forgotten.24 as roger Launius has argued, the american “master narrative” 

of spaceflight incorporates the mythology of “limitless frontier,” the popular 

image of the “heroic explorer,” and futurist visions to tell the story of american 

triumph in the space race, exceptionalism, and success. three counter narratives 

have also emerged: the left-wing criticism of spending funds on space instead of 

social programs, the right-wing criticism of the space program as an excessive 

government expense, and various conspiracy theories of secretive space militarization schemes, alien abductions, and alike.25 the competition among the 

master narrative and the three counter narratives might provide a template for 

analyzing the clash of diverse cultural representations of the Space age outlined 

by rosenberg. each narrative plays out in public discourse through literature, 

imagery, film, and other media. the competition among Space age symbols 

serves as a proxy for the battle of the narratives. 

a number of seminal works have explored the relationship between NaSa 

and popular culture. the political scientist howard McCurdy has examined the 

links between popular conceptions of space exploration and national space policy, 

focusing on NaSa’s deliberate exploitation of the frontier myth and the utopian 

visions of social progress through technological means, and its encouragement 

of the Cold War fears of Soviet domination. as the space program after apollo 

changed its character, it no longer matched the popular expectations inherited 

from the previous era. the gradual disillusionment with the NaSa space program 

since the 1970s could be traced to a widening gap between popular sentiment and 

the reality of spaceflight.26 the cultural theorists Marina Benjamin, Constance 

penley, and others have studied how popular culture responded to the Space 

age by reinterpreting NaSa’s symbolic imagery and generating competing 

discourses.27 Broader culture turns space images, artifacts, names, events into 

24. See, for example, roger D. Launius, “perceptions of apollo: Myth, Nostalgia, Memory, or 

all of the above?” Space Policy 21 (May 2005): 129–139; William D. atwill, Fire and Power: 

The American Space Program as Postmodern Narrative (athens, Ga: University of Georgia press, 

1994); andrew Smith, Moondust: In Search of the Men Who Fell to Earth (New York, NY: 

Fourth estate, 2005). For a historiographic review of the cultural history of the Space age, 

see asif a. Siddiqi, “american Space history: Legacies, Questions, and Opportunities for 

Future research,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, eds. Steven J. Dick and roger 

D. Launius (Washington, DC: NaSa Sp-4702, 2006), esp. pp. 472-477. 

25. See Launius’s article in this volume. 

26. howard e. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian 

Institution press, 1997). 

27. See Marina Benjamin, Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World Beyond 

(New York, NY: Free press, 2003), Constance penley, NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in 

America (New York, NY:Verso, 1997), and Debra Benita Shaw,“Bodies Out of this World:the 

Space Suit as Cultural Icon,” Science as Culture 13 (March 2004): 123–144. 
 

 

 

 

 

210 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

“floating signifiers”—symbols without fixed meaning—that are reinterpreted 

again and again as they pass through different contexts. No single group or 

agency—even a government agency—can fully control them. 

From a cultural anthropologist’s perspective, the interaction between 

NaSa and broader culture could be recast as a dialogue of different cultures: 

NaSa’s own culture(s) and the diverse subcultures of space fans, activists, 

educators, and artists. a study of this interaction might finally bring together 

two disparate research areas—the analyses of the Space age in popular culture 

and the studies of NaSa’s own institutional culture(s).28 the anthropological 

models of cultural contact, conflict, translation, mediation, and the “trading 

zone” may prove useful here.29 

Combining the notion of historical memory with the model of cultural 

exchange leads to an investigation of the dynamics of memory in different 

cultures. Within larger american culture, every distinct group—space engineers, 

astronauts, and space fans, for example—nurtures its own memories, its own 

folklore, and its own historical visions of the Space age. What happens when 

different groups interact and exchange their memories? What new mythologies 

and hybrid identities emerge? 

although different groups and different nations may have different 

memories of the Space age, the cultural mechanisms by which these memories 

are exchanged and altered over time prove remarkably similar. If we look beyond 

american culture and examine the convolutions of the historical memory of the 

Space age in russian and Soviet culture, we will find a similar struggle between 

a master narrative and an array of counter-stories, even though the dynamics of 

this struggle will follow a specific russian political and cultural trajectory.30 

28. On NaSa culture(s), see alexander Brown, “accidents, engineering, and history at NaSa, 

1967–2003,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, pp. 377-402; Yasushi Sato, “Local 

engineering and Systems engineering: Cultural Conflict at NaSa’s Marshall Space Flight 

Center, 1960-1966,” Technology and Culture 46:3 (July 2005): 561-583; Diane Vaughan, 

The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA (Chicago: 

University of Chicago press, 1996); Vaughan, “Changing NaSa: the Challenges of 

Organizational System Failures,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, pp. 349-376. 

29. See peter Galison,“trading Zone: Coordinating action and Belief,” in The Science Studies Reader, 

ed. Mario Biagioli (New York, NY: routledge, 1999), pp. 137-160. 

30. On memorialization practices in Soviet and post-Soviet contexts, see Svetlana Boym, The 

Future of Nostalgia (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2001); Frederick C. Corney, “rethinking a 

Great event:the October revolution as Memory project,” Social Science History 22:4 (Winter 

1998): 389-414; Geoffrey a. hosking,“Memory in a totalitarian Society:the Case of the Soviet 

Union,” in Memory, ed. Butler, pp. 97-114; and James V.Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering 

(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University press, 2002). 
 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 211 

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rUSSIaN SpaCe MeMOrIaLIZatION 

Memories of the Space age occupy a prominent place in contemporary 

russian culture. this year alone, the russians have celebrated the centennial 

of the legendary Chief Designer Sergei Korolev, the 150th anniversary of 

the space visionary Konstantin tsiolkovskii, the 120th anniversary of the 

Soviet rocketry pioneer Fridrikh tsander, the 50th anniversary of the r-7 

intercontinental ballistic missile designed by Korolev, and, finally, the 50th 

anniversary of Sputnik and of Laika’s flight on Sputnik II. One anniversary, 

however, was barely noticed: the ill-fated Soyuz 1 mission, which ended 40 

years ago in a crash and the tragic death of the Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir 

Komarov. that year, 1967, was a significant turning point in Soviet cultural 

attitudes toward spaceflight: from admiration and pride to grief, cynicism, and, 

ultimately, indifference. Yet this memory is overwritten by a different, prideboosting version of history. 

the cultural trope of the founding father, as asif Siddiqi has pointed out, 

still dominates the russian cultural perceptions of the Space age. In JanuaryFebruary 2007, a large conference was held in Moscow to commemorate 

Korolev’s centennial. the conference had 1,650 participants; over 1,000 papers 

were submitted, and 420 were selected for oral presentation at the conference 

in 20 sections running in parallel over four days.31 although not all the papers 

were historical (many were devoted to current issues in astronautics), several 

sections were devoted to history. Such Korolev conferences are organized every 

year; this year’s was the 31st. also, every april, Gagarin conferences are held 

at his birthplace, the town of Gagarin (this year, it was the 33rd conference), 

and every September the town of Kaluga organizes tsiolkovskii conferences 

(this year’s was the 42nd). the general mood at such conferences is celebratory: 

veteran cosmonauts wear their ceremonial uniform, dancers in ethnic russian 

costumes provide a suitable patriotic background, and Korolev’s (or Gagarin’s, 

or tsiolkovskii’s) portrait dominates the stage. During the Korolev conference, 

a new monument to Korolev was dedicated at the conference site, the Bauman 

State engineering University in Moscow. Giant portraits and dominating, 

larger-than-life monuments serve as symbolic beacons for historical discourse. 

these conferences provide a suitable setting for hero-worshipping, rather than 

critical analysis. a chosen set of historical figures—Korolev, tsiolkovskii, and 

Gagarin—serve as sources of light rather than objects of study at which light 

should be directed. 

31. analytical report on the XXXI academic Conference on Cosmonautics, dedicated to the 

100th anniversary of academician Sergei Korolev. Moscow, russia, January 30–February 

1, 2007 (available at http://www.ihst.ru/~akm/ao31.htm). See also asif Siddiqi, “From russia 

with history,” NASA History Division News and Notes 24:2 (May 2007): 1-2, 4-5 (available at 

http://history.nasa.gov/nltr24-2.pdf ). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

212 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

this weaving of space history around a handful of key personalities was 

characteristic of Soviet space history from its early days. If Korolev has traditionally been portrayed as the “founding father” of Soviet cosmonautics, tsiolkovskii 

might be christened its “founding grandfather.” a deaf schoolteacher in the provincial town of Kaluga, tsiolkovskii was a self-taught theorist and visionary of 

space travel. In the 1910s-30s, his writings widely circulated in the growing 

russian community of space travel enthusiasts. In the 1930s, the Stalin propaganda machine made him into a national hero, a “poster grandpa” for national 

technological superiority. this ascribed identity was quite different from his own 

cultivated image of a humble provincial inventor, science popularizer, and public 

educator who built rocket models in his home workshop.32 

In the postwar period, Soviet rocket engineers and the space enthusiasts’ 

community put the government-constructed myth to their own use. In 

the late 1940s, the name of late tsiolkovskii was regularly evoked amidst a 

party-sponsored nationalist campaign asserting the priority of russian-born 

scientists and engineers. Journalists claimed that tsiolkovskii had invented the 

airplane and the dirigible.33 On September 17, 1947, on the 90th anniversary 

of tsiolkovskii’s birth, Sergei Korolev gave a speech at the commemoration 

meeting at the Central hall of the Soviet army. as asif Siddiqi has noted, 

“significantly, Korolev drew attention to tsiolkovskii’s ideas about space travel 

rather than rocketry or airships, thus beginning the process of relocating 

tsiolkovskii within space research rather than aeronautics.”34 Suddenly, 

Korolev and other rocket engineers interested in space exploration began 

to recall their prewar meetings with tsiolkovskii and to present their space 

projects as “inspired” by tsiolkovskii. pilgrimages to tsiolkovskii’s home in 

Kaluga to meet with the great man came to be seen retrospectively as a “rite 

of passage” for any major figure among the rocket engineers. a symbolic link 

with tsiolkovskii, canonized by the Soviet state, played an important role in 

legitimizing their proposals in the eyes of government officials. In 1952-1953, 

in autobiographical materials, accompanying his applications for membership 

in the Communist party and in the academy of Sciences, Korolev wrote about 

his personal meeting with the late visionary as a starting point for his interest 

in rocketry. even though he had met tsiolkovskii only once in 1932, during 

32. See James t. andrews, “K. e. tsiolkovskii, ascribed Identity, and the politics of Constructing 

Soviet Space Mythology, 1917-1957,” paper presented at the 2006 annual conference of the 

american association for the advancement of Slavic Studies in Washington, DC; andrews,“In 

Search of a red Cosmos: Space exploration, public Culture, and Soviet Society,” Societal Impact 

of Spaceflight, eds . Stephen Dick and roger Launius (NaSa, forthcoming); and andrews, Visions 

of Space Flight: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Russian Popular Culture, and the Birth of Soviet Cosmonautics, 

1857-1957 (texas a&M University press, forthcoming). 

33. “My – nasledniki tsiolkovskogo,” Komsomol’skaia pravda (September 17, 1947). 

34. asif a. Siddiqi,“the rockets’ red Glare: Spaceflight and the russian Imagination, 1857-1957,” 

ph.D. dissertation, Carnegie Mellon University, 2004, p. 293. 
 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 213 

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Soviet poster commemorating the centennial of Tsiolkovskii’s birth, 1957. (Courtesy 

of the Russian Academy of Sciences Archives) 

tsiolkovskii’s visit to Moscow, the story later became embellished to the point 

of Korolev’s vivid recollection of a visit to tsiolkovskii’s house in Kaluga—a 

visit that evidently never happened.35 privately, Korolev admitted that he 

barely remembered tsiolkovskii and that the main source of his recollections 

was his own “fantasy.”36 Yet the official canonization of tsiolkovskii and the 

resurrection of his legacy played a crucial role in legitimizing the idea of space 

exploration in the postwar Soviet Union. By turning a government-sponsored 

myth into a personal memory, Korolev managed to present his space projects 

35. See Iaroslav Golovanov,“Korolev i tsiolkovskii,” unpublished manuscript; rGaNtD, f. 211, op. 

4, d. 150 (available at http://rgantd.ru/vzal/korolev/pics/006_008.pdf); Georgii Vetrov, S.P. Korolev 

i kosmonavtika: Pervye shagi (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), chaps. 20, 21. 

36. Iaroslav Golovanov, Korolev: Fakty i mify (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 110. 
 

 

 

214 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

as a matter of national prestige and eventually to secure permission to launch 

Sputnik shortly after the centennial of tsiolkovskii’s birth.37 

the MYth OF the COSMONaUt 

as the Soviet government kept the identity of the true leaders of the space 

program secret (Sergei Korolev remained an anonymous “chief designer” until 

his death in 1966), a handful of flown cosmonauts literally had to stand on top 

of Lenin’s mausoleum next to Nikita Khrushchev for the entire space program. 

State-sponsored memorialization of Soviet space achievements turned such 

staged events as mausoleum appearances into iconic images of the space era 

widely disseminated through television, newspapers, posters, and postcards. 

the space historian Cathleen Lewis has examined the Soviet “myth of the 

cosmonaut,” which in some aspects mirrors the astronaut myth even though 

the two were supposed to stand for two ideologically opposite political regimes 

and systems of values. During the Soviet era, ghost writers produced numerous 

cosmonauts’ biographies that followed a familiar pattern of heroic narrative: 

humble beginnings, childhood burdened by wartime hardship, encouragement 

by the family and teachers, good education paid for by the Soviet state, a wise 

mentor who teaches the core communist values, loyal military service, building 

up character and physical strength through a “trial of fire,” achieving the lifetime 

dream by carrying out an important mission trusted to the cosmonaut by the 

Communist party, and finally coming back with an important message reaffirming 

the communist values.38 as the cultural historian Svetlana Boym has noted,“Soviet 

space exploration inherited the rhetoric of war; it was about the ‘storming of 

space,’ and the cosmonaut was the peacetime hero who was ready to dedicate 

himself to the motherland and, if necessary, sacrifice his life for her sake.”39 

the cosmonaut myth played a major role in Khrushchev’s attempts to 

de-Stalinize Soviet society—to break with the Stalinist past and to reconnect 

with the original revolutionary aspirations for a communist utopia.40 In 1961, 

soon after Gagarin’s flight, Khrushchev ordered to remove Stalin’s remains 

37. Siddiqi, “the rockets’ red Glare.” See also asif a. Siddiqi, The Red Rockets’ Glare: Soviet 

Imaginations and the Birth of Sputnik (Cambridge University press, forthcoming). 

38. Cathleen Lewis, Curator of russian spacecraft at the Smithsonian National air and Space 

Museum, has been working on a book on the social and cultural history of “hero-cosmonauts” 

in the Soviet Union. She has presented various aspects of her research at numerous scholarly 

conferences. 

39. Svetlana Boym, “Kosmos: remembrances of the Future,” in Kosmos: A Portrait of the Russian 

Space Age, photographs by a. Bartos, text by S. Boym (princeton, NJ: princeton architectural 

press, 2001), p. 91. 

40. On the Khrushchev period, see polly Jones, ed., The Dilemmas of De-Stalinization: Negotiating 

Cultural and Social Change in the Khrushchev Era (London and New York: routledge, 2006), and 

William taubman, Khrushchev:The Man and His Era (New York, NY:W.W. Norton, 2003). 
 

 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 215 

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from Lenin’s mausoleum in red Square and to change the name of the city of 

Stalingrad, the site of a major battle that turned the tide of World War II and a 

potent symbol of the Soviet victory over Nazism. as monuments of the Stalin 

era were being dismantled, new memorials to the Space age were erected, 

supplanting the collective memory of Stalinist terror and devastating war with 

futurist visions of space conquests. 

the cosmonaut myth was mostly about the future, not the past. In 1961, 

on the heels of Gagarin’s triumph, Khrushchev proclaimed a new Communist 

party program to build a communist society in the Soviet Union within the 

lifetime of the current generation. the creation of the New Soviet Man—an 

honest, sincere, modest, morally pure person and a conscientious worker— 

was an essential part of the program, and the cosmonauts were hailed as a 

living embodiment of this human ideal. Cosmonauts themselves often felt 

uncomfortable playing a public role that had little to do with their own 

professional identity.41 

In the Brezhnev period, as conservative ideologues attempted to whitewash 

the image of Stalin as a political and military leader, memories of World War 

II again took up a prominent place in public discourse. the conquest of space 

became symbolically associated with the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. 

a typical Brezhnev-era biography pictured Gagarin in his capsule, preparing 

for his flight and listening to music, which evoked memories of his childhood: 

life under Nazi occupation, war privations, and the joy of liberation by Soviet 

soldiers.42 this ideological appropriation of private memories quite creatively 

reinterpreted Gagarin’s actual experiences. as a boy, Gagarin indeed survived 

the occupation, but he reportedly had to hide this fact while applying to a 

flight school; this “dark spot” in his biography could have prevented his 

admission.43 he later wondered how the authorities still allowed him to become 

a cosmonaut after learning about the fact.44 and the music he listened to during 

the preparations for his flight could hardly evoke elevated patriotic feelings: 

he actually listened to Lilies of the Valley, a popular love song whose lyrics 

cosmonauts parodied, turning it into a drinking song.45 

41. See Slava 	Gerovitch, “‘New Soviet Man’ Inside Machine: human engineering, Spacecraft 

Design, and the Construction of Communism,” OSIRIS 22 (2007): 135-157. 

42. Yuri Gagarin:The First Cosmonaut (Moscow: Novosti press agency publishing house, 1977). 

43. Interview 	with Marina popovich, Iakutsk vechernii (March 18, 2005) (available at http:// 

epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/intervy/popovich-m1.html). 

44. Interview with pavel popovich, Fakty (Kiev) (July 18, 2003) (available at http://epizodsspace. 

testpilot.ru/bibl/intervy/popovich.html). 

45. Interview with pavel popovich, Meditsinskaia gazeta (april 13, 2007) (available at http://www. 

mgzt.ru/article/310). For a transcript of Gagarin’s onboard communications, see “Zvezdnyi reis 

Iuriia Gagarina,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, no. 5 (1991): 101-129. 
216 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

Gagarin monument in Moscow, dedicated in 1980. (Courtesy of Wikipedia) 
 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 217 

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Like any irrational construction that was to be believed rather than critically 

examined, the myth of the cosmonaut was full of internal contradictions. the 

cosmonauts were portrayed as both ordinary people and exceptional heroes. 

all the first cosmonauts had military ranks but their missions were presented 

as entirely peaceful. their flights were praised as daring feats, while official 

reports of perfectly functioning onboard automatics did not seem to leave much 

room for human action.46 

In July 1980, shortly before the opening of the Moscow Olympics, a monument to Gagarin was dedicated in Moscow. Gagarin’s giant statue soars 40 

meters above the crowd on top of a colossal pillar, evoking the image of a 

rocket plume. the cosmonaut and his rocket are symbolically fused, presenting 

Gagarin as a superhuman blend of man and machine. the insurmountable distance between the statue and the viewer emphasizes the mythological 

proportions of Gagarin’s figure, which rises in its futuristic perfection far above 

today’s all-too-human world. 

CONStrUCtING the MaSter NarratIVe 

Just like the cosmonaut myth in many respects resembled the astronaut 

myth, the Soviet master narrative of space exploration mirrored essential features 

of the american story of national exceptionalism, technological progress, and 

continuous success. pervasive secrecy and centralized control over the media 

further streamlined public discourse about space. Bound by secrecy on one 

side and by propaganda demands on the other, Soviet-era space history was 

reduced to a set of clichés: flawless cosmonauts flew perfect missions, supported 

by unfailing technology. all contingencies, failures, and alternative paths were 

thoroughly purged from history books. entire programs, such as the manned 

lunar program, were passed over in silence. the space industry itself, namely 

its leading think tank, the Scientific research Institute No. 88 (since 1966, 

the Central Scientific research Institute of Machine Building), was charged 

with the task of clearing all space-related materials for publication in the open 

press.47 While Soviet propaganda cultivated an idealized image of the Soviet 

space program for ideological purposes, space industry officials had their own 

reasons for deemphasizing failures and contingencies before decision-makers in 

the high echelons of Soviet power. 

the cosmonauts resented the restrictions on information about their 

flights, having to repeat the same platitudes if not outright lies over and over 

again. In his private diary, Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin, the Deputy 

46. See Slava Gerovitch,“human-Machine Issues in the Soviet Space program,” in Critical Issues in 

the History of Spaceflight, pp. 107-140. 

47. See Yurii a. Mozzhorin, Tak eto bylo: Memuary Iu.A. Mozzhorina. Mozzhorin v vospominaniiakh 

sovremennikov (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnaia programma obrazovaniia, 2000), p. 298. 
 

 

218 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

The Chief Designer Sergei Korolev reenacting his actions during Yuri Gagarin’s flight 

on April 12, 1961. (Photo from the author’s collection) 

Chief of the air Force’s General Staff in charge of cosmonaut selection and 

training, complained about the official ban on reports about equipment failures 

and cosmonaut errors: “Because of these restrictions, we are actually robbing 

ourselves by creating an impression of ‘extraordinary ease’ and almost complete 

safety of prolonged space flights. In fact, such flights are very difficult and 

dangerous for the cosmonauts, not only physically, but also psychologically.”48 

“the most interesting things in our cosmonautics are classified,” he lamented.49 

these sentiments, however, did not translate into an active opposition to the 

master narrative. When asked to serve as a consultant for andrei tarkovsky’s 

feature movie based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel Solaris, in which space travel 

turned into an exploration of the human soul, Kamanin blatantly refused. 

48. Nikolai Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 4, 1969-1978 (Moscow: Novosti kosmonavtiki, 2001), p. 

182 (diary entry of June 6, 1970). 

49. Nikolai Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 1, 1960-1963 (Moscow: Infortekst, 1995), p. 176 (diary 

entry of October 31, 1962). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Such science fiction “degrades human dignity and denigrates the prospects of 

humanity,” he wrote in the same diary.50 

an “inner censor” reinforced the master narrative more efficiently than any 

outside censoring agency. early Soviet discourse constantly oscillated between 

“what is” and “what ought to be”—the quality literary scholar Katerina Clark 

has labeled a “modal schizophrenia.”51 the blurring of this boundary and the 

desire to replace “what is” with “what ought to be” was characteristic of the 

later space-related discourse as well. Sergei Korolev was acutely aware of the 

historical significance of his space projects, but his vision of history reflected a 

desire to improve on reality to meet an ideal. “What is” was just a messy, errorprone draft, while the history’s hall of fame deserved a clean, showcase version of 

“what ought to be.” Korolev did not admit any journalists to the launch site on 

the day of Yuri Gagarin’s pioneering flight, april 12, 1961.52 Later, however, he 

sat down for a photo session, pretending to communicate with the cosmonaut in 

orbit. as Korolev’s identity was still a state secret, the photo was not, of course, 

publicly released at the time. this fake was made for internal consumption—for 

those who knew about Korolev and his role in the space program—and for 

future generations as a “clean” version of historical events. 

For Korolev, space artifacts were first and foremost symbols, not merely 

technological objects. Before the launch of Sputnik, two copies of the satellite 

were made: one for the flight and one for ground tests and simulations. Korolev 

ordered the satellite surface to be polished in order to maximize reflection of solar 

light to avoid possible overheating. he was outraged, however, when he learned 

that his subordinates neglected to polish the test copy: “It will be displayed in 

museums!” he stressed the aesthetic appeal of the ball-shaped Sputnik, arguing 

that, as a symbol of human entry into space, it must look “properly.”53 

Korolev’s notion of looking “properly” apparently did not include looking 

authentic. Soon after Gagarin’s flight, Korolev suggested to display a makeup of Gagarin’s space capsule at an aviation show at the tushino airfield in 

Moscow. Since Gagarin’s Vostok spacecraft was still classified, Korolev let his 

subordinates “unleash their fantasy.”54 the result looked impressive but had 

nothing to do with the actual spacecraft.55 

50. Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 4, p. 152 (diary entry of april 18, 1970). 

51. Katerina Clark,The Soviet Novel:History as Ritual,3rd ed.(Chicago,IL:the University of Chicago 

press, 2000) pp. 36-38. 

52. Iaroslav Golovanov, Zametki vashego sovremennika, vol. 1, 1953-1970 (Moscow: Dobroe slovo, 

2001), p. 399 (diary entries of January-March 1970). 

53. Memoirs by Mark Gallai, in Akademik S.P. Korolev: uchenyi, inzhener, chelovek.Tvorcheskii portret po 

vospominaniiam sovremennikov, ed.aleksandr Ishlinskii (Moscow: Nauka, 1986), p. 63. 

54. Memoirs by Stal’ Denisov, in ibid., p. 218. 

55. anton pervushin, “Glavnaia taina ‘Vostoka,’” Sekretnye materialy XX veka, no. 8 (april 2004) 

(available at http://epizodsspace.testpilot.ru/bibl/pervushin/vostok.html). 
 

 

 

 

220 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

Soviet media skillfully “enhanced” iconic images to stress their ideological 

message and to eliminate any undesired connotations. For example, the May 

1961 issue of the Soviet illustrated magazine Science and Life featured a drawing 

of Gagarin’s launch on its cover. the drawing faithfully depicted the actual 

scene of Gagarin’s bidding farewell to a group of administrators, officers, 

engineers, and technicians, with one exception: all the military personnel at the 

launch pad were magically transformed into civilians, their military uniforms 

replaced with colorful cloaks. recent research has uncovered many instances 

of retouching or cropping cosmonaut photos to erase “undesirable” individuals 

(who died in an accident or left the cosmonaut corps) from group shots—a 

venerable Soviet tradition going back to the Stalin-era iconographic erasure of 

high-placed “enemies of the people.”56 

to create a “clean” version of space history, both visuals and audio records 

were edited. On august 8, 1962, at a meeting of the State Commission that 

confirmed crew selections for the Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 flight, Deputy Chief of 

the air Force Marshal Sergei rudenko mistakenly pronounced the cosmonaut 

pavel popovich’s last name as popov. “this gross error created discomfort for 

everybody present,” wrote Kamanin in his diary. “too bad, but we’ll have to 

cut ‘popov’ out of Marshal’s speech.”57 again, the editing was made not for an 

immediate public release (the State Commission meeting, attended by Korolev 

and other “secret” designers, went on behind closed doors), but for a “clean” 

historical record. 

artifacts and records deposited in museums and state archives were 

carefully selected to reinforce the master narrative. For example, when a 

document outlining the instructions for a cosmonaut who accidentally landed 

on foreign soil came up for declassification, this sparked a internal debate. 

the instructions explained in detail that the cosmonaut should not disclose 

any information about the launch site, the booster, the spacecraft, and the 

leadership of the Soviet space program, and only the last—seventh—item on 

the list permitted the cosmonaut to ask for contact with a Soviet consul. “how 

can we give this document to a museum? how will we look like after that?” 

asked the person responsible for declassification and ordered the document to 

be destroyed. Valentina ponomareva, a former cosmonaut candidate and a space 

56. See James Oberg,“Cosmonauts and Cosmo-NOtS: Image Falsification in the Soviet Manned 

Space program,” remembering the Space age: 50th anniversary Conference, NaSa history 

Division and National air and Space Museum Division of Space history, October 22-23, 2008, 

Washington, DC On the Stalin-era political manipulation of iconography, see David King, 

The Commissar Vanishes:The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia (New York, NY: 

Metropolitan Books, 1997). 

57. Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 1, p. 137 (diary entry of august 8, 1962). 
 

 

 

 

 

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historian, salvaged the document from destruction, but it still was not made 

available to the public.58 

the master narrative was literally written in stone—in massive monuments 

that placed the cosmonauts, the leading engineers, and Soviet political leaders 

on a pedestal of historical myth. In a revealing symbolic gesture, space industry 

leadership actually placed space documents and artifacts in the foundation of 

one such monument in Moscow. a recently declassified petition from a group 

of industry leaders to the Soviet political leadership read: 

For the memorialization of the outstanding historical 

achievements of the Soviet people in the conquest of space 

and for the eternal preservation of documentation and other 

materials about the flights of Soviet spacecraft, it would be 

advisable to place in special sealed containers documents, 

films, and make-ups of Soviet artificial satellites of earth, of 

space stations, of space ships, and of the most important 

research equipment used in flight, and to brick up these containers into the foundation of a monument commemorating 

the outstanding achievement of the Soviet people in the conquest of space to be erected in Moscow.59 

an identical set of carefully selected documents and artifacts was put on display at a museum open under the monument. Space history was written once and 

for all.the master narrative was literally protected from challenge by a stone wall. 

SOVIet COUNter-NarratIVeS 

Individual memories that could not fit into the master narrative did not 

disappear. Beneath the glossy surface of official history, a myriad of private 

stories circulated informally, and they formed an oral tradition totally separate 

from written accounts. historians have traditionally associated such “counter 

memories in the very shadow of the official history” with groups which are 

“excluded or overlooked.”60 In the Soviet space program, by contrast, the 

groups that secretly cultivated such “counter memories” were front and center 

in official history: the space engineers and the cosmonauts. they were privy 

to information carefully concealed from an average Soviet citizen, and they 

58. Valentina ponomareva, Zhenskoe litso kosmosa (Moscow: Gelios, 2002), pp. 118-119. 

59. Leonid Smirnov et al. to the party Central Committee, February 2, 1966; russian State archive 

of the economy (rGae), Moscow, f. 4372, op. 81, d. 1944, l. 50. 

60. Catherine Merridale,“War,Death,and remembrance in Soviet russia,”in War and Remembrance 

in the Twentieth Century, eds. Jay Winter and emmanuel Sivan (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge 

University press, 1999), quoted in Fritzsche,“the Case of Modern Memory,” p. 107. 
 

 

222 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

preserved and passed on their memories as part of professional folklore. telling 

and listening to the “true stories” of events hashed up or distorted in official 

accounts became an essential part of their group culture, a part of being a space 

engineer or a cosmonaut. Counter memory defined their private identity as 

much as the master narrative shaped their public persona.61 

the engineers and the cosmonauts resented the obvious gap between their 

private memories and the official story. Forced to toe the official line in public, 

they let off their frustration in diaries and private conversations. “Why are we 

telling lies?” Korolev’s deputy Boris Chertok jotted in his notebook, reflecting on 

multiple launch failures concealed from the public.62 “all our reports are half-truths, 

which is worse than a lie,” Iaroslav Golovanov, a leading space journalist, wrote in 

his notes.63 While the rest of the world was watching a live report of the apollo 8 

mission, Soviet television broadcasted a children’s movie. Golovanov remarked on 

that occasion,“are Central Committee officials so thick that they don’t understand 

how foolish and shameful this is?”64When his newspaper put off the publication of 

his article on apollo 11 indefinitely, he let off steam in his private notebook:“I am 

tormented with shame.Will they allow such a disgrace again?”65 

the same people—journalists, cosmonauts, and leading engineers—wrote 

both official accounts and private counter memories. a discursive split went 

right through their souls. Lieutenant General Nikolai Kamanin was one of the 

leading spokespersons for the Soviet space program. he appeared on the radio 

and television, published popular books and articles, arranged cosmonauts’ 

public appearances, and wrote and rehearsed their public speeches. In December 

1968, he wrote an article for The Red Star, the Soviet armed Forces newspaper, 

about the forthcoming launch of apollo 8. he entitled his article “Unjustified 

risk” and said all the right things that Soviet propaganda norms prescribed 

in that case. Naturally, he did not even mention that the Soviet Union had its 

own secret human lunar program. But in his private diary, he frankly admitted 

that the americans were getting ahead in the lunar race and railed against those 

whom he saw as the true culprits: party leadership, military brass, and top 

administrators of the space program who neglected or misdirected the program 

61. On the tension between the professional identity and the public image of Soviet cosmonauts, 

see Gerovitch, “‘New Soviet Man’ Inside Machine,” pp. 149-152. On how secrecy shaped the 

identity of space engineers, see Gerovitch, “Stalin’s rocket Designers’ Leap into Space: the 

technical Intelligentsia Faces the thaw,” OSIRIS 23 (2008): 189-209. 

62. Boris Chertok, Notebook #16, September-November 1964; Chertok papers, Smithsonian 

National air and Space Museum,Washington, DC. 

63. Golovanov, Zametki vashego sovremennika, vol. 1, p. 383 (diary entries of September 1969– 

January 1970). 

64. Ibid., p. 343 (diary entries of September-December 1968). 

65. Ibid., p. 372 (diary entries of June-September 1969). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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for far too long. “We have fallen behind the United States by two or three 

years,” he wrote in the diary. “We could have been first on the Moon.”66 

the master narrative dominated Soviet media, but during the relatively 

liberal “thaw” of the Khrushchev era, newspapers occasionally gave voice 

to ordinary citizens who did not join in the public expression of enthusiasm 

for space. For example, in June 1960, a youth newspaper published a letter 

from one alexei N., who bluntly asked about the space program, “What’s in 

it for me?” “I, for example, on the eve of the launch of a rocket, received 300 

rubles salary, and this is what I still receive, in spite of the successful launch. 

Doesn’t is seem to you that the enthusiasm for these sputniks and the cosmos 

in general is inopportune and, more precisely, premature?” he asked. “rocket, 

rocket, rocket—what’s it needed for now? to hell with it now, and with the 

moon, but give me something better for my table. after that, then it will really 

be possible to flirt with the moon.”67 Most likely, the newspaper published 

this critical letter not to generate a genuine debate but simply to provoke an 

indignant reaction from space enthusiasts and thus further shore up the master 

narrative. an occasional display of dissenting opinion only stressed the need for 

the further strengthening of the space propaganda effort. even such carefully 

controlled expressions of criticism, however, totally disappeared from public 

discourse during the Brezhnev period. 

the first visible cracks in the master narrative came from those inside the 

space program who wanted to reassign credit among the major protagonists, 

while preserving the overall structure of the narrative. In 1974, the chief 

designer of rocket engines Valentin Glushko, Korolev’s longtime opponent, 

was appointed head of Korolev’s former design bureau. For 15 years, as Glushko 

ruled this central asset of the Soviet space program, he made a determined 

effort to rewrite Soviet space history by emphasizing his own contributions 

and downplaying Korolev’s. he even ordered to remove spacecraft designed by 

Korolev from the bureau’s internal museum and to replace them with rocket 

engines of his own design.68 

the tensions that brewed under the lid of the master narrative over 

decades eventually came to surface as the policy of glasnost during Gorbachev’s 

perestroika gave voice to the suppressed counter memories. 

66. Nikolai Kamanin, Skrytyi kosmos, vol. 3, 1967-1968 (Moscow: Novosti kosmonavtiki, 1999), p. 

335 (diary entry of December 12, 1968). 

67. Quoted in paul Josephson,“rockets, reactors and Soviet Culture,” in Science and the Soviet Social 

Order, ed. Loren r. Graham (Cambridge, Ma: harvard University press, 1990), p. 185. 

68. asif a. Siddiqi, “privatising Memory: the Soviet Space programme through Museums and 

Memoirs,” in Showcasing Space, eds. Martin Collins and Douglas Millard (London: Science 

Museum, 2005), p. 107. 
 

224 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

the eND OF the SOVIet UNION aND the COLLapSe OF 

the MaSter NarratIVe 

In the late 1980s, public revelations of the full scale of Stalin’s crimes led 

to a swift deterioration of the official historical discourse. Space history was also 

profoundly affected. Some archival documents came to light, private diaries 

became available, participants began to speak out, and a totally new picture of 

the Soviet space program emerged like a giant iceberg suddenly lifted out of the 

water. as asif Siddiqi has written, “the single narrative of Soviet space history— 

teleological and Whiggish—fractured into multiple and parallel narratives full 

of doubt (for the claimed successes of the program), drama (for the episodes we 

never knew about) and debate (over contesting narratives of history).”69 Veteran 

engineers, cosmonauts, and politicians began to tell stories of multiple failures 

during Soviet space missions, fatal errors and true heroism, favoritism in project 

funding, and hidden pressures to launch by a politically motivated date. 

the collapse of the Soviet Union, as the russian state largely withdrew 

both its economic support for the space industry and its ideological oversight 

over historical discourse, became a truly traumatic event for historical memory 

of the Space age. this trauma resulted in a systematic transformation of 

memory of all previous Soviet space history. Soviet-era political leadership, 

often depicted as inept and short-sighted in the perestroika-period memoirs, 

suddenly acquired a better image. Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev were now 

portrayed as wise leaders, who appreciated the importance of the rocket and 

space industry and lent it much-needed political and economic support. 

the memory of the Space age became atomized and decentralized, or, 

in asif Siddiqi’s expression, “privatized” along with russian industry itself. 

trying to attract Western investors and clients, russian space companies 

began advertising their history, opened exhibit halls for the public, and put 

on display rare space artifacts, including many original spacecraft. Owned and 

operated by space companies themselves, these “corporate” museums produced 

versions of space history that placed these companies in the best possible light. 

a competition in today’s marketplace naturally led to competing versions of 

history, each shored up with its own set of artifacts and corporate collections 

of memoirs. to this day design bureaus and other russian space institutions 

often physically hold or control access to most historical documents related to 

the Soviet space program, and the insiders have complete control over which, 

when, and in what form documents are released. 

the old mode of hero-worshipping history did not change; only now 

we witness clashes between followers of different space hero cults. Soviet 

space history itself is full of acrimonious disputes, including the famous fallout 

69. Ibid., p. 99. 
 

 

 

 

 

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The unveiling of a monument to the chief designer of rocket engines Valentin 

Glushko at the Alley of Space Heroes in Moscow, October 4, 2001. (Photo from the 

author’s collection) 

between Korolev and the chief rocket engine designer Valentin Glushko, or 

the equally famous and equally bitter rivalry between Korolev and his main 

domestic competitor in the space race, the chief designer of cruise missiles 

Vladimir Chelomei. a loyal team of followers gathers around each of these 

historical figures, and they construct their own versions of history, trying 

to invalidate their opponents’ accounts. Korolev’s defenders accuse Glushko 

of refusing to build rocket engines for Korolev’s lunar rockets, and blame 

Chelomei for siphoning off a large part of resources of the lunar program, 

all this resulting in the Soviet loss in the lunar race. But the rivals have their 

own stories to tell. From their perspective, Korolev is often portrayed as a 

ruthless competitor and a clever political operator. For example, Khrushchev’s 

son Sergei, who had worked for Chelomei, has suggested that Korolev had 

“focused his energy on what he did best—the elimination of his rivals.”70 a 

group of russian space industry dignitaries are posing in front of Glushko’s 

70. Sergei Khrushchev, “how rockets Learned to Fly: Foreword,” in Von hardesty and Gene 

eisman, Epic Rivalry: The Inside Story of the Soviet and American Space Race (Washington, DC: 

National Geographic, 2007), p. xviii. 
 

 

 

 

 

226 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

monument, using the monument as a backdrop for a photo opportunity. at the 

same time, symbolically, they are standing guard to this monument and to a 

specific version of history that sanctifies this particular hero. 

Monuments are not just silent memorials commemorating the past. 

Monuments do speak. Valentin Glushko reportedly bequeathed to inter his remains 

on the surface of the Moon. this bequest is cited nowadays as an inspiration for the 

russians to go the Moon.71 an aura of national pride is projected from the glorious 

past into the promising future. a heroic image of the past is enrolled to promote a 

specific policy agenda today. “Memorialization has become an essential function 

of the current russian space program,” asif Siddiqi has noted. For russians, “truly, 

their future (e.g., bases on the Moon) exists in simultaneity with their past (e.g., 

Sputnik, Gagarin). It has become almost impossible to separate them.”72 

the dominant medium for reassessing the past and translating this 

reassessment into lessons for today and tomorrow has been a steady stream 

of memoirs written by veterans of the Soviet space program: cosmonauts, 

engineers, physicians, military officers, and administrators. By revealing 

hitherto unknown historic details and placing space artifacts into context, 

these memoirs serve as a major vehicle for exploring Soviet space history. Since 

archival records are largely unavailable to researchers, new revelations come 

mostly through such memoirs. Nowhere is the “privatization” of memory as 

evident as in these highly personal, often emotional and partisan, accounts. 

Memoirists often try to write not merely an account of their own activities 

within the space program, but the whole history of specific periods or projects 

as seen from their partial perspective. In other words, they present coherent 

alternative versions of space history, not simply collections of bits and pieces 

of their individual experiences. thus, even though these memoirs purport to 

articulate “counter-memory”—an alternative to the official story line—in fact 

they show a craving and a nostalgia for a Soviet-style single master narrative 

that would elevate their own patron—be it Korolev, Glushko, or Chelomei— 

above others.73 “Counter-memory” ends up reproducing the same stereotypes 

of the master narrative, for it still serves a propaganda purpose—if not for the 

central government, then for a particular group within the space industry. 

the changes in the way memoirs were written from the Soviet era to the 

perestroika to the post-Soviet period reflect an adaptation of individual memory 

to a specific historical context.74 an oft-cited memoir by Oleg Ivanovskii went 

71. aleksandr Zhelezniakov, “V Moskve otkryt pamiatnik akademiku Glushko,” Poslednie kosmicheskie 

novosti, no. 206 (October 4, 2001) (available at http://www.cosmoworld.ru/spaceencyclopedia/hotnews/ 

index.shtml?04.10.01.html). 

72. Siddiqi,“From russia with history,” p. 5. 

73. Siddiqi,“privatising Memory,” p. 108. 

74. On memoirs of the Soviet era, see The Russian Memoir: History and Literature, ed. Beth holmgren 

(evanston, IL: Northwestern University press, 2003); Irina paperno, “personal accounts of the 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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through multiple editions from 1970 to 2005.75 Ivanovskii was the lead designer 

on the Vostok mission; he coordinated interaction among multiple participants 

in the production, testing, and launch of Gagarin’s spacecraft. he later headed 

the space industry department of the Military Industrial Commission, the 

top government body overseeing the space program. the early editions of his 

memoirs were published under the pseudonym Ivanov; he wrote about many 

leading space engineers but could not reveal their names. In the 1980s, he added 

their real names but still followed the Korolev-centered master narrative. even 

in the post-Soviet period, he was not ready to reveal anything about his activity 

inside the government bureaucracy. In the latest edition, a three-page section 

on this period of his life is filled entirely with quotations from other people’s 

memoirs.76 Without access to many original documents, the world of personal 

memory becomes self-referential. Ivanovskii did openly what others do implicitly 

or even unconsciously—he presented other people’s memories as his own. 

In the absence of crucial archival sources, memoirs are becoming a major 

source for historical scholarship. among all the memoirs of the post-Soviet era, 

the most ambitious and the most influential has been the four-volume set of 

books by Korolev’s deputy Boris Chertok, a sweeping and riveting account of 

the Soviet space program from its origins in the postwar years to the end of 

the Cold War. Well-informed and well-told, these memoirs, nonetheless, are 

written entirely from the perspective of Korolev’s engineering team.77 In russia, 

the reverence for such patriarch figures and the trust in their personal accounts 

reach extremes. the recent fundamental, 750-page-long russian Encyclopedia of 

Human Spaceflight often draws on memoirs as a major source for its articles. For 

example, the entry on the Soyuz 15 mission is based largely on an extended quote 

from Chertok’s memoirs.78 In 1974, Soyuz 15 failed to dock with the Salyut 3 

space station, and an internal controversy erupted over equipment malfunctions 

Soviet experience,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3:4 (Fall 2002): 577–610; 

and Barbara Walker,“On reading Soviet Memoirs:a history of the ‘Contemporaries’ Genre as 

an Institution of russian Intelligentsia Culture from the 1790s to the 1970s,” Russian Review 59:3 

(2000): 327–352. 

75. See aleksei Ivanov (Oleg Ivanovskii), Pervye stupeni: Zapiski inzhenera (Moscow: Molodaia 

gvardiia, 1970); Ivanov (Ivanovskii), Vpervye: zapiski vedushchego konstruktora (Moscow: 

Moskovskii rabochii, 1982); Oleg Ivanovskii, Naperekor zemnomu pritiazhen’iu (Moscow: 

politizdat, 1988); and Ivanovskii, Rakety i kosmos v SSSR: Zapiski sekretnogo konstruktora 

(Moscow: Molodaia gvardiia, 2005). 

76. Ivanovskii, Rakety i kosmos, pp. 164-166. 

77. NaSa history Division has sponsored the translation of these memoirs into english under asif 

Siddiqi’s editorship.Siddiqi has provided an excellent running commentary to the english edition, 

which places Chertok’s story in a wider context. See asif a. Siddiqi, “Series Introduction,” in 

Boris Chertok, Rockets and People (Washington, DC: NaSa Sp-4110, 2005), pp. ix-xix. 

78. See Iurii M. Baturin, ed., Mirovaia pilotiruemaia kosmonavtika. Istoriia.Tekhnika. Liudi (Moscow: 

rtSoft, 2005), pp. 209-210. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

228 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

and the actions of the crew in that incident. By letting an engineer tell his story 

unopposed, encyclopedia editors in effect presented a vary partial view of that 

controversy, placing the blame on the crew.79 When a personal perspective is 

thus validated and becomes a major reference source, this “counter-memory” of 

a previously hushed-up episode literally turns into a new master narrative. 

the NOStaLGIC pOetICS OF pOSt-SOVIet SpaCe MeMOrY 

In today’s russia, which has lost its former Communist ideals and is still 

searching for a unifying “national idea,” Gagarin’s pioneering flight—the pinnacle 

of the Soviet space program—often stands as a symbol of history that the russians 

could really be proud of, despite the trauma of losing the superpower status. “If 

we did not have Gagarin, we would not be able to look into each other’s eyes. 

It seems, we blew everything that we could. But we still have Gagarin. We 

will never lose him,” writes one russian journalist. “Gagarin is the symbol of a 

russian victory over the entire world. a symbol for ages to come. We don’t have 

another one and perhaps never will. Gagarin is our national idea.”80 

Sociological studies confirm that the russians today rank Gagarin’s flight 

as their second proudest historical achievement (91 percent), right after the 

victory in World War II (93 percent), and followed by Sputnik (84 percent).81 

Other Soviet symbols of national pride are falling far behind: the Stalin-era 

creation of the atomic and hydrogen bombs, the Khrushchev-era Virgin Lands 

campaign, and the Brezhnev-era Baikal-amur giant railroad construction are 

all tainted by various historic revelations that cast a dark shadow over the former 

showcase projects. 

the russian space program occupies such a prominent place in collective 

memory that any critique of its past or present is often viewed as unpatriotic. the 

deorbiting of the Mir space station in March 2001 caused a public outcry. the loss 

of Mir was portrayed in the media as a major blow to the national psyche. radical 

Communist opposition viewed the destruction of Mir as part of a sinister Western 

plot to bring down russia, and accused president putin of bowing to Western 

demands. Street protests were held, with signs reading, “Send the government to 

the bottom!” and “If you drown Mir, we’ll drown you!”82 

79. For an alternative account by the Soyuz 15 crew see Mikhail rebrov, “Gor’kii privkus slavy,” 

Krasnaia zvezda (September 9, 1994): 2; for an english translation, see “Cosmonauts Unfairly 

Blamed for Failure of Soyuz-15 Flight,” JprS-USp-94-007 (October 5, 1994): 3. 

80. Ivan Iudintsev,“rossiia stremitsia v kosmos ...na skripuchei telege proshlykh uspekhov,”HotCom. 

ru, vol. 16 (april 12, 2001) (available at http://www.hotcom.smi-nn.ru/main/art.phtml?id=5888). 

81. russian public Opinion research Center, press release 612, January 18, 2007 (available at 

http://wciom.ru/arkhiv/tematicheskii-arkhiv/item/single/3864.html). 

82. Vladimir plotnikov,“rubikon prezidenta,” Sovetskaia Rossiia (March 22, 2001) (photo of street 

protests available at http://sumpaket.webzone.ru/listwka.html). 
 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 229 

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President Putin presents Gagarin’s 1961 portrait by Nikolai But to the Cosmonaut 

Training Center head Petr Klimuk, Star City, April 12, 2001. (Photo from the author’s 

collection) 
 

 

 

230 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

Both critics of the government and government officials appealed to the 

public sentiment about space history, each side trying to claim historical memory 

in support of its legitimacy. the new, post-Soviet political leadership appropriated 

the image of Gagarin as its own ideological symbol, an emblem of national 

pride and technological prowess, and an inspiration for a superpower status. On 

april 12, 2001, on the 40th anniversary of Gagarin’s flight and just three weeks 

after the de-orbiting of Mir, president putin visited the Cosmonaut training 

Center in Star City and gave a speech before the cosmonauts. the Center personnel 

prepared a special backdrop for putin’s speech—a giant, full-wall-size portrait of 

Gagarin in full regalia—a not-so-subtle message to the president, reminding him 

of the appreciation of cosmonauts’ achievements by previous governments. For 

his part, putin also showed historical sensitivity: he assured the cosmonauts that 

april 12—the Cosmonautics Day that was established to memorialize the date of 

Gagarin’s flight—was celebrated not only by the cosmonauts, but by the entire 

country. to boost the cosmonauts’ morale, which was at a historic low after the 

Mir demise, putin brought them a gift. apparently he concluded that nothing 

could be more valuable to the cosmonauts than reasserting the symbolic meaning 

of space memory, and he presented them with another portrait of Gagarin. the 

cosmonauts, in turn, handed the president their own gift: a watch with Gagarin’s 

portrait on its face, and putin immediately put it on.83 By exchanging gifts, the 

president and the cosmonauts in effect exchanged their memories.84 Both sides 

seemed keen to avoid confrontation over the present-day Mir controversy by 

reaffirming their connection with space history. this co-remembrance of the 

celebrated past of the Soviet space program reasserted their common identity as 

russian heirs to the Soviet glory. 

In post-Soviet culture, space history becomes part of what the cultural 

critic Natalia Ivanova has termed “no(w)stalgia”: neither condemnation nor 

idealization of the past, but its actualization as a symbolic language for discussing 

today’s pressing issues. the “no(w)stalgic” audience turns into “a collective 

participant and a collective interpreter; a creator of a myth, a part of the myth, 

and a debunker of the myth; the living past and a trial of the past at the same 

time.”85 the cultural anthropologist Serguei Oushakine has argued that the 

main task of “the postsocialist poetics of nostalgic clichés” is “to produce an 

already known and previously encountered effect of recognition, to evoke a 

shared experience, to point toward a common vocabulary of symbolic gestures” 

83. V. Davydova et al., “40 let pervomu poletu cheloveka v kosmos!” Novosti kosmonavtiki, no. 6 

(2001) (available at http://www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/content/numbers/221/01.shtml). 

84. On the Soviet tradition of gift-giving, particularly on gifts to political leaders, see Dary vozhdiam / 

Gifts to Soviet Leaders, edited by Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov (Moscow: pinakoteka, 2006). 

85. Natalia Ivanova, No$tal’iashchee: Sobranie nabliudenii (Moscow, 2002), p. 62. See also Natalia 

Ivanova, “No(w)stalgia: retro on the (post)-Soviet television Screen,” The Harriman Review 

12:2–3 (1999): 25–32. 
 

 

 

 

 

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and thus to overcome “a peculiar post-Soviet stylistic block, a particular 

expressive deficiency of postsocialism.”86 Old symbols become frames for 

entirely new meanings. When president putin and the cosmonauts have to find 

a common language, both sides resort to nostalgic images of the past—Gagarin’s 

portraits—to convey their messages. 

the Gagarin iconography was no longer tied to the specific meanings 

attached to it in the Soviet era; it became a shared language that could express a 

wide range of new meanings. In the early 1990s, youth culture appropriated space 

iconography for the widely popular “Gagarin parties,” rave dance extravaganzas 

held at the Cosmos pavilion in the famed Soviet exhibition of people’s economic 

achievements in Moscow. Giant make-ups of rockets and spacecraft hung from 

the ceiling, an enormous portrait of Gagarin was specially produced to adorn 

the festivities, and real cosmonauts were invited to have drinks at the bar and 

to mingle with the crowd. placing old Soviet memorabilia into a youth party 

context had a strange liberating effect: space symbols were no longer perceived 

as ideologically loaded emblems of Soviet propaganda or perestroika revisionism. 

“the juxtaposition of Soviet symbols with rave symbols, which may seem ironic 

and absurd,” writes the cultural anthropologist alexei Yurchak, “in fact freed 

the symbolic meanings attached to Gagarin and the space program from their 

Soviet pathos and reinvented them, making them accessible for the new cultural 

production.”87 Yurchak has suggested the metaphor of “sampling” to express the 

(re)use of Soviet symbolism in the post-Soviet culture. “as with house music— 

which is continuously remixed, sampled, and quoted in new contexts—here, 

former official symbols were also remixed and presented in new contexts and 

in a fresh, nonlinear format,” he writes. “thus, the new ‘symbolic samples,’ 

containing quotes from past and recent Soviet meanings, were placed into a 

dynamic new context.”88 

rUSSIaN CapItaLISM aND the SeMIOtICS OF SpaCe 

In the post-Soviet era, discourses of the past and of the present interact in 

complex ways. as the historian Martin Collins points out, the Global age that 

we live in has both changed the cultural perception of spaceflight and shifted 

priorities for the Space age. the meta-narrative of exploration no longer 

dominates the public image of spaceflight, and new large-scale space projects 

tend to involve global satellite communication systems, rather than ambitious 

86. Serguei alex Oushakine,“‘We’re Nostalgic but We’re not Crazy’:retrofitting the past in russia,” 

The Russian Review 66:3 (July 2007): 469, 481. 

87. alexei Yurchak,“Gagarin and the rave Kids:transforming power, Identity, and aesthetics in the 

post-Soviet Night Life,” in Consuming Russia: Popular Culture, Sex, and Society Since Gorbachev, 

edited by a. Baker (Durham, NC: Duke University press, 1999), p. 94. 

88. Ibid., p. 95. 
232 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

human spaceflight endeavors. Instead of leading humanity away from earth 

into the enchanting Unknown, space projects now connect disparate parts of 

earth, changing the very terms in which we discuss culture in general and 

Space age culture in particular.89 

Collins draws our attention to the semiotic nature of new discursive 

regimes: cultural symbols do not simply represent things, they act. they create 

a “second nature” environment in which new identities emerge and a new form 

of cultural power competes with and reshapes old political and institutional 

structures. thus culture cannot be seen as a mere gloss on the rough surface 

of the crude machinery of technological innovation, economic pressures, and 

political decision-making. Culture is an actor in its own right—an instrument 

of innovation, a tool of profit-making, and the stuff politics is made of. 

Both capitalism and communism manipulated with symbols: capitalism 

made semiotics an essential part of marketing, while communism incorporated 

it into daily ideological indoctrination. Both generated mass production and 

mass consumption of symbols; any public representation sold something, be it 

a product or an ideological dogma. Communist propaganda officials dealt with 

some of the same issues as corporate marketing executives. 

In post-Soviet russia, the cultural heritage of the decades of the communist 

rule clashes with the newly developing capitalist culture. russian advertising 

campaigns today often skillfully combine old Soviet symbolism with “new 

russian” capitalist values. to what Collins has called the “mix of semiotics, 

capitalism, spaceflight, and the global and the local” they add the spectacularity 

of space symbols of the Soviet superpower, which are fashionable among the 

young and nurture the nostalgic feelings of the old. In the summer of 2006, the 

cell phone provider MtS launched a billboard campaign in Moscow, promoting 

its new “Number One” calling plan. the billboard depicted a cosmonaut in 

a spacesuit happily using a cell phone in space. accompanied by a television 

advertisement with the slogan “Be Number One!”, this blunt attempt to brand 

the company as the industry leader drew on the popular russian association 

of the cosmonaut image with Gagarin, the “Number One” cosmonaut. In a 

truly postmodern fashion, the billboard message also had a self-mocking twist: 

the cosmonaut was wearing space gloves, which of course made it impossible 

to punch keys on the phone. thus the advertisement pretended not to be an 

advertisement at all, but rather an invitation to the viewer to play a semiotic 

game, sorting out contradictory signifiers. 

the mixed feelings of pride for the glorious space achievements of the past, 

shame for losing the superpower status, and the mockery of both pride and 

shame as ideological constructs provided a fertile ground for the semiotic 

interplay of past/present, reality/simulation, and truth/advertising. the 

89. See Collins’s article in this volume. 
 

 

 

 

 

CreatING MeMOrIeS: MYth, IDeNtItY, 233 

aND CULtUre IN the rUSSIaN SpaCe aGe 

A billboard advertisement of the “Number One” cell phone calling plan by the MTS 

company in the streets of Moscow, June 2006. (Photo from the author’s collection) 

ostentatious self-awareness of the simulated reality of advertising was taken to a 

new level in a series of MtS television ads that followed the “Number One” 

billboard campaign. those ads first depicted a cosmonaut talking on a cell phone 

during preparations for a takeoff, but then a wider camera shot gradually revealed 

that the action was actually happening at a movie set being prepared for shooting 

a takeoff scene.90 In a sly reference to the popular conspiracy theories about 

entire space missions staged on a movie set, these ads again invited the viewer to 

blur the boundary between reality and simulation, between an advertisement 

and a game, and between space history and today’s marketplace. 

Global satellite communication and positioning systems are increasingly 

integrated into the russian economy, but their political and cultural ramifications 

remain peculiar to russian society and are burdened with the remembrance of 

the Soviet past. as late as 1999, there still was no legal framework for using 

global positioning systems in russia. In 1998, a batch of Volkswagen cars was 

reportedly not permitted for sale in russia, because they were equipped with 

90. See Dmitrii Kozlov,“MtS:O iaitsakh,tarifakh,sovetskoi simvolike i butaforskikh kosmonavtakh,” 

Reklamnye idei, no. 5 (2006) (available at http://www.advi.ru/page.php3?id=287, including one of 

the television ads).
 

 

234 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

GpS receivers.91 In 2001 the russian authorities decided to build a russian 

rival to GpS, and they revitalized the stalled military project called GLONaSS 

(GLObal Navigation Satellite System), now broadening its use for civilian 

purposes. In May 2007, president putin signed a decree authorizing free and 

open access to the civilian navigation signals of the GLONaSS system to both 

russian and foreign customers.92 after adding three satellites in December 

2007, GLONaSS would soon provide almost complete coverage of the russian 

territory. according to the planners, GLONaSS should reach global coverage 

by 2010. the russian authorities counted that foreign consumers, especially in 

the Middle east and South east asia, would be interested in having access to an 

alternative to the U.S.-controlled GpS.93 

Instead of fostering a sense of global unity, satellite navigation systems in 

the russian context are becoming a subject of international technological 

competition, a tool of political influence, and a vehicle for boosting national 

pride. U.S.-russian negotiations on achieving technical compatibility and 

interoperability between GpS and GLONaSS progress very slowly. In the 

meantime, the russian Ministry of Industry has proposed limiting the sales in 

russia of GpS receivers that were not compatible with GLONaSS.94 Official 

policies toward global navigation systems in russia seem to fall back on the old 

Soviet stereotype of national isolationism. In March 2007, putin held a meeting 

of the State Council in Kaluga, the town nicknamed “the birthplace of 

cosmonautics” where tsiolkovskii spent most of his life and produced his most 

important works. having reestablished historical links with tsiolkovskii’s 

visions of space exploration, putin instructed the Council members that 

GLONaSS “must work flawlessly, be less expensive, and provide better quality 

than GpS.” he expressed his confidence that russian consumers would show 

“healthy economic patriotism” and prefer GLONaSS over GpS.95 In December 

2007, the first batch of dual-signal GpS/GLONaSS traffic navigators was 

quickly sold out in Moscow stores at $570 a piece, several months before the 

customers could take full advantage of GLONaSS capabilities.96 

91. V. Koliubakin,“‘Iridium’–presentatsiia v Sankt-peterburge,” Tele-Sputnik, no. 3(41) (March 1999) 

(available at http://www.telesputnik.ru/archive/41/article/40.html). 

92. Novosti russian News and Information agency report,May 18,2007 (available at http://rian.ru/ 

technology/innovation/20070518/65722212.html). 

93. Novosti russian News and Information agency report, December 26, 2007 (available at http:// 

www.rian.ru/technology/connection/20071226/94147340.html). 

94. anton Bursak, “Minprom zashchitit GLONaSS, ogranichiv vvoz GpS-ustroistv,” RBK Daily, 

February 22, 2007 (available at http://www.rbcdaily.ru/print.shtml?2007/02/22/media/266488). 

95. Viktor Litovkin,“GLONaSS ishchet oporu na zemle,” FK Novosti Information agency report, 

april 2, 2007 (available at http://www.fcinfo.ru/themes/basic/materials-document.asp?folder=1446 

&matID=134457). 

96. prIMe-taSS Business News agency report,December 27,2007 (available at http://www.primetass.ru/news/show.asp?id=746309). 
 

 

 

 

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For individual russian users, an “eye in the sky” often evoked Soviet-era 

cultural memories of total surveillance. In October 2007, General Nikolai 

patrushev, the head of the FSB (the successor to the KGB), announced plans 

for a nationwide system of traffic control. Under the banner of fighting 

terrorism, the FSB intended to implement a system of monitoring individual 

motor vehicles on the russian territory. technical details of the new system 

were not revealed, but it was implied that it might involve the use of satellites 

for positioning and communication. Journalists quickly gathered initial 

negative reactions to the news: “it’s an invasion of privacy”; “this smells like a 

violation of constitutional rights of citizens”; and “any surveillance brings up 

bad memories of Stalin’s totalitarian system.”97 at the same time, individual 

users seemed quite willing to use GpS devices to track the movements of their 

own children.98 

a shift in priorities from space exploration to satellite applications is 

clearly reflected in the russian public opinion. In an april 2005 poll, the 

highest number of respondents (52 percent) said that scientific research and the 

development of advanced technologies should be a top priority of the russian 

space program, and 44 percent supported defense applications. 17 percent 

mentioned the importance of space achievements for international prestige, 

and only 1-4 percent prioritized missions to the Moon and Mars, search for 

extraterrestrial civilizations, and space tourism.99 ambitious projects of space 

exploration serve as a token of memory, an emblem of the “no(w)stalgic” past, 

but they no longer dominate the cultural production of the present. 

CONCLUSION 

the Space age both reinforced cultural boundaries—through the Cold 

War imagery and rhetoric—and blurred them through the emerging sense 

of the global. It produced vivid memories and engaging stories; individual 

retelling of these stories and collective propaganda projects of remembrance 

gradually turned historical events into mythological epics, shaping the identity 

of generations. the “Sputnik generation” of russian citizens, who grew up 

in the 1950s, in recent interviews acknowledged the formative role of the key 

events of the Space age, but had little personal recollection of their reaction 

97. andrei Kozlov,“Voditeli popali pod podozrenie,” Vzgliad, October 16, 2007 (available at http:// 

www.vz.ru/society/2007/10/16/117887.html). 

98. a. Kuznetsov, report on testing the S-911 personal Locator (available at http://gps-club.ru/gps_ 

think/detail.php?ID=8057). 

99. russian public Opinion research Center, press release 187, april 11, 2005 (available at 

http://wciom.ru/arkhiv/tematicheskii-arkhiv/item/single/1181.html). 
 

236 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

to Sputnik or Gagarin’s flight.100 In order to remember, we have to create our 

memories. and we create them out of the myths and symbols of our culture. 

Cultural myths should not be seen merely as distorted memories. It is 

precisely these “distortions,” cultural adaptations and appropriations of symbols, 

that give cultures their individuality, their unique character, and distinct 

perspective. Just as one’s personal memories reveal more about one’s current 

identity than about one’s past, historical myths provide a valuable insight into 

the culture that produces them. at the intersection of space history and cultural 

history, the semiotics of Space age remembrance ties together individual 

memory and collective myth, the materiality of objects and the pliability of 

symbols, the authenticity of fantasy and the deceptive nature of truth. 

there can be no “true” memory, as any act of recollection reconstitutes 

our memories. as different cultures remember the Space age, it keeps changing, 

revealing new symbolic meanings and providing an inexhaustible source of 

study for historians. By shifting the focus from debunking myths to examining 

their origins and their constructive role in culture, we can understand memory 

as a dynamic cultural force, not a static snapshot of the past. 

100. Donald J. raleigh, tran. and ed., Russia’s Sputnik Generation: Soviet Baby Boomers Talk about Their 

Lives (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University press, 2006). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 13 

the Music of Memory and Forgetting: 

Global echoes of Sputnik II1 

amy Nelson 

In times when history still moved slowly, events were few 

and far between and easily committed to memory. they 

formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of 

adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk 

clip. a historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the 

morning after with the dew of novelty. 

— Milan Kundera2 

It’s been four long days since we first started experimenting 

on the dearly departed 

soon she won’t communicate anymore. 

— amoree Lovell3 

While americans’ memory of the “evil empire” might be fading,4 the 

Cold War continues to inform an increasingly diverse and interrelated 

global popular culture in often surprising ways. among these, the enduring 

1.	 the research for this essay was supported by a Summer humanities Stipend from Virginia tech, 

the Summer research Laboratory on russia, eastern europe, and eurasia at the University of 

Illinois, and a Faculty research Grant from Virginia tech’s College of Liberal arts and human 

Sciences. For assistance tracking down musical and poetic tributes to space dogs I am grateful 

to Karl Larson, tom ewing, Mark Barrow, robert Stephens, erik heine, andrew Jenks, and 

especially evan Noble. I am indebted to Brian Britt and Greta Kroeker for their help translating 

lyrics in languages I wish I knew better. Some material from this essay also appears in amy 

Nelson, “Der abwesende Freund: Laikas kulturelles Nachleben,” in Jessica Ullrich, Friedrich 

Welzien, and heike Fuhlbrügge, eds, Ich, das Tier. Tiere als Personlichkeiten in der Kulturgeschichte 

(Berlin: reimer Verlag, 2008), pp. 215-224. 

2.	 Kundera, Milan. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Michael henry heim (Middlesex, 

england: penguin Books, Ltd, 1980 [1979]), pp. 7-8. 

3.	 Lines from the song “Laika: an allegory,” Six Sadistic Songs for Children (2005). 

4.	 In its annual assessment of the attitudes of today’s youth, Beloit College’s “Mindset List for the 

Class of 2010” notes that for today’s college students “the Soviet Union has never existed and 

therefore is about as scary as the student union.”“Beloit College Mindset List,” http://www.beloit. 

edu/~pubaff/mindset/2010.php (accessed January 20, 2008). 
 

 

 

 

 

238 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

celebrity and complex historical memory surrounding “Laika,” the mixedbreed dog that became the first living being to orbit earth in November 1957, 

is certainly one of the most intriguing examples. Instantly famous as evidence 

that the Soviets led the race to conquer space, Laika joined a small group of 

animals who are celebrities in their own right. But while the fame of other 

creatures in this cohort often derives from humans’ shared assessment of their 

symbolic importance—as an emblem of grit and courage in the case of a depression-era racehorse such as Seabiscuit or as an exotic token of national rivalry in 

the case of p. t. Barnum’s giant pachyderm, Jumbo, (purchased in 1882 from 

the London zoo for a then-record sum of $10,000),5 Laika’s celebrity was more 

controversial at the outset and remains more complicated 50 years after the 

flight of Sputnik II. By examining the ongoing resonance of the first space dog 

in global popular culture, this essay shows how a defining episode of the early 

Space age has been remembered even as its specific historical circumstances 

have been effaced. this contradictory legacy has much to say about the shifting, 

mutable nature of social frames of memory (and, by extension, forgetting), and 

about the complex ways that humans engage, imagine, and remember the life 

and death of an individual dog. 

Speculation about Laika’s fate and the significance of her voyage served 

as the crux of the initial controversy. as Susan Buck-Morss and David Caute 

have recently noted, the fierceness of the cultural Cold War derived, somewhat 

ironically, from the superpowers’ shared enlightenment heritage and the fact 

that both sides largely agreed on cultural values, including a faith in progress, a 

veneration of science and technology, and a determination to harness nature to 

human ends. the space race, inaugurated a short month before Laika’s voyage 

with the launch of the first artificial satellite, tapped into all of these concerns 

while also serving as a proxy for armed conflict. Caute’s bemused assertion that 

“a Soviet dog orbiting in space caused all american dogs to howl” highlights 

the international drama precipitated by Laika’s flight. as ordinary citizens 

scanned the night sky and amateur radio operators tracked the satellite’s radio 

signal, world headlines confirmed the Soviets’ latest victory in the space race—a 

competition of scientific, engineering, and industrial might that was both more 

threatening and more fascinating than conventional warfare.6 

Sending a dog into orbit further undermined Western confidence already 

shaken by the launch of Sputnik I. at the same time, this bizarre, public form of 

animal experimentation outraged animal welfare groups. For although Laika’s 

5.	 Laura hillenbrand, Seabiscuit an American Legend (New York, NY: random house, 2001); harriet 

ritvo, The Animal Estate.The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, Ma: 

harvard University press, 1987), pp. 220, 232-233. 

6.	 David Caute, The Dancer Defects.The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford, 

UK:Oxford University press,2003),pp.4,38-39;Susan Buck-Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe. 

The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 2002). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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space capsule had food, water, and a climate control system designed to support 

her for several days, it was not engineered to be retrievable, so the dog’s death 

was a certainty from the outset. For 40 years the Soviets maintained that Laika 

had died painlessly after several days in orbit, revealing only in 2002 that she 

succumbed to overheating and panic a few hours after launch.7 

Sacrificed in the quest to make spaceflight a reality for humans, Laika the 

dog provoked intense reactions from people who regarded her variously as an 

“experimental animal,” a “brave scout,” a “faithful servant,” or an “innocent 

victim.”8 at one level, these responses mirrored contradictory attitudes, 

common in their main contours across many cultural and national contexts, 

of people toward dogs. as such, conflicting human perspectives on the first 

space dog drew on and intensified more generalized tensions generated by the 

intertwined nature of domestic dog and human ecologies.9 they also tapped 

the excitement and apprehension occasioned by the advent of the nuclear era 

and the Space age, which suggested the compelling attractions as well as the 

tremendously destructive potential of technological and scientific advances. 

Over the last 20 years or so, the multivalent echoes of Laika’s immediate 

celebrity have inspired an array of creative endeavors, including Lasse halström’s 

film, My Life as a Dog (1985) and extending to a number of recent literary 

undertakings, an array of Web sites, and, most remarkably, a diverse and 

expanding corpus of music emanating from various points around the Northern 

hemisphere and the transnational arena of cyberspace. Since the mid-eighties, 

music groups in Scandinavia, Spain, Germany, Japan, the United States, and 

the United Kingdom have dedicated songs to Laika, and three have adopted 

her name as their own. this represents considerable name recognition. Indeed, 

in the musical arena of commercial cyberspace, the first space dog seems to 

have more currency than the first space man or even the founder of the Soviet 

state.10 Nearly 50 short pieces are named after Laika or have lyrics referencing 

7.	 David Whitehouse, “First Dog in Space Died within hours,” BBC News Online October 28, 

2002, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2367681.stm (accessed January 25, 2008). 

8.	 these overlapping but often contradictory perspectives on Laika might be explained in terms 

of the sociological concept of the “boundary object.” See anita Guerrini, Experimenting with 

Humans and Animals. From Galen to Animal Rights (Baltimore, 2003), p. x; Susan Leigh Star and 

James r. Griesemer, “Institutional ecology, ‘translations’ and Boundary Object: amateurs and 

professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-39,” Social Studies of Science 19 

(1989): 387-420. 

9.	 On the extent to which the destinies of humans and domestic dogs are inextricably linked 

by forces of nature and culture, see raymond Coppinger and Lorna Coppinger, Dogs. A 

New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior, and Evolution (Chicago, IL: the University of 

Chicago press, 2001); Donna haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People, and 

Significant Otherness (Chicago, IL: prickly paradigm press, 2003); and Susan Mchugh, Dog 

(London, UK: reaktion Books, 2004). 

10. a search across all genres in the Itunes store in January 2008 yielded 23 pieces with Yuri Gagarin’s 

name in the title, 27 pieces named after Lenin, and 43 referencing Laika. 
 

 

240 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

her story. Nineteen of these are exclusively instrumental, and the majority 

of those are electronica in the tradition of the “space music” popularized for 

the last 20 years or so by Stephen hill in his syndicated program “hearts of 

Space.” Laika also has served as muse for classically trained musicians, including 

Max richter (“Laika’s Journey,” 2002) and Ulrike haage, whose “requiem 

for Laika” (2005) interweaves vintage Soviet radio broadcasts and narration in 

German with sung portions of the Mass for the dead (with the sacrificial agnus 

dei recast as a wolf). 

Given this prominence, one might expect Laika to provide an important 

bridge to the popular memory of the space race, the Cold War, and the Soviet 

past. But while Laika’s initial celebrity depended heavily on the politically 

charged and highly publicized circumstances under which she was sent into 

space, her ongoing resonance derives more from her appeal as a symbol of 

the timeless human concerns of sacrifice, experimentation, alienation, and 

loss. Indeed, an analysis of the recent musical tributes to her suggests that the 

contemporary popular memory of the first space dog has become somewhat 

uncoupled from the history of Sputnik II. 

to explain this paradox, we must note that while the realms of “memory” 

and “history” partially overlap, they also differ in important ways. historians 

use many different kinds of evidence—including qualitative sources such as 

memoirs, diaries, and oral histories—to gain insight on the events of the past. 

But like other scholars in the behavioral sciences and the humanities, they 

distinguish between the act of remembering and the historical events being 

remembered. recent research in this area reminds us that for individuals and 

societies as a whole, memory is an active, iterative process. Our recollection 

of events is not a literal recall of a fixed or imprinted image or experience, 

but rather a construction or reconfiguration of what happened.11 that the 

democratizing impulses fuelling the “unofficial knowledge” of popular memory 

often run counter to the empirical and sometimes arcane preoccupations of the 

professional historian has been well-documented, even as recent scholarship 

has focused on understanding the current obsession with “memory” among 

scholars and laypeople.12 

Intended as a satirical observation on the perversity of Czech communism, 

Milan Kundera’s assertion that “nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip,” while 

events themselves are “soon forgotten,” offers a telling comment on how time 

11. David Gross, Lost Time: On Remembering and Forgetting in Late Modern Culture (amherst, Ma: 

University of Massachusetts press, 2000), p. 4. 

12. On the significance of amateur collectors and preservationists to the construction and perpetuation 

of popular memory. see raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory. Past and Present in Contemporary 

Culture (London:Verso, 1994). For a recent attempt to historicize discourses of memory and 

modernity, see alon Confino and peter Fritzsche, The Work of Memory. New Directions in the Study 

of German Society and Culture (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois press, 2002). 
 

 

 

 

 

the MUSIC OF MeMOrY aND FOrGettING: 241 

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seems to have accelerated since the end of the last World War while at the 

same time historical memory has become less stable and, in many contexts, 

less valued. Where the cultural legacy of the first space dog is concerned, the 

inherent atemporality of the media-mediated images, sounds, and messages 

that have played an increasingly dominant role in framing social and cultural 

memory over the last 50 years seem to be critically important.13 So, too, are the 

converging influences of globalization and the digital technologies that have 

transformed the production, distribution, and consumption of music since the 

late nineties.14 With the rise of relatively small digital audio files, such as the 

Mp3, the global internet became the ideal forum to facilitate the exchange 

and distribution of music, a creative medium uniquely suited to conveying the 

emotional charge of the Laika story. as the song cited for this essay’s second 

epigraph suggests, by 2005 that story might sound more like a funeral for a 

friend than an early episode of the quest to send humans into space. 

Laika’s current visibility in various aesthetic and creative realms extends 

and expands on the celebrity status accorded her in the early years of the space 

race. Like several other dogs sent into space by the Soviets between Laika’s 

voyage and Yuri Gagarin’s manned flight in 1961, Laika became the subject 

of a sophisticated, anthropomorphized celebrity.15 photographs of the canine 

cosmonauts were printed on front pages around the world. reporters flocked to 

their “press conferences,” and millions tuned in to hear their barks transmitted 

on radio “interviews.” Fame was fleeting for most of these dogs as the world’s 

attention quickly shifted from their exploits to the more compelling drama of 

human space travel and exploration. Laika, however, proved to be the exception. 

the significance of her voyage and the fact that she was deliberately sent to her 

death inspired a number of commemorative projects in the Soviet Union and 

other countries as well. 

Soviet tributes to the canine pioneer began within a year of her journey. 

Soon after her flight, a brass tag was attached to her kennel with the inscription 

translated here from the russian: “here lived the dog Laika, the first to orbit our 

planet on an earth satellite, November 3, 1957.”16 In keeping with the tradition 

of commemorating historic events and individuals, the Soviet mint issued an 

enamel pin of “the First passenger in Space,” showing the dog’s head and a 

rocket hovering over earth on a field of stars. Official commemorations in other 

countries soon followed as stamps bearing the dog’s likeness were issued in 

13. Gross, Lost Time, p. 123. 

14. timothy D.taylor, Strange Sounds. Music,Technology & Culture (New York, NY: routledge, 2001). 

15. I examine the history of the space dog program and the dogs’celebrity in:Laikas Vermächtnis:Die 

sowjetischen raumschiffhunde” in Tierische Geschichte: Die Beziehung von Mensch und Tier in der 

Kultur der Moderne, eds. Dorothee Brantz and Christof Mauch (paderborn: Schöningh, in press). 

16. a. Golikov and I. Smirnov,“Chetveronogie astronavty,” Ogonek 49 (1960): 2. 
 

 

 

 

242 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

romania (1957), albania (1962), Sharjah/Mongolia (1963), and poland (1964).17 

In the fall of 1958, the Soviet Union began to market its first filtered cigarette, 

using Laika’s name and image on the wrapper, and initiating a now 50-year-old 

process of commodification and “branding” of the space dog.18 the high-relief at 

the base of the monument “to the Conquerors of Space” (dedicated in 1964) at 

the exhibition of achievements of the National economy19 (VDNKh) includes 

an alert, larger-than-life Laika, whose capsule provides the foundation for a rocket 

guided by the muscular male arms of an anonymous socialist-realist human. 

While the pins, stamps, and monuments of the 1950s and 1960s might 

be fairly straightforward commemorations of a significant event or individual, 

other tributes to Laika were more complex.20 Outside the Soviet Union, at least 

two musical memorials addressed the main concerns raised by Sputnik II— 

american preoccupation with the specter of Soviet domination and widespread 

shock over sending a dog to its death in space. 

“Sputniks and Mutniks,” recorded by ray anderson and the homefolks 

in 1958, playfully captured the sensationalism and insecurity Laika’s flight 

generated in the United States.21 Jaunty and playful, the song’s quick tempo and 

bluegrass style is at odds with the anxiety over the potential for weaponizing 

space expressed in the lyrics: 

Sputniks and mutniks flying through the air
 

Sputniks and mutniks flying everywhere
 

they’re so ironic, are they atomic? 


those funny missiles have got me scared.
 

While anderson’s song received relatively little distribution before Jayne Loader 

and pierce and Kevin rafferty identified it as a “must have” for the soundtrack 

of their satirical documentary Atomic Cafe (1982), the second song from this 

era, “russian Satellite,” enjoyed instant and enduring acclaim. as one of the 

Mighty Sparrow’s three Carnival road March Competition winners from 1958, 

the song helped catapult the “Sparrow” (born Slinger Francisco) to the forefront 

of the calypso world, where he has remained for nearly half a century. as in 

the case of “Sputniks and Mutniks,” the lyrics and music of “russian Satellite” 

17. In the sixties, the Soviet Union and several other eastern Bloc countries also issued stamps of 

other space dogs, especially Belka, Strelka, Chernushka, and Zvezdochka. Stamps of Laika were 

issued later in hungary (1982) and North Korea (1987). 

18. “Soviet Smokers Now have Filters,” New York Times, September 11, 1958. 

19. In 1992,the title of this center was changed to the all-russian exhibition Centre,but it continues 

to be referred to by its previous acronym of VDNKh. 

20. See for example, Leonid Vysheslavskii’s poem, “pamiati Laiki,” Zvezdnye sonety (Moscow: 

Sovetskii pisatel’, 1962), p. 71. 

21. Atomic Cafe Soundtrack (rounder Select, 1994). 
 

 

 

 

 

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work against each other for ironic effect. But whereas the appeal of “Mutniks 

and Sputniks” derives from its disarming simplicity, “russian Satellite” exploits 

a hallmark of calypso style, setting deftly pointed social commentary against a 

bright, syncopated melody. “Murder, murder everywhere,” begins the song, 

which goes on to examine one of the many widespread myths about Laika’s 

demise: “Over a thousand miles in space . . . they poison the food for the poor 

puppy / Oh Lord, this is more than cruelty.” In 2002, the Mighty Sparrow 

reminded fans that he is a “multi-faceted” individual whose concerns about 

social justice still extended past the human community: “I can remember when 

the russians sent a satellite in the sky, with a dog in it. I was the only one who 

came out and said that I was sorry for the dog.”22 

Given that rock and roll music developed in tandem with the space 

race and the heyday of science fiction, the pervasiveness of space themes 

throughout rock’s history is hardly surprising. Indeed, as Ken McLeod has 

recently noted, “the association of space and alien themes with rock’n’roll 

rebellion is found throughout rock’s history and has had an impact on nearly 

all its stylistic manifestations.”23 But while any number of examples can be 

mustered to demonstrate the fertility of this connection from the 1960s on 

(i.e., David Bowie’s Space Oddity [1969] and his glam rock alter ego “Ziggy 

Stardust,” pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon [1973], George Clinton’s Mothership 

Connection [1974], etc.), the flight and plight of the first space dog seems to 

have found minimal resonance between the late 1950s and the era of glasnost. 

Beginning in the mid-1980s, however, a diverse assortment of filmmakers, 

musicians, artists, and authors began turning to Laika for inspiration. Most of 

the resulting creative work has originated outside the former Soviet Union, 

although statistical evidence suggests that the memory of Laika thrives in her 

homeland as well. the majority of russians surveyed in 1994 could identify 

Laika more accurately than they could other major events from the post-war 

period, including the Cuban missile crisis, the 20th party Congress, or the 

publication of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

24 

the starting point for this renewed interest in the first space dog was the 

1985 film My Life as a Dog. Set in Sweden in the late ‘50s, Lasse halström’s 

drama charts the coming of age of a boy named Ingemar, who copes with his 

mother’s failing health and her inability to care for him by reminding himself 

of Laika’s plight. he worries that Laika starved to death, identifies with her 

helplessness, and laments her physical isolation in an effort to gain perspective 

22. “Sparrow, the Concerned Caribbean Villager,” The Jamaica Gleaner, November 27, 2002, http:// 

www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20021127/ent/ent1.html (accessed January 25, 2008). 

23. Ken McKleod,“Space Oddities:aliens, Futurism, and Meaning in popular Music,” Popular Music 

vol. 22, no. 3 (2003): 340. 

24. howard Schuman and amy D.Corning,“Collective Knowledge of public events:the Soviet era 

from the Great purges to Glasnost.” The American Journal of Sociology 105, no. 4 (2000): 913-956. 
 

 

244 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

on his own abandonment and loss, which culminates in the death of his mother 

and his own beloved dog, Sickan. as the film’s title and these lines suggest, 

Ingemar reaches across the boundary of species to shore up his own identity 

and resolve: 

I can’t help thinking about Laika. She had to do it for human 

progress. She didn’t ask to go . . . she really must have seen 

things in perspective. It’s important to keep some distance . . . 

halström’s film garnered critical acclaim at film festivals in Berlin and toronto 

before making headlines in the United States, where box office sales ultimately 

topped eight million dollars. Nominated for a raft of awards and winner in the 

Best Foreign Film category for both the New York Film Critics award (1987) 

and the Golden Globe awards (1988), My Life as a Dog inspired a new wave of 

(mainly musical) tributes to the first dog in space. 

the first of these came in 1987 from the Spanish punk rock group, 

Mecano. part of “La Movida,” the counter-cultural movement that mobilized 

Spanish youth in the 1980s, Mecano found commercial success in France, Italy, 

and Latin america, as well as in Spain. Still readily accessible on Youtube, 

Mecano’s song, “Laika,” tells the story of a “normal russian dog” and speculates 

about her “thoughts” as she looked down on earth through the window of her 

space capsule.25 Like many bands to follow, Mecano laments sacrificing a dog 

to human ambition and curiosity, and in so doing elevates Laika to realms 

normally reserved for humans: “We have to think that on earth there is one 

little dog less / and in heaven there is one star more.” 

the most long-standing musical group to appropriate Laika’s name was 

also founded in 1987. Ironically retro in conception, Laika and the Cosmonauts 

offered updated instrumental surf rock in the 1960s tradition of Dick Dale, 

complete with loud reverberating solo guitar and lots of fast double picking. 

the irony here derived from the former studio musicians’ Finnish citizenship. 

Like their compatriots, the Leningrad Cowboys, Laika and the Cosmonauts 

parodied Finland’s ambivalent stance toward the Cold War superpowers by 

choosing a Soviet-themed name and adopting a quintessentially american 

style. the group rode the wave of the instrumental surf rock revival set off by 

the release of the surf documentary, Endless Summer II and the inclusion of Dick 

Dale’s “Miserlou” on the soundtrack of the film Pulp Fiction in 1994. reviving 

the connection between rock music and space themes dating back to the early 

1960s, Laika and the Cosmonauts paid explicit homage to the Space age with 

their first album and title hit, C’mon do the Laika (1988) and their 1996 

compilation, Zero Gravity. Besides offering covers of surf-rock classics and 

25. “Mecano-Laika,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgHkv1XPPis (accessed January 25, 2008). 
 

 

 

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themes from ‘60s movies and television shows (including Psycho, Vertigo, and 

Mission Impossible), the group composed its own music with a sound one critic 

described as bouncing “between endless summer, lurching polka, spy flick, and 

spaghetti western themes. Sometimes moody, sometimes trippy . . . party music 

supreme.”26 the quartet has released six albums since its founding in 1987 and 

counts Pulp Fiction director, Quentin tarantino, among its diehard fans.27 

With a career that spanned the transition from the end of Soviet communism to the age of the global electronic village, Laika and the Cosmonauts were 

among the first musical ensembles to tap the appeal of campy nostalgia for 

things (formerly) Soviet to a range of audiences. Others who mastered the 

appropriation of Soviet symbols and themes included rasputin Stoy, whose 

German synth-pop band CCCp found an enthusiastic following in alternative 

dance clubs. along with several homages to the Soviet space program, the 

band’s 1996 album, Cosmos, includes a cut called “Laika, Laika” with the enthusiastic participation of the russian army chorus. 

Over the last decade, however, explicit references to the Soviet past have 

become vaguer, focusing instead on a fairly generic nostalgia for the early space 

race or on the figure of the first space dog herself. For example, the american 

indie rock-power pop band Sputnik dedicated a smoky, strummed guitar ballad 

to Laika in 2004, but the other tracks on its debut album Meet Sputnik make 

little or no reference to the space race. Following the lead of the Leningrad 

Cowboys, the virtual band Gorillaz titled their hit remix album of 2002 

Laika Come Home, combining the name of the Soviet space dog with the title 

commonly associated with the anglo-american canine hero Lassie. While the 

album art evokes the glory days of dogs and chimps in space, the music consists 

of re-mixes of the group’s first (eponymous) album in reggae and dub style. 

Clearly for musicians, Laika’s association with the creative possibilities and 

costs of innovation continues to serve as a compelling touchstone. the most 

explicit homage to the space dog and her legacy belongs to the eclectic British 

quartet, Laika, which uses sampling and electronics to achieve a celestial, 

innovative sound and features an image of the dog on all of its album covers. 

Founded in 1994, the group released five albums before “taking a break” in 

November 2007, the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik II. While the 

group’s “classic” sound is best exemplified in collections such as Silver Apples 

of the Moon (1995) and Sounds of the Satellites (1997), the incorporation of blues 

elements in Good Looking Blues (2000) followed from the group’s determination 

to confound expectations. according to their Web site: “they’re not a rock 

band, but they play guitars. they’re not an ‘electronic’ group in the usual sense 

26. andy ellis,“the amazing Colossal Band,” Guitar Player 29, no. 5 (May 1995): 129. 

27. “Laika and the Cosmonauts,” http://www.laikaandthecosmonauts.com/news/index.php3 (accessed 

January 25, 2008). 
 

 

 

246 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

of the term, yet they meld and twist samples with the best of them.”28 as for the 

name, Margaret Fiedler and Guy Fixsen explain their choice as follows: 

[W]e liked the sound of the word and we liked the association with being “out there” in terms of experimentation 

while at the same time being a warm furry organic thing . . . 

the other reason we like the name is that it was probably the 

most high profile animal experiment ever—Laika died up 

there in her capsule—and we are strong believers in animal 

rights and things that seem kind of obvious to us, like not 

eating them.29 

While innovation represents an essential component of artistic originality, 

concern about animal experimentation and sacrifice emerges as a recurring 

theme in Laika-themed songs across several genres. For example, american 

folk singer Kyler england uses phrases from the beloved nursery rhyme 

“twinkle, twinkle, Little Star” to frame an almost maudlin tribute to a brave 

dog sacrificed for human ends: “like a diamond in the sky / gave your life 

for humankind / what a view it must have been.”30 In the hands of amoree 

Lovell, the portland-based rocker cited in this essay’s second epigraph, the same 

material gets an almost silly gothic twist, replete with rollicking arpeggios, 

cello counterpoint, and moaning bass chorus background. Others, such as the 

retro rock group Sputnik, eurodance star Ice MC, and the grunge rock group 

pond, denounce the human forces behind Sputnik II with little or no trace of 

irony. the lyrics of pond’s “My Dog is an astronaut,” for example, expresses 

this wish for Laika: 

I hope she sails on and on across the universe 

finds there some new world where she’ll be safe from man’s 

experiments 

that don’t have come home parts 

In many of these songs, Laika is no longer a stray dog captured for 

laboratory research, but rather an abused or abandoned pet. Since most people 

more easily relate to dogs as pets or companions than as research subjects, this 

slippage facilitates an emotional connection with Laika’s experience even as it 

obscures the reality of her life. Other kinds of identity ambiguity in musical 

tributes to the space dog involve the performer appropriating a canine identity 

28. “Laika,” http://www.laika.org/index_main.shtml (accessed January 25, 2008). 

29. “Laika,” http://www.laika.org/index_main.shtml (accessed January 25, 2008). 

30. Kyler,“Laika,” A Flower Grows in Stone (Deep South, 2004). 
 

 

 

 

 

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or blurring the human-dog boundary in the vein of George Clinton’s “atomic 

Dog” or the hip hop artist Snoop Dogg. the most explicit example of this is 

probably Ice MC’s eurodance hit from 1990 in which the rapper announces: 

I’m a dog
 

my name is Laika
 

my ambition is to be like a f---in’ astronaut
 

and see Mars31
 

In other cases, the boundary between human and animal and the ethical 

perspective of the artist are unclear, as in Moxy Früvous’s “Laika,” which 

appeared on the Canadian group’s 1994 smash hit album, Bargainville. the point 

of view shifts numerous times throughout this witty meditation on coming of 

age in the age of flying dogs. Like Ice MC and the death rock group Massacre 

(which speculates that Laika had a fear of heights),32 Moxy Früvous projects 

human aspirations and feelings onto Laika with excellent ironic results (“hey 

darling, throw this space pup a bone”). 

an even more arresting ambiguity surfaces when humans incorporate 

Laika into human pantheons. a physical example of this is the monument to 

fallen cosmonauts erected outside Moscow in 1997 that includes a likeness of 

Laika peering up at the faces of the humans who also died in the conquest 

of space. In the musical realm, we have a brilliant send up of real and artistic 

spectacular demises by British singer Neil hannon. In the title cut of the 2004 

album Absent Friends,

33 hannon flanks a witty toast to Laika with tributes to 

the suicidal actress Jean Seberg, the World War I chaplain “Woodbine Willy” 

(who distributed cigarettes to doomed and dying soldiers), the persecuted Oscar 

Wilde, and the king of cool Steve McQueen (as “hicks” in The Great Escape). 

the flirtation with self-destruction in “absent Friends” finds more direct 

expression in the song “Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” a ballad by the Montrealbased indie rock sensation arcade Fire. While themes of death and loss run 

throughout the album (appropriately entitled Funeral), “Neighborhood #2” 

invokes Laika’s name as the definitive marker of betrayal and rejection: 

alexander, our older brother,
 

set out for a great adventure.
 

he tore our images out of his pictures,
 

31. “Laika,” Cinema (Xyx, 1991). 

32. “Laika, se va,” Aerial (1998?). 

33. the Divine Comedy, Absent Friends (parlophone, 2004). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

248 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

he scratched our names out of all his letters.
 

Our mother shoulda just named you Laika!34
 

the music video for this piece shows a book of “memories” being pulled 

from the family bookshelves during the singing of the third line. as the last 

line is sung, a shell labeled “Laika” blasts out of a cannon. In this song and in 

other examples, the elision of canine-human identity facilitates a reversal of the 

original inflection of Laika’s story. the historical Laika might still be a victim 

or a pioneer, but contemporary Laikas can also be agents of betrayal (as in the 

case of “Neighborhood #2) or emblems of lost causes.35 When the specifics 

of Sputnik II are invoked, the ending of the story is subject to considerable 

revision: Laika might survive, return to earth, or reappear in another realm. 

For example, in Niki McCretton’s recent theatrical production, “Muttnik, 

the First Dog in Space,” the British solo stage performer portrays Laika as 

a “canine adventurer” whose “rags to riches story” appeals to audiences of 

“Children and Childish adults.” 36 

as the Soviet particulars of Laika’s story recede from the popular 

consciousness, musicians seem increasingly inclined to link her to more 

universal human concerns and struggles. the clearest example of using Laika’s 

name without any reference to the circumstances surrounding her story is a 

dreamy, half-intelligible song about lost love and self-effacement by Damon 

and Naomi, the folk-duo, peace activist sponsors of exact Change publishers.37 

Other songs, such as Massacre’s “Laika, se va” or Blipp!’s “Laika,” use selected 

elements of the Sputnik II story to frame meditations on a (human) longing to 

return home or the isolation of an endless journey. 

In addition to the musical compositions discussed here, a number of recent 

literary endeavors refer to or are inspired by Laika as well. among these are 

children’s books and science fiction works, as well as more serious explorations 

of loneliness and alienation such as James Flint’s novel Habitus (2000) and 

Sputnik Sweetheart (1999) by haruki Murakami. Nick abadzis’s graphic novel 

Laika (2007) intertwines fact and fiction to examine the nature of trust and 

the implications of technological advances for what it means to be human. 

In Jeanette Winterson’s recently published, Weight (2005), the first space dog 

appears as a grateful companion to a world-weary atlas in a witty retelling 

of a classic myth-cum-meditation on choice, freedom, and coercion. In 

34. arcade Fire,“Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” Funeral (Merge records, 2004). 

35. For a recent example of this usage, see the comic strip “Get Fuzzy” from November 7, 2006. 

36. “Muttnik 	 the First Dog in Space,” http://www.angelfire.com/stars4/nikimccretton/cgi-bin/ 

MuttnikShowDetails2006.pdf (accessed January 25, 2008). 

37. “Laika,”More Sad Hits (Shimmy Disc,1992);“exact Change:Classics of experimental Literature,” 

http://www.exactchange.com/frame/frame.html (accessed January 25, 2008); “Damon and Naomi,” 

http://www.damonandnaomi.com/frameset/frame.html (accessed January 25, 2008). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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keeping with dogs’ powerful role as mediators of realms in various mythic and 

legendary settings, Winterson’s historical Laika helps the mythic hero negotiate 

his unbearable burden even as he saves her from the solitude of outer space.38 

additional evidence of Laika’s continued resonance is found in the 

astonishing number of Web sites devoted to the dog. these range from a 

“rainbow bridge” memorial that places Laika in the sentimentalized cosmology 

of grieving pet owners, to sites concerned primarily with space history, stamp 

collecting, or vending space dog memorabilia.39 a rescue organization for 

homeless animals in Moscow chose Laika for its Web site logo because, “she 

represents for us the plight of homeless animals everywhere—abandoned or 

exploited, but rarely treated with the respect and compassion which all living 

creatures deserve.”40 

and then there is akino arai’s song “Sputnik,” which appeared on her 

Raining Platinum album in 2000. In a manner perhaps befitting a famous anime 

singer, the real, the imaginary, and the fabricated are interwoven in this song 

of lost (human?) love. the lyrics refer to “the Laika dog on Sputnik II,” but 

then conflate the historical Laika with “Kloka,” a space dog fabricated by the 

Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta for an installation called “Sputnik: the Odyssey 

of Soyuz 2.” First exhibited in Madrid in 1997, “the Odyssey of Soyuz 2” 

used manipulated digital photos to present an elaborate, completely fabricated 

history of a fictional cosmonaut who allegedly vanished (along with his canine 

companion) in 1968.41 

a song of human longing that invokes a fictitious dog to commemorate a 

real one might be the ultimate tribute to a global celebrity whose entire history 

is built on irony. For not only is Laika the dog a more meaningful figure—at 

least in the popular imagination—than the many human forces associated with 

her voyage, but, even more paradoxically, it seems that by perishing in space, she 

has become eternal. Laika endures as a symbol of futuristic adventure, sacrifice, 

and experimentation, as a foil for human anxieties about abused animals and 

pet dogs, and as a timeless echo of a unique historical moment. But in today’s 

popular culture, the particulars of that moment seem to have been far easier to 

metabolize than the reality of sending “man’s best friend” on a one way trip to 

38. On dogs as negotiators of human identities and boundaries, see Mchugh, Dog, pp. 47-48. 

39. “Memorial to Laika,” http://www.novareinna.com/bridge/laika.html (accessed January 25, 2008); 

ted Strong, “Laika the russian Space Dog!,” http://tedstrong.com/laika-trsd.shtml (accessed 

January 25, 2008); Sven Grahn, “Sputnik-2, More News from Distant history,” http://www. 

svengrahn.pp.se/histind/Sputnik2/sputnik2more.html, accessed January 25, 2008; Sven Grahn, 

“Sputnik-2, Was it really Built in a Month?,” http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/histind/Sputnik2/ 

Sputnik2.htm (accessed January 25, 2008); Melissa Snowden, “russian Space Dogs,” http:// 

www.silverdalen.se/stamps/dogs/library/library_space_dogs_russian.htm (accessed January 25, 2008). 

40. “Moscow animals,” http://www.moscowanimals.org/index.html (accessed January 25, 2008). 

41. Catherine auer,“Ground Control to Comrade Ivan,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists vol. 58, 

no. 2 (2002): 10-12. 
250 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

outer space. Like Oscar Wilde, a figure synonymous with wit and gay identity, 

Laika has become an iconic figure largely divorced from historical specifics. 

her continued presence in the human imagination depends on her absence, on 

the bizarre and public circumstances of her demise, and on the contradictions 

between the grim realities of her life and people’s idealized conceptions of dogs. 

In contemporary global culture, the memory of the first space dog remains 

vibrant, even as the historical particulars surrounding her place in the Space 

age begin to fade. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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GLOBaL eChOeS OF SpUtNIK II 

LaIKa SINGLeS WIth LYrICS 

(title,artist,album,Year, Genre,artist’s Country) 

“Sputniks and Mutniks,” ray anderson and the homefolks, Na, 1958, country, 

United States 

“russian Satellite,” the Mighty Sparrow, Na, 1959, reggae, trinidad 

“Laika,” Mecano, Descanso Dominical, 1987, alternative, Spain 

“Laika,” Ice MC, Cinema, 1990, eurodance/hip hop, United Kingdom 

“Laika,” Äge andersen, 1991, folk rock, Norway 

“Laika,” Damon and Naomi, More Sad Hits, 1992, alternative / indie rock, 

United States 

“Laika,” Moxy Früvous, Bargainville, 1994, folk, Canada 

“Laika, Laika,” CCCp, Cosmos, 1996, rock, Germany 

“My Dog is an astronaut, though,” pond, Rock Collection, 1997, indie rock, 

United States (Oregon) 

“Laika, se va,” Massacre, Aerial, 1998, death rock, argentina 

“La Ballata Di Laika,” Daisy Lumini e Beppe, El Paese Dei Bambini con la Testa, 

1999, folk / acoustic, Italy 

“Sputnik,” akino arai, Raining Platinum, 2000, alternative, Japan 

“Laika,” Gionata, L’uomo e lo Spazio, 2002, alternative, Italy 

“Laika,” Kyler england, A Flower Grows in Stone, 2003, folk/indie rock, United 

States 

“Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” arcade Fire, Funeral, 2004, indie rock, Canada 

“absent Friends,” Divine Comedy, Absent Friends, 2004, alternative, United 

Kingdom 

“Laika,” Little Grizzly, When it comes to an end I will stand alone, 2004, indie 

rock, United States (texas) 

“Sputnik (Song for Laika),” Sputnik, Meet Sputnik, 2004, rock, United States 

“Laika,” Blipp! Impulser, 2005, electronic / alternative, Sweden 

“Laika,” per Bonfils, Exotic Fruits, 2005, electronic, Denmark 

“Ultra Laika,” per Bonfils, Exotic Fruits, 2005, electronic, Denmark 

“Laika: an allegory,” amoree Lovell, Six Sadistic Songs for Children, 2006, 

gothic rock, United States (Oregon) 

“Laika,” Built by Snow, Noise, 2007, indie rock, United States (texas) 
 

 

 

252 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

“Laika,” handshake, World Won’t Wait, 2007, folk, United Kingdom (London) 

“Laika In Space,” the antecedents, Letters from Rome, 2007, indie rock/pop, 

United States (Oregon) 

“Laika,” team robespierre, Everything’s Perfect, 2008, punk/dance, United 

States (New York) 

INStrUMeNtaL SINGLeS NaMeD aFter LaIKa 

(title,artist,album,Year) 

“Laika,” the Cardigans, The Other Side of the Moon, 1997
 

“Laika,” those Norwegians, Kaminzky Park, 2003
 

“Like armstrong + Laika, tied and tickled trio, Observing Systems, 2003
 

“Laika,” alias, Instrument No. 4, 2004
 

“Laika,” Ghost 7, New Directions in Static, 2004
 

“Laika’s theme,” the Divine Comedy, Absent Friends, 2004
 

“Laika,” Walnut Grove Band, Black Walnut, 2005
 

“Laika,” KDream, Spacelab, 2005
 

“Laika,” honey B. & the t-bones, On the Loose, 1990
 

“Laika Goes techno,” Deliens, Impacts, 2006 


“Laika,” ratasseriet, Beyond, 2006
 

“Laika,” the take, Dolomite, 2006


 “Laika,” Jah on Slide, Parole de Rude Boy, 2007
 

“Neighborhood #2 (Laika), Vitamin String Quartet, 2007
 

“Laika,” tony Corizia, Basswoodoo, 2007
 

“Laika (part 1), CNtr, Northern Deviation, 2007
 

“Flight of the Laika,” Gabber Nullification project, Gabber Nullification Project, 


2006
 

“Laika (part 2), CNtr, Northern Deviation, 2007
 

“Laika,” Juri Gagarin, Energia, 2008
 
 

Chapter 14 

From the Cradle to the Grave: 

Cosmonaut Nostalgia in Soviet and 

post-soviet Film 

Cathleen S. Lewis 

“the earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot 

stay in the cradle forever.” 

—tsiolkovskii 

“Of all the arts, for us the most important is cinema.” 

—Lenin 

INtrOduCtION 

Soviet film has featured space travel since its beginning. the first Soviet 

cinematic blockbuster drew on a contemporary science fiction novel about 

a pair of travelers to Mars. Since that time point, the popular images of human 

spaceflight and films in russia and the Soviet union have had a long, intertwined 

history that spanned a century. Over that period, the image of the cosmonaut 

changed along with political sensibilities. prior to the revolution, the literary 

image of the cosmonaut began to take form when russian writers began to 

explore the possibility of flying into space through the means of science fiction. 

as revolution approached, these writings took on ideological overtones, 

combining the ideas of spaceflight with concepts of utopia and revolution. after 

the Bolshevik revolution, the government undertook the reconstruction of the 

russian film industry that had flourished during the years prior to the revolution. 

about the same time, recognizing the propaganda potential of the media, Lenin 

declared it a priority in the economic reconstruction of the country that 

followed the civil war. Over the next decade, a handful of movies treated the 

idea of space travel, each one conforming increasingly closely to predominant 

ideological mores about the demeanor and messages of space travelers should 

carry on their missions. the most popular media in the Soviet union and the 

most popular and celebrated event in Soviet history combined to create a 

national memory and understanding of spaceflight. 

In a conversation with Soviet Commissar of enlightenment anatolii 

Lunacharsky in the years immediately after the 1917 revolution, Lenin said,
 

 

 

 

 

 

254 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

“Of all the arts, for us the most important is cinema.”1 Whether Lenin 

referred to the propaganda potential of the media or its ability to satisfy the 

country’s need for entertainment is unclear. Nonetheless, during the course 

of rebuilding the country after war and revolution, the new Soviet state went 

to great effort and expense to develop this young art form. two of the earliest 

and most artistically innovative films of this era featured space travel and 

were adaptations of a Soviet science fiction novel that promoted the idea of 

interplanetary socialist revolution.2 the reopening of Soviet cinemas and the 

first portrayal in spaceflight in film coincided with the cinematic production of 

aleksei tolstoy’s Aelita in 1924. Months later, a team of animators created their 

own version of tolstoy’s tale, replicating the ambitious tone of revolutionary 

fervor of the time. By the end of the decade, Stalin had redirected that fervor 

internally towards transforming the u.S.S.r. into an industrialized country. 

Ideologically, transforming nature and political loyalty replaced the concept of 

exporting revolution. Man and machine traveling through space matched the 

prevailing political metaphor of the time of man using technology to master 

nature. Science fiction that emphasized man’s ability to engineer mastery over 

nature and political and personal loyalty gained favor during that brief period 

when officials tolerated speculative literature. 

1.	 translated and quoted in: The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents, 1896-1939, 

1988, trans. richard taylor, ed. richard taylor and Ian Christie, paperback (London: 

routledge, 1994), p. 56 from the original citation in G. M. Boltyanskii (ed.), Lenin i kino 

(Moscow/Leningrad, 1925), pp. 16-19. although many historians cite Lenin’s quotation, 

there is thin evidence that Lenin actually said precisely those words. In the introduction to 

Josephine Woll’s book on the cinema of the thaw era, richard taylor describes the quote 

thus, “Cinema has been the predominant popular art form of the first half of the 20th century, 

at least in europe and North america. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the former 

Soviet union, where Lenin’s remark that ‘of all the arts, for us cinema is the most important’ 

became a cliché and where cinema attendances were until recently still among the highest 

in the world.” Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw, Kino: the russian 

Cinema Series, ed. richard taylor (London: I. B. tauris publishers, 2000), p. vii. denise 

Youngblood casts doubts on whether Lenin actually made the statement, but does support 

the idea that Lenin had the intention to promote cinema as a means to propaganda, denise J. 

Youngblood, Movies for the Masses: Popular Cinema and Soviet Society in the 1920s (Cambridge, 

uK: Cambridge university press, 1992), p. 35. peter Kenez discusses the likelihood that 

the words were consistent with Lenin’s actions, peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society: From 

the Revolution to the Death of Stalin, Kino: the russian Cinema Series, ed. richard taylor 

(London: I. B. tauris publishers, 2006), p. 22. 

2.	 the two films were adaptations of aleksei tolstoy’s novel, Aelita. aleksey Nikolayevich tolstoy, 

Aelita, trans. antonnia W. Bouis, ed. theodore Sturgeon, Macmillan’s Best of Science Fiction 

(New York, NY: Macmillan, 1981). the first was Yakov protazanov’s film by the same name: 

Yakov protazanov, Aelita:Queen of Mars,Kuinzhi,Valentina;tseretelli,Nikolai;eggert,Konstantin; 

Solntseva, Yulia; Zavadsky, Yuri; Ilinsky, Igor; Batalov, Nikolai (Mezhrabpom-rus, 1924), 120 

minutes.the second was an animated version: Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komisarenko, and Yuri 

Merkulov, Mezhplanetnaia revolutsiia (Interplanetary Revolution), animation (Biuro gosudarstvenno 

tekhnicheskogo kino, 1924), 7:40 min. 
 

 

 

 

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after Stalin’s death, options for speculative expression began to reopen. 

Soviet science fiction reemerged in the late 1950s after the Soviets launched 

Sputnik in 1957 and Gagarin in 1961. during the early era of human spaceflight 

in the 1960s, filmmakers undertook a new effort at portraying spaceflight 

with ideological undertones similar to the previous era. this time, instead 

of demonstrating how the new technology was transforming the economy 

and society these movies reassured the public, combining documentary and 

theatrical components. the focus was on the present indicating that the era of 

science fiction and the present were one. after the collapse of the Soviet union, 

spaceflight attracted new interest, this time without the inhibitions of party 

ideology. these new, post-Soviet films were one component of a reexamination 

of the 1960s as a pivotal period in Soviet history. 

While Soviet and russian portrayals of spaceflight have been sporadic 

over the decade, they have been consistent in the way in which they reflect 

their contemporary ideological realities. Similar to the real cosmonauts, film 

cosmonauts carried the ideology of their nation into space. 

SpaCeFLIGht GaINS IdeOLOGY 

Whether or not Lunacharsky’s memory of Lenin’s statement on the 

importance of film to the young Soviet state was accurate, the new government 

indeed demonstrated a commitment to film production that made its importance 

clear. Movies had been popular in pre-revolutionary russia. In 1913, St. 

petersburg and Moscow had over one hundred movie theaters even though the 

Lumières brothers’ invention of the motion picture camera and projector had 

only arrived in russia in 1896, one year after its introduction in France.3 Within 

five years of the first russian film production, and at the onset of World War 

I, russia was producing about ten percent of films that screened in nearly 1500 

russian movie theaters.4 as was true with european audiences, the russians 

preferred costume dramas and literary adaptations in this new medium.5 

Film was a very expensive industry for the young u.S.S.r. What World 

War I did not destroy of the russian movie industry, the Civil War finished off. 

Movie theaters and production companies, like most enterprises that were not 

essential to life, dissolved due to neglect and scavenging during the Civil War. 

New foreign films were far too expensive for the government to import during 

the 1920s into the few surviving theaters. and precious materials for domestic 

film production were beyond the means of the impoverished state. promising 

3. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 10-11 and 34. 

4. Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, p. 13, and Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, p. 2. 

5. Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, pp. 2-3, and Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 13-18. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

256 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

and experienced russian directors had fled the country to Western europe 

where filmmaking remained a viable career.6 

early Soviet attempts to reignite the film industry were not successful. a 

film industry was far more complex than a factory and relied heavily on foreign 

trade as much as artistic talent. It was only the implementation of the New 

economic policy (Nep) that materially changed the situation.the Nep allowed 

the formation of joint stock companies that could earn income, which was the 

fiscal solution that allowed movie houses to reopen and make profits from ticket 

sales. after several iterations, Sovkino, the Soviet film production company, was 

established as a corporation with shares owned by the Supreme Council of 

the National economy, Moscow and petrograd workers’ councils, and people’s 

Commissariat of Foreign trade, which was the largest stockholder.7 the resulting 

cooperation between Sovkino and the one remaining independent film studio, 

Mezhrabpom-rus, solved the difficulty of marshalling resources to make films.8 

Mezhrabpom-rus used the profits from Sovkino to pay for film production. 

the Nep period not only marked a relaxed attitude towards the economy 

and business, but it also marked a period during which attempts were made to 

encourage the repatriation of russian intellectuals who had fled the country 

during World War I or the Civil War. One such person was Iakov protazanov, 

the russian film director who had directed widely popular costume dramas 

before the war and had lived in exile in paris and Berlin since 1917.9 today in 

the West, protazanov’s role in early Soviet cinema had been overshadowed by 

directors such as Vertov and eisenshtein, but at the time, at age 41, this relatively 

old man of the cinema promised to reinvigorate russian film.10 probably at the 

behest of Lunacharsky, protazanov returned to russia with the promise that he 

would be allowed to adapt aleksei tolstoy’s Aelita to film with few expenses or 

6.	 Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, pp. 3-5, and Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, pp. 16-21. Both 

authors recount the disassembly of the russian film industry and the dispersal of its resources. 

7.	 Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, p. 40. 

8.	 “In addition, the Nep allowed the formation of the private joint-stock companies. Of these, the 

two most important were rus and Mezhrabpom, which were later to form Mezhrabpom-rus. 

Mezhrabpom was an abbreviation of International Workers’ aid, an organization established in 

Germany in 1921 by pro-Soviet and pro-Communist elements. Its original task was to help 

Soviet russian fight famine.” Ibid., p. 38. 

9.	 “[protazanov] made his directorial debut in 1912 with the production of the Departure of the 

Great Old Man (‘ukhod velikogo startsa’), an account of the final days of Lev tolstoy. he made 

a star of Ivan Mozzhukhin in literary adaptations, such as The Queen of Spades (‘pikovaia dama’) 

in 1916, based on pushkin’s short story, and Father Sergius (‘Otets Sergei’) after the novella by 

tolstoy, made in 1918.” david Gillespie, Early Soviet Cinema: Innovation, Ideology and Propaganda, 

Short Cuts: Introductions to Film Studies (London; New York:Wallflower, 2000), p. 10. 

10. Jay Leyda, Kino:A History of the Russian and Soviet Film, 1960,third (princeton, NJ: princeton 

university press, 1983), p. 186. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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resources spared. his allocation of film stock far exceeded the normal budgets 

of the time.11 

protazanov took advantage of his prestige and drew on then-dormant 

russian artistic resources. he hired established russian stage actors, such as 

Nikolai tsereteli, and offered the first screen roles to new actors Igor Ilinsky, 

Iuliia Solnetseva, and Nikolai Batalov, all of whom later became Soviet film 

stars. Modernist artist Isaak rabinovich designed the massive Constructivist 

sets for the Mars scenes. In addition, alexandra ekster designed the modernist 

Martian costumes just prior to her departure from the Soviet union.12 

as a completed film, Aelita was almost two hours long—very long for the 

standards of the time.13 It was popular among the film going public. rumors 

circulated that the director was unable to view the opening due to overcrowding.14 

Most importantly, Sovkino was able to distribute the movie throughout europe, 

thus earning hard currency, improving the Soviet union’s balance in foreign 

trade, and making a profit for future productions. as a measure of his success, 

protazanov went on to make ten more silent films in the next six years and 

continued to make movies until two years before his death at the age of 63 in 

1945.15 In spite of the taints of having returned from abroad after the revolution 

and producing an ideological suspect film as his inaugural post-Soviet film, 

protazanov survived better than other, more revolutionary filmmakers. 

as an adaptation of tolstoy’s novel, Aelita was the first Soviet science fiction film. It influenced subsequent and internationally better-known european 

11. protazanov’s production of Aelita was clearly a priority for Sovkino, as the expense of the 

project revealed: “the production history of Aelita indicated that protazanov prepared for 

his Soviet debut with great care and forethought, but without political foresight. though 

schooled in the breakneck pace of pre-revolutionary filmmaking, averaging more than ten 

films annually before the revolution, he took over a year to complete Aelita. according to 

the handsome programs that was distributed at screenings of the picture, protazanov shot 

22,000 meters of film for the 2841-meter film (a 3:1 ratio was the norm) and employed a case 

and crew of thousands.” Youngblood, Movies for the Masses, p. 109. advertising for the film, 

too, was unprecedented. almost a year prior to its release, Soviet film newspapers and journals 

reported on the status of the production. In the weeks leading up to the opening in Moscow, 

Pravda advertised teasers for the perspective Moscow audiences. aleksandr Ignatenko, “Aelita”: 

Pervyi opyt sozdaniia blokbastera v rossii (Sankt-peterburg: Sankt-peterburgskii gosudarstvennyi 

universitet kino i televideniia, 2007). 

12. Gillespie, Early Soviet Cinema, p. 11. although ekster associated with the Constructivists, she 

considered herself to be an art nouveau designer as she did not adhere to the Constructivist 

tenets of utility. She immigrated to paris in 1925. Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism 

(New haven, Ct: Yale university press, 1983), pp. 153-155 and 242. 

13. protazanov, Aelita: Queen of Mars. 

14. Mike O’Mahony,“aelita,”in The Cinema of Russia and the Former Soviet Union,ed.Brigit Beumers, 

24 Frames (London:Wallflower, 2007), p. 37. 

15. andrew J. horton,“Science Fiction of the domestic,”Central Europe Review 2, no. 1. January 10, 

2000: Kinoeye, February 7, 2007, http://www.ce-review.org/00/1/kinoeye1_horton.html, n.p. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

258 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

science fiction films, such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926).16 however, Aelita was 

in fact not a close adaptation of tolstoy’s Aelita, consequently shifting the central 

theme of the film away from science fiction. In fact, protazanov’s liberties with the 

novel’s plot turned the film into a fantasy melodrama that, while appealing to the 

public, drew harsh criticism from the ideologically strict party elite. In the movie 

version of Aelita, the heroes Los and Gusev do travel to Mars and precipitate a 

worker’s revolution, but the travel takes place in Los’s dream that he has because 

of his jealousy over his wife.the director turned the export of revolution into a 

fantasy. his liberties transformed space exploration from a revolutionary activity 

into the daydreams of an engineer with lingering bourgeois sentiments. Moreover, 

protazanov’s production dwelled on the corruption and hypocrisy of the Nepmen 

and pointed out that no one was above the corrupting influences of poverty. 

the Martian sequences and Los and Gusev’s travel to the planet are of 

particular interest for their style and design even though their significance to 

the story is diminished. In contrast to the Soviet-set portions of the movie, 

which were filmed largely in the streets of Moscow, Mars was represented 

entirely with the constructivist set. Modern-designed costumes and even the 

movements of the actors seem to follow the choreography of modernist dance 

in the manner in which Sergei diagalev’s Les Ballet Russes was popularizing in 

exile at the same time. Yet protazanov used these modernist images to portray 

a dream fantasy of a feudal, slave-owning society. By doing so, he broke the 

intellectual link between the utopian ideal and modernist art that constructivist 

artists were demonstrating at the time.17 even though protazanov disassociated 

the revolutionary notions from space travel, his version of Aelita nonetheless 

established a standard for fictional space travelers in russian culture. Los, in 

his dream, discovered his true self through spaceflight, even though the flight 

was imaginary. he discovered that his dreams of spaceflight interfered with his 

acceptance of reality, much in the way that the Nep period had been a step 

back from revolutionary idealism. 

the implications of protazanov’s inclusion of modernist and constructivist 

designs and sets in Aelita merits separate discussion. In many ways, the period 

16. Ibid. 

17. art historian Christina Kiaer defines constructivism as “this concept of the ‘socialist object’ as 

russian Constructivism’s original contribution not only to the history of the political avant-garde 

art movements of the 20th century, but also to the theory of a noncapitalist form of modernity.” 

Christina Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions:The Socialist Objects of Russian Constructivism (Cambridge, 

Ma:the MIt press, 2005), p. 1.“From this it may be concluded that the term ‘Constructivism’ 

arose in russia during the winter of 1920-1921 as a term specifically formulated to meet the 

needs of these new attitudes towards the culture of the future classless society. Strictly speaking, 

the term should not be used with reference to those works of art which were made prior to 

the revolution, completely free of any utilitarian content of social commitment on the part of 

the artist who produced them.” Christina Lodder, Russian Constructivism (New haven, Ct:Yale 

university press, 1983), p. 3. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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of the Nep was the freest time of intellectual experimentation in the Soviet 

union. among the many experimental movements active at the time was 

aleksandr rodchenko’s Constructivist group that emerged from the Moscow 

Institute of artistic Culture (INKhuK).18 the group sought to map out the role 

of material objects after the revolution eliminated the last vestiges of capitalism. 

rodchenko and his group experimented with the modernist design of everyday 

objects, using geometric shapes and images of machines as the main themes of 

their designs. their experimentation continued for some time into the 1930s, 

but it did not meet with any degree of success. Modernist preoccupation with 

stylistic innovation and machines contrasted with the central tenet of Socialist 

realism that focused on the nature and concerns of the people.19 Leaders 

within the architectural community favored neoclassicism since it appeared to 

resemble russian national ideals.20 the protracted competition for the design of 

the palace of the Soviets is one example of the manner in which architects and 

designers pulled away from modernism.21 these actions paved the way for the 

creation of monumental art works in which sculptors and painters collaborated 

with the architect.22 Over the ensuing years, constructivist designs lost their 

associations with progress in the Soviet union until the death of Stalin. 

protazanov’s Aelita sparked an immediate ideological response over his portrayal of Nep Soviet society. It also sparked a cinematic response. the same year 

that Aelita came out, Soviet animators Nikolai Khodataev, Zenon Komisarenko and 

Yuri Merkulov released an eight-minute animated short, Mezhplanetnaia revolutsiia 

(Interplanetary Revolution).23 this short,too,was loosely based on tolstoy’s Aelita.In this 

case, the revolutionary cosmonaut was red army Warrior Comrade Kominternov. 

his name is eponymous with the Communist International—the organization for 

the international spread of the revolution.the film began with the Bolshevik revolution that motivated the capitalists to flee earth for Mars. Kominternov chased 

down the capitalists, following them on his own spacecraft. On Mars, he pursued 

the grotesque capitalists, emerged victorious, and then sent his message to an earth 

receiving station decorated with a portrait of Lenin (see illustration). Khodataev’s 

revolutionary message is not remarkable, but his techniques for portraying this 

18. Kiaer, Imagine No Possessions, pp. 1-2. 

19. Cynthia Simmons,“Fly Me to the Moon: Modernism and the Soviet Space program in Viktor 

pelevin’s ‘Omon ra’,” Harriman Review 12, no. 4 (November 2000): 4. 

20. arthur Voyce, “Soviet art and architecture: recent developments,” Annals of the American 

Academy of Political and Social Science 303, “russia since Stalin: Old trends and New problems” 

(January 1956): 107. 

21. Vladimir paperny, Architecture in the Age of Stalin: Culture Two, trans. John hill and roann Barris 

(Cambridge, uK: Cambridge university press, 2002), pp.1-8. 

22. Voyce,“Soviet art and architecture,”: 114. 

23. Nikolai Khodataev,Zenon Komisarenko,and Yuri Merkulov,Mezhplanetnaia revolutsiia (Interplanetary 

Revolution), animation (Biuro gosudarstvenno tekhnicheskogo kino, 1924), 7:40 min. 
 

 

 

 

260 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

Kominternov declares victory in Mezhplanetnaia revoliutsiia (1924) Nikolai Khodataev, 

Zenon Komisarenko, and Yuri Merkulov. Mezhplanetnaia Revolutsiia (Interplanetary 

Revolution). Animation. Biuro gosudarstvenno tekhnicheskogo kino, 1924. 7:40 min. 

Redistributed in: Animated Soviet Propaganda: From the October Revolution to 

Perestroika. Films by Jove in Association with Soyuzmultfilm Studio. Executive 

Producer: Oleg Vidov. Director/Writer/Producer: Joan Borsten. Restored version (c) 

2006. (Films by Jove) 

message are startling in their ingenuity.the animation used a combination of hand 

drawn cells and cutout animation.although the ideology of Khodataev’s short differed from that of protazanov, these were the last two portrayals of space travelers 

using modernist designs for nearly 40 years. 

although creative artists began the portrayal of utopian spaceflight in 

film in the 1920s, the science popularizers were about a decade behind in the 

production of science fiction films. Kosmicheskii reis (Spaceflight) was a 1936 film 

that was the brainchild of director Vasilii Zhuravlev, a young director who 

evaded the ideological controversies that plagued protazanov.24 In contrast 

to protazanov and Khodataev, Zhuravlev’s goal was to portray spaceflight 

24. Vasili Zhuravlev, Kosmicheskii reis (Space Flight), S. Komarov; K. Moskalenko; V. Gaponenko; V. 

Kovrigin; N. Feoktistov; (Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie kinematografii i fotografii (GuKF), 1936), 

70 minutes.the english translation of the film title is sometimes referred to as Cosmic Voyage. 
 

 

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The spacecraft Iosif Stalin waits for launch to the Moon in Kosmicheskii reis (1936) Vasili 

Zhuravlev. Kosmicheskii Reis (Space Flight). S. Komarov; K. Moskalenko; V. Gaponenko; 

V. Kovrigin; N. Feoktistov; Gosudarstvennoe upravlenie kinematografii i fotografii (GUKF), 

1936. 70. 

realistically and to produce a technical science fiction film. previously the 

creator of educational scientific films, he called on the expertise of none other 

than Konstantin tsiolkovskii for technical advice.25 tsiolkovskii had been a 

science popularizer, as well as an airship and rocket theorist. even this late in 

his life, tsiolkovskii enthusiastically contributed to the project, sketching and 

writing notes on his anticipation of the effects of spaceflight.26 

Kosmicheskii reis is set in the futuristic year of 1946, and begins at the fictional tsiolkovskii Institute for Interplanetary Communications. In contrast to 

protazanov’s Aelita, the earth scenes are modernist, resembling the art deco 

25. anatolii F. Britikov, Russkii sovetskii nauchno-fantasticheskii roman (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo “nauka,” 

1970), p. 27. 

26. Ben Finney, Vladimir Lytkin, and Liudmilla 	 alepko, “tsiolkovskii’s “album of Space 

Voyages:” Visions of a Space theorist turned Film Consultant.” 1997, in Proceedings of the 

Thirty-First History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, Turin, Italy, 1997, 

ed. donald C. elder and George S. James, vol. 26, History or Rocketry and Astronautics, aaS 

history Series (San diego, Ca: univelt, 2005), pp. 3-16. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

262 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

style that was popular in hollywood films at that time. the film features aged 

astrophysicist, pavel Ivanovich Sedykh, who bears a remarkable resemblance to 

Konstantin tsiolkovskii. the film opens with Sedykh planning a spaceflight to 

the Moon on board his space rocket (see illustration), the Iosif Stalin, in spite of 

a previous failed test mission with a cat. after a dispute over issues of personal 

loyalty and bureaucratic interference, Sedykh balks at concerns over his health 

and insists on accompanying his assistant and an adolescent boy, andrushka, on 

the flight. the three astronauts successfully land on the Moon, unfortunately 

losing fuel and their radio in the process.27 While en route to the Moon, the trio 

experience weightlessness, and on the Moon, they experience diminished gravitational pull. In the process of making a visual signal for earth about their 

successful arrival, they discover the cat from the previous mission has survived 

and that frozen remnants of the lunar atmosphere can be used as fuel for their 

return mission. Meanwhile on earth, scientists plan to launch a rescue mission. 

Just as the launch is about to take place, the Iosif Stalin returns with the jubilant 

crew. Sedykh declares that they have “opened the path to space.” during the 

late 1950s and early 1960s, Soviet cosmonauts, politicians, and journalists 

repeated that phrase again and again. 

the KOMSOMOL IN SpaCe 

Both science fiction film and literature diminished in prominence in the 

Soviet union under Stalin. after Kosmicheskii Reis, there was not another space 

science fiction film in Moscow until 1958 when the east German film based on 

the Stanislav Lem science fiction story, Der Schweigende stern (Silent Star) opened 

in theaters in the Soviet union under the russian title Bezmolvnaia zvezda. 

28 a

new infusion of science fiction films, beginning with the prescient Soviet film 

Nebo zovët (the Sky Calls), followed in 1960. It predicted a space race between 

the united States and the Soviet union to Mars.29 Like Kosmicheskii reis before 

27. Sedykh and andrushka referred to themselves as “astronauts” and not “cosmonauts” throughout 

the film.this was the prevailing name of space travelers at the time,drawing from the Latin-based 

language of Verne.the decision to adopt the Greek-root cosmos for cosmonaut was deliberate 

and absolute in 1961. Morton Benson,“russianisms in the american press,” american Speech 

37, no. 1 (February 1962): 41-47. 

28. Kurt Maetzig, Der Schweigende Stern (The Silent Star), (Bezmolvnaia zvezda), tani,Yoko; Lukes, 

Oldrich; Machowski, Igancy; Ongewe, Julius (deutsche Film (deFa), 1959), 155 min. 

29. Mikhail Kariukov and a. Kozyr,’ Nebo zovët (The Sky Calls), pereverzev, Ivan; Shvorin,aleksandr; 

Bartashevich, Konstantin; Borisenko, Larisa; Chernyak,V.; dobrovolsky,Viktor (Gosudarstvenii 

komitet po kinematografii (Goskino), 1960), 77 min. american producer roger Corman 

purchased the rights to the film and hired a young Francis Ford Copolla to rework the movie. 

Battle Beyond the Stars was an american interplanetary war movie with no reference to Cold 

War competition. Jimmy t. Murakami, Battle Beyond the Stars,thomas, richard;Vaughn, robert, 

Saxon, John (New World pictures, 1980), 104 min. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Masha bids farewell to her crewmates from the Vega, Shcherba and Allan Kern, as 

they prepare to land on Venus to rescue their colleagues from the Serius in Planeta 

Bur’ Klushantsev, Pavel. Planeta Bur’ (Planet of Storms). V. Emel’ianov; Iu. Sarantsev; 

G. Zhzhenov; K. Ignatova; G. Vernov; G. Teikh, Leningrad Popular Science Film Studio, 

1962. 83 min. (Courtesy Seagull Films of New York) 

it, Nebo zovët took pains at demonstrating the effects of spaceflight through 

special effects and set design. 

two years after the release of Nebo zovët and within one year of Yuri Gagarin’s 

historic flight, another Soviet science education film director, pavel Klushantsev, 

presented his own fictional interplanetary tale, Planeta bur’ (Planet of Storms).30 the 

movie began with a crash.a meteor crashes into one of three Soviet spacecraft en 

30. pavel Klushantsev, Planeta bur’ (Planet of Storms), emel’ianov, V.; Sarantsev, Iu.; Zhzhenov, G.; 

Ignatova, K.;Vernov, G.;teikh, G. (Lennauchfilm, Leningrad popular Science Film Studio, 1962), 

83 min. Like its immediate predecessor, this film, too, had a second cinematic life in american 

theaters, first as the 1965 Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet and then in 1968 as Voyage to the Planet 

of Prehistoric Women. director peter Bogdanovich created the second american version. Curtis 

harrington, Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet, rathbone, Basil; domergue, Faith; Shannon, Marc 

(roger Corman productions, 1965), 78 min. and peter Bogdanovich, Voyage to the Planet of 

Prehistoric Women,Van doren, Mamie; Marr, Mary; Lee, paige (the Filmgroup, 1968), 78 min. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

264 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

route to the planet Venus.the crews of the surviving spacecraft,“Vega”and “Serius,” 

had to make a decision about exploring the planet while waiting for a third craft to 

join them.they decided jointly that in the name of the party and the Soviet union, 

they would go ahead with the risky exploration, leaving a lone crewmate and the 

only woman, Masha, in orbit (see illustration).With them, the men took the robot 

and its designer, an american, to the surface. In this movie, the cosmonauts found 

themselves separated from their spacecraft on the planet Venus, fighting prehistoric 

animals and surviving erupting volcanoes en route back to their spacecraft. the 

men survived the mission by maintaining Komsomol discipline. the robot was 

not capable of sacrificing himself for the good of the collective; therefore, the 

cosmonauts abandoned the robot in a river of molten lava.Meanwhile,onboard the 

sole remaining spacecraft orbiting the planet,Masha struggled to maintain discipline 

and remain in orbit over her desire to commit a pointless act of heroism. In the end 

Masha overcame her emotions, obeyed orders, and aborted her rescue attempt to 

the planet’s surface, thus leaving open the possibility of salvaging the mission. 

even though they were made a generation apart, Planeta bur’ resembled 

Kosmicheskii reis in content and values. Both films relied heavily on the principles 

of science education for content, although the latter used wild fantasy in the 

Venus segments of the movie. the former presented an image of cosmonauts 

that announced the new age of human spaceflight to the world. Planeta bur’ 

demonstrated that cosmonauts took the values of party discipline with them as 

they explored the solar system. the film also began Klushantsev’s 1960s trilogy 

that included the movies The Moon and Mars. all three films combined science 

education with realistic portrayals of science fiction, even though the later two 

were hybrids of documentary and theatrical film, switching from scientific 

lectures and interviews to dramatic demonstrations of scientific principles. this 

new genre reinforced the cosmonaut message during the 1960s. through party 

discipline, the Soviet union was leading the way into space. 

although popular cinema never achieved the propaganda effect that 

Lenin and Lunacharsky had predicted during the revolution, it did remain a 

popular diversion from everyday life. In spite of ideological mandates and the 

international popularity of Modernist film directors such as eisenshtein and 

Vertov, russian audiences preferred a comprehensible story line and rational 

adventure. as a result, the earliest Soviet science fiction movies subordinated 

the ideological aspects of space travel to the fantasies about the appearance of 

other worlds. Subsequent films attributed a nation’s ability to fly in space to 

personal loyalty and party discipline. this trend continued in the new Soviet 

science fiction films at the dawn of the Space age. this style would continue in 

films and the portrayal of cosmonauts through the collapse of the u.S.S.r. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

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pOSt-SOVIet reexaMINatIONS 

after the dissolution of the Soviet union in 1991, postmortem examination 

of the Soviet experience became a national pastime. artists, writers, and 

filmmakers joined with journalists and common citizens to assess what the 

75-year Bolshevik experiment had meant. there have been two recent russian 

theatrical films, aleksei uchitel’s Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (Space as Premonition, 

2005)31 and aleksei Fëdorchenko’s Pervye na lune (First on the Moon, 2005),32 that 

address the legacy of the golden years of Soviet spaceflight in their own unique 

manner. each film places spaceflight into the context of a specific period. 

uchitel’s film is set in the early 1960s and Fëdorchenko’s begins in the 1930s. 

Both dissect the origins of the culture of real spaceflight. 

aleksei uchitel’s film takes a nostalgic approach in which the early Soviet 

space program provides the background for a story about the illusion of nostalgic 

optimism. the film takes place between the time of the launch of Sputnik and 

Yuri Gagarin’s flight. the protagonist of the story is a hapless young man, 

Konëk, whose naïveté has benefited him. unaware of the injustices around him, 

he is able to wonder through life unaffected by it. the main character is a cook 

whose real name is Viktor, but he goes by the nickname “Konëk” (horsie). 

the story focuses on Konëk’s relationship with a former sailor and dockworker, 

German. German, who is also known as “Lefty,” is a former sailor who is 

trying to defect to the West. his persona allures Konëk, a man who is haplessly 

living with his mother and indecisive about committing to his girlfriend, Lara. 

In contrast, German is worldly and sophisticated. the men form bonds: both 

are war orphans and relish fights with sailors. to Konëk’s mind, German is 

exotic and mysterious, possessing superior skills and knowledge about the 

world, as well as material possessions including an east German radio that 

picks up BBC. In spite of his seeming sophistication, German cannot articulate 

properly the english words to declare his intention to defect. Ironically, his 

new hapless friend demonstrates the ability to mimic the voices on BBC radio 

almost perfectly, although he has no ambitions for contact with the West and 

understands little of what he is saying. 

Over the course of their relationship, Konëk begins to dress and act like 

German. he goes as so far as to practice swimming in the harbor. Konëk assumes 

that this activity is to improve his athletic performance; he is clueless that his 

31. aleksei uchitel,’ Kosmos kak predchuvstvie (Space as Premonition), Mironov, evgenii; pegova, Irina; 

tsyganov, evgenii; Liadova, elena (rock Film Studio, 2005), 90 minutes. uchitel’ won the 

“Golden St. George” award at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2005 for this movie. 

32. aleksei Fedorchenko, Pervye na lune (First on the Moon),Vlasov, Boris; Slavnin, aleksei; Osipov, 

andrei; Otradnov, anatolii; Ilinskaia, Viktoriia (Sverdlovsk Film Studio and Film Company 

Strana, 2005), 75 minutes. Ironically, this film won the “Best documentary” award at the Venice 

Film Festival in 2005.the same year, it won “the Best debut” prize at the Kinotaur Festival in 

Sochi, russia. 
266 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe

friend intends to defect by swimming out to a foreign ship. Sailors eventually 

beat him up for his attitude and for flagrantly walking around town with the 

forbidden radio. as their relationship develops, German confesses that his 

mysterious secret assignment is to seek out the ten cosmonauts who are training 

for the first spaceflight in Kustanay in the Kazakh republic. For a while, German 

insists to Konëk that soon men will travel to the Moon everyday, but, ultimately, 

he confesses again that he had been in prison in Kustanay, convicted for making 

wisecracks while in the Navy. German is last seen swimming toward a shipping 

vessel marked “Lake Michigan” as the ship moves away. Viktor (Konëk) marries 

rima, Lara’s sister, and they take a train to Moscow.

In Kosmos kak predchuvstvie, space is metaphor for hope. In the movie, Lara 

asks Konëk as a plea for reassurance if he can see Sputnik after German seduces 

her. a second use of the metaphor occurs during Konëk and rima’s trip to 

Moscow. While on the train, Konëk crosses paths with an equally unassuming 

young pilot named Gagarin whom the hero and audience believe to be the Yuri 

Gagarin. When speaking to Gagarin in the train, Konëk asks him if he is going 

to fly rockets. Gagarin responds by asking if he was referring to the predictions 

of tsiolkovskii. Konëk replies, “No, German.” Gagarin has not heard of that 

scientist, to which Konëk replies, “he is not a scientist, but he has already 

flown.” When the pilot arrives at his stop, Konëk asks his name and notices that 

his shoelace is untied. Later Konëk recognizes Gagarin by this untied shoelace. 

By this time, Gagarin has made his flight and is walking down the red carpet to 

greet Khrushchev.

It is through this meeting that the director has tied the meaningless life 

of his hero to the equally unpurposeful mission of the space program. the 

experienced and knowledgeable character, German, is determined to escape 

the Soviet union, even if it costs him his life. the more meandering of the two, 

Konëk, identifies most closely with Gagarin. One film reviewer has described 

the time between Sputnik and Gagarin’s mission, “the two moments of Soviet 

triumph in space that, the contemporary audience knows, led nowhere and 

that provide the bookends of the film (the flights of Sputnik and of Gagarin).”33

these two moments of triumph represent a memorable period that benefited 

the nation through their naiveté but provided no objective improvement in its 

circumstances. 

Fëdorchenko’s Pervye na lune is closer in tone to Viktor pelevin’s novel 

Omon Ra in its take on the space program.

34 produced as a mock documentary or 

33. Katerina Clark, “‘aleksei uchitel,’ dreaming of Space [Kosmos kak predchuvstvie] (2005),” 

KinoKultura, no. October 2005, http://www.kinokultura.com/reviews/R10-05kosmos.html (accessed 

on august 11, 2006).

34. pelevin’s novella was an award-winning book in russia in the early 1990s. the book is a 

modernist satire that tells the story of a boy, Omon, who wants above all things to become 

a cosmonaut. his journey to that goal takes him through the Byzantine depravations of a 
FrOM the CradLe tO the GraVe: 267 

COSMONaut NOStaLGIa IN SOVIet aNd pOSt-SOVIet FILM 

mockumentary, this film fabricates the existence of a secret Cheka film archive 

of a Stalinist program to send men to the Moon during the 1930s. Where Space 

as Premonition parodies the unfulfilled potential of spaceflight weighed-down 

by a corrupt system, First on the Moon, portrays the cosmonauts as tragic victims 

of the state. the events of this film take place during the late 1930s and present 

footage of the selection and training of cosmonauts for a secret flight to the 

Moon. the purported documentary reports on the uncovered mission and the 

search for the survivor—cosmonaut Ivan Sergeevich Kharlamov—his journey 

from his crash site in Chile, and ultimate return to the Soviet union. although 

this is a parody, partly of the Stalinist Falcon’s flights of the 1930s and partly 

of the space program of the 1960s, the treatment of the cosmonauts is deeply 

affectionate. they, too, are hapless and blameless in their efforts. 

Ivan Sergeeivch Kharlamov started his career as an aviation pioneer along 

with Chkalov and Baidukov, aviators who were the first heroes of the Soviet 

union. at some point in his career, he joins a team of Soviets and Germans 

who were cooperating on rocket development under the conditions of the 1922 

German-Soviet treaty of rapallo. among the finalists for the mission are four 

people: Kharlamov; a girl known as the Komsomol princess, Nadia; a central 

asian, Kharif Ivanovich Fattakhov; and a midget. all endure the final testing, 

and the chief designer makes the final selection of Kharlamov for a launch in 

1938. after the launch, the ground control loses all contact with the spacecraft, 

throwing the entire program into turmoil. the chief designer commits suicide. 

Mysterious men sedate and kidnap the remaining cosmonaut-candidates from 

their barracks and destroy all evidence of the mission, saving only a scale model 

of the spacecraft. 

What could have been a complete coverup of the program’s existence was, 

however, imperfect. In March 1938, Chilean peasants report seeing a fireball in 

the sky. this episode refers to a real event in history of a meteor landing in the 

country. In Fedorchenko’s film, it is not a rock, but Kharlamov’s spacecraft that 

lands in Chile. he has survived his mission. however, without official status, 

Kharlamov has no resources with which to return home and has to become 

personally resourceful to do so. the Cheka interviews trace his steps in the 

return home. he travels through Mongolia during the russo-Japanese War, 

after crossing the pacific Ocean via boat and through China. Speaking only 

gibberish upon his return to the u.S.S.r., Kharlamov ends up spending time 

in a psychiatric hospital. It was this time that the people’s Commissariat for 

Internal affairs (NKVd) takes notice of his return to the u.S.S.r. always not 

close enough on his trail, 30 NKVd agents gather information on his life as 

they follow him. 

corrupt Soviet system that stages a mock-flight to the Moon. When Omon discovers the 

true level of deception about the program, and implicitly, the Soviet system, he flees. Viktor 

pelevin, Omon ra (Moscow, russia: Vagrius, 2001). 
 

268 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

the bulk of the film contains interviews with those who knew or saw 

him. the materials that the NKVd agents salvaged include psychiatric footage 

of the administration of electroshock and insulin therapy that bear a remarkable 

resemblance to the flight-test footage. agents also interview his wife after he 

leaves the psychiatric hospital. they later interview Fattakhov and the midget. 

the interviews with Fattakhov about Kharlamov’s background are particularly 

instructive. Fattakhov has become a builder of giant mechanical insects 

for children’s museums. his profession makes the analogy to Franz Kafka’s 

Metamorphosis obvious, especially because the insects are always on their backs 

except for one final scene with Fattakhov at a museum. 

the NKVd’s trail of Kharlamov goes cold after they tracked down the 

midget who returned to his original profession—a circus performer. at one 

point, Kharlamov joins him where, for a while, he plays the part of a circus 

version of aleksandr Nevskii, repelling the teutonic invaders.35although the 

NKVd gives up pursuit of Kharlamov at this point and eventually opts to 

destroy all evidence of the lunar program, they neglect one thing. there is one 

remaining source of evidence that they cannot destroy. In the closing scenes, 

the movie takes the viewer to the natural history museum in Chile, near where 

the peasants had seen the fireball in 1938. this museum retains the footage 

from Kharlamov’s lunar mission and the hardware from his flight. the movie 

closes with film footage of a lunar landscape and a lone, silent cosmonaut sitting 

inside his spacecraft (see illustration). 

Pervye na lune goes far to dissolve the links between the hero cosmonaut 

and the Soviet state. Kharlamov was loyal to his country to the end, returning 

even after his existence had been denied. even his final known role was that 

of the legendary and publicly manipulated Nevskii. his reward for all this had 

been pursuit and abuse by the system that created him. 

Both uchitel and Fëdorchenko drew on the traditions of realistic science 

fiction in their films. In each case, spaceflight is technically accurate and not 

metaphysical. these films refer to the traditions that Zhuravlev and Klushantsev 

had pioneered. the difference between these post-Soviet filmmakers and their 

predecessors is that they have portrayed Soviet cosmonauts stripped of the 

either implicit (Kosmicheskii reis) or explicit (Planeta Bur) ideological discipline. 

uchitel’s Gagarin lived in morally reprehensible system that only the hapless can 

ignore. Fodorchenko’s Kharlamov returned to a country whose state apparatus 

is determined to remove all evidence of his existence. 

35. this scene was clearly homage to Sergei eisenshtein’s film version of the Nevskii story, 

completed in 1938 and withdrawn in 1939. In Fedorchenko’s film, the invading midget 

teutonic Knights bear the swastika-like crosses that eisenshtein’s attackers on Novgorod did. 

Sergei eisenshtein, Aleksandr Nevskii, Cherkasov, Nikolai; Okhlopkov, Nikolai; abrikosov, 

andrei; Orlov, dmitri; Novikov, Vasili (Mosfilm, 1938), 1:37. this is one of many allusions 

to Soviet films in the movie. at one point, the cosmonauts go to see Zhuravlev’s Kosmicheskii 

reis during the course of their training. 
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COSMONaut NOStaLGIa IN SOVIet aNd pOSt-SOVIet FILM 

Cosmonaut Kharlamov en route to the Moon in Pervye na lune Fedorchenko, Aleksei. 

Pervye Na Lune (First on the Moon). Vlasov, Boris; Slavnin, Aleksei; Osipov, Andrei; 

Otradnov, Anatolii; Ilinskaia, Viktoriia. Sverdlovsk Film Studio and Film Company Strana, 

2005. 75 minutes. DVD: ©2004 Prokatnoe upravlenie Sverdlovskoi konostudii. ©2005 

OOO “SR Didzhital.” (©Dizain Oblozhki OOO “SR Didzhital.”) 

CONCLuSION 

the 20th century began with great expectations about spaceflight and 

communist revolution. By the end of the century, although spaceflight had 

become a reality, it did not meet the expectations of the early visionaries, 

and the revolution had become a bitter disappointment to most. In real life, 

russian and Soviet cosmonauts have traveled barely higher than Yuri Gagarin 

did in his 1961 flight, escaping the cradle of earth by only a few hundred 

kilometers. In film, they traveled to Mars, the Moon, and Venus, carrying with 

them bold messages of interplanetary revolution and party discipline. When 

russians began to reexamine the Soviet experience, they did not spare the 

once celebrated experience of spaceflight. Spaceflight had been a central focus 

of mid-century Soviet propaganda as demonstrable evidence that the Soviet 

union had exceeded recovery from World War II and was overtaking the 

united States. although pre-Gagarin film directors could easily refit fictional 

characters with appropriate political awareness for the given situation, once the
270 reMeMBerING the SpaCe aGe 

Soviet union had sent men and a woman into space, those individuals were 

forever bound to the Soviet ideology of the 1960s. For that reason, the postSoviet reassessment of the early years of human spaceflight paid close attention 

to the cosmonaut’s relationship with the state. One consequence was that these 

films extricated spaceflight and cosmonauts from their ideological burden 

by passing the judgment that what might have held cosmonauts back from 

fulfilling the spaceflight dreams of the 1920s. according to these directors, it 

had been ideology and not technology. as tsiolkovskii had predicted, humans 

had emerged from the cradle of earth, but it was from the gravesite of the 

Soviet union that cosmonauts gained their freedom from ideological burdens. 
 

 

Chapter 15 

examining the IConic and rediscovering 

the photography of Space exploration in 

Context to the history of photography1 

Michael Soluri 

The exactly repeatable pictorial statement in its photographic forms 

has played an operational role of the greatest importance in the development of modern science and technology. It has become an essential 

to most of our industries and to all of our engineering.2 

I. prefaCe 

My earliest recollection of space travel was the star-size dot of the Soviet 

Union’s Sputnik blinking on then off then on as it arced across the then 

starry sky of Niagara falls, New York. and the first photograph that ignited my 

fantasies of space exploration (not withstanding motion pictures like Forbidden 

Planet, This Island Earth, and The Day the Earth Stood Still) was the dismaying 

launch-explosion of the Navy’s Vanguard One. It was the United States’ first 

effort to place a satellite into earth orbit in December 1957. the result was a 

1.	 I wish to thank Steve Dick and his committee (which included asif Siddiqi) for having 

chosen me to participate in the “remembering the Space age Conference”—a dream come 

true. thank you as well to Leslie Martin and the aperture foundation for their invaluable 

assistance in obtaining the artists’ rights to some of the fine art photographs used in this paper. 

My gratitude to them for the inspiration I constantly receive from the world-class exhibitions, 

books, and lectures that have catalyzed my thinking for this paper. NaSa Johnson Space 

Center’s (JSC) Media resource Center, Michael Gentry (and his dedicated team) was always 

available to find sought-after imagery, along with a wealth of information and insight on 

human spaceflight photography. Mary ann hager at the Lunar and planetary Institute 

provided invaluable guidance on the flight photography of project apollo. ed Wilson and 

Maura White of JSC’s Information and Imaging Systems branch provided research and high 

resolution files from apollo flight films. the hubble SM4 crew of StS-125, whose wish 

to make more insightful images during their mission, inspired me to explore and share 

with them the photographic history of astronaut flight photography. and thanks to Loralee 

Nolletti, my wife and mother to our son, Gabriel, for her remarkable skill and patience in the 

editing of this paper. 

2.	 William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, Ma: the MIt press, 

1969), p. 179. 
 

272 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

black-and-white image published over and over in various print media venues 

that, over the last five decades, has become a convincing visual report on the 

american effort to compete with the Soviets who already had two satellites in 

earth-orbit. the Vanguard image is one of many now-familiar images that 

visually communicate the early days of the Space age. as a result, it can be 

argued that this photograph has become iconic in the sense that it is a recognizable 

image whose familiarity is framed both by its historic relevance and its repeated 

publication in chronicling the first 50 years of space exploration. 

In my process of rediscovering the iconic within these first 50 years of 

space exploration photography, I will first identify those images that I consider 

to be iconic, including the Vanguard launch explosion. thereafter, I will discuss 

these photographs within the context of the history of photography, looking at 

both their technical evolution as record-keeping tools and their aesthetic appeal 

and importance as historic markers of american culture and beyond. Once 

this historical framework is established, I will move beyond the known iconic 

imagery to the emergence of other imagery. and why not consider new imagery? 

aren’t there other photographs beyond that one iconic photograph—the new 

and largely undiscovered photograph that tells the same story of an event? In 

fact, that new photograph may even offer a fresh perspective on the event. I 

will then critique these new and emerging photographs and juxtapose them 

to aesthetic markers in the history of photography, drawing from landscape, 

portraiture, documentation, photojournalism and fine art photography. 

II. beGINNINGS 

On a January night in 1958, not even 60 days after the Vanguard’s explosive 

entrée, the U.S. army launched its Jupiter-C version of the redstone rocket, 

introducing the first successful orbiting of an american satellite: explorer 1. 

this event was historically significant for both space science and photography 

because it created a new and emerging iconographic image: the launching of a 

rocket thrusting into space. In addition, the postflight news conference was 

memorialized in a photograph of the jubilant Wernher Von braun, William 

pickering, and James Van allen holding a model of america’s first satellite over 

their heads.3 the photographs of Vanguard One, explorer 1, and the postflight 

press conference were products of a distinctly american culture. With the 

Soviets not providing any immediate photographic evidence of their similar 

events, the american print media had ushered in a new photographic genre: 

space exploration photography. these photographs would be repeated again and 

again in both the print and electronic media for the next five decades. Moreover, 

images of a rocket explosion, a rocket launch and the people behind the scenes 

3.	 the photographer of this image is unknown, according to erik M. Conway, the historian at the 

Jet propulsion Laboratory. 
 

 

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Vanguard One Explosion at Cape Canaveral, Florida: December 6, 1957. (NASA) 

would become immediate archetypes for those recording the exploits of future 

space exploration. these iconic images (and others that also eventually emerged) 

have had a profound impact on american culture, and the adaptation of american 

scientific and technological culture abroad.4 

4.	 for a greater understanding on the association between space exploration and the american 

culture’s space policy and history, see howard McCurdy’s Space and the American Imagination 

(Smithsonian Institution, 1997).
 

274 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Explorer 1 Launch, Cape Canaveral, Florida: January 31, 1958. (NASA) 

In examining the first 50 years of iconic imagery, space exploration 

photography has largely focused on the reporting of an event. according to 

William Ivins, photography actually has two possible outcomes: the recording 

of an event and the interpretation of that event: 

the flood of photographic images (since its invention) 

has brought about a realization of the difference between 

visual reporting and visual expression. So long as the two 

things were not differentiated in the mind of the world, the 

world’s greater practical and necessary interest in reporting 

had borne down artistic expression under the burden of a 

demand that it be verisimilar (true or real), and that a picture 

should be valued not so much for what it might be in itself as 

for the titular subject matter which might be reported in it.5 

It is my intent to explore these assertions by examining the notions of 

visual reporting and visual expression in the photography of space exploration 

in the context of the evolving history of photography. What follows is a brief 

summary of that history. 

5.	 William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, Ma: the MIt press, 

1969), p. 177.
 

 

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Explorer 1 post-launch news conference, Washington, DC: February 1, 1958. (NASA) 
 

 

 

 

 

 

276 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

III. aN abbreVIateD hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY 

the nineteenth century began by believing that what was 

reasonable was true and it wound up by believing that what 

it saw a photograph of was true—from the finish of a horse 

race to the nebulae in the sky. the photograph has been 

accepted as showing that impossible desideratum of the historian—wie es eigentlich gewesen—how it actually was.6 

In 1836, more than 120 years before the dawn of the Space age, the sciences 

of chemistry and optics began to come together, resulting in the inevitable 

invention of photography.7 as early as 1826 in france, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce 

was able to capture an image with an eight hour exposure of sunlight through 

a camera obscura. he called his results, which eventually faded on bitumen 

paper, a heliograph. What eluded Niépce, however, was the ability to fix and 

chemically secure the image permanently. a few years later, in 1837, LouisJacques-Mandé Daguerre discovered a process that captured and fixed an image 

on a polished silver surface. before exposure to sunlight through a camera, the 

silver surface had to be exposed to the fumes of iodine. Once sensitized and 

exposed, it was developed in a vapor bath of hot mercury. this process resulted 

in a daguerreotype. Daguerreotypes, however unique and precious, were oneof-a kind, small in size, fragile, and not reproducible.8 

by 1835, William fox talbot, a british nobleman, was able to do what 

scientists, alchemists, inventors, and artists had been unable to do: create exactly 

reproducible pictorial images. he called his image reproduction a calotype. 

With the calotype, talbot figured out the basic principles of photography: 

how to get images of things he saw in a camera obscura on paper and how to 

make them permanent. Given both the competitiveness and thus simultaneity 

of photography’s invention, he put together the findings in a paper presented 

to the royal Society in London.9 talbot read his paper, “Some account of the 

art of photogenic Drawing, or the process by which Natural Objects may be 

to Delineate themselves without the aid of the artist’s pencil,” on January 31, 

1839—six months before Daguerre’s official presentation.10 When considering 

a timeline, it was 119 years to the day until the launch of explorer 1. 

6. Ibid., p. 94. 

7. Ibid., p. 116. 

8. Ibid., p. 120. 

9. Ibid., p. 122. 

10. by the next decade, photographic experimentation moved across the ocean to america. In 1840, 

Dr. John Draper of New York City was the first to make a 20 minute exposure of the Moon on 

a daguerreotype.to mark the historical significance of Draper’s image, consider that the date was 

230 years after the 1610 publication of Galileo’s drawings of the Moon in Sidereus Nuncius and 
 

 

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Fall of Richmond, Virginia: 1865. (Mathew Brady/Library of Congress) 

and just two years into the Space age in 1959 and approximately 95 years 

since Mathew brady’s exact and reproducible photographic images of the Civil 

War, the first still photograph from the backside of the Moon was radioed to 

earth by the Soviet Union’s robotic space probe, Luna III.11 the resulting series 

of images, as crude as they were, added another element to the genre of space 

exploration photography: images captured and transmitted to earth by robotic 

space probes of interplanetary objects and solar system phenomena. 

Over the next 48 years since Luna III, the scope and scale of space 

exploration photography has evolved from the combination of interplanetary 

and earth-orbiting robotic spacecraft, earth-based telescopes, and human 

spaceflights. the methodical recording of space exploration technology, the 

engineering and construction of spacecraft, and the day-to-day operations of 

space centers and aerospace corporations (recorded by both NaSa and its 

contractors) has augmented this robotic imagery. the sheer quantity of these 

images is considerable. Some of these photographs are classified or restricted 

and only available to engineers, scientists, and NaSa administrators. Others, 

depending on varying degrees of governmental policy, are classified, edited, 

catalogued, and released into the public domain for use by the media, academia, 

and the general public. Of these released images, they can be said to have 

become symbolic in the reporting and representation of space exploration. 

128 years before the apollo 8 astronauts became the first humans to photograph earth rising 

over the Moon’s surface in 1968. 

11. between 1861 and 1865, less than 25 years after the invention of the photograph, (not much 

more than the time between the launch of Sputnik and the first launch of the Space Shuttle), 

Mathew brady’s photographic record of the american Civil War—documentary images of 

people,battlefields,and the tools of war—became a first.his photographs eternalized the damage, 

carnage, and technology of that war for generations to come. 
 

 

 

278 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Back side of the Moon by the Soviet’s Luna lll: 1959. (NASA) 

Indeed, a few of these photographs have even become iconic. these are 

photographic images that have transcended from the temporal to the iconic; 

they are now a part of our popular culture and photographic history.12 

examples of such iconic photographs are Neil armstrong’s 1969 snapshotlike portrait of apollo 11’s buzz aldrin at tranquility base and a series of 

self-portraits by aldrin of his boot and resulting boot prints in the pristine 

lunar dust.13 these color photographs are now almost mythic in the sense that 

they have become the definitive photographic default setting for “first men on 

the Moon” and/or “first human-Moon landing.” In context, however, other 

lesser known images from apollo 12 and video still-frame images from apollo 

11 emerge equally important in terms of technical proficiency and aesthetics. 

for example, the black-and-white series of surface photographs made by the 

apollo 12 landing crew (Charles Conrad and alan bean) are remarkable in 

12. See program cover photograph for:“remembering the Space age:50th anniversary Conference,” 

NaSa history Office Division, Office of external relations, NaSa headquarters and Division 

of Space history of the National air and Space Museum (NaSaM), October 22-23, 2007. 

13.	 See apollo 11 images aS11-40-5874 through aS11-40-5880 at the Lunar and planetary 

Institute apollo Image atlas, 70mm hasselblad Image catalog, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/ 

apollo/catalog/70mm/mission/?11. 
 

 

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Unaltered Buzz Aldrin Apollo 11 portrait: July 20, 1969. (Neil Armstrong/NASA) 

their variety, description, and aesthetics.14 Specifically, bean’s photograph of 

Conrad along side, the Surveyor 3 spacecraft with their lunar module in the 

background documents the first evidence in one location, of human and robotic 

exploration on a celestial body.15 bean’s photograph of Conrad—their LeM in 

14. the first four frames of apollo 12’s magazine “Y” by alan bean of pete Conrad offers the most 

distinctive (color) sequence of an apollo astronaut descending the Lunar excursion Module 

(LeM) to the surface of the Moon of any of the six manned landings. 

15.	 See apollo 12 film magazine “x”: aS12-48-7133 in the apollo 12 flight photography at the 

Lunar and planetary Institute apollo Image atlas – 70mm hasselblad Image catalog, http://www. 

lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/mission/?12. 
 

280 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

the background and bean being reflected in Conrad’s visor—is as captivating 

an image of man on the Moon as is the definitive aldrin portrait.16 

In addition to these photographs are the largely overlooked black-andwhite photographic images of apollo 11 made by ed von renouard, a video 

technician at the honeysuckle Creek tracking Station in Canberra, australia.17 

During armstrong’s historic descent from the LeM, von renouard took 35 

mm black-and-white images off of his video monitor while it was receiving 

the first live downlink to earth. the downlink was being transmitted from 

a remote slow-scan, black-and-white video camera that was attached to the 

Modularized equipment Stowage assembly (MeSa) unit on the side of the 

LeM descent stage. 

Von renouard photographs captured the ethereal look of “live” blackand-white tV images mixed with the silver-grain textures of black-and-white 

film as armstrong descended down the ladder. In some respects, both the 

aesthetics and the nature of how and where these black-and-white images were 

made complement armstrong and aldrin’s hasselblad surface photography. 

Moreover, they document the first human to descend to the surface of another 

celestial world on film through video. these “mixed media” images made it 

possible to photograph and participate in an historic event as it happened off of 

a live tV broadcast without even being there. 

Up to this point, I have discussed several iconic photographs from the first 

50 years of american space exploration. however, in compiling a short list, 

I would also include: the first photograph of earth from the orbiting satellite 

explorer 6 in 1959; the May 1961 redstone launch of Mercury astronaut alan 

Shepard; the february 1962 atlas launch with John Glenn; the first eVa (extra 

Vehicular activity) ballet of ed White from Gemini 4 in 1965; the first earthrise 

as seen from the Moon by Lunar Orbiter l in 1966; Neil armstrong’s apollo 11 

portrait of buzz aldrin standing against a black sky on the surface of the Moon 

in 1969; the full “blue-marbled” earth showing antarctica as photographed by 

the crew of apollo 17 in 1972; Voyager 1’s first image of earth and the Moon 

from seven million miles away in 1977; bruce McCandless, II in his MMU 

(Manned Maneuvering Unit) floating away from the Space Shuttle in 1984; 

the in-flight explosion of the Challenger in 1986; the hubble Space telescope’s 

photograph of M16, the eagle Nebula’s “pillars of Creation,” in 1995; the “pale 

blue dot” of earth as photographed by Voyager l from four billion miles in 

16. for further discussion on the altering of the iconic aS11-40-5903 of buzz aldrin by NaSa, 

please refer to eric Jones commentary from the apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal at: http:// 

history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-5903history.html. 

17. for an extensive description on both the role of the honeysuckle Creek tracking station during 

the apollo 11 and the resulting video and photography, see http://www.honeysucklecreek.net/ 

Apollo_11/index.html. 
 

 

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Pete Conrad, Apollo 12: November 19, 1969. (Alan Bean/NASA) 

1996, and a full planetary view of Saturn and its myriad of rings by the Cassini 

spacecraft in 2006.18 

In further examining the causal relationship between the emergence of an 

image that becomes iconic and its ability to sustain itself,William Ivins’s analysis of 

“an exactly repeatable” report of an event (in this case a photographic one) can 

provide some context. Ivins writes that “the role of the exactly repeatable pictorial statement and its syntaxes resolves itself into what, once stated, is the truism 

that at any given moment the accepted report of an event is of greater importance 

than the event, for what we think about and act upon is the symbolic report and 

18. this short list is based on what I believe represents classic iconic space exploration imagery. 
282 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Armstrong descends the LEM. (Ed von Renouard/Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station) 

Armstrong Steps Off the LEM. (Ed von Renouard/Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station) 
 

 

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not the concrete event itself.”19 as a result, the iconic images just cited and others 

like them—however compelling and important as markers in the visual chronology and history of space exploration—have become the symbolic reports.and as 

symbolic reports, these photographs have been seen and experienced to the point 

of being too familiar.they have been routinely published over the decades in academic and scientific journals, popular weekly and monthly magazines, newspapers 

and magazine supplements, posters, online journals and reports, and any number 

of photographically inspired books. as a result, these iconic photographs have 

become predictable markers leaving the viewer with few surprises. 

however, there are alternative editing possibilities to draw from the first 

50 years of space exploration photography. these alternatives lend themselves 

to aesthetic considerations worthy of examination as I have attempted with 

the iconic space exploration photographs already defined and discussed. If 

the scope of space exploration photography is to mean anything beyond its 

intended technical, scientific, and utilitarian (day-to-day) reporting, there 

needs to be an aesthetic framework for examining these photographs as well. 

Given the accessibility to NaSa’s photographic archives—and hopefully in the 

future from russian, former Soviet, Chinese, european, Indian, and Japanese 

space agencies—it should be possible to reexplore the familiar and discover the 

unfamiliar with history and aesthetics in mind. 

IV. the aeSthetIC pOSSIbILItIeS Of 

phOtOGraphIC DOCUMeNtatION 

His (T. H. O’Sullivan) primary aim was not to philosophize about 

nature, but to describe the terrain. The West was a place to span 

with railroads, to dig for gold and silver, to graze cattle, or perhaps 

sell groceries and whiskey. Occasionally—and remarkably—an 

especially extravagant sample of spectacular landscape would be set 

aside, sacrosanct, for the amazement of posterity, but this was neither 

the first function, nor the first interest, of the Surveys. 20 

In the last half of the 19th century, as the technology of photography 

continued to evolve—the size of cameras, sensitivity of glass plate negatives to light, 

and darkroom apparatus—it became less studio-dominated and more portable. 

furthermore, photography’s apparent verisimilitude resulted in opportunities for 

both american and european photographers to use the medium as a means of 

19. William M. Ivins, Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (Cambridge, Ma: the MIt press, 

1969), p. 180. 

20. John Szarkowski, The Photographer and the American Landscape (New York, NY:the Museum of 

Modern art, 1963), p. 3. 
 

 

 

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communicating to others what unexplored landscapes and native peoples looked 

like. forty-five years after photography’s invention, pioneers in america like t. 

h. O’Sullivan, William henry Jackson, alexander Gardner, J. K. hillers, edward 

Muybridge and Mathew brady documented the territories of the United States 

unexplored by non-indigenous peoples. In numerous surveying expeditions 

between the Mississippi river and the pacific (1867–1879), these photographers 

documented the “geographical and geologic” for the U.S. Government Survey.21 

the aesthetic and historic examination of 19th and early 20th century landscape 

photography was first placed in context to the significance of the documentary 

photograph as art by John Szarkowski.he accomplished this in his seminal exhibition, 

and subsequent catalogue and book The Photographer and the American Landscape—by 

the Museum of Modern art (MoMa) in New York in 1963.22 Szarkowski, then 

the eminent curator of photography at the MoMa, examined the aesthetics of 

landscape photography by looking at the role of the photographer: 

the photographer-as-explorer was a new kind of picture 

maker: part scientist, part reporter, and part artist. he was 

challenged by a wild and incredible landscape, inaccessible to 

the anthropocentric tradition of landscape painting, and by 

a difficult and refractory craft. he was protected from academic theories and artistic postures by his isolation, and by 

the difficulty of his labors. Simultaneously exploring a new 

subject and a new medium, he made new pictures, which 

were objective non-anecdotal, and radically photographic.23 

from the photographer’s new role as explorer-in-the-wilderness, Szarkowski 

continued: “this work was the beginning of a continuing, inventive, indigenous tradition, a tradition motivated by the desire to explore and understand the 

natural site.”24 as a result, it is interesting to note that the recognition of landscape photography in the early 1960s paralleled the emerging human and robotic 

exploration of space. perhaps these parallel photographic developments were no 

accident. they shared certain thematic roots, namely “incredible” landscapes 

and a certain challenge in the mechanics and labor of picture making. 

Some of the still imagery captured by the 12 apollo astronauts between 

1969 and 1972 while on the low-angled, Sun-lit surface of the Moon, can be 

21. Ibid., p 3. 

22. Later in 1971, the George eastman house in rochester, New York, originated and exhibited 

“figure and Landscape.” this exhibition further explored the relationship between manmade 

objects, people, and landscape. 

23. John Szarkowski, The Photographer and the American Landscape (New York, NY:the Museum of 

Modern art, 1963), p. 2. 

24. Ibid., p. 2. 
 

 

 

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Truckee Desert, Nevada: 1869. (T. H. O’Sullivan/U.S. Geological Survey) 

likened to 19th and 20th century landscape photography. for example, the 

19th century landscape photographer t. h. O’Sullivan’s other worldly image 

of an ambulance covered wagon (containing his portable darkroom) and horses 

among the sand dunes of Nevada’s Carson Desert can be compared to apollo 

12 astronauts pete Conrad and alan bean’s documentation of their Oceanus 

procellarum landing site with the Surveyor 3 spacecraft in view.25 

In this 1869 black-and-white image, O’Sullivan positions his camera to 

look back towards his footprints that lead to a team of horses attached to a 

covered wagon. the mis en scene gives a sense of scale of the wagon to the 

vastness of the pristine dunes and the washed out white sky. by comparison, 

alan bean’s 1969 black-and-white photograph of the surface of the Moon 

includes his shadow looking toward the near distant and insect-like Surveyor 

3 robotic spacecraft in its 1967 landing place. the abstraction of bean’s long 

shadow—postured in making this photograph—falls off against the desolate 

lunar landscape of the Surveyor crater and the stark blackness of space. both 

photographs give life to an otherwise lifeless landscape.26 

25. apollo 12 black-and-white photograph aS12-48-7093 taken by alan bean. 

26. Other comparisons to early landscape photography emerge from studying the photographs made 

by the apollo 17 crew. During the apollo 17 mission, eugene Cernan and harrison Schmitt 
 

 

 

286 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Shadow of Apollo astronaut Alan Bean at Surveyor III lunar landing site: 1969. (NASA) 

the influence of 19th century landscape photography may extend beyond 

photography itself. Consider the work of the mid-20th century illustrator Chesley 

bonestell. he was an illustrator of space exploration whose mixed illustrations 

often combined photography with pen, ink, and paint. his style of photorealism 

ultimately contributed to the american public’s imagination of what space and 

shot more than 3000 photographs. Schmitt and Cernan took a range of pictures documenting 

surface features and geologic formations in the Valley of taurus Littrow with earth floating 

above.the photographs showing a celestial body above the given horizon harkens back to ansel 

adams’s “Moonrise over hernandez, NM.”this black-and-white photograph shows a turn-ofthe-century adobe-like village set in the foreground with snowcapped mountains and a near full 

Moon set in a deep gray-black sky. Likewise, the Schmitt/Cernan photographs depict the bluemarbled earth suspended in a black lunar sky and floating above the Moon’s hills, craters, massive 

rocks and, occasionally, the landed LeM. 
 

 

 

 

 

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spaceflight might look like.27 for example, bonestell’s photographic illustration 

of “Saturn from the surface of its Moon titan” first published in 1944 offers an 

imaginary vision of what the exploration of our solar system might produce.28 

With Saturn and a few of its other moons, its rings suspended in the background 

and jagged mountains resting on an icy surface in the foreground, the sense of a 

mysterious and alien world permeates the work. bonestell’s technical and aesthetic 

process, however, was uniquely photographic. Like most of his illustrations, 

“Saturn from the Surface of titan” was actually a carefully composed and 

artificially lit (to simulate the angle of the Sun) photograph of a model in which 

the artist constructed a mountainous landscape and painted the backdrop of 

Saturn, its rings, moons, and stars. aesthetically, the constructed mountains of 

titan may very well have been influenced by 19th century Western landscapes 

like those of the pioneer photographer J. K. hillers. 

hillers worked on the documentation of the unsettled West during the 

powell Survey (1870-1879) for the U.S. Geological Survey. his photographs, 

which often captured the monumental, depicted and celebrated geologic 

formations like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite Valley. however, it is hillers’s 

extensive documentation in arizona’s Canyon de Chelly that is likened most to 

bonestell’s imagined landscape of Saturn’s moon titan.29 

the work of edward Curtis offers a transition from the photography of 

landscape to the inclusion of people and their habitats. Curtis’s documentation, 

mostly during the first quarter of the 20th century, is often attributed to be 

among the most remarkable portrayal of Native americans and their customs 

and habitats before emerging gentrification and containment on reservations. 

his work is remarkable because of his ability to gain access to and trust of 

his subjects, which resulted in a quality of photography that suggested the 

subject’s inner life. Curtis worked with the complexity of the era’s photographic 

technology and adapted it to his personal style, allowing him to connect with 

and capture the humanity of his subjects and their sacred landscapes in alaska’s 

Northwest, the Great plains and South West. along the way, he developed 

a list of “twenty-five cardinal points” which outlined the ethnographic and 

anthropological details to accompany the captions in his photographs.30 

a few of Curtis’s landscape images can be compared to some of the 

photographs beamed to earth from the surface of Mars by NaSa’s Viking Landers 

(1976), pathfinder (1996), and most recently the Mars exploration rovers. the 

27. a short list of other prominent illustrators of imagined space are robert McCall, pat rawlings, 

ron Miller, and David a. hardy. 

28. for a description of how bonestell made this iconic image, see http://www.bonestell.org/titan.html.

29. the online site of the U.S. Geological Survey offers an impressive and comprehensive series of 

photo galleries regarding their 19th century pioneer photographers, including O’Sullivan and 

hillers, at http://libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov/photo.htm.

30. alan porter,“the North american Indian” Camera 52, no. 12 (December 1973): 4, 13-14, 23-24. 
288 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

1944: “Saturn from the Surface of its Moon Titan.” (©Bonestell Space Art) 

two rovers have been scientifically studying, sampling, and photographing the 

surface of the Martian landscape since January 2004. among the many startling 

photographs are the serene images looking back at the rover’s wheel tracks and 

a hint of its solar panels, the lone trace of human ingenuity and technology 

amid a landscape of rocky debris on the wind-blown Martian sand. Some of 

these photographs recall Curtis’s landscape documentation of Native american 

villages in the american Southwest. for example, Curtis took a photograph 

of a deserted hopi Indian building in the village of Walpi, a 500-year-old 

village on a mesa in northern arizona. the village rests at the near edge of 

an eroded rocky cliff protruding out into the desert. the aesthetics of this 

image and the warm-toned yellow hue, resulting from the gravure process that 

reproduced the original, can be compared to some of the rover Opportunity’s 

panoramic photographs made in a location known as Meridiani planum. In 

one reddish hued image, the curving wheel tracks from the rover show how it 

navigated around rock debris in the Meridiani planum, a vast dry lakebed that 

may have once contained water, and the rim of Victoria crater on the horizon. 

the quality of light, the similarities in camera framing, and the feeling of 

desolateness offer a comparison between the geological evolution of earth and
 

 

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1870–1879: Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. (J. K. Hillers/U.S. Geological Survey) 
290 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Walpi Village v.12: 1907. (Edward S. Curtis/McCormick Library of Special Collections, 

NW University Library) 

Mars. It also offers consideration to the erosion of a landscape that may have 

once nurtured some form of life. 

the Curtis hopi landscapes were part of a grand design: the photographer 

attempted to systematically document the indigenous peoples of North america, 

focusing on Native americans west of the Mississippi and into Canada.31 

Consider Curtis’s 1903 black-and-white portrait of a Zuni woman with a 

decorated ceramic bowl. the photographer’s connection with his subject and 

the simplicity of his lighting and composition make this photograph a symbol 

of its era. the Zuni woman has a quality of the timeless, contributing to a 

sense of her profound dignity and humanity. Nearly a hundred years later, the 

relevance of Curtis’s cardinal points and his aesthetic approach to documentary 

portraiture serve to influence my own photographic documentation of the 

people and place in space exploration. by comparison, my 2007 black-and-white 

portrait of an american astronaut, Megan Mcarthur, conveys a similar quality 

of lighting and composition. as with the Curtis image, I sought compositional 

31. Ibid. 
 

 

 

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MER Opportunity on Mars at Victoria crater: 2008. (JPL/NASA) 

simplicity, dramatic lighting, and eye contact that reveal Mcarthur’s purpose, 

pride, dignity and humanness.32 

While the photographers of the american frontier were drawn to the 

possibilities inherent in the open range, others who were captivated by life in 

urban and industrial centers were emerging. the evolution of photographic 

technology—glass plate to acetate-based negative film and more reliable handheld 

cameras—resulted in equipment that was less cumbersome, allowing the 

photographer to respond to situations and environments with greater spontaneity 

than previously possible.33 this directly contributed to the emergence of industrial 

and urban landscape photography. paul Strand was among a group of early 20th 

century american photographers who explored the contrasts between urban 

people and place. his documentation captured a moment in american urban 

history. as his work defines the urban landscape at the time, it may seem to be 

a commentary on american and even western civilization. take, for example, 

Strand’s black-and-white image “Wall Street 1915.” the photograph depicts the 

side of an indifferent stone building with massive, black rectangular windows 

reigning over shadowed and silhouetted figures. the figures walk anonymously 

alongside the tall and seemingly impenetrable building. In an interview in New 

York City in 1973, Strand discussed his aesthetic: 

32. In documenting the SM4/StS125 mission preparations to the hubble Space telescope, the 

author secured the first authorized portrait session of an astronaut crew in more than 25 years. 

Mcarthur’s portrait is from that series which was photographed in black-and-white and color in 

the anechoic laboratory at JSC. 

33. 20th century landscape photographers like alfred Stieglitz, edward Steichen, edward Weston, 

ansel adams, paul Caponigro, and harry Callahan among others sought environments and 

subject matter that responded to their intellectual curiosity and idiosyncratic manner of 

combining lighting and composition—all of which influenced their approach to interpreting 

both the natural and the human made. 
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Zuni Woman v.17: c. 1903. (Edward S. Curtis/McCormick Library of Special Collections, 

NW University Library) 
 

 

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Hubble SM4 Astronaut K. Megan McArthur: 2007. (©Michael Soluri) 
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Paul Strand: Wall Street, New York, 1915. (©Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand 

Archive) 

It wasn’t just that I was wandering around and I happened to 

see something like that. I went down there with a ( handheld 3-1/4 x 4-1/4 english reflex) camera in order to see 

whether I could get the abstract movement of the counterpoint between the parade of those great black shapes of the 

building and all of those people hurrying below.34 

that same feeling of anonymity and imposing height extends 50 years later 

in an industrial photograph taken at NaSa’s former Lewis research Center. 

there a man stands by a swinging valve door of a supersonic wind tunnel.35 

this uncredited photograph taken by an unknown space center photographer 

is among a significant body of NaSa and aerospace industrial imagery that 

conveys the relationship between humans and their tools. More precisely, the 

34. Jonathan Green, The Snapshot (Millerton, NY:aperture, Inc.,1974), p. 47. 

35. See Glenn research Center GrC Image Net C1956-42070, “Swinging Valve for Supersonic 

Wind tunnel,” NaSa GrIN database number: GpN-2000-0014474. 
 

 

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Swinging Valve for Supersonic Wind Tunnel: 1956. (NASA Lewis Research Center) 

image depicts a nameless engineer in context to an imposing structure designed 

and built during the early years of space exploration. 

In exploring the documentation of people and their industrial achievements, and focusing on the significant body of work made at the former NaSa 

Lewis research Center, I cannot ignore the work of the New York City photographer eugene de Salignac. De Salignac was a New York City civil servant 

and the sole photographer of New York City’s Department of bridges/plant 

and Structures from 1906 through 1934. During that period, he made over 

20,000 glass plate negatives that documented the evolving infrastructure of 
 

 

 

296 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

New York. though the volume of de Salignac’s work is impressive, the work 

had been largely ignored through the 20th century. Only recently were his 

photographs re-discovered, edited, and afforded a major exhibition at the 

Museum of the City of New York and a book in 2007.36 

Made within a year of Strand’s “Wall Street 1915,” de Salignac’s “brooklyn 

bridge 1914” portrait shows a group of painters randomly suspended along 

the numerous ascending cables of the bridge, appearing like musical notes 

in a composer’s score. this visualization of random or musical placement 

reoccurs in a NaSa Lewis research photograph of two engineers working 

with an oscilloscope connected to a scale model supersonic aircraft inside a 

wind tunnel. In the black-and-white image random streaks of white light from 

the multiple flash systems that illuminate the engineers and the model aircraft 

bounce around the highly reflective tunnel and its three circled windows. 

again, this is an uncredited photograph made in 1957 with what I suspect was 

a large format camera (typical for extensive detail).37 the photograph evokes a 

mid-20th century feel for communicating “high-tech men-at-work.” It does 

so by posing the men (as is often the case) and then asking the two engineers 

to do their work. In comparison to de Salignac’s (apparent) found moments of 

(staged) randomness, the Lewis Center image is a visually compelling portrait 

of the emerging era of aerospace, just as the de Salignac photograph is a portrait 

of emerging urban infrastructure in america. 

by the 1930s the evolution of the camera and the subsequent reduction in 

the size and quality of film revolutionized the look of news reporting and signaled 

the emergence of the picture magazine. Magazines like Time, Life and Fortune 

sprang up in competition to newspapers. along with this, photographers were 

beginning to discover that they could access, experience, and interpret a range 

of events and situations in unobtrusive ways with handheld cameras.38 the result 

was a new genre of photography called photojournalism—an approach in both 

news gathering production and photographic documentation. Small, handheld 

cameras like the 35 mm and 2 1/4 size were formidable tools with which to 

discover more fluid, intimate, and strikingly visual opportunities between people 

and place. the small camera created opportunities to tell a story, communicate 

a point-of-view, or report an unfolding event in one or even in a group of 

photographs (photographic essay). the small camera afforded the photographer 

a means to enter new social and industrial worlds without lengthy planning 

36. See New York Rises – Photographs by Eugene de Salignac (New York, NY, aperture foundation 

and New York City Department of records/Municipal archives, 2007), with essays by Michael 

Lorenzini and Kevin Moore. 

37. See Glenn research Center GrC Image Net C1957-45670,“engineers Check body revolution 

Model,” NaSa GrIN database number: GpN-2000-001473. 

38. however, given the low grade quality of newsprint and photographic reproduction quality, large 

format cameras were still commonly used to obtain extensive detail and sharpness. 
 

 

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Brooklyn Bridge: 1915. (Eugene de Salignac/Courtesy NYC Municipal Archives) 

and pretense. this new found spontaneity augmented the photographer’s access 

with the given subject, thereby facilitating the telling of a story with depth 

and understanding. photographic reporting and documentation—since the 

era of Curtis, Strand, and de Salignac—had now progressed to the point of 

actually capturing the immediate and even intersecting with the very fabric 

of life, war, industrialization and, on the not-too-far horizon, the exploration 

of space. at the same time, the increasing portability and decreasing cost of 

photography lead to the mass consumerization of home photography and the 

resulting cultural emergence of snapshot photography. 

and with the snapshot, a new kind of photographic aesthetic evolved: a quality 

of imagery that has a kind of throwaway immediacy. typically, they were images 

that were neither studied nor anticipated, but could be. for the casual amateur, 

the immediacy brought with it a freedom from the formal rules of photography. 

Since rules did not necessarily have to be adhered to, standards by which to 

measure quality changed. hence evolved the notion that a good photograph is 

one that is not only technically correct, but easy to make. In all respects, it is the
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Engineers Check Body Revolution Model: 1957. (NASA) 

essence of George eastman’s classic slogan: “You press the button and we do the 

rest.” this idea has permeated american photography and photography itself for 

nearly a century. In his classic book, The Snapshot, Jonathan Green summed up 

the ambivalence toward and relevance of snapshot photography: 

It has been bandied about as both praise and condemnation. 

It has been discussed as both process and product. a snapshot may imply the hurried, passing glimpse or the treasured 

keepsake; its purpose may be casual observation or deliberate preservation. the snapshot may look forward in time to 

a chaotic, radically photographic structure, the appropriate 

equivalent of modern experience; or it may look backward 

to the frontal formal family portrait of a bygone age.39 

39. Jonathan Green, The Snapshot (Millerton, NY:aperture, Inc.,1974), p. 3. 
 

 

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One of the first snapshots taken in Earth orbit by John Glenn: February 20, 1962. 

(NASA) 

this brings us to what I would call the snapshot aesthetic in space exploration 

photography. In examining the snapshot aesthetic, I cannot ignore the photography 

of astronauts in-flight by the astronaut themselves. Consider John Glenn on the 

eve of america’s first manned orbital mission in 1962. John Glenn went out to 

buy an ansco autoset 35 mm handheld camera (with a 55 mm lens) from a local 

store in Cocoa beach.40 With out formal photographic training, Glenn bought this 

modest camera because no one in the program at that time foresaw the necessity 

of an astronaut taking pictures. Glenn took the ansco autoset on board Ma6.this 

resulted in a series of 48 snapshots of earth taken from the window of his Mercury 

space capsule.41 from Glenn’s efforts and the resulting images, it can be argued that 

Glenn was the first human to record and take iconic snapshots in space. 

40. Gary h. 	Kitmacher, “astronaut Still photography During apollo,” (Washington, DC: 

National aeronautics and Space administration), http://history.nasa.gov/apollo_photo.html

(accessed March 6, 2008). 

41. See John L. Kaltenbach, “a table and reference List Documenting Observations of earth 

from Manned earth Orbital and Suborbital Spaceflight Missions Including the Unmanned 

apollo-Saturn 4 and 6 Missions” (houston,tx, National aeronautics and Space administration 

Lyndon b. Johnson Space Center, December 1976), http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/metadata/ApolloSaturn_4-6.html (accessed March 18, 2008). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Of historic interest then is the in-flight photography by the Gemini crews 

(1965–66).42 here the snapshot-like photographs that James McDivitt made of 

ed White during the first american eVa (from one of the open twin hatches of 

Gemini 4) is among the iconic images of american human spaceflight. however, 

what has not been uncovered are the photographs that White made with a 35 mm 

Zeiss Contarex camera mounted on his handheld mini propulsion system.43 by in 

large, these photographs should document his perspective of the Gemini capsule 

with both capsule doors open and his snapshots of his colleague James McDivitt. 

Of aesthetic relevance (in a snapshot sense) are the eVa images from Gemini 9 

through 12. among these photographs is the partially sunlit and shadowed close up 

of buzz aldrin during an eVa.the photographs’setting is outside the open hatch 

of his Gemini 12 spacecraft. James Lovell took this snapshot. Lovell’s photograph 

captures an intense look in aldrin’s eyes.this image is unique because it captured 

in a passing glance a quality of human vulnerability in the void of space. 

perhaps the most distinctive in-flight astronaut “snapshot” photography 

is the apollo 7 crew’s photography of themselves.44 each portrait of the three 

crewmembers (Wally Schirra, Donn eisele, and Walt Cunningham) was initiated 

by Cunningham, who felt that they needed a souvenir from their mission.the 

photographs are framed using a handheld hasselblad 70 mm camera with an 

80 mm lens. Cunningham also used a handheld spot meter to measure the sunlight entering the cabin windows.the results are not just a series of technically 

accurate exposed images, but they are a series of exquisite snapshots made under 

controlled conditions: the same environment, camera, lens, and quality of sunlight. Cunningham was able to capture both a vulnerability and intensity of each 

of his two crewmates. In turn, Schirra was able to capture similar qualities in his 

photograph of Cunningham under the same conditions. When all three snapshots are grouped together, the square-framed tight close-ups of Schirra, eisele, 

and Cunningham offer an unimagined glimpse—in the stark sunlight of outer 

space—of three men’s faces within the tight confines of the first ever apollo space 

mission.45 these photographs are timeless “souvenirs” whose aesthetic relevance 

42. Since project Mercury, handheld cameras have accompanied crews into space.the cameras were 

initially recordkeeping tools to study earth from space. from these handheld cameras there also 

resulted opportunities to capture the spontaneous moments during spaceflight, both within and 

outside of a spacecraft. 

43. See John L. Kaltenbach, “a table and reference List Documenting Observations of the earth 

from Manned earth Orbital and Suborbital Spaceflight Missions Including the Unmanned 

apollo-Saturn 4 and 6 Missions” (houston,tx, National aeronautics and Space administration 

Lyndon b. Johnson Space Center, December 1976), http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/metadata/ApolloSaturn_4-6.html (accessed March 18, 2008). 

44. See Lunar and planetary Institute Apollo Image Atlas–70mm Hasselblad Image catalog for apollo 7, 

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/mission/?7.

45. See John L. Kaltenbach, “a table and reference List Documenting Observations of the earth 

from Manned earth Orbital and Suborbital Spaceflight Missions Including the Unmanned 
 

 

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are—referencing Green’s consideration of the snapshot—a combination of both 

deliberate preservation and the appropriate equivalent of modern experience. 

V. CONfOUNDING expeCtatIONS 

At NASA, the elegance was in the design of the engineering systems rather than in 

the manners of the men.46 

Some 38 years after the first publication of Of a Fire on the Moon, Mailer’s 

astuteness on NaSa’s institutional culture during the era of apollo 11 helps 

to suggest why most NaSa generated photography from the first 50 years of 

space exploration tends to typically focus on the elegance and design of its 

engineering systems. Yet the results from some of its design and engineering 

systems are typically the first communication to the greater public. as a result, 

NaSa releases pictures from weather satellites, robotic space craft flybys of the 

inner and outer planets, the era of apollo 11, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, and the 

ISS programs. the elegance of its engineering systems is also celebrated in the 

manner of its rockets, rocket engines, guidance system avionics, the integration, 

testing and assembly of earth orbiting satellites and space probes, interplanetary 

robotic spacecraft and so on. Yet confounding expectations in the need to report 

on the “elegance of its engineering systems” at often the expense of the “manners 

of men,” are the photojournalists who, given the precious commodities of 

accreditation, access, and time work mostly from “behind the velvet rope” to 

capture these essential moments. essential moments that are typically captured 

in the routine of rocket launches, press conferences, and guided media tours. 

photographic coverage by the print media (in daily newspapers and 

weekly news magazines) reached its zenith during the first decade and a half of 

the american space program. photographers working for the wire services like 

ap (associated press), UpI (United press International), and reuters provided 

the american audience with a steady supply of rocket launches—manned and 

unmanned. More extensive storytelling in the form of photographic essays and 

written reportage typically appeared in weekly magazines like Life, Look, Time, 

Newsweek, US News and World Report, and the monthly National Geographic. In 

Life magazine’s coverage of the first 16 years of the Space age (between 1957 

and 1972) for example, it published only 28 cover stories with 1962 and 1969 

tying with 7.47 With access, time, ingenuity and imagination, photojournalists 

apollo-Saturn 4 and 6 Missions” (houston,tx, National aeronautics and Space administration 

Lyndon b. Johnson Space Center, December 1976) http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/metadata/ApolloSaturn_4-6.html (accessed March 18, 2008). 

46. Norman Mailer, 	Of a Fire on the Moon (New York, NY: Signet book/New american 

Library,1971), p. 136. 

47. See time, Inc., Life, the First 50 Years: 1936–1986 (boston, Ma: Little, brown and Company,1986). 
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Snapshot portraits of the Apollo 7 crew in flight: October 1968. (left 

top) Donn Eisele, (left bottom) Wally Schirra (Cunningham/NASA), 

(above) Walt Cunningham. (Schirra/NASA) 

like ralph Morse, Otis Imboden and Jon Schneeberge revealed the early 

years of space exploration that often revealed the “manners” of the men of 

NaSa.48 these photographers provided their (stylistic) interpretations of 

astronaut training to the launchings of the atlas, titan and Saturn-apollo. 

however, access to these photographers’ complete work is challenging because 

it tends to be centralized within the news organization that they represented. 

editorial photography made under contract by in-house photographers like 

Morse, Imboden, and Schneeberge is essentially owned and copyrighted by the 

magazine corporation, such as Time-Life and National Geographic. 

Unlike access to NaSa’s public domain photographs, either in a flight 

center’s archive or through its online Web portal, the decentralization of photographic archives among news media outlets creates a major challenge for 

48. Other significant wire service photographers that covered the early years of the american space 

program were Jim Kerlin, russ Yoder, frank beattie, and hugo Wessels. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

304 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

research.49 Such is the case with bruce Weaver, a former ap photographer currently with agence france press who has covered the american space program 

since the early 1980s. his 1986 photography of the Challenger launch (which are 

among those that revealed the subsequent puff-of-black smoke) is over shadowed by his clearly capturing the explosion 77 seconds later. In Weaver’s case, 

the exposed roll of film was the property of ap, and subsequently, Weaver didn’t 

have any say on the final edit nor did he have access to the film he had shot even 

though the photograph selected was among the most widely used in communicating the horror of the accident worldwide. It is impossible to track down 

Weaver’s entire take from the ap archives, even today. and his “iconic” image 

of the explosion remains revenue intensive for the ap, but not for Weaver.. 

Contrary to this is the extensive and accessible photography by bill taub, the 

senior photographer at NaSa headquarters in Washington, DC, from 1958 through 

1975. During the early years of NaSa,taub was able to set the precedents in intimately capturing the nascent space agency.taub’s place was similar to the conditions 

that framed de Salignac’s reign as sole photographer for the City of New York. 

however, de Salignac never saw his work published nor exhibited while taub, on 

the other hand, was able to have his work credited in numerous stories in National 

Geographic during the early years of the space program.In addition,many of the public domain images in the NaSa archive at headquarters reflect his body of work. 

beyond those photographers already noted, there is a distinct group of photojournalists who have been covering the american space program since the 1980s 

for the ap,UpI,reuters,Florida Today,and the Orlando Sentinel.

50the scope of these 

photographers work is worth examining (although the restraints mentioned above 

will be formidable) given their continuous coverage and access to both human and 

robotic space missions from the Kennedy and Johnson Space Centers.there are, 

however, two photojournalists whose accessible work distinguishes itself.the first 

of these is Scott andrews who has been photographing every shuttle and nearly 

every unmanned rocket/satellite launch since StS-1 in april 1981. 

the quality of andrews’s work reflects a significant and stylistic approach in 

the reporting and documentation of the industrial landscape of space exploration 

photography. Within this landscape, andrews portrays Mailers “elegance in 

the design” by constantly reexploring his subject matter. his subject matter is 

typically rockets, rocket launches, active and historically inactive launch pad 

complexes, and rocket assembly facilities. 

49. typically a photographer’s space coverage is part of a magazine or media corporation’s archive. 

In building its archives, a news group like ap selects only the most historically relevant or 

iconic to save and catalogue as a revenue bearing profit center for the organization. as a result, 

it may be difficult, even next to impossible, to examine a photographer’s complete body of 

unedited work for possible alternative choices beyond the familiar or existing iconic. 

50. Joe Skipper-reuters;bruce Weaver-agence france press;pete Cosgroves-UpI;phill Sandlin-ap; 

Mike brown-Florida Today; red huber-Orlando Sentinel; and James Nielson-Houston Chronicle. 
 

 

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July 4, 2006: Shuttle Discovery Return to Flight. (©Scott Andrews) 

Considered the guru of remote rocket launch photography by his peers, 

andrews has been able to document both the magic and the elegance of the 

machines that launch into space through a combination of imagination and 

inventiveness.51 With no two launches ever identical, he achieves his imagery by 

strategically placing multiple motor driven cameras—with varying focal length 

lenses—in and around a rocket’s launch pad complex regardless of weather and 

time of day.52 the scope of andrew’s work can be examined in context to 

51. andrews is a Washington, DC based photographer whose work has been published in magazines 

such as Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, Smithsonian, and Discover. 

52. according to andrews,the automated firing of the remote cameras around the launchpad,regardless 

of the time of day,is activated by the sound or vibration of the rocket engines at ignition.When the 

sound or vibration reaches a predetermined level, the camera trigger will fire the linked cameras. 
306 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

April 26, 2003: Expedition 7 Soyuz Launch. (©Scott Andrews) 
 

 

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the photography of american railroads: specifically, the survey, building and 

operation of the american railway system by some of the pioneer late 19th 

century landscape photographers for the U.S. Geological Survey, and in the 

20th century, the imaginative and stylistic (steam) railroad photography of O. 

Winston Link and richard Steinheimer.53 their documentation of the fleeting 

era of steam locomotives set in context to the american landscape has been 

revered for detail. these photographers portrayed the scope and scale of the 

american railroad system with care and exactitude. this attention to detail of 

scope and scale exists in andrews’s work as well. 

andrews’s photograph documenting the second return-to-flight of the 

Space Shuttle Discovery offers several references to the history of photography 

and space. both the placement and framing of his remote hasselblad camera 

is reminiscent of the remote video images of apollo 17’s LeM blasting off 

from the surface of the Moon. however, it is andrews choice of black-andwhite film and one of the dried out ponds that typically surround the launch 

pad complexes in dry weather that distinguishes this image. as a result, the 

foreground patterns of dried out clay playing against the ascending shuttle has 

aesthetics reminiscent of western american desert images captured by 19th 

century landscape photographers like t. h. O’Sullivan and J. K. hillers. the 

other worldliness patterns of dried out clay can also be compared to some of 

the MrO (Mars reconnaissance Orbiter) surface images of Martian polar cap 

regions. In contrast, andrews remote close-up of a russian Soyuz rocket just 

seconds in to its liftoff, offers an insightful document of the launch pad—the 

same one used to launch Sputnik nearly 40 years earlier. It also portrays the 

elegance of russian rocketry, long hidden and secretive during the former 

Soviet era. 

Next comes the photography of bill Ingalls, currently the senior in-house 

photographer at NaSa headquarters in Washington, DC. Ingalls has been the 

first NaSa photographer to routinely document NaSa’s collaboration with 

the russian space program. Ingalls tends to explore what Mailer describes as 

the “manners of the men” through unique access and time in which to 

photograph both the american and russian human space flight programs. 

Since 1999 his continuous documentation has captured the cultural similarities 

and differences between both spaceflight programs. his documentation of the 

solemnity of the russians in the training of their cosmonauts and launching of 

their rockets from the same launch complexes that supported Sputnik and 

Gagarin warrants examination. as of this writing, Ingalls remains the only 

photographer to have continuous access to every russian launch involving 

53. See O. Winston Link’s Steam, Steel and Stars (harry N. abrams); The Last Steam Railroad in 

America (harry N. abrams); richard Steinheimer’s A Passion for Trains (W. h. Norton & 

Company) and Walker evans photographic studies of railroad car insignias for a 1956 Fortune 

article “before they Disappear.” 
308 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Expedition 8 crew meets the media. (©Bill Ingalls/NASA) 

Soyuz rocket being transported to launch pad. (©Bill Ingalls/NASA) 
 

 

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american astronauts.54 for example, his photograph of the expedition 8 crew 

(in a closed off, rather cage-like glass room) offers a distinct point of view of 

how the russian’s present a fully suited crew—only hours from their launch to 

the ISS—to space officials and the media. as a result, Ingalls has achieved 

continued access to a space exploration infrastructure, once remote and 

secretive, that harkens to de Salignac’s continuous three decade documentation 

of New York City’s urban infrastructure. by examining Ingalls’s somber 

photograph of russian security guards accompanying a Soyuz rocket being 

transported to its baikanor launch pad, offers not only a contrast to shuttle 

launch preparations at the Kennedy Space Center in florida. It provides an 

insightful observation on what the past history of Soviet era space exploration 

may have looked like in the desolateness of Kazakhstan.55 

VI. the paSt, preSeNt aND fUtUre phOtOGraphIC
 

DOCUMeNtatION Of NaSa aS a LabOr fOrCe
 

I saw doing space history as investigating what space flight efforts could reveal about 

a particular time and place.56 

—Margaret a. Weitekamp 

the examination of space exploration photography to the history of photography has demonstrated relationships to landscape photography, photographic 

documentation, and the evolution of the snapshot. Now it is time to consider 

another photographic genre, documentary portraiture and its relationships to 

space exploration photography, specifically the people that make going into 

space happen. In her essay, “Critical theory as a toolbox,” Margaret Weitekamp 

considers historically examining NaSa as a labor force: 

Many other aspects of NaSa as a labor force remain unexamined . . . . although the individual stories of astronauts, 

flight controllers and rocket scientists have been recorded, 

54. See “roads Less traveled” by the photographer Jonas bendiksen in Aperture 170, Spring 2003. 

bendiksen documents the spent lower stages of russian rockets that crash (and pollute) in the 

often populated and desolate areas of Kazakhstan and Siberia. 

55. Since the return-to-flight of the Space Shuttle in 2005, Ingalls has also been able to frame all 

subsequent Shuttle launches from the perspective of the NaSa administrator in the firing room 

at Kennedy Space Center. Mission after mission, these photographs represent some of the most 

prolific unstaged documentation of a NaSa administrator and senior management during the 

moments of launch in the history of american space exploration. 

56. Margaret a.Weitekamp,“Critical theory as a tool box:Suggestions for Space history’s relationship 

to the history Subdisciplines” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, ed. Steve Dick and roger 

D. Launius (Washington, DC: National aeronautics and Space administration, 2006), p. 562. 
 

 

 

 

 

310 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

the collective stories of the thousands of people who made 

particular space projects work offer many opportunities for 

thinking about the space agency as a workplace.57 

In considering the last 50 years of existing photographic coverage of 

NaSa as a workplace, (often within a framework of industrial photography), 

inspires close examination and comparisons to the genre of documentary 

portrait photography and to photographers like august Sanders, Lewis hine, 

Walker evans, W. eugene Smith, Irving penn, richard avedon and arnold 

Newman.58 In fact the work of Lewis W. hine and W. eugene Smith, specifically 

their photography of american industrialization and its labor (before and after 

World War II), offer a significant reference and comparison to the wide range 

of NaSa’s photography of its own labor force. 

In examining the photography of Lewis hine, I am immediately drawn to 

two seminal images: the black-and-white photograph of a goggled welder working 

on the empire State building and the photograph of a t-shirted powerhouse 

mechanic using a massive wrench to tighten a steam valve. In the circa 1932 

photograph, an unnamed goggled worker is pictured amid an elliptically shaped 

piece of steel with a cut circle rimmed with bolts as he holds (in gloved hands) an 

ignited welding torch. Leaning slightly into the steel, his dark-colored goggles 

are juxtaposed to the circular black hole in the steel piece. the convex shape 

of his soft tweed-like hat that covers his head juxtaposes off of the concave cut 

into the steel. the harmony of this laborer with the work before him can be 

57. Ibid., p. 563. 

58. the stylistic approach of 20th century portrait photographers like august Sanders, Irving penn, 

and richard avedon yields distinct bodies of work that reveals the photographer’s connection 

to his subject matter in the hope of capturing moments of vulnerability in body language and 

eye contact. Sanders’s documentation of the physiognomy of Germans before World War II, 

for example, is significant in its breath and honesty. he often portrayed his subjects from all 

walks of life—pastry chef, musician, teacher, judge, lawyer, etc.—in their own work or personal 

environment. Sanders’s influence is felt in the portraits of Irving penn and of my own. penn’s 

black-and-white series on american and french working professionals and those of various 

peruvian and african tribes (or even on american subcultures like hell’s angels) are seminal in 

the cultural history of 20th century photography. Specifically, penn’s 1950s portraits of workers 

in paris, London, and New York like bakers, butchers, waiters, charwomen, deep sea divers, 

and rag-and-bone men resulted in a seminal body of work called “the Small trades.” each 

individual is photographed on a mottled gray background illuminated with natural daylight from 

windows or skylights. richard avedon believed that a photograph has a life of its own anchored 

in the era in which it was made. as a result, his approach was to both isolate and interpret his 

subjects without a definable location nor identifiable background. avedon’s portraits typically 

document an individual with a quality of flat lighting posed against a bath of pure white light. 

In some respects, this is not too different than the expected aesthetics of a passport photograph. 

by composing his subjects in different positions within the camera’s frame, avedon was able 

to capture the essence of an individual through the emotional expression of his or her body 

language and his or her direct or indirect eye contact. 
 

 

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compared to paul riedel’s industrial image of a NaSa tIG welder in the clean 

room of the technical Services building at the former Lewis research Center.59 

here a high tech welder in 1963 is similarly goggled however he is welding 

metallic objects by (safely) inserting his hands through protective gloves that 

securely enter a closed protective chamber. In both images each photographer 

discovers and frames a kind of unity between laborer and place of labor. 

by comparing hine’s iconic 1920 staged portrait of a powerhouse mechanic 

to a 1964 NaSa technician working on a “9 thruster ion engine array” furthers 

both the notion of unity and juxtaposition of laborer and place of labor.60 

these four images convey a sense of aesthetics in which a discovered 

harmony exits in the very choreography of the subject matter. as a result, the 

visual harmony between worker, workplace, and the labor itself is a useful 

foundation for viewing and analyzing labor-related imagery from the archives 

of NaSa’s various space centers. 

My photographic documentation of NaSa’s labor force has its roots in the 

writing of the author Studs terkel. terkel’s Working (based on oral interviews) 

provides both a narrative and intellectual framework for examining NaSa as a 

labor force.61 to be sure, there are the engineers who, piece by piece, have preassembled every screw and electrical connection to all the parts of the ISS. then 

there are the technicians who for the last 27 years have repaired and replaced 

tiles on shuttle orbiters. and there are the technicians who check, replace and 

check again the Space Shuttle’s hydraulics and avionics. In any given Center on 

any given day, there exist countless photographic opportunities to document 

the labor force. those men and women who work behind the scenes day-to-day. 

they are the laborers who make space exploration possible. terkel understood 

the importance of the work that goes on behind-the-scenes in america. he 

celebrated that work and noted that it often goes unrecognized. In his book, 

Working, terkel interviewed a steel worker, Mike Le fevre: 

It’s not just the work. Somebody built the pyramids. 

Somebody’s going to build something. pyramids. empire 

State building—these things just don’t happen. there’s hard 

work behind it. I would like to see a building—say the empire 

State, I would like to see on one side of it a foot wide strip 

from top to bottom with the name of every brick layerer, the 

59. See Glenn research Center GrC Image Net C-1963-63814:“tIG welder located in the clean 

room of the technical services building tSb – the inert gas welding facility is used for welding 

refractory metals in connection with the Columbium Liquid Sodium Loop project.” 

60. See Glenn research Center GrC Image Net C-1964-71003: “9 thruster ion engine array in 

tank 6 at the electrical propulsion Laboratory epL.” 

61. Studs terkel, Working – People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What 

They Do (New York, NY:the New press, 1972). 
312 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

“Goggled Welder”: c.1932. (Lewis Hine/Library of Congress) 

name of every electrician, with all the names. So when a guy 

walked by, he could take his son and say “see, that’s me over 

there on the 45th floor. I put the steel beam in” picasso can 

point to a painting what can I point to? a writer can point to 

a book. everybody should have something to point to.62 

62. Ibid., p. xxxii. 
 

 

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“TIG Welder”: 1963. (Paul Riedel/NASA) 

My own interest in documenting some of the technicians who work on a 

shuttle orbiter was sparked by reading interviews like Le fevre’s.63 My desire to 

63. Since 2005, I have been photographically documenting NaSa’s New horizons mission to pluto 

and the Kuiper belt at the Goddard Space flight Center, Kennedy Space flight Center, Johns 

hopkins University applied physics Lab, and the Lowell Observatory. I expect to continue this 

documentation through New horizons flyby of pluto in the summer of 2015. My documentation
314 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Powerhouse mechanic with wrench: 1920. (Lewis Hine/Library of Congress) 
 

 

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1964: Engineer at a 9 thruster ion engine array. (NASA) 

visualize the relationship between a worker and their place of work is evident 

in my black-and-white portrait of a United Space alliance technician. In this 

photograph made in one of the Space Shuttle’s Orbiter processing facilities 

and portraiture of the StS-125 crew and SM4 engineers, scientists, and technicians of the last 

NaSa service mission to the hubble Space telescope began in february 2007.Like New horizons, 

it is an ongoing exploration into the relationship between people and their place of work. 
316 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Technician at the engine base of shuttle orbiter Discovery. Kennedy Space Center: 

2006. (©Michael Soluri) 

(Opf) at the Kennedy Space Center, he is juxtaposed by one of the three main 

Shuttle engine insert positions. In scope and scale, I sought to explore the 

workspace of the people whose day job is working on a spaceship. In another 

exploration, I sought to document the engineers and technicians integrating 

the New horizons spacecraft in the pre-clean room at the Goddard Space 

flight Center. Working in a near sterile environment, these two electrical 

engineers are juxtaposed with a rolling cart of their tools and instruments. In 

both explorations, I sought the dignity of the space worker in context to his 

working environment. 

While examining the photography of NaSa’s labor force, it is impossible 

to ignore the photography of the workplace itself. John Sexton has made 

Kennedy Space Center his industrial landscape. his highly crafted approach to 

black-and-white photography is informed by the history of landscape and 

documentary photography and his close working relationship with ansel 

adams.64 Sexton’s documentation of the Space Shuttle over a period of about 

64. Sexton was ansel adams’s technical and photographic assistant from 1979 until adams’s 

death in 1984. 
 

 

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Two “New Horizons” electrical engineers and their cart of tools in the Goddard 

Space Flight Center pre-Clean Room: 2005. (©Michael Soluri) 
318 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Forward Reaction Control System Detail, Columbia. Kennedy Space Center, Florida. 

(©1994 John Sexton. All rights reserved) 
 

 

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Atlantis Vertical Vehicle Assembly Building. Kennedy Space Center, Florida. (©2000 

John Sexton. All rights reserved) 

eight years may very well be the most insightful and classic portrayal of an 

american spaceship to date.65 It is unfortunate that Mercury, Gemini, nor 

65. See John Sexton, Places of Power: The Aesthetics of Technology (Carmel Valley, Ca: Ventana 

editions, 2000). 
320 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

apollo spacecraft and their launch complexes were afforded such stylistic and 

personal interpretation.66 

having successfully navigated NaSa’s public affairs Office (paO) 

between the post-Challenger era of 1990 and the events of 9/11, Sexton was able 

to document in large format black-and-white, both the elegance and dignity 

of the most complex machine ever created by humans. With the coveted 

combination of quality access and time, Sexton, over a period of 13 visits to 

the Kennedy Space Center, carefully portrayed various angles of the orbiter in 

context to the cathedral-like interior of the Vehicle assembly building (Vab) 

as it was being processed for spaceflight. he also systematically identified and 

isolated distinctive elements of the Space Shuttle orbiter like one of its three 

main rocket engines, landing gear, the flight deck’s glass cockpit, the thermal 

protection system tiles, and the skeletal interior of a stripped down cargo bay. 

the subtleness and monumentality to the scale of surroundings, and the 

distinct qualities of light that typically emerge from an adams landscape 

photograph like “Moonrise over hernandez, New Mexico” can be examined 

in many of Sexton’s nature and industrial landscape images. In his many 

interpretations of the Space Shuttle orbiter—in this example, hanging vertically 

by its nose in preparation for mating to its fuel tank and two solid rocket 

boosters—he conveys a similar adherence to scale, monumentality, and qualities 

of light. Comparisons to Sexton’s sense of organic shapes in his nature work can 

also be seen in his composition of one of the Space Shuttle’s forward reaction 

Control thrusters. 

VII. reSOUrCefUL eDItING, aUthOrING, aND the 

apprOprIatION Of SpaCe expLOratION phOtOGraphY 

It is time to remember that the camera lures. Then compels a man 

to create through seeing. It demands that he learn to make the realm 

of his responses to the world the raw material of his creative activity. 

Creative understanding is more camera-like than invention. 

– Minor White67 

In examining the context of different photographic genre to space exploration 

photography, it would be remiss to ignore fine arts photography.although limited 

in number, a significant body of work by photographer-editors and fine art 

photographers has resulted in a range of significant, single-themed books and fine 

art photography that references the history of space exploration photography. 

66. there are no known industrial landscape studies of the apollo and Skylab configured launchpads, 

their crawler transports,Vab, and firing room configurations by fine art photographers. 

67. Nathan Lyons, Photographers on Photography (englewood Cliffs, NJ: prentice-hall, 1966), p. 164. 
 

 

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While there have been many high-end picture books that have published 

the iconic and familiar photography of space exploration, few have been edited to 

reflect an astronaut’s insight while in space. One title that conveys the astronaut’s 

perspective is The Home Planet.

68the book remains one of the earliest “coffee table” 

books to cohesively portray an astronaut’s photographic exploration of earth and 

the Moon.the book brought together aesthetically compelling images (considering 

lighting, angle, composition) chosen from not just the american space program 

but also, for the first time since the space era began, from the then Soviet space 

exploration photography.the result is a book with visual continuity with images 

of earth and earth-related phenomena (weather, river and ocean patterns, and 

geologic formations). the photographs were mostly taken by astronauts in orbit 

around earth and in orbit or on the surface of the Moon.What distinguishes this 

volume today is the quality of the editing.Complementing the minimalist design, 

layout and superb printing is the bilingual flow of first-person narrative in a variety 

of languages like, english, russian, German, french, hindu, and bulgarian. 

hardly a decade later, the landscape photographer Michael Light published 

his book Full Moon in 1999. Light’s book portrays the Moon as landscape and 

examines the sublime quality of light and detail from project apollo’s space 

flight photography. Over a period of four years, Light researched and edited a 

substantial number of in-flight photographs made from project’s Gemini and 

apollo (1965–1972). by gaining access to NaSa’s photo archive, he was able to 

make the first drum-scanned digital files from essentially second generation 

copies of the original flight films.69 the resulting editing and juxtaposition of 

superbly reproduced full page black-and-white and color images created an 

aesthetic flow of a journey to the Moon and back via the historic timeline of 

manned spaceflight, beginning with the explosive fireball ignition of the Saturn 

apollo’s five rocket engines and ending with a view of the pacific Ocean as seen 

through the window of a just landed apollo module. 

the subtext of Light’s editing and editorial structure suggests themes of 

exploration and discovery. the quality of light and shadow in the photographs 

is significant. as a result, the actual quality of detail found on the printed page 

is stunning. this quality is impossible to appreciate in the familiar and iconic 

photography published by NaSa and the print media. even Light’s handling 

of the iconic apollo images discussed earlier (for example, the before and after 

photographs of aldrin’s boot print in the lunar dust) reveals a tonal range, and 

subtly of detail and texture that is impossible to draw out from the same images 

in familiar consumer print media. 

Of particular interest to the author is the lighting captured by the apollo 

astronauts. as explorers carrying cameras, the apollo astronauts were similar to 

68. See 	The Home Planet, ed. Kevin W. Kelly for the association of Space explorers, reading, 

Massachusetts (reading, Ma:addison-Wesley publishing Company, 1988). 

69. Michael Light,“the Skin of the Moon,” Full Moon (New York, NY:alfred a. Knopf, 1999). 
 

 

 

 

322 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

the pioneer photographers of the 19th century who, with their cameras, were 

responding to the unknowns of the american West. however, unlike the physical 

conditions of the 19th century photographers, the Gemini and apollo crews were 

responding to the new and unexplored by photographing their experiences inside 

their spacecraft and outside in the vacuum of space. they were able to capture 

qualities of light and shadow that were impossible to experience or capture on 

earth. Commenting on the lunar landscape, Light puts it this way: 

Issues of big and small comprise but one half of the sublime landscape; for me, the other is the rule of light itself. 

Concerns about light always lurked behind all the others that 

drove my selection, and so to me the (NaSa) archive’s most 

important images will always remain the black-and-white 

ones, in part because their finer grain carries a higher visual 

acuity and renders more detail, but mostly because of the 

way they distill light in a world without air.70 

as a result, not only does the handheld black-and-white photography 

from apollo’s 12 and 14 through 17 offer further aesthetic reexamination, the 

imagery from the automated metric and panoramic cameras (installed in the 

service module) also offer opportunities in visual exploration and discovery. 

the writer, film maker, and photographer Michael benson chose a different 

approach in conveying the sense of light, scale and landscape in space exploration 

photography.benson researched and edited the still imagery that had been captured 

and beamed back to earth by the robotic exploration of our solar system. published 

in 2003, Beyond, Visions of the Interplanetary Probes often displays rediscovered 

photographs that have never been registered on a negative.71 the subject matter 

is most of our solar system’s inner and outer planets, their Moons, asteroids and 

the Sun.the images were taken by earth and Moon orbiting, and interplanetary 

robotic space probes like OrbView,terra, aqua, Galileo, Lunar Orbiter, Magellan, 

Solar and heliospheric Observatory (SOhO),Viking Orbiters and its landers,Near 

earth asteroid rendezvous (Near),Voyager and the hubble Space telescope. 

benson addresses his experience researching and editing the images. the 

results of this became a kind of philosophical treatise on the history of the 

photographic imaging systems used in these robotic probes. benson’s ideas on 

the nature of art in these images become relevant here: 

I meditate on the fact that questions of authorship would 

tend to disqualify a space probe’s pictures from serious 

70. Michael Light,“the Skin of the Moon,” Full Moon (New York, NY:alfred a. Knopf, 1999). 

71. Michael benson, Beyond-Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (New York, NY: harry N. abrams, 

2003) p. 295. 
 

 

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consideration as works of art—even though its scientific 

discoveries are undeniable, and attributed. Yet those same 

questions are very much present in the rarefied art-world air 

these days. even ansel adams was only ansel adams part of 

the time. Like most photographers, he shot a lot of pictures 

and then selected those few that today constitute the work 

we connect with his name . . . What’s left is choice—curatorship. and I would argue that these pictures qualify for 

another reason: their mysterious, Leonardo-esque smile.72 

One can look at a range of benson’s choices and make associations 

between a probe’s photography and that of a photographic master. for example, 

Voyager’s flyby of Jupiter takes on a modernist approach with its abstract colors 

and organic shapes. Next, there is Magellan’s Minor White-like-exploration of 

Venus. the Synthetic aperture radar (Sar) imagery is all black-and-white, 

and White only worked in black-and-white. also, Magellan captured unusual 

surface features, the quality of which are reminiscent to some of White’s more 

interpretive work of objects and landscapes. and then there is the black-andwhite exploration of Mars by the Viking Orbiters and Mars Global Surveyors 

that recalls the work of ansel adams, edward Weston, and aaron Siskind. 

benson’s choices also reinforce the notion that the photography from space 

exploration can be researched, edited and curated in a way that reflects the 

artistic proclivities of an author-curator. 

While benson and Light sought to convey various editorial approaches 

to the aesthetic possibilities of robotic and astronaut space flight photography, 

there are also artists who appropriate—take, borrow or are inspired by—space 

exploration in combination with photography, its related imaging technologies 

and even art. the work of the Spanish artist Joan fontcuberta, for example, is 

distinctive for its humor, inventiveness and intellect. by experimenting with 

computer mapping software—used by cartographers to create realistic threedimensional models and maps—fontcuberta has created images of unimagined 

landscapes that look as though they were made by earth orbiting satellites. 

Scanning examples of iconic paintings from artists like rousseau, turner, 

Cezanne, or Dali and feeding a digitized file from one of the paintings into 

the mapping software fontcuberta achieved results in a fully rendered, realistic 

landscape of mountains, hills, valleys, rivers and lakes. the landscapes are, of 

course, visual fiction as experienced in his book fittingly entitled, Landscapes 

without Memory.

73 In context, fontcuberta’s fictional landscapes have an uncanny 

72. Ibid., p. 304. 

73. Joan fontcuberta, Landscapes Without Memory (New York, NY:aperture, 2005). 
324 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

Henri Rousseau, “The Dream,”: 1910. Oil on canvas. (The Museum of Modern Art, 

New York) 

Derived photograph from “The Dream.” (©Joan Fontcuberta) 
 

 

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SRTM image of Santa Monica Bay. ([PIA02779]/NASA) 

resemblance to the imagery produced from the Shuttle radar topography 

Mission (SrtM) in 2000.74 

When the digital scan of, say, rousseau’s 1910 painting The Dream is 

generated into the mapping software, the resulting fictional landscape image 

of a lake, sharply defined mountains, the sky, and clouds can be contrasted to a 

SrtM radar image of Santa Monica bay to Mount-baden powell, California.75 

In the SrtM bay photograph, the distinct quality of the mountains, and the 

colors of water and sky have a three-dimensional quality such as that experienced 

in the mountain and lake image derived from The Dream. 

In a turn from a series of fictional landscapes with their own imbedded 

story, fontcuberta has also experimented with stories based on invented photographs and created ephemera. One such story is based on a fabricated 

organization, the Sputnik foundation, and a fictitious cosmonaut, Ivan 

74. In addition to the SrtM of earth, some of the images in fontcuberta’s book, Landscapes 

without Memory, also have an image quality similar to the imagery received from the Magellan 

space probe’s radar imaging of the surface of Venus. 

75. See 	JpL’s “Shuttle radar topography Mission” online at http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/ 

mission/htm. 
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“Ivan Stochnikov and Kloka in their historical EVA,” from the Sputnik project: 1997. 

(©Joan Fontcuberta) 

Istochnikov. In 1998, fontcuberta purports that the Sputnik foundation sponsored an extensive, researched installation which examined the artifacts, details 

and life of the Soviet cosmonaut, Istochnikov who had apparently disappeared 

during the fight of Soyuz 2 in 1968. the reality, however, was that fontcuberta 

had created an entirely fictitious narrative that reflected his actual research of 

the Soviet culture and its space program. fontcuberta’s portraits of Istochnikov 

are, in fact, those of fontcuberta himself. the artist also created a series of
 

 

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Eugene Cernan’s EVA from GT9: June 1966. (NASA) 

convincingly staged photographs of Ivan and his dog Kloka in their historical 

eVa from the flight of Soyuz 2. the photographs are reminiscent of (mid1960s) eVa’s by, among others, the american astronaut ed White on Gemini 

4 and eugene Cernan on Gemini 9. 

another example of the appropriation of space exploration photography 

by members of the fine arts community is the conceptual piece, The Apollo 

Prophecies.

76 On first blush, its title would suggest yet another assertion that the 

apollo trips to the Moon were staged on vast sound sets (such as those used in the 

making of the hbO series “from the earth to the Moon.”) While that television 

series was staged to recreate some of the actual historical events of apollo, 

76. Nicholas Kahn and richard Selesnick, 	The Apollo Prophecies (New York, NY: aperture 

foundation, 2006). 
 

328 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

The Apollo Prophecies are, in fact, a series of staged, edited and photoshopped 

black-and-white photographs that document a purely fictional event. the work 

centers on the apollo landing on the Moon and the subsequent discovery of 

a lost mission of edwardian astronauts who colonized the Moon nearly three 

quarters of a century earlier. 

The Apollo Prophecies is both humorous and well researched. Drawing from 

both the history of photography and the history of the apollo missions, the 

two fine art photographers Nicholas Kahn and richard Selesnick wrote, staged, 

acted, photographed, and edited two seamlessly woven, multi-page panoramas 

that portray a two-man crew, their launch, journey, landing, discovery, and 

return to earth. In addition, the two photographers also wrote and created an 

accompanying booklet, “apollo: a prophecy” that conceptually chronicles the 

mission profiles from apollo l to apollo xxxl. the booklet contains portraits 

made to appear turn-of-the 20th century and hand-drawn. the illustrations detail 

the edwardians and the artifacts from their lunar colonization. In the “editor’s 

Note” the authors offer insight into the philosophical subtext of their work: 

It is a little known fact that when the apollo astronauts 

returned from the Moon, they brought back evidence of a 

previously unknown lunar expedition. this evidence comprised several cardboard canisters containing lunar breccia 

and, more significantly, a document written by the early 

explorer that prophesied the future arrival of the NaSa 

astronauts themselves. 

Most saw the documents as a forgery, not least because the 

early explorers viewed the coming astronauts as cosmic deities. 

Whether the prophecy is authentic or not, its vision is hard to 

deny—if any man is to be transformed in to a god, what better candidate is there than the one who has ascended into the 

celestial sphere and stood alone on a distant world?77 

On the surface the tone of the narrative could seem authentic but as 

readers and viewers, well aware of space history, we know it is not. In fact, we 

muse at Kahn and Selesnik’s posturing. Calling the apollo astronauts “cosmic 

deities” in the eyes of the early explorers is absurdly comical. Yet, there is also 

an irreverence that alludes to a belief on the part of some people that the apollo 

landings were staged. 

Within the panoramas of the book, though, a number of Gemini flight 

and apollo surface photographs can be referenced to compare with some 

77. Ibid., see accompanying pamphlet “apollo:a prophecy” (without page numbers), additional text 

by erez Lieberman. 
 

 

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Panorama from Apollo Prophecies. (Kahn & Selesnick [Aperture, 2006]. All rights 

reserved) 

“Apollo Bug,” 1963. (Bill Bowles/NASA) 
330 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

John Young, Commander of Apollo 16 on the lunar highland plains of Descartes 

April 1972. (Charles Duke/NASA) 

of the staged scenes created by the photographers. as in fontcuberta’s eVa 

photograph of Ivan and Kloka, it would appear that Kahn and Selesnick 

appropriated the visual feeling of 1960s era eVa photography from Gemini 

missions like White’s Gt4, Cernan’s Gt9, and aldrin’s Gt12. for example, on 

the outbound journey to the Moon, the crew of two astronauts emerge from 

their Gemini-inspired capsule on an eVa to study nearby asteroids. as the 

story continues, the crew lands and explores the lunar surface. the astronauts 

pick up rock samples and set up something that looks like the far UV Camera/ 

Spectrograph.78 the detail and aesthetics of rock samples and camera recall the 

78. See further information on George Carruthers (of the Naval research Lab), who was the pI 

and inventor of the Lunar Surface Ultraviolet Camera and its related imagery from apollo 16 at 

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap960610.html. 
 

 

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surface imagery from apollo 16. It also recalls a staged black-and-white NaSa 

Lewis research Center photograph—in the construction spirit of a bonestell— 

of an early model of the LeM on a faux lunar surface with stars in a black sky 

and a buck rogers style of astronaut.79 

In the photograph that begins the second panorama of the book, the two 

astronauts have emerged from their lunar rover and have just discovered the 

edwardian’s camp. With the long-coated edwardians’ backs to the camera, the 

“apollo” explorers survey the camp’s infrastructure of housed rocks and spacesuited pets, like a dog and elephant. the visual tone on the lunar surface can be 

compared to a black-and-white image of the apollo 16 astronaut John Young.80 

In the photograph Young is just breaking into the right side of the camera 

frame and the lunar rover—its antenna aimed towards earth—is parked in 

the background of the Descartes region landing site. the two images together 

create a contemplative, non-conspiratorial juxtaposition between historical fact 

and staged historical fiction. 

VIII. ChOICeS, traNSItIONS, aND OppOrtUNItIeS 

Who built the seven towers of thebes? 

the books are filled with the names of kings. 

Was it kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone... 

In the evening when the Chinese Wall finished where did 

the masons go? 

—bertolt brecht81 

the first 50 years of space exploration has been visualized largely through 

the publication of iconic photography, those few identifiable and often 

repeated images. as I have argued, however, there are other images that exist. 

for the most part, these photographs have been largely overlooked or even 

undiscovered, and yet they too can be placed alongside these iconic images and 

be considered within the context of the history of photography. I have also been 

discussing the aesthetics of space exploration photography in terms of landscape, 

documentary, and snapshot photography as a means to a visual literacy. how 

then can some of these photographs of space exploration be defined as artistic? 

the noted landscape photographer robert adams offers some thought on art 

and the making of photographs: 

79. See Glenn research Center GrC Image Net:C-1963-65465,“Model of apollo bug to Simulate 

Lunar Landing” by bill bowles. 

80. See Lunar and planetary Institute Apollo Image Atlas – 70mm Hasselblad Image catalog for apollo 

16 http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/mission/?16. 

81. Studs terkel, Working – People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What 

They Do (New York, NY:the New press, 1972), p. xxxi. 
 

332 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

It seems to me that what art has historically,traditionally focused 

on are these moments of recognition and insight. by looking closely at specifics in life, you discover a wider view. and 

although we can’t speak with much assurance about how this is 

conveyed, it does seem to me that among the most important 

ways it’s conveyed by artists is through attention to form. 

the notable thing, it seems to me, about great pictures is that 

everything fits. there is nothing extraneous. there is nothing 

too much, too little, and everything within that frame relates. 

Nothing is isolated.the reason that becomes so moving is that 

the artist finally says that the form that he or she has found in 

that frame is analogous to form in life.the coherence within 

that frame points to a wider coherence in life as a whole.82 

It is my observation that a significant quality of space exploration photography is unique and idiosyncratic in form. the form is revealed in landscape 

and documentation as it spans through a whole host of photographic imagery 

(in color and black-and-white) not just produced and created on earth, but created from robotic spacecraft, human spaceflight, and earth-based telescopes. 

furthering the discussion on the aesthetics of art photography, it is worth noting the historical relevance that black-and-white space exploration photography 

has had on contemporary fine art photographers like Michael Light, Michael 

benson, John Sexton, and even myself. Charlotte Cotton, a curator and writer 

on photography, offers some thought on the reascendancy of black-and-white in 

a recent online essay titled “the New Color: the return of black-and-white”: 

I am sure I’m not alone in beginning to think that the more 

complex, messy, unfashionable, and broad territory of blackand-white photography is where we are going to find some 

of the grist to the mill in photography’s substantive and longer-term positioning within art.83 

Indeed, the rich tonalities of black-and-white photography—from velvety 

blacks to grays to pure whites—have defined the aesthetics of landscape and 

documentary photography since the late 19th century. the recent documentary 

and landscape work by contemporary photographers such as Sebastian Salgado 

82. See more on robert adams “photography, Life and beauty” on pbS’s Art in the Twenty First 

Century, http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/adams/clip2.html (accessed february 13, 2008). 

83. Charlotte Cotton, “the New Color: the return of black-and-white.” Contribution to 

the tip of the tongue forum, March 2007, http://www.thetipofthetongue.com (accessed March 

2007, now defunct). 
 

 

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(Genesis), bernd and hilla becher (Water Towers), and John Sexton (Places of Power) 

re-affirms the significance of black-and-white as a means of exploration and discovery. even the recent exploration of the daguerreotype process by the artist 

Chuck Close has resulted in finely crafted black-and-white portraits of contemporary artists and writers. the consideration of black-and-white as the “new color” 

is significant. to Cotton, it may even move photography to a new plane: 

Contemporary black-and-white photography . . . has moved 

my thinking about the present state of photography onto a 

much more optimistic platform. through these contemporary manifestations, the true, maverick character of photography, of our medium’s history, is far from lost. Indeed, these 

threads of the past are given new and meaningful effect.84 

One could conclude that the enthusiastic response of a few contemporary 

photographers to the abundance of black-and-white photography that NaSa 

produced during the first 50 years of space exploration is no surprise.85 It is 

compelling that apollo 12 and 14 through 17 produced a significant amount 

of black-and-white photography, and it is the scope of that photography 

which tends to be referenced and appropriated by fine art photographers. this 

appropriation is significant because the inherent nature of black-and-white 

imaging foreshadows what art photography could contribute to the present 

and evolving history of space exploration photography, particularly in the 

documentation of people and place as human spaceflight transitions from the 

Space Shuttle and the ISS into the Constellation program.86 

84. Ibid. 

85. It should be noted, however, that the institutional choice (by photographic engineers) at NaSa 

to use color film on human spaceflight missions (since project Mercury) was not arbitrary.the 

decision was pragmatic because it reflected the practical needs of the engineering and scientific 

communities. a technical philosophy unchanged as human spaceflight activities evolved from 

project apollo and Skylab, to the Space Shuttle and ISS programs.although during the first 20 

years of NaSa, the paO (public affairs Office) typically relied on black-and-white photography 

to record the day-to-day and staged media events given the medium’s immediacy and the 

historical nature of its use in the print media. however, by the late 1970s and with the emerging 

Space Shuttle program, black-and-white was eased out in favor of the immediacy (and cultural 

preference) that color coverage could provide. a choice unchanged as the second 50 years of 

space exploration begins, except to note that color films were gradually eased out in the late 

1990s in favor of color digital technology. 

86. the reemergent relevance of black-and-white, however, does not diminish the significance that 

color continues to have. for example, note the works by photographers like William eggleston, 

Stephen Shore, Joel Meyerowitz, robert adams, and John pfahl. It also must be considered that 

over the last several decades artist photographers, curators and teachers have emerged from Mfa 

programs like those found at the art Institutes of Chicago, San francisco,Yale, and the rochester 

Institute of technology. 
 

 

334 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

the quality of this transition to the Constellation program, one that 

has not been experienced since the close of apollo and the emergence of the 

Space Shuttle, reinforces Weitekamp’s suggestion that the history of NaSa be 

examined in terms of its labor force. Weitekamp’s proposition fits squarely within 

the landscape and documentary aesthetics found in the history of 20th century 

photography. this thinking can be considered as a catalyst in leading conversations 

that examine the existing photography of the labor force and its various work 

sites. examining the first 50 years can help prepare and plan for a systematic and 

managed documentation of the next 50 years of space exploration. 

In essence, it may be well worth evaluating the necessity for the researching 

and cataloguing NaSa’s photographic archives and the collections of its contractors 

as a means for creating the criteria for the next 50-year cycle. this would include 

the photography from Kennedy, Marshall, Michoud, Stennis, Dryden, Goddard, 

Glenn, Langley, Johnson, ames, Vandenberg, and JpL. the results of such 

research may unveil collections of insightful work like high-speed engineering 

(Schlieren photography), industrial, portraiture, and the day-to-day workings 

of the labor force by one or more unrecognized photographers. for example, 

there are, in fact, decades of remarkably sophisticated work by the industrial 

photographers bill bowles, paul riedel, and Martin brown at NaSa’s Glenn 

research Center (formerly Lewis research Center). I contend that research like 

this may yield historically significant discoveries (not unlike Michael Lorenzini’s 

curatorial research, discovery, and exhibition of eugene de Salignac’s engineering 

and infrastructure photography). perhaps, in conjunction with the NaSa history 

Division and a flight center’s archives, a combination of graduate students and 

doctoral candidates with affinities towards the realm of the curatorial would be 

likely resources in implementing such a long-term undertaking. 

as the second 50 years of space exploration begins, so does its resulting 

photography. rather than solely depending on NaSa flight center photography, 

which is largely reactive to the moments at hand, I suggest taking a more 

proactive approach. Why not engage fine art photographers and photojournalists 

who may offer historians, curators, policymakers, and, ultimately, the public a 

more perceptive understanding of the current and future american space 

programs before they vanish forever. In many respects, why wait until an 

american space exploration program like the Space Shuttle is completed, 

scrapped, and rusted like remnants of project apollo’s infrastructure. 

take for examples Scott andrews prescient documentation of discarded and 

“abandoned in place” launch pads at the Kennedy Space Center. Well beyond 

the dusk of the apollo years, andrews documented (over a number of visits 

beginning in the late 1990s) all that remains of Launch Complex 34.87 andrews 

87. See chapter two, Charles D. benson and William barnaby faherty, Moonport:A History of Apollo 

Launch Facilities and Operations (NaSa Special publication-4204 in the NaSa history Series, 

1978), http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4204/contents.html (accessed March 27, 2008). 
 

 

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Saturn Apollo Launch Complex 34, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: October 1999. 

(©Scott Andrews) 

captured in black-and-white the discarded isolation of an elevated launch pad 

resting on four rectangular legs of steel and eroding concrete. the skeletal launch 

pad looms over cracked slabs of concrete like the “shattered visage” from Shelley’s 

“Ozymandias.”88 When andrews’s prosaic image is placed in context to the nostalgic years of apollo, certain events become more understandable: the early 

testing of the Saturn rocket, the death of the first apollo astronauts (trapped in 

fire within their apollo capsule), the subsequent test launches of Saturn and the 

first manned mission of apollo 7, leading to the quest to land on the Moon. What 

studied documentation of people and place that might have been photographed 

88. percy bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” alexander W. Wilson, et al., The Norton Anthology of 

Poetry (New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Co., 1983), p. 619. 
336 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

of apollo, Skylab, and the initial emergence of the Space Shuttle program may 

never be known. What small in-roads of photographic documentation that have 

been made during the shuttle era may be considered a foreshadowing of what 

may be documented in the coming 50 years of american space exploration. 

It is tantalizing to consider that if project apollo had had a combination 

of landscape and documentary photographers interpreting the scope and 

scale of this program from 1962 through 1975 (much like the photography 

that was directed and managed by the government supported farm Securities 

administration or fSa in the 1930s), the aesthetic range would have been 

invaluable to space historians and the public alike. perhaps, the creation and 

implementation of a modestly funded artist and writers program (likened 

to some extent to the National Science foundation’s “antarctic Writers and 

artists” program) can be considered. Such a program could be an extension 

of NaSa’s educational outreach, its history office and even the Smithsonian’s 

National air and Space Museum (NaSM). In combination with the research 

and curatorial needs of both NaSa and the NaSM, such a program could 

contribute to the direction of how space exploration photography is curated 

and documented. these efforts could also result in a foundation of relevant 

photographic documentation, and at the same time, identify iconic imagery 

from other space fairing nations like eSa, russia, China, Japan, and India. all 

of which, of course, would contribute to an understanding of space exploration 

and its history on a worldwide level. 

the necessity for planning and implementing a methodology of research 

and archiving becomes evident. It can result in an emerging visual literacy that 

is in sync with the proactive photographic documentation of the american 

space program over the next 50 years. Such a methodology would need to 

memorialize not just the intended scientific, technical and day-to-day recordkeeping, but an aesthetic that embraces the essential labor force responsible for 

actualizing the next 50 years of human and robotic space exploration. from 

this a more salient visual literacy emerges which broadens and deepens the 

understanding of human exploration. 

Ix. epILOGUe 

as brecht wondered about the Chinese masons and the Great Wall, I 

wonder about the photographic documentation of what remains of the Space 

Shuttle and ISS programs, and the visual evidence that both historians and 

curators will be able to examine, publish, and exhibit in the decades to come. I 

embrace a photographic approach whose framework encompasses the discovery 

of the past and the documentation and interpretation of the present in context 

to the evolving history of both photography and space exploration. I liken 

this approach to my poetic journey when walking through richard Serra’s 

Sequence—a vast sculpture consisting of a series of connected 13-foot high
 

 

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torqued, curving, rust-colored steel plates. from an elevated position, Sequence 

resemble two gigantic violin scrolls standing back to back.89 as I journey inward 

within one of the spirals, I experience an enclosed elliptical space where shafts 

of light cascade down the sides of the steel walls. I notice how the sunlight 

plays upon the scale of the space within the ellipse. When I move back into the 

wall’s shadows, I discover a remarkable angled slit, an apparent exit. I exit and 

proceed through a narrow, disorienting corridor of curved steel, until I discover 

another interior space, similar yet different than the first. I retrace my steps back 

to the first only to realize that this time the path has lead me to yet another 

possible exit. Moving within these one of a kind structures, I could not have 

anticipated my journey or my exit. as with the commitment to an interprative 

photographic documentation of people and place during the next 50 years in 

space exploration, we cannot begin to know where our efforts might lead. 

appeNDIx 

In all the history of mankind, there will be only one generation that will be the first to explore the solar system, one 

generation for which, in childhood, the planets are distant 

and indistinct discs moving through the night sky, and for 

which, in old age, the planets are places, diverse new worlds 

in the course of exploration. 

—Carl Sagan90 

as I contemplate the next 50 years of space exploration photography, I 

find myself thinking about the serendipitous relevance between two rather 

unremarkable images from the photographic annals of project apollo. the 

very first image, recorded from the first launch of a Saturn V, came from apollo 

4’s robotically controlled onboard camera. It is the image of a waxing crescent 

planet earth in November 1967.91 Some five years later in December 1972, the 

very last image made by one of the apollo 17 crew (before stowing the camera 

away for reentry) was of a waxing crescent planet earth.92 perhaps, these two 

images foreshadowed the next nearly 40 years of human spaceflight. the images 

89. tom Christie and holly Meyers, “Steeling beauty, richard Serra’s advance party,” LA Weekly, 

august 15, 2007, http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/art/steeling-beauty/17007/ (accessed february 

16, 2008). 

90. Dava Sobel, The Planets (New York, NY:Viking, the penguin Group, 2005), pre-contents page 

(not numbered). 

91. See apollo 4 images at the Lunar and planetary Institute Apollo Image Atlas – 70mm Hasselblad 

Image catalog, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/magazine/?01. 

92. See apollo 17 images at the Lunar and planetary Institute Apollo Image Atlas – 70mm Hasselblad 

Image catalog, http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/catalog/70mm/magazine/?152. 
338 reMeMberING the SpaCe aGe 

foreshadowed space flight limited to only the low earth orbiting ventures of 

Skylab, the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. 

Now at the outset of the next 50 years of space exploration, I contemplate 

the extraordinary imagery beaming down from the hubble Space telescope: 

distant nebulas and galaxies (and the confirmation of the existence of an 

organic compound in the atmosphere of a planet in a near-by star system), 

Cassini’s exploration of Saturn’s moons titan and enceladus for water, the Mars 

reconnaissance Orbiter’s discovery of water deposited clay in a dry lake bed, 

and Messenger’s first flyby of Mercury since Mariner 10. 

as a result, I am drawn to the visual possibilities that will originate from 

both robotic spacecraft and human spaceflight. So it is reasonable for me to 

postulate what still photographic images may be reasonable candidates for 

“iconic” during the next 50 year cycle, among them: 

•	 first	discernable	image	of	a	water	planet—with	evidence	of	oceans,	clouds,	

continents—in another solar system 

•	 first	image	of	alien	life	forms	either	alive	or	in	fossil	form

•	 first	image	capturing	the	earliest	light	of	the	universe	just	after	the	“Big	

bang” 

•	 Jupiter	and	some	of	its	moons	as	seen	from	the	surface	of	Europa

•	 first	 panoramic	 image	 from	 the	 surface	 of	 Europa	 illuminated	 by	 the	

reflected light of Jupiter, not the Sun 

•	 Saturn	and	its	rings	as	(possibly)	seen	from	the	surface	of	Titan

•	 first	detailed	image	of	the	surface	of	Pluto	in	the	foreground	with	Charon	

and/or other plutonian moons in some crescent phase in the background 

•	 defining	color	image	of	Earth	and	the	Moon	from	the	surface	of	Mars	

•	 clear	 discernable	image	 of	 Earth’s	 “pale-blue-dot”	taken	from	the	 outer	

fringes of our solar system 

•	 first	sequential	or	montage	image	of	a	Kuiper	Belt	Object

•	 image	of	the	first	group	of	civilian	“tourists”	to	orbit	Earth	in	a	spaceship	

ll type of spacecraft 

•	 during	SM4,	the	last	human	mission	to	the	Hubble	Space	Telescope,	a	180	

degree montage of overlapping images of hSt, the orbiter, earth, and 

space taken from various vantage points in the Space Shuttle’s cargo bay 

and from its robotic arm 

•	 first	 detailed	image	of	the	Apollo	11	landing	 site	 by	 a	 robotic	 spacecraft	

(ideally in low angled sunlight) showing the LeM lander, american flag, 

aLSep, discarded artifacts (camera bodies, etc.), and boot prints
 

 

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 339 

SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY 

•	 Earth	 and	the	Moon	 rising	 above	the	 irregular	 horizon	 line	 of	the	 first	

asteroid to be explored by humans 

•	 astronauts	(not	waving)	by	their	lander	(in	low	angled	or	backlit	sunlight)	

on the surface of the first asteroid to be explored by humans 

•	 self-portrait	 of	the	 first	 21st	 century	 astronauts—with	their	 lander	 amid	

lunar hills, mountains, boot and wire-rim tire tracks—to have landed on 

the surface of the Moon since apollo 17’s December 1972 exploration 

•	 time	exposed	image	from	the	lunar	surface—during	the	two-week	lunar	

night—of lunar surface geography and the stars above 

•	 defining	 photograph	from	 a	 northwest	 position—in	low	 angled	 sunlight	

from the east— by the first astronauts to visit (but not enter) apollo 11’s 

tranquility base landing site 

•	 first	Chinese	astronauts,	by	their	flag	and	lander,	to	land	on	the	Moon

•	 a	series	of	black-and-white	images—in	film—made	with	a	space	hardened	

Leica by the first crew to inhabit the first lunar outpost created on the 

surface of the Moon 

•	 a	 series	of	available	light	“self”	portraits	 (without	flash)	of	the	first	crew	

heading to Mars: one set made just as they pass the Moon; the second made 

half way in their journey; the third made 24 hours or less before they set 

out to first land on the surface; the fourth made during the first eVa on the 

surface of Mars by humans 

•	 astronauts	on	the	surface	of	Mars	by	just-discovered	evidence	of	actual	or	

recent water flow 

•	 first	astronauts	(on	the	surface	of	Mars)	at	the	location	of	the	first	discovered	

evidence of either life forms or fossilized life forms 

•	 the	first	en	route	interstellar	probe’s	imagery	of	its	intended	destination	of	

a nearby star system and some of its planets 

 

 

Chapter 16 

robert a. heinlein’s Influence 

on Spaceflight 

robert G. Kennedy, III 

robert heinlein is one of the most influential science fiction authors of 

all time. his writings not only inspired numerous people to enter the 

sciences and engineering in general—and the field of spaceflight in particular— 

but also shaped the way that people thought about spaceflight. thus, even 

though Sputnik was a strategic surprise for the United States, there were legions 

of young americans predisposed to step up and get to work on the challenging 

task of winning the space race. heinlein’s influence can currently be seen in the 

activities of numerous private spaceflight entrepreneurs. 

LooKInG BaCKward 

Science fiction has changed history. we know this happened at least 

once in a very direct and far-reaching way by the documented influence of 

the science fiction writer h. G. wells upon the yet-to-be Manhattan project 

physicist Leo Szilard—one of the seven so-called “Men from Mars,”1

—when 

crossing a London street in 1933. as richard rhodes relates this story in his 

pulitzer prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb: 

on February 27, 1932 . . . physicist James Chadwick of 

the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge University . . . 

announced the possible existence of a neutron . . . the neutron . . . had no electric charge, which meant it could pass 

through the surrounding electrical barrier and enter into 

the nucleus. the neutron would open the atomic nucleus 

to examination. It might even be a way to force the nucleus 

1.	 the seven famous hungarian Jewish physicists who emigrated to america before world war II 

were all products of the famous Minta Gimnasium in Budapest.two of them would go on to 

win nobel prizes.they were in birth order:theodor von Karman, George de hevesy, Michael 

polanyi, Leo Szilard, eugene wigner, John von neumann, and edward teller.the joke among 

their american colleagues was that they were actually from Mars and not hungary as they 

claimed because they possessed unearthly brilliance, spoke english with an impenetrable Central 

european accent, and nobody knew what a hungarian accent really sounded like anyway. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

342 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

to give up some of its enormous energy. Just then, in 1932, 

Szilard found or took up for the first time that appealing 

orphan among h. G. wells’s books that he had failed to discover before: The World Set Free. . . . It was a prophetic novel, 

published in 1914, before the beginning of the Great war 

[world war I]. as Szilard recalled, wells described 

the liberation of atomic energy on a large scale for 

industrial purposes, the development of atomic bombs, 

and a world war which was apparently fought by an 

alliance of england, France, and perhaps including 

america, against Germany and austria, the powers 

located in the central part of europe. he places this 

war in the year 1956, and in this war the major cities 

of the world are all destroyed by atomic bombs.2 

It is difficult to read this story, even at nearly a century’s remove, without 

chills running down one’s spine in much the same way that a first reading of 

“Future prospects of the United States” in Democracy in America by alexis de 

tocqueville produced during the depths of the Cold war.3 Such prescience and 

perspicacity is almost inhuman. according to rhodes: 

In London . . . across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury, 

Leo Szilard waited irritably one gray depression morning 

for the stoplight to change . . . tuesday, September 12, 1933 

2.	 richard rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (new York, nY:touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 

1986), pp. 23-24. 

3.	 de tocqueville, Comte alexis, democracy in america (1835), chapter 21. “on the Future 

prospects of the United States. there are at the present time two great nations in the world, 

which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the 

russians and the americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and whilst the attention of 

mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among 

the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.“ 

all other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain 

their power; but these are still in the act of growth.all the others have stopped, or continue to 

advance with extreme difficulty; these alone are proceeding with ease and celerity along a path 

to which no limits can be perceived.the american struggles against the obstacles which nature 

opposes to him; the adversaries of the russian are men.the former combats the wilderness and 

savage life; the latter, civilization with all its arms.the conquests of the american are therefore 

gained by the ploughshare; those of the russian by the sword.the anglo-american relies upon 

personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided strength and 

common sense of the people; the russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm.the 

principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter, servitude.their starting-out point is 

different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of 

heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.” 
---

 

---

 

 

roBert a. heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe on SpaCeFLIGht 343 

. . . Szilard stepped off the curb. as he crossed the street time 

cracked open before him and he saw a way to the future, 

death into the world and all our woe, the shape of things to 

come . . . without question, Szilard read The Times of 

September 12, with its provocative sequence of headlines: 

the BrItISh aSSoCIatIon 

BreaKInG down the atoM 

tranSForMatIon oF eLeMentS 

Szilard was not the first to realize that the neutron might 

slip past the positive electrical barrier of the nucleus . . . 

but he was the first to imagine a mechanism whereby more 

energy might be released in the neutron’s bombardment of 

the nucleus than the neutron itself supplied . . . as the light 

changed to green and I crossed the street,” Szilard recalls, 

“it . . . suddenly occurred to me that if we could find an 

element which is split by neutrons and which would emit 

two neutrons when it absorbs one neutron, such an element, 

if assembled in sufficiently large mass, could sustain a nuclear 

chain reaction . . . In certain circumstances, it might be possible to . . . liberate energy on an industrial scale, and construct atomic bombs.”4 

the accidental discovery of x rays and radioactivity in 1895-96 upset 

everyone’s notion of the immutable atom and the eternal clockwork universe, 

opening up grand new vistas of disturbing change. there at the turn of the 

century to interpret these mysterious new findings and extrapolate their 

potential meaning was one herbert George wells, a consumptive who in the fine 

tradition of impoverished tubercular writers before (robert Louis Stephenson) 

and after (robert a. heinlein) was unable to do any heavier work than writing 

for a living. In 1899, he had already produced what heinlein would call “the 

greatest speculative novel ever written,” When the Sleeper Wakes.

5 In this single 

novel, just one among many, wells conceived: 

a) heavier-than-air engine-powered warplanes, including their major types 

(fighter, bomber, and large transport), as well as thought-out doctrine for 

4. rhodes (ref. 2), pp. 13, 27-28. 

5. a good subtitle might have been the Miracle of Compound Interest. 
 

 

344 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

their application in air battles (note that this was four years before the 

wright brothers flew 300 feet in their contraption at Kitty hawk) 

b)a variety of so-called “Babble Boxes”—audio media machines to appeal 

to every demographic segment that anticipated narrowcasting, blogs, and 

the world wide web—and “televisors” that resembled the informationretrieval capabilities of the Internet 

c) mass-transit systems such as slidewalks, automatic high-speed surface 

freight, and airports 

In addition to predicting the Bomb (as well as related concepts that we 

would recognize as decapitating first strike, strategic atomic exchange by air, 

and mutual assured destruction) in The World Set Free (1914), in other novels, 

wells forecast suburbia and many other political and social developments that 

would accompany these innovations and, like de tocqueville, the superpower 

status of america.6 all during his own life, robert a. heinlein described h. G. 

wells as his single greatest literary and intellectual influence.7 

heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe 

So what about heinlein himself? he was more technically prolific than 

even the incredible wells, but his influence was regrettably less direct than the 

example above. this may simply be a characteristic of how things go in a naïve 

versus mature ecosystem, in which 80 percent of the significance is determined 

within the first 20 percent of the timespan. 

direct effects on Society and Spaceflight 


via technological Innovation
 

the web site http://www.technovelgy.com attributes 120 (so far) inventions, 

novel devices (e.g., the waterbed), and neologisms (e.g., “free fall” and “grok”) 

to robert a. heinlein. an incomplete list of just some of his space-related 

ideas includes: various electromagnetically-levitated transport systems also 

known as “mass-drivers,” a hands-free helmet, the “parking” orbit, a Space 

Shuttle, stealth, and the gravity slingshot maneuver. this polymath’s skill at 

innovating was not limited to science, technology, and engineering either, 

which handicapped most of the writing in what came to be known as “the pulp 

era.” heinlein brought originality to his craft, pioneering the literary technique 

of “Future history” used by many top writers of the genre since (implicitly or 

6.	 paul Crabtree, “the remarkable Forecasts of h. G. wells,” The Futurist 41, no. 5 (Sept./oct. 

2007): 40-46. 

7.	 Michael hunter,“First Look: the Influences of h. G.wells on robert a. heinlein’s For Us, the 

Living,” The Heinlein Journal, no. 14 (January 2004): 15-18. 
 

 

 

roBert a. heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe on SpaCeFLIGht 345 

explicitly), and refining wells trick of “domesticating the impossible” (canonical 

instance: “the door dilated”).8 heinlein eventually grew impatient with what 

he called his procrustean bed. according to elwood teague, a contemporary 

of his, heinlein, who read as widely as wells, was obsessed with “the coming 

of the Bomb” even in the late 1930s. this surely must have been the wellsian 

influence. heinlein did, in fact, manage to meet wells in Los angeles about 

that time, and would have seen the groundbreaking epic motion picture, Things 

to Come, which was based on wells’s work, both dystopian and utopian. he 

was in frequent correspondence with scientists such as the physicist robert 

Cornog, as well as engineers who would go on to the Manhattan project, 

informing and being informed, and using the new discoveries to lend the 

essential heinleinesque verisimilitude to his art. In keeping with his deep 

sense of discretion and military honor, this speculative phase ended instantly 

when his editor at Astounding Science Fiction, John w. Campbell, Jr., told him 

in december 1940 that discussion of uranium-235 had “gone black” in the 

technical literature. (his salient novella, Solution Unsatisfactory was already in 

press by then. the story is remarkable even today for the essential political 

truths it captured.) Being the renaissance Man of the world he was, heinlein 

knew exactly what this blackout portended.9 he maintained this self-imposed 

censorship throughout the war years, though it is obvious he never stopped 

thinking about it.10 others were not so discreet. For example, Cleve Cartmill, his 

fellow habitue of the Manana Literary Society (MLS) that met in the heinleins’ 

living room in prewar Los angeles, published a short story called “deadfall” in 

the March 1944 issue of Astounding that was so technically accurate, it resulted 

in a visit to Campbell’s editorial office by the naturally irate FBI. heinlein’s 

contact with the community of “rocket science” (meaning rocketry, nuclear 

weapons, and strategic matters) resumed after hiroshima and continued for the 

rest of his life. one group of atomic scientists eventually became the Federation 

of american Scientists, principally interested in disarmament and arms control. 

another later group became the Citizen’s action Committee for Space, the first 

proponent of what came to be called the Strategic defense Initiative. heinlein 

was apparently never troubled by the hobgoblin of consistency. 

though an engineer by training and inclination, heinlein did not promote 

engineering per se. In his frequent lectures on the value of a liberal education, 

he would only say that the stool of knowledge has three legs: mathematics, 

(foreign) language, and history. three legs are all that are necessary to stand: 

8.	 Bill patterson,“a Study of ‘If this Goes on . . . ’,” The Heinlein Journal, no. 7 (July 2000): 29-42. 

9.	 heinlein also predicted the time, mode, and method of the Japanese attack on pearl harbor a 

week before the event, based on his own experience as a navy gunnery officer aboard an aircraft 

carrier participating in a simulated attack exercise nine years before. 

10. robert a. heinlein to J. S. Kean,“tentative proposal for projects to be carried on at naMC,” 

august 14, 1945, heinlein archives, http://heinleinarchives.net/ (accessed august 19, 2007). 
 

346 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

neither engineering, technology, nor science are mentioned. the first leg exists 

because mathematics is the universal language of science. the second leg exists 

because one will never really understand one’s own language, so one cannot 

know the true shape of one’s mind until one has seen it from the outside through 

a foreign language (there’s probably a connection to Godel’s Incompleteness 

theorem). the third leg exists because one will never be prepared for the 

future until one has first learned to see the present in the light of the past. 

direct effects on Spaceflight via people 

after the Japanese attack on december 7, 1941, robert heinlein tried to 

rejoin the navy. after being turned down, he used his annapolis connections to 

get an engineering job as a civilian in an aeronautical factory at the philadelphia 

navy Yard, relocating there from Los angeles with his second wife, Leslyn.11 

his navy classmates, who were well aware of heinlein’s gifts, at first had him 

spotting engineering talent before giving him a materials research position at 

the navy air Materials Center (naMC). (It was here he met the woman who 

would become his third wife—and so important to his later work—a navy 

waVe lieutenant (j.g.) named Virginia Gerstenfeld, forever known to history 

as “Ginny.”) turning to the science-fiction community, heinlein recruited his 

fellow writers L. Sprague deCamp and Isaac asimov to work at the navy Yard 

in aeronautical engineering as well. de Camp took a navy commission and, 

under heinlein’s guidance, eventually turned to work on high-altitude pressure 

suits at naMC. towards the end of the war, combat aircraft—particularly 

long-range heavy bombers—were flying so high that mere warm clothing 

and oxygen masks could not protect the crews from the elements. heinlein’s 

troubles with tuberculosis, which had invalided him into early retirement from 

the navy in 1934, precluded his direct participation in the altitude chamber and 

other experiments. But it is certain that the science fiction background of all 

three men—namely in regard to what would be called “spacesuits”—informed 

the work. the 1940 short story “Misfit” contains an accurate description of 

what a space suit should be. 

one of heinlein’s new (and less famous) hires was edward L. “ted” 

hays, a mechanical engineer like heinlein himself. hays worked as a flight test 

engineer on problems associated with carrier operations. (heinlein’s first billet 

after graduating from annapolis was on the most advanced warship of her day, 

the carrier USS Lexington.) hays went on to safety and survival equipment, 

became deeply involved in the development of navy pressure suits, moved to 

naSa in 1961 after project Mercury was underway, and eventually ending 

11. robert James,“regarding Leslyn,” The Heinlein Journal, no. 9 (July 2001): 17-36. 
 

 

 

 

roBert a. heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe on SpaCeFLIGht 347 

up on the apollo program as chief engineer of life support systems where he 

specialized in, of course, space suits!12 

Indirect effects on Society and Spaceflight via Literature 

Because his literary genius was recognized so early by his readers and 

fellow writers in the late 1930s, heinlein left an indelible imprint on the 

entire genre of science fiction, which might not have happened in a later more 

fractured and competitive age.13 his prewar influence on the other writers (e.g., 

L. Sprague deCamp, Frederick pohl, Isaac asimov) of what came to be known 

as the postwar “Golden age of science fiction” was simply profound. It is no 

exaggeration to say that writing in the field experienced a quantum leap in 

quality compared to its pulp roots. postwar, heinlein even managed to bring 

his chosen genre out of the ghetto into the respectable “slicks” (glossy, largeformat color weeklies such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s, bygone 

media of a bygone age), where he would continue to be published. a full 

generation later, he was still mentoring and guiding major new writers (e.g., 

Larry niven and Jerry pournelle for their seminal “First Contact” novel, The 

Mote in God’s Eye (1973).14 heinlein not only transmitted literary technique to 

his colleagues—his values of service and sacrifice, an individualistic outlook, 

and ethos of competence also came through and were propagated to millions of 

these authors’ readers in turn. 

Indirect effects on Society and Spaceflight via politics 

though his postwar writing was certainly more polished and sophisticated, 

heinlein’s prewar thinking was more original and imaginative in some ways. his 

earliest work contained themes that were politically revolutionary even by today’s 

jaded standards. Revolt in 2100 comprised the novella If This Goes On . . . (1939), 

and two short stories “Misfit” (1939), and “Coventry” (1940)—graced with the 

best science fiction cover art ever—are in this genre.15 

the first of these stories is perhaps the purest example of what MLSmember henry Kuttner called “the innocent eye”—no surprise that it’s among 

the earliest work before professionalism sets in. It is set in a world in which 

the United States has turned its back on interplanetary exploration and science 

12. Bill higgins interview, Kansas City, Mo, July 7, 2007, (unpublished article forthcoming). 

13. again, early players are generally more significant in a field than later ones, notwithstanding their 

absolute level of skill.this is a fundamental property of evolution. 

14. robert a. heinlein to Larry niven and Jerry pournelle, “Motelight,” June 20, 1973, (copy in 

U.C. Santa Cruz heinlein archives, UCSC Library, Santa Cruz, Ca); robert a. heinlein to 

Larry niven and Jerry pournelle, “the Mote in God’s eye,” august 1973, (copy in heinlein 

archives). 

15. robert a. heinlein, If This Goes On . . .,“Coventry,” and “Misfit” in Revolt in 2100 (new York, 

nY: Signet Books, 1953). 
348 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

Robert Heinlein’s book, Revolt in 2100, was made up of the novella If This Goes On . . . 

(1939) and two short stories, “Misfit” (1939) and “Coventry” (1940). 
 

roBert a. heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe on SpaCeFLIGht 349 

after a period of “Crazy Years,” falling into a theocratic police state. one does 

not have to imagine how depression-era readers received these words, either: 

we have their letters describing how awestruck they were and their immediate 

realization at what a talent they had in their mailboxes. (regrettably, the 

background story of the novella If This Goes On . . . seems less outlandish now 

than it did 70 years ago.) 

after hiroshima, heinlein wrote a remarkable (yet usual for him) 

valedictory memorandum to his superiors notifying them that the Bomb 

would put them out of business. then he promptly resigned and returned to 

Los angeles with his wife, Leslyn. he endured several lean years of hardship, 

during which his second marriage broke up, before returning to writing fiction. 

this was the period of 1945-47 when he engaged in what he disingenuously 

called “world saving”—articles for the general public about the significance of 

the new atomic age. why distinguish his activity as disingenuous? Because, 

despite his protestations that he wrote just to keep the wolf from his door and 

his frequent declarations equating the value of his writing with the reader’s 

beer money, heinlein was in fact deeply interested in politics—he ran for the 

California State assembly in 1938—and educating his fellow human beings. 

these pungent articles were mostly ignored by the mainstream and never saw 

print except for one major exception. an early postwar collaboration with his 

annapolis classmate Captain Caleb Laning called “Flight into the Future” 

appeared in the august 30, 1947 issue of Collier’s, which described a nightmarish 

vision of an atomic arms race in space. (the concept eventually became the 

core of the second juvenile novel, Space Cadet.) the article (which was mostly 

heinlein’s work) did attract a lot of attention but ultimately led nowhere. 

why didn’t “Flight” succeed? why were its prescriptions and prognostications ignored by the military establishment and the policymakers? one 

must recall that the USaF was once called United States army air Force 

(USaaF) before being split off from the army by president truman in 1947 in 

the same act that created the department of defense (dod) and the Central 

Intelligence agency (CIa). aviation’s roots in this country are in the army, not 

the navy.16 recall also that the Manhattan project, and the related operation 

paper Clip and project aLSoS (netted the German nuclear scientists as well 

as the rocket scientists including wernher von Braun), were primarily army 

operations. Likewise, project rand—an r&d department spun off from 

douglas aircraft that drafted the seminal “design of an experimental worldCircling Spaceship” (1946)—was supported by the USaaF. rocket research 

was chronically underfunded by navy until the submarine-launched ballistic 

16. analagous to the situation in russia, the russian strategic missile forces and russian rocketry 

in general have their roots in artillery (a classic army mission), not aerospace as is usually the 

case elsewhere, which has led to some interesting differences in design philosophy, doctrine, and 

operating procedures compared to the west. 
 

 

 

350 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

missile (SLBM) program started in the mid-1950s.17 Caleb Laning was as original a thinker as heinlein, but despite starting earlier, strategic weapons and, 

by extension, their platforms, were always the army’s rice bowl. perhaps the 

navy’s early expression of interest stimulated the nascent USaF to actively take 

over satellite portfolio. 

Indirect effects on Spaceflight via pop Culture 

after his breakup with Leslyn towards the end of his hard times in 1947, 

robert hooked up with Ginny and hit the road. the first of his juvenile 

novels, Rocket Ship Galileo, appeared, which would become the basis for the 

movie Destination Moon. robert and Ginny worked out the modus vivendi that 

would guide the rest of their lives together. She became his first reader and 

indispensable partner. a long string of juveniles alternating with adult novels 

followed during an amazingly prolific decade. 

In 1949, some of heinlein’s connections from his prewar hollywood days 

led to a collaboration with the producer George pal as technical advisor on the 

oscar-winning science-fiction motion picture Destination Moon (1950). heinlein 

enjoyed an unusually close (by hollywood standards) productive relationship 

with the film’s director, Irving pichel, who took most of heinlein’s advice. 

thus this film still looks remarkably good by today’s standards and raised the 

bar for science fiction on the silver screen.18 Destination Moon led to the trio of 

great science fiction films by George pal: When Worlds Collide (1951), War of 

the Worlds (1953), and The Time Machine (1960). these classic films with their 

high production values certainly had at least indirect effects on pop culture. It 

is interesting that pal, starting at heinlein, came around to wells. 

It is surely no accident that, a decade after Rocket Ship Galileo (1947) and 

the whole series of juvenile novels that inspired millions of people who were 

teenaged in 1947-1959, legions of young professionals were ready to answer the 

challenge of Sputnik and to choose technical careers, entering the workforce 

just as the space race began.19 one (current) naSa administrator is the apparent 

exception, declaring that an interest in spaceflight led him to science fiction, not 

the usual way around.20 the predominantly libertarian people who work in the 

free space movement almost universally cite heinlein as their principal inspira17. r. Cargill hall, “earth Satellites, a First Look at the United States navy,” Proceedings of 

the Fourth History Symposium of the International Academy of Astronautics, Konstanz, German 

Federal republic (october 1970): 253-277. 

18. Like most of the crew, heinlein did not enjoy the film’s financial rewards, again standard for 

hollywood.also, and regrettably, it did not lower the bar on a lot of bad science fiction flicks yet 

to come, but one must remember that Sturgeon’s Law is always in effect. 

19. Bill patterson,“a Study of ‘Misfit’,” The Heinlein Journal, no. 3 (July 1998): 24-32. 

20. Michael Griffin,“the Future of naSa,” speech delivered at the robert a. heinlein Centennial 

Conference 1907-2007, Kansas City, Mo, July 6, 2007. this was apparently the first time in 

history that a serving naSa administrator addressed a science-fiction audience. 
 

 

 

roBert a. heInLeIn’S InFLUenCe on SpaCeFLIGht 351 

tion, including the most recent winner of the ansari X-prize.21 oddly enough, 

heinlein’s values lap over into pop culture by another unexpected route—namely 

the computing/cyberpunk community, which has a high degree of congruence 

with the sets of libertarians, space enthusiasts, and science fiction fans. 

ConCLUSIon 

heinlein’s diluted meta-gift of values—independence and liberty, technical 

competence and self-sacrifice, a paradoxically well-informed innocent eye— 

passed down and paid forward, may well turn out to be his greatest contribution 

to spaceflight. 

we’ll see. 

acknowledgments 

I extend thanks and sincere appreciation to dr. dwayne a. day, Mr. 

timothy B. Kyger, Mr. Bill patterson, and dr. Bill higgins 

Cassutt, Michael, “More Conversation: on the Meaning of periods,” The 

Heinlein Journal, no. 20 (January 2007): 3. 

doherty, Brian, “robert heinlein at 100,” Reason 39, no. 4 (august/ 

September 2007): 48-54. 

Gifford, James, Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion (Sacramento, 

Ca: nitrosyncretic press, 2000. 

Laning, Caleb, and robert a. heinlein, “Flight Into the Future,” Collier’s 

60, no.34 (august 30, 1947): 19, 36-37. 

McCurdy, howard e. “Fiction and Imagination: how they affect public 

administration,” Public Administration Review, 55, no. 6 (november-december, 

1995): 499-506. 

patterson, Bill, “robert a heinlein: a Biographical Sketch,” The Heinlein 

Journal, no. 5 (July 1999): 7-36. 

patterson, Bill, “review of Leon Stover’s annotated h.G. wells, When the 

Sleeper Wakes: A Critical Text of the 1899 New York and London First Edition,” The 

Heinlein Journal, no. 7 (July 2000): 43-46. 

patterson, Bill, ed., “Critique of Stover, Leon, Science Fiction from Wells to 

Heinlein,” The Heinlein Journal, no. 10 (January 2002): 48. 

patterson, Bill, “Virginia heinlein: a Biographical Sketch,” The Heinlein 

Journal, no. 13 (July 2003): 2-26. 

patterson, Bill, “h. G. wells and the Country of the Future,” The Heinlein 

Journal, no. 15 (July 2004): 4. 

21. peter diamandis, “private human Spaceflight,” paper presented at the robert a. heinlein 

Centennial Conference 1907-2007, Kansas City, Mo, July 6, 2007. 
 

352 reMeMBerInG the SpaCe aGe 

www.technovelgy.com (accessed october 21, 2007). 

wells, h. G. When The Sleeper Wakes (London: McMillan & Co., Ltd., 

1899). 

wells, h. G., The World Set Free: A Story of Mankind (London: McMillan 

& Co., Ltd., 1914). 
 

Chapter 17 

american Spaceflight history’s Master 

Narrative and the Meaning of Memory 

roger D. Launius 

INtroDuCtIoN 

the term master narrative typically refers to a set of sociocultural 

interpretations of events agreed upon by most of the interpreters of the 

event or age, and these are abundantly apparent when considering the history 

of the Space age. they offer what might best be considered secure knowledge 

formed to delineate the trajectory of the historical event and center it in its 

appropriate cultural place. Master narratives are ubiquitous in american history. 

they serve important purposes in helping to create a useable past for the nation 

and its peoples. historians, perhaps unmindfully, accept the master narrative 

about whatever subject they are examining with relative ease most of the time 

and facilitate its creation and maintenance as bulwarks upon which the national, 

or other, story rests. In this instance they support a group identity, whether it 

be a subgroup or a nation-state, exhibiting varying degrees of commitment to, 

as well as detachment from, the concepts of the groups that they serve. they 

move between these two poles to construct historical perspectives that will be 

of value to the group. rarely do historians create from whole cloth a master 

narrative, instead usually reinforcing the dominant perceptions, or master 

narrative, already held by the group.1 

It may be argued that there are four narratives that have emerged concerning 

the u.S. space program, one that is a master narrative and three minor variations. 

these include: 1) the overwhelmingly dominant narrative of american triumph, 

exceptionalism, and success; 2) the counter narrative of criticism of the space 

program from the left, wasting funds on a worthless expense that yielded little 

when so many americans could have benefited from spending on social programs; 3) a more recent narrative of criticism of spaceflight from the right of 

the political spectrum focusing on the program as a representation of liberal 

taxing and spending strategies; and 4) a fringe narrative that sees in the u.S. 

1.	 I have explored this issue an another context in roger D. Launius,“Mormon Memory, Mormon 

Myth, and Mormon history,” Journal of Mormon History 21 (Spring 1995): 1-24. 
354 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

NASA’s original Mercury 7 astronauts posing with a U.S. Air Force F-106B jet aircraft 

in 1959. These astronauts epitomized the perceived “American exceptionalism” 

that was considered to be such an intrinsic part of the national character. From 

left to right: M. Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper, John H. Glenn, Jr., Virgil I. “Gus” 

Grissom, Jr., Walter M. “Wally” Schirra, Jr., Alan B. Shepard, Jr., and Donald K. “Deke” 

Slayton. (NASA) 

space program a close tie to all manner of nefarious activities. this last narrative emphasizes conspiracy theories—of extraterrestrial visitation, abduction, 

and government complicity, of denials of the apollo Moon landings in favor 

of a deep-seated conspiracy, as part of a larger militarization scheme aimed at 

world domination, and a host of strange and bewildering conspiracies affecting 

the lives of normal americans in negative ways. each of these narratives has a 

place in the american consciousness as it remembers the Space age. this essay 

will seek to discuss these four narratives and how they have interrelated over 

the 50 years of the Space age. 
 

 

 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 355 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

CIvIL SpaCefLIght aS aMerICaN trIuMph aND 

exCeptIoNaLISM 

the history of american spaceflight has rested for some 50 years on the 

master narrative of an initial shock to the system, surprise, and ultimate recovery 

with success after success following across a broad spectrum of activities. It is 

a classic story of american history in which a vision of progress, of moving 

from nothing to something, dominates the story. that master narrative offers 

comfort to the american public as a whole, but most especially to the governing 

class who take solace in how the nation responded to crisis. 

for example, the surprising Soviet success with Sputnik, so the master 

narrative relates, created a furor and led the united States to “catch up” to 

the Soviet union in space technology. this crisis forced the eisenhower 

administration to move quickly to restore confidence at home and prestige 

aboard. With mounting pressure, the eisenhower response became typical of 

earlier crises within the united States; politicians locked arms and appropriated 

money to tackle the perceived problem. In this effort, both the civilian and 

military space efforts benefited, one openly and the other in secrecy. the 

Department of Defense approved additional funds for an army effort, featuring 

Wernher von braun and his german rocket team, to launch an american 

satellite. the army’s explorer project had been shelved earlier in favor of 

concentrating on vanguard as the first american scientific satellite, but drastic 

times called for drastic measures and suddenly the atmosphere in Washington 

had changed. the army was told to orbit the first satellite by february 1, 1958, 

only four months after the first Sputnik. von braun and his team went to work 

on a crash program with a modified Jupiter C ballistic missile. the first launch 

took place on January 31, 1958, placing explorer 1 in orbit. on this satellite 

was an experiment by James a. van allen, a physicist at the university of 

Iowa, documenting the existence of radiation zones encircling earth. Shaped 

by earth’s magnetic field, what came to be called the van allen radiation belts 

partially dictates the electrical charges in the atmosphere and the solar radiation 

that reaches earth.2 

following this, Congress passed and eisenhower signed the National 

aeronautics and Space act of 1958. this legislation established NaSa with 

a broad mandate to explore and use space for “peaceful purposes for the 

benefit of all mankind.”3 the core of NaSa came from the earlier National 

2.	 robert a. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite (New york, 

Ny:oxford university press,1993),pp.93–96;roger D.Launius, NASA:History of the U.S.Civil 

Space Program (Malabar, fL: Krieger publishing Co., 1994), pp. 26–27; James a.van allen, Origins 

of Magnetospheric Physics (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1983). 

3.	 “National aeronautics and Space act of 1958,” public Law #85-568, 72 Stat., 426. Signed by the 

president on July 29,1958, record group 255, National archives and records administration, 
 

 

 

356 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

advisory Committee for aeronautics with its 8,000 employees, an annual 

budget of $100 million, and its research laboratories. It quickly incorporated 

other organizations into the new agency, notably the space science group of 

the Naval research Laboratory in Maryland, the Jet propulsion Laboratory 

managed by the California Institute of technology for the army, and portions 

of the army ballistic Missile agency in huntsville, alabama.4 this set in train 

the necessary capabilities for the achievement of considerable success in space 

exploration during the 1960s. 

according to this master narrative, the experience from Sputnik through 

the apollo Moon landings have represented an epochal event that signaled the 

opening of a new frontier in which a grand visionary future for americans 

might be realized. It represented, most americans have consistently believed, 

what set the united States apart from the rest of the nations of the world. 

american exceptionalism reigned in this context, and apollo is often depicted 

as the critical event in the united States’ spaceflight narrative, one that must be 

revered because it shows how successful americans could be when they try. at 

a basic level, apollo served as a trope of america’s grand vision for the future. 

this exceptionalist perspective has also dominated the public characterizations 

of spaceflight in general, and apollo in particular, regardless of the form of 

those characterizations.5 for example, expressing this central perspective 

on americanism, not long after the first lunar landing in July 1969 richard 

Washington,DC;alison griffith, The National Aeronautics and Space Act:A Study of the Development 

of Public Policy (Washington, DC: public affairs press, 1962), pp. 27-43. 

4.	 Launius, NASA, pp. 29-41. 

5.	 Several years ago I prepared “a baker’s Dozen of books on project apollo,” and I have 

updated it periodically since. these are singularly worthwhile books, but all support 

the dominant trope in the historiography. the titles include: Donald a. beattie, Taking 

Science to the Moon: Lunar Experiments and the Apollo Program (baltimore, Maryland: Johns 

hopkins university press, 2001); roger e. bilstein, Stages to Saturn: A Technological History 

of the Apollo/Saturn Launch Vehicles (Washington, DC: National aeronautics and Space 

administration Sp-4206, 1980); Courtney g. brooks, James M. grimwood, and Loyd S. 

Swenson, Jr., Chariots for Apollo: A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft (Washington, DC: 

National aeronautics and Space administration Sp-4205, 1979); andrew Chaikin, A Man 

on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts (New york, Ny: viking, 1994); Michael 

Collins, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys (New york, Ny: farrar, Straus and giroux, 

1974); edgar M. Cortright, ed., Apollo Expeditions to the Moon (Washington, DC: National 

aeronautics and Space administration Sp-350, 1975); David M. harland, Exploring the Moon: 

The Apollo Expeditions (Chicester, england: Wiley-praxis, 1999); Stephen b. Johnson, The 

Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and European Space Programs (Washington, 

DC: Johns hopkins university press, 2002); W. henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E. 

Webb of NASA (baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins university press, 1995); John M. Logsdon, 

The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (Cambridge, Ma: the 

MIt press, 1970); Walter a. McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of 

the Space Age (New york, Ny: basic books, 1985); Charles a. Murray and Catherine bly 

Cox, Apollo, the Race to the Moon (New york, Ny: Simon and Schuster, 1989); David West 

reynolds, Apollo: The Epic Journey to the Moon (New york, Ny: harcourt, brace, 2002). 
 

 

 

 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 357 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

Nixon told an assembled audience that the flight of apollo 11 represented 

the most significant week in the history of earth since the creation.6 Clearly, 

the president viewed the endeavor as both path breaking and permanent, a 

legacy of accomplishment that future generations would reflect on as they plied 

intergalactic space and colonized planets throughout the galaxy. perhaps the 

americans were responsible for the second most important week in the history 

of the cosmos, placing an essentially godlike cast upon the nation. 

Spaceflight has persistently represented a feel-good triumph for the nation 

and its people. It conjured images of the best in the national spirit and served, in 

the words of journalist greg easterbrook, as “a metaphor of national inspiration: 

majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with 

precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth.”7 Certainly apollo 

represented this in the imagery that became iconic in the public consciousness— 

an astronaut on the Moon saluting the american flag served well as a patriotic 

symbol of what the nation had accomplished—but so have the later human 

missions of the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, and the robotic 

probes and observatories that have pulled back the curtain to reveal a wondrous 

universe. this self-image of the united States as a successful nation has been 

repeatedly affirmed in the spaceflight master narrative since 1957.8 

It might be argued that spaceflight represented an expression of national 

power in the context of the “positive liberal state” offered the world by the 

united States. In essence, this position celebrates the use of state power for 

“public good.” human exploration of the solar system was always viewed as 

reasonable and forward-looking and led to “good” results for all concerned, 

or so adherents of this master narrative believed. Without perhaps seeking 

to do so, apollo offered an important perspective on a debate that has raged 

over the proper place of state power since the beginning of the republic. as 

one historian remarked about this philosophy of government, the state would 

actively “promote the general welfare, raise the level of opportunity for all 

men, and aid all individuals to develop their full potentialities.” It would assert 

active control in this process, seeking improvements to society “both economic 

and moral, and they did not believe in leaving others alone.”9 

the Democrats of the 1960s believed in activist government, and examples on the part of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations abound. this 

translated into an ever increasing commitment to the use of the government to 

6.	 10:56:20 PM, EDT, 7/20/69 (New york: CbS News, 1969), p. 159. 

7.	 greg easterbrook,“the Space Shuttle Must be Stopped, Time,february 2,2003,available online 

at http://www.mercola.com/2003/feb/8/space_shuttle.htm (accessed february 24, 2006). 

8.	 I made this argument in relation to apollo in roger D. Launius,“perceptions of apollo: Myth, 

Nostalgia, Memory or all of the above?” Space Policy 21 (May 2005): 129-139. 

9.	 Daniel Walker howe, The Political Culture of the American Whigs (Chicago, IL: university of 

Chicago press, 1979), p. 20. 
 

 

358 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

achieve “good ends”—the war on poverty, the peace Corps, support for civil 

rights, numerous great Society programs, space exploration, and a host of other 

initiatives are examples. these all represented a broadening of governmental 

power for what most at the time perceived as positive purposes. 

Such statements of triumph and exceptionalism have permeated the 

narrative of spaceflight from the beginning. for only one example among many 

that might be discussed, andrew Chaikin’s 1994 A Man on the Moon oozes 

the narrative of triumph in the context of apollo.10 alex roland captured the 

importance of this book best when he proposed that Chaikin offered a retelling 

of a specific myth and in that retelling it performed a specific purpose. It is not 

so much history as it is “tribal rituals, meant to comfort the old and indoctrinate 

the young.” he added: 

all the exhilarating stories are here: the brave, visionary 

young president who set america on a course to the moon 

and immortality; the 400,000 workers across the nation who 

built the apollo spacecraft; the swashbuckling astronauts who 

exuded the right stuff; the preliminary flights of Mercury 

and gemini—from alan Shepard’s suborbital arc into space, 

through John glenn’s first tentative orbits, through the rendezvous and spacewalks of gemini that rehearsed the techniques necessary for apollo. there is the 1967 fire that killed 

three astronauts and charred ineradicably the apollo record 

and the apollo memory; the circumlunar flight of Christmas 

1968 that introduced the world to earth-rise over the lunar 

landscape; the climax of apollo 11 and Neil armstrong’s 

heroic piloting and modest words, “that’s one small step for a 

man, one giant leap for mankind”; the even greater drama of 

apollo 13, rocked by an explosion on the way to the moon 

and converted to a lifeboat that returned its crew safely to 

earth thanks to the true heroics of the engineers in houston; 

and, finally, the anticlimax of the last apollo missions. 

roland finds that Chaikin had to struggle to maintain a triumphal narrative of 

apollo, however, for the missions became a deadend rather than a new beginning 

and no amount of heroic prose could overcome that ironic plot twist.11 

american exceptionalism has dominated the vast majority of the national 

discussion of spaceflight, represented perhaps best in popular culture. as only 

one example among many, the late comedian Sam Kinison once ranted to other 

10. Chaikin, A Man on the Moon. 

11. alex roland,“how We Won the Moon,” New York Times Book Review, July 17, 1994, pp. 1, 25. 
 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 359 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

nations seeking to replicate the “greatness” of america: “you really want to 

impress us! bring back our flag!”12 this statement of american exceptionalism 

and triumph in relation to apollo, while it has a form of jingoism at its 

center, expresses a core truth about how these efforts have been embraced 

and celebrated in the united States. While Kinison’s challenge symbolized 

for many americans national superiority—at the same time signaling the 

inferiority of all others—NaSa situated its spaceflight aspirations within the 

arena of international prestige. If anything this trope of national exceptionalism 

and triumph has only intensified over time, clearly dominating discussion of 

america’s spaceflight efforts.13 

at sum, americans have usually viewed space exploration as a result of 

a grand visionary concept for human exploration that may be directly traced 

to the european voyages of discovery beginning in the 15th century.14 given 

this observation, these endeavors have been celebrated as an investment in 

technology, science, and knowledge that would enable humanity—or at least 

americans—to do more than just dip their toes in the cosmic ocean, to become 

a truly spacefaring people. accordingly, americans have taken as a measure of 

the majesty of this vision the length of time, complexity, and expense of the 

program, and the linkage of the length of time, complexity, and expense of its 

space exploration activities to earlier explorations. the Spanish exploration of 

the americas proved time consuming, complex, and expensive. So did the efforts 

of other european powers in the sweepstakes of exploration and imperialism 

that took place over long periods made possible by these explorations. the 

exploration of space was much the same only more so, and this made it special 

and grand and visionary. 

12. See “bush to announce goal of returning to the moon,” online at http://forums.pcper.com/ 

printthread.php?threadid=277513 (accessed april 19, 2004). 

13. representative works include, frutkin, International Cooperation in Space; roger handberg and 

Joan Johnson-freese, The Prestige Trap: A Comparative Study of the U.S., European, and Japanese 

Space Programs (Dubuque, Ia: Kendall/hunt publishing Co., 1994); brian harvey, The New 

Russian Space Programme: From Competition to Collaboration (Chichester, england: Wiley— 

praxis, 1996); Dodd L. harvey and Linda C. Ciccoritti, U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in Space 

(Miami, fL: Monographs in International affairs, Center for advance International Studies 

at the university of Miami, 1974); Joan Johnson-freese, Changing Patterns of International 

Cooperation in Space (Malabar, fL: orbit books, 1990); Joan Johnson-freese, “Canceling 

the u.S. Solar-polar Spacecraft: Implications for International Cooperation in Space,” Space 

Policy 3 (february 1987): 24-37; Joan Johnson-freese, “a Model for Multinational Space 

Cooperation: the Inter-agency Consultative group,” Space Policy 5 (November 1989): 

288-300; John M. Logsdon, “u.S.-Japanese Space relations at a Crossroads,” Science 255 

(January 17, 1992): 294-300. 

14. the best example of this is Stephen J. pyne,“Space:athird great age of Discovery,” Space Policy 

4 (august 1988): 187-199. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

360 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

Celebrants of spaceflight have long argued that returns on investment in this 

age of exploration changed americans’ lives.15 as president Lyndon b. Johnson 

remarked at the time of the third gemini flight in august 1965, “Somehow the 

problems which yesterday seemed large and ominous and insoluble today appear 

much less foreboding.”Why should americans fear problems on earth,he believed, 

when they had accomplished so much in space?16 In this triumphalist narrative, 

the reality of spaceflight demonstrated that anything we set our minds to we could 

accomplish. “If we can put a man on the Moon, why can’t we . . .” entered the 

public consciousness as a statement of unlimited potential.17 Spaceflight, of course, 

remains a powerful trope of american exceptionalism to the present. 

CrItICISM of SpaCefLIght froM the poLItICaL Left aS 

WaStefuL goverNMeNt SpeNDINg 

a counter narrative to the master account of american triumph, 

exceptionalism, and success also emerged in the 1950s and argued that a 

large space exploration program deserved criticism from the left as a waste 

of expenditures of federal funds that could have been much more effectively 

used to feed the poor, help the elderly, care for the sick, or otherwise carry 

out critical social programs.18 Left-leaning critics argued that NaSa’s efforts 

15. Stephen J. pyne, The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica (Iowa City, Ia: university of Iowa press, 1986); 

Nathan reingold, ed., The Sciences in the American Context: New Perspectives (Washington, DC: 

Smithsonian Institution press, 1979); Norman Cousins, et al., Why Man Explores (Washington, 

DC: NaSa educational publication-125, 1976); Sarah L. gall and Joseph t. pramberger, NASA 

Spinoffs: 30 Year Commemorative Edition (Washington, DC: National aeronautics and Space 

administration, 1992). 

16. Lyndon b. Johnson, “president’s News Conference at the LbJ ranch,” Public Papers of the 

Presidents,august 29, 1965, p. 944-45. See also Lyndon b. Johnson,“Michoud assembly facility, 

Louisiana,” Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, December 12, 1967, p. 1967. 

17. to determine how widespread this question is, in 2001 I undertook a search of the DowJones 

database, which includes full text of more than 6,000 newspapers, magazines, newswires, and 

transcripts. Some of the publications go back to the 1980s but most have data only from the 

1990s. except for perhaps Lexis-Nexis, DowJones is the largest full-text database available.there 

are more than 6,901 articles using this phrase, or a variation of it, in the database.among them 

was a statement by former White house Chief of Staff, Mack McClarty concerning Mexico 

on National public radio’s “all things Considered,” entitled,“analysis: president bush to visit 

Mexico and its president.” Maria elena Salinas, co-anchor at Miami-based Spanish-language 

cable network univision, used this phrase when discussing her decision to list the apollo Moon 

landings as first in the top 100 news events of the 20th century. Levinson a.atomic bombing of 

hiroshima tops journalists’ list of century’s news.associated press. february 24, 1999. 

18. among those 	criticisms, see hugo young, bryan Silcock, and peter Dunn, Journey to 

Tranquillity: The History of Man’s Assault on the Moon (garden City, Ny: Doubleday, 1970); 

erlend a. Kennan and edmund h. harvey, Jr., Mission to the Moon: A Critical Examination 

of NASA and the Space Program (New york, Ny: William Morrow and Co., 1969); John v. 

Moeser, The Space Program and the Urban Problem: Case Studies of the Components on National 

Consensus (Washington, DC: program of policy Studies in Science and technology, george 
 

 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 361 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

were, in the words of aerospace historian roger e. bilstein, “a cynical mix 

of public relations and profit-seeking, a massive drain of tax funds away from 

serious domestic ills of the decade, or a technological high card in international 

tensions during the Cold War.”19 Some of those attacks were sophisticated and 

involved, others were simplistic and without appeal to all but those with the 

predilection to believe them. 

for example, vannevar bush, a leading and well-respected scientist who 

appreciated the marshaling of the power of the federal government in the 

furtherance of national objectives, questioned large expenditures for spaceflight. 

he wrote to NaSa administrator James e. Webb in april 1963 voicing his 

concerns about the cost, versus the benefits, of the human space exploration 

program. he asserted “that the [apollo] program, as it has been built up, is 

not sound.” he expressed concern that it would prove “more expensive than 

the country can now afford,” adding that “its results, while interesting, are 

secondary to our national welfare.”20 

Sociologist amitai etzioni was even more critical. In a reasoned, fulllength critique of the Moon landing program in 1964, he deplored the “huge 

pile of resources” spent on space, “not only in dollars and cents, but the best 

scientific minds—the best engineering minds were dedicated to the space 

project.” Could not those resources have been better spent on improving the 

lives people in modern america?21 etzioni bemoaned the nation’s penchant 

for embracing both high technology and unsustainable materialism: “we seek 

to uphold humanist concerns and a quest for a nobler life under the mounting 

swell of commercial, mechanical, and mass-media pressure.”22 

as etzioni remarked in a 1962 article that also expressed his concern 

about spaceflight: “If private foundations or some university professors wish to 

continue to satisfy their own and the common human desire to know about 

outer space, fine. but can the public spend 30 billion dollars—the amount 

required to send one man to the moon—to answer some questions about the 

shape of the moon? are we that curious, when the same amount of money would 

serve to develop . . . India?” furthermore, he noted, “as emotional as it might 

sound, this is truely [sic] a question of investment in feeding starving children 

Washington university, 1969); edwin Diamond, The Rise and Fall of the Space Age (garden 

City, Ny: Doubleday and Co., 1964). 

19. roger e. bilstein, Testing Aircraft, Exploring Space: An Illustrated History of NACA and NASA 

(baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins university press, 2003), p. 200. 

20. vannevar bush to James e.Webb,administrator, NaSa,april 11, 1963, p. 2, presidential papers, 

John f. Kennedy Library, boston, Ma. 

21. amitai etzioni, The Moon-Doggle: Domestic and International Implications of the Space Race (New 

york, Ny: Doubleday, 1964), p. 70. See alton frye, “politics—the first Dimension of Space,” 

Journal of Conflict Resolution 10 (March 1966): 103-12, for a review of Moon-Doggle. 

22. etzioni, Moon-Doggle, p. 195. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

362 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

as against improving the maps of van allen belts, of suppressing ignorance and 

disease on earth as against finding new moons in the skies.”23 

other critics were even more impulsive in their censure. If spaceflight 

was truly about demonstrating to the world american capabilities, cautioned 

nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, “we are making the wrong choice.” americans 

could demonstrate this in other more positive ways. “to race the russians to the 

moon and let our old people live on almost nothing is immoral,” he remarked 

specifically about the apollo lunar program. “the moon is not science—not 

bread. It is circus. the astronauts are the gladiators. It’s lunacy, I say.”24 as time 

passed, for Szilard and a minority of other americans, space exploration seemed 

like an increasingly embarrassing national self-indulgence.25 

Several of the leaders in the u.S., especially those within the Democratic 

party, found that support for NaSa’s space exploration agenda clashed with 

supporting funds for social programs enacted through “great Society” legislation. 

they disparaged apollo both as too closely linked to the military-industrial 

complex and defense spending and too far removed from the ideals of racial, 

social, and economic justice at the heart of the positive liberal state the Democrats 

envisioned. Liberal senators such as J. William fulbright, Walter Mondale, 

and William proxmire challenged the Johnson administration every year over 

funding for NaSa that they believed could be more effectively used for social 

programs. accordingly, bureau of the budget Director Charles Schultze worked 

throughout the middle part of the 1960s to shift funds from NaSa to such 

programs as the war on poverty. Johnson even tried to defend NaSa as a part of 

his “great Society” initiatives, arguing that it helped poor southern communities 

with an infusion of federal investment in high technology. Nonetheless, this 

proved a difficult sell and the NaSa budget declined precipitously throughout 

the latter half of the 1960s.26 

Indicative of this concern, even as apollo 11 was being prepared for launch 

from the Kennedy Space Center in florida on July 16, 1969, rev. ralph 

abernathy led a protest at the gates of the Center for 150 protesters and 4 

23. amatai etzioni, “International prestige, Competition and Cooperative existence,” Archives of 

Europeenees de Sociologie 3, no. 1 (1962): 21-41, quotes from pp. 38-39. 

24. Quoted in oscar h. rechtschaffen, ed., Reflections on Space: Its Implications for Domestic and 

International Affairs (Colorado Springs,Co:uSaf academy,1964),p.118,available from Defense 

technical Information Center, accession no.aD0602915. 

25. W. henry Lambright, Powering Apollo: James E.Webb of NASA (baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins 

university press, 1995), pp. 140-141. 

26. robert Dallek,“Johnson, project apollo, and the politics of Space program planning,” in roger 

D. Launius and howard e. McCurdy, eds., Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership 

(urbana, IL: university of Illinois press, 1997), pp. 75-88. 
 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 363 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

mules. his aim was to call attention to the plight of the poor even as the u.S. 

government spent lavishly on flights to the Moon.27 

In contrast to the triumphalist, exceptionalist narrative that celebrates space 

exploration, this narrative views the endeavor as a waste, a missed opportunity 

to further important and necessary goals in america. Indeed, the triumphalist 

narrative of spaceflight has been so powerful a memory that most people in the 

united States reflecting on it believe that NaSa enjoyed enthusiastic support 

during the 1960s and that somehow the agency lost its compass thereafter.28 

Contrarily, at only one point prior to the apollo 11 mission, october 1965, 

did more than half of the public favor the lunar landing program. americans 

have consistently ranked spaceflight near the top of those programs to be cut 

in the federal budget. Such a position is reflected in public opinion polls taken 

throughout the Space age when the majority of americans ranked NaSa as the 

government initiative most deserving of reduction, and its funding redistributed 

to Social Security, Medicare, and numerous other programs. While most 

americans did not oppose space exploration per se, they certainly questioned 

spending on it when social problems appeared more pressing.29 at some level 

it was like the characterization of the overlanders en route westward on the 

oregon trail who opined that the platte river that they followed was a mile 

wide and an inch deep. Support for space exploration was broad but not deep 

and almost always lost in comparison to other federal initiatives. 

Since the heyday of apollo, little has changed in this support for NaSa 

and its space exploration agenda. Many on the left view spaceflight, usually 

characterized exclusively as the human space program, as a waste of resources 

that might be more effectively deployed to support other good ends. Many 

find themselves nodding in agreement when Josh Lyman, the White house 

assistant Chief of Staff in the fictional West Wing television series told NaSa 

officials that his one priority for the space agency was that it stay out of the 

newspapers with tales of mismanagement and woe. he added that his agenda 

included using precious federal funds here on earth to help people rather than 

to conquer space.30 

27. bernard Weinraub,“Some applaud as rocket Lifts, but rest Just Stare,” New York Times, July 17, 

1969, p. 1. 

28. James L. Kauffman, Selling Outer Space: Kennedy, the Media, and Funding for Project Apollo, 

1961-1963 (tuscaloosa, aL: university of alabama press, 1994); Mark e. byrnes, Politics 

and Space: Image Making by NASA (New york, Ny: praeger, 1994); Neil de grasse tyson, 

“expanding the frontiers of Knowledge,” in Stephen J. garber, ed., Looking Backward. 

Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S. Human Spaceflight Symposium (Washington, DC: NaSa 

Sp-2002-4107, 2002), pp. 127-136. 

29. roger D. Launius, “public opinion polls and perceptions of u.S. human Spaceflight,” Space 

Policy 19 (august 2003): 163-175. 

30. “the Warfare of genghis Khan,” episode #513, West Wing, broadcast: february 11, 2004. 
 

364 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

of course, criticism of the space exploration initiatives of NaSa have 

taken myriad turns within the space community itself, as losers in the debate 

question the course taken. because NaSa pursued the Space Shuttle program 

in the aftermath of apollo it was unable to undertake other projects that might 

have been more fruitful, the argument goes. there is no question that this is 

true, and usually critiques along these lines take one of three forms. the first 

is a criticism that NaSa spent the last 30 years in earth orbit and it could 

have—indeed should have—used the same funding that it received for the 

Space Shuttle and Space Station to return to the Moon or to explore Mars. 

robert Zubrin, a persistent advocate for a mission to Mars, made this 

case in testimony before the u.S. Senate in 2003. he said: 

In today’s dollars, NaSa[’s] average budget from 1961-1973 

was about $17 billion per year. this is only 10% more than 

NaSa’s current budget. to assess the comparative productivity of the apollo Mode with the Shuttle Mode, it is therefore useful to compare NaSa’s accomplishments between 

1961-1973 and 1990-2003, as the space agency’s total expenditures over these two periods were equal. 

he concluded: “Comparing these two records, it is difficult to avoid the 

conclusion that NaSa’s productivity in both missions accomplished and 

technology development during its apollo Mode was at least ten times greater 

than under the current Shuttle Mode.”31 

a second criticism of “paths not taken” comes from representatives of the 

scientific community and usually involves questioning the role of humans in 

space at the expense of science missions. university of Iowa astrophysicist and 

discoverer of the radiation belts surrounding earth that bears his name, James 

a. van allen, never believed that human spaceflight was worth the expense. In 

2004 he remarked, “risk is high, cost is enormous, science is insignificant. Does 

anyone have a good rationale for sending humans into space?”32 undoubtedly, 

large numbers of scientific missions could have been developed had funding 

used for human missions been used instead to fund other types of scientific 

efforts. but it is not a zero-sum-game, and there is little reason to believe that 

31. testimony of robert Zubrin to the Senate Commerce Committee, october 29, 2003, p. 

2, available online at http://www.marssociety.org/content/Zubrin102903.PDF (accessed february 

26, 2006). 

32. James a. van allen, “Is human Spaceflight obsolete?” Issues in Science and Technology, vol. 20 

(Summer 2004), available online at http://www.issues.org/20.4/p_van_allen.html (accessed august 

3, 2004). 
 

 

 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 365 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

reducing funding for human spaceflight would translate into greater funding 

for robotic missions.33 

Most recently, the NaSa administrator, Mike griffin, questioned the 

human space exploration agenda of NaSa since apollo, calling the Space 

Shuttle program the result of a “policy failure” that was relentlessly pursued by 

NaSa for more than a generation. “It is now commonly accepted that was not 

the right path,” griffin told USA Today in an interview that appeared as a page 

one story on September 28, 2005. “We are now trying to change the path while 

doing as little damage as we can.” When asked pointedly if the shuttle had been 

a mistake the NaSa administrator responded, “My opinion is that it was . . . It 

was a design which was extremely aggressive and just barely possible.”34 

a subtext in all of this is that conservative political decisions, especially 

richard Nixon’s decision to approve only the Space Shuttle in the aftermath 

of apollo, set course down a wasteful, useless road when it might have been 

possible to reach other decisions and pursue much more productive paths. all 

of these criticisms about the place of space exploration in modern america 

have become part of a larger counter to the master narrative that questions the 

dominant story of american exceptionalism. at some level, as political scientist 

howard e. McCurdy remarked, space exploration “was to america what the 

pyramids were to egypt. It’s one of our great accomplishments . . . . but when 

you go back and look, there were people, at the time who are expressing public 

misgivings. and in private—where you can get those kinds of conversations— 

[they] are pulling their hair out about this program.”35 

this theme has been played out repeatedly in the american left since the 

beginning of the Space age. for example, NaSa came under congressional fire 

even as it tried to pursue new space exploration initiatives at the beginning of 

the 1970s. faced with domestic unrest, urban problems, and escalating military 

spending in vietnam, Congress was eager to cut whatever programs it could, 

and NaSa presented an appealing target. as New york Congressman ed Koch 

mused, “I just for the life of me can’t see voting for monies to find out whether 

or not there is some microbe on Mars, when in fact I know there are rats in the 

harlem apartments.” even some pro-space legislators questioned the necessity 

of further space exploration after apollo and wondered if NaSa had fully 

considered its options. Congressman Joseph Karth led the opposition because 

of what he considered NaSa’s hubris. “NaSa must consider the members of 

33. See Daniel S. goldin, speech at California Institute of technology, December 4, 1992, NaSa 

historical reference Collection, NaSa history Division,Washington, DC. 

34. traci Watson, “NaSa administrator says Space Shuttle was a Mistake,” USA Today, September 

28, 2005, p. 1a. 

35. “transcript:Washington goes to the Moon, part 1: Washington,We Have A Problem,” aired May 

25, 2001, WaMu fM, transcript available online at http://wamu.org/d/programs/special/moon/ 

opp_show.txt (accessed october 17, 2007). 
 

 

 

 

 

366 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

the Congress a bunch of stupid idiots,” he complained. “Worse yet, they may 

believe their own estimates—and then we are really in bad shape.”36 

a persistent drumbeat of criticism from the left for NaSa’s efforts in human 

space exploration has sometimes reached crescendo proportions. Critics have 

long condemned NaSa for “overselling” the space exploration agenda and then 

failing to deliver on that promise. Many liberal americans have agreed with Leo 

Mcgarry, the White house Chief of Staff in the fictional West Wing television 

series when asked about NaSa’s overreach: “Where’s my jet pack, my colonies 

on the Moon? Just a waste.”37 More recent ventures in space exploration, and 

especially their failure, have wrought even more energetic criticisms.38 

CrItICISM of SpaCefLIght froM the poLItICaL rIght 

from the beginning of the Space age, some figures on the right of the 

american political spectrum have also criticized NaSa’s exploration agenda 

as an excess of federal power, another counter to the master narrative. In 

their view, the federal government should not do much of anything, offering 

a persistently libertarian position that emphasized individual prerogative and 

personal freedom over state action. as an example, for this reason eisenhower 

believed that empowering NaSa to accomplish the apollo Moon landings of 

the 1960s was a mistake. he remarked in a 1962 article: “Why the great hurry 

to get to the moon and the planets? We have already demonstrated that in 

everything except the power of our booster rockets we are leading the world 

in scientific space exploration. from here on, I think we should proceed in an 

orderly, scientific way, building one accomplishment on another.”39 he later 

cautioned that the Moon race “has diverted a disproportionate share of our 

brain-power and research facilities from equally significant problems, including 

education and automation.”40 Likewise, in the 1964 presidential election, 

republican candidate Senator barry goldwater urged a reduction of the apollo 

commitment to pay for national security initiatives. 

With the coming of the successful Moon landings, however, the american 

right largely retreated from any high profile criticism of apollo. that position 

dominated until the 1980s when a full-scale assault on the “great Society” efforts 

36. Quoted in Ken hechler, toward the Endless Frontier: History of the Committee on Science and 

Technology, 1959-79 (Washington, DC: government printing office, 1980), p. 274. 

37. “the Warfare of genghis Khan,” episode #513, West Wing, broadcast: february 11, 2004. 

38. greg easterbrook,“the Case against NaSa,” New Republic,July 8,1991,pp.18-24;alex roland, 

“priorities in Space for the uSa,” Space Policy 3 (May 1987): 104-114; alex roland, “the 

Shuttle’s uncertain future,” Final Frontier,april 1988, pp. 24-27. 

39. Dwight D. eisenhower,“are We headed in the Wrong Direction?” Saturday Evening Post,august 

11-18, 1962, p. 24. 

40. Dwight D. eisenhower,“Why I am a republican,” Saturday Evening Post, april 11, 1964, p. 19. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 367 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

of the Democrats in the 1960s emerged in the public realm. a questioning of 

the apollo program became part of a conservative strain in american political 

discourse that increasingly found expression during the reagan era of the 1980s. 

percolating for many years, it emerged full-blown during the era to reconsider 

the history and policy of liberal ideology in the united States. In the process, 

reappraisals have castigated the social upheaval of the 1960s, defeat in vietnam, 

and great Society programs as failures of american politics.41 there was also a 

conservative space history, as well as a conservative space policy, that emerged 

during the same era. Some have even hinted that criticism of apollo was 

appropriate as part of a larger assault on the “products of the maniacal 1960s.”42 

No one has been more successful in offering a conservative critique of the 

early efforts to explore space than Walter a. McDougall, who published a pulitzer 

prize-winning “political history of the Space age.”43 his situation of the history 

of apollo in the context of the united States’ well-documented political “right 

turn” may well represent the central thrust of space history and policy since the 

1980s, for many have followed in his footsteps.44 this critique has emphasized 

a derogation of government programs as wasteful and inefficient, a celebration 

of private sector space initiatives, a relaxation of the regulatory environment, 

41. the reinterpretation of america in the 1960s has been a major cottage industry in recent years, 

and the reassessment has as often as not been negative. anyone wishing to pursue study of the 

reorientation of american society in the 1960s should read Milton viorst, Fire in the Streets: 

America in the 1960s (New york, Ny: Simon and Schuster, 1979); allen J. Matusow, The 

Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New york, Ny: harper and row, 

1984); William L. o’Neill, Coming Apart (Chicago, IL: Quadrangle books, 1971); godfrey 

hodgen, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon, What Happened and Why (garden 

City, Ny: Doubleday and Co., 1976); Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the 

Sixties (New york, Ny: basic books, 1977). for works that question the “great Society” and 

the social upheaval of the 1960s, see Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties 

Legacy to the Underclass (New york, Ny: William Morrow and Company, 1993); thomas C. 

reeves, The Empty Church: The Suicide of Liberal Christianity (New york, Ny: free press, 

1996); Charles Murray, Loosing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 (New york, Ny: 

basic books, 1984); Irwin unger, The Best of Intentions: The Triumph and Failure of the Great 

Society Under Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon (Naugatuck, Ct: brandywine press, 1995); gareth 

Davies, From Opportunity to Entitlement: The Transformation and Decline of Great Society Liberalism 

(Lawrence, KS: university press of Kansas, 1997); arthur benavie, Social Security Under the Gun 

(New york, Ny: palgrave Macmillan, 2003); ellen Schrecker, ed., Cold War Triumphalism: The 

Misuse of History After the Fall of Communism (New york, Ny: New press, 2004). 

42. Walter a. McDougall, “technocracy and Statecraft in the Space age:toward the history of a 

Saltation,” American Historical Review 87 (october 1982): 1010-1040, quote from p. 1025. 

43. Walter a. McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth:A Political History of the Space Age, in Journal of 

American History (New york: basic books, 1985). 

44. Darryl L. roberts, “Space and International politics: Models of growth and Constraint in 

Militarization,” Journal of Peace Research 23 (September 1986): 291-298. 
368 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

and a redistribution of federal research and development funds from traditional 

sources to organizations less tied to Democratic administrations.45 

Nothing expresses this “right turn” better than the rehabilitation of 

Dwight D. eisenhower as president. he has emerged as the hero of the Space 

age, seeking to hold down expenditures, refusing to race the Soviet union into 

space, and working to maintain traditional balances in policy, economics, and 

security. as alex roland noted concerning Water McDougall’s study of the 

subject, eisenhower stands “alone against the post-Sputnik stampede, unwilling 

to hock the crown jewels in a race to the moon, confident that america’s 

security could be guaranteed without a raid on the treasury, and concerned 

lest a space race with the russians jeopardize america’s values and freedoms 

and drag us down to the level of the enemy.” Conversely, the Democrats— 

especially Kennedy and Johnson—emerge as villains in this drama, ever seeking 

to enhance the power of big government to reshape the landscape of the united 

States as a means of facilitating their schemes of social revolution. Indeed, as 

NaSa administrator James e. Webb asked, if we can accomplish apollo “why 

can’t we do something for grandma with Medicare?”46 the linkage of space 

policy and social policy may seem tenuous at first, but in this critique the power 

of the federal government and the state system to “intrude” in individual lives 

required denunciation. 

Critiques from the right also noted that the mandate to complete apollo on 

president John f. Kennedy’s schedule prompted the space program to become 

identified almost exclusively with high-profile, expensive, human spaceflight 

projects. this was because apollo became a race against the Soviet union for 

recognition as the world leader in science and technology and, by extension, in 

other fields. for example, McDougall juxtaposed the american effort with the 

Soviet space program and the dreams of such designers as Sergei p. Korolev. While 

he recognized the american effort as a significant engineering achievement, he 

concluded that it was also enormously costly both in terms of resources and the 

direction to be taken in state support of science and technology. In the end, 

NaSa had to stress engineering over science, competition over cooperation, 

and international prestige over practical applications. 

45. this subject has been discussed in andrew J. butrica, Single Stage to Orbit: Politics, Space 

Technology, and the Quest for Reusable Rocketry (baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins university 

press, 2003); W. D. Kay, “Space policy redefined: the reagan administration and the 

Commercialization of Space,” Business and Economic History 27 (fall 1998): 237-247. an 

element of manipulation science data has also surfaced. for instance, this may be found in 

such works as Mark bowen, Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World’s Highest 

Mountains (New york, Ny: henry holt and Co., 2005), which talks at length about NaSa 

and censorship concerning global climate change. 

46. alex roland, “how Sputnik Changed us,” New York Times, april 7, 1985, pp. 1, 6, quote 

from p. 6. 
 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 369 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

Most importantly, McDougall argued that the Space age gave birth to a 

state of “perpetual technological revolution” because of the technocracy that 

arose to support this incredibly complex set of machines and activities. In essence, driven to respond to the Soviet challenge the united States recreated the 

same type of command technocracy that the Soviets had instituted. McDougall 

concluded that the space race led to nothing less than “the institutionalization 

of technological change for state purposes, that is, the state-funded and managed r&D explosion of our time.”47 as McDougall wrote: 

[I]n these years the fundamental relationship between the 

government and new technology changed as never before 

in history. No longer did state and society react to new 

tools and methods, adjusting, regulating, or encouraging 

their spontaneous development. rather, states took upon 

themselves the primary responsibility for generating new 

technology. this has meant that to the extent revolutionary 

technologies have profound second order consequences in 

the domestic life of societies, by forcing new technologies, 

all governments have become revolutionary, whatever their 

reasons or ideological pretensions.48 

and once institutionalized, technocracy has not gone away. McDougall 

concluded that it was enormously costly to the nation, and not just in public 

treasure. emphasizing the effect of the space race upon american society, this 

critique focused on the role of the state as a powerful promoter of technological 

progress—to the detriment of the nation as a whole. 

the spaceflight critique from the right bemoaned fundamentally what one 

observer called so much nostalgia for “the lost world of thomas Jefferson and 

adam Smith, its seeming faith in the untrammeled operation of the marketplace, its occasionally strident anticommunism, or its neo-orthodox assertions 

about humanity’s sinful nature.”49 Whether or not such a world ever actually 

existed was problematic, but in reality the debate over spaceflight from the 

right revolved around how much activity by the federal government is appropriate. Conservatives question an activist government and spaceflight clearly 

demonstrated activism in a most significant manner. While most americans 

accepted at face value the benign nature of this power, conservatives tended to 

challenge its legitimacy.50 

47. McDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth, p. 5. 

48. Ibid., pp. 6-7. 

49. robert griffith,“roots of technocracy,” Science 230 (December 6, 1985): 1154. 

50. ralph e. Lapp, The New Priesthood: The Scientific Elite and the Uses of Power (New york, Ny: 

harper & row, 1965), pp. 227-228. Similar cautions, but aimed at the use of science and 
370 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

though distinctive in many respects, critics from the right believed the 

power accrued by NaSa corrupted it, making it exploitative of others and 

engendering in them cynicism toward those they dominated. they may have 

tried to conceal that fact by laying claim to the dominant myths and symbols 

of the american frontier, invoking heroes from american folklore, positivist 

images of “manifest destiny,” and happy visions of white-topped wagon trains 

traveling across the prairies, but conservative critics declared that only a ruse. 

through space exploration the federal government enhanced its power and 

while many americans celebrated this use of federal power, conservatives 

bemoaned its intrusion into their vision of individual liberty for the future. 

that concern has enjoyed a persistent presence in the american spaceflight 

community since the 1980s. 

of course, absent the power sharing relations present on earth—state to 

state, local to national, philosophy to philosophy—the regime above earth’s 

atmosphere must be ruled by concentrated state power, much of it u.S. power, 

often hidden behind beguiling masks. they have been reminded by conservative 

critics of the subtle nature of strenuous and sometimes capricious governmental 

power in this experience. the region has, of course, been the scene of intense 

struggles over power and hierarchy, not only between nations but also between 

classes, genders, and other groups. the outcome of those struggles has a few 

distinctive features found nowhere else in america, especially power elites 

that are not much like those in other areas, particularly those elites located at 

intersections between the federal agencies, corporations, and interest groups. 

at sum, these concerns suggest an uneasy relationship to the bureaucracy that 

made possible the advance of space exploration. 

this is seen in at least one criticism of space exploration from the political 

right in the mid-1990s when then Speaker of the house Newt gingrich (r-ga) 

criticized NaSa as having too much power and becoming muscle-bound. he 

said that while he generally favored science and technology investment by the 

federal government he always believed that NaSa should have been dismantled 

after apollo. In the aftermath of the Moon landings, gingrich said, NaSa had 

become a bureaucracy in the worst sense of the term. “If you keep people 

there,” he contended, “they become obsolescent.”51 that was a metaphor for 

the whole of NaSa as it moved beyond its glory of the Moon landings. 

In an irony too great to ignore, criticism of space exploration—especially 

the apollo program—from the right has largely been juxtaposed with support 

for NaSa from conservative politicians in the years since the Moon landings. 

Whereas the apollo program, expensive and large and successful, had been the 

technology to dupe americans, may be found in robert L. park, Voodoo Science: The Road 

from Foolishness to Fraud (New york, Ny: oxford university press, 2000); amitai etzioni, 

The Limits of Privacy (New york, Ny: basic books, 2000). 

51. “gingrich Says NaSa Should have folded,” New York Times, february 5, 1995, p. 24. 
 

 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 371 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

initiative of a Democratic president; the period since has been dominated by 

a republican political consensus that has become increasingly conservative. 

that criticism then took on the added flavor of enthusiasm for private sector 

space activities instead of large government efforts. Core questions plaguing 

space policy since the 1950s have revolved around the role of the government 

versus the private sector in facilitating space exploration. Should all activities 

be undertaken by the federal government? Should there be some type of 

public/private partnership put into place to accomplish these tasks? Should the 

government leave these activities entirely to private companies, involving itself 

only insofar as required to assure safety of its citizens? Should some entirely 

different model be employed to ensure space exploration? If the macroeconomic 

studies sponsored by NaSa were an indication, the returns on investment in 

space research and development were astounding. the Midwestern research 

Institute (MrI) study of 1971 determined that NaSa r&D provided an overall 

7:1 return. essentially, for every dollar spent on r&D, seven dollars were returned 

to the gDp. MrI refined its study in 1988, calculating this time an even higher 

9:1 return on investment. Chase econometrics performed a more sophisticated 

study in 1975 that reported a whopping 14:1 return on investment.52 If this was 

true, said the conservative critique of spaceflight, should not the private sector 

pursue this objective free from government interference. 

the reagan administration of the 1980s certainly thought so and 

proceeded to privatize spaceflight. at reagan’s behest Congress passed the 

Commercial Space Launch act of 1984 that ensconced in law the desire to 

open space access to private sector providers.53 there followed a series of moves 

intended to create a commercial space capability while reducing government 

funding for space exploration.54 Increasingly since the reagan era spaceflight 

has become increasingly private, in no small measure the result of efforts to 

reduce the role of the federal government. 

Many examples exist. beginning in the mid-1990s, several start-up 

companies were organized to undertake new space initiatives. Indeed, 1996 

marked something of a milestone in the history of spaceflight as worldwide 

52. “economic Impact of Stimulated technological activity,” final report, Midwest research 

Institute, october 15, 1971, Contract No. NaSW-2030; Michael K. evans, “the economic 

Impact of NaSa r&D Spending,” Chase econometric associates, Inc., bala Cynwyd, 

pa, april 1976; “economic Impact and technological progress of NaSa research and 

Development expenditures,” Midwest research Institute, Kansas City, Mo, for the National 

academy of public administration, September 20, 1988; bDM, “economic return on 

technology Investments Study: final report,” September 30, 1994. 

53. “Commercial Space Launch act of 1984, public Law 98-575,” in John M. Logsdon, gen. ed., 

Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume IV, 

Accessing Space (Washington, DC: NaSa Sp-4407, 1999), pp. 431-440. 

54. Space Launch policy Working group, “report on Commercialization of u.S. expendable 

Launch vehicles,”april 13, 1983, p. 3, NaSa historical reference Collection. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

372 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

commercial revenues in space for the first time surpassed all governmental 

spending on space, totaling some $77 billion. this growth continued in 1997, 

with 75 commercial payloads lofted into orbit, and with approximately 75 more 

military and scientific satellites launched. this represented a threefold increase 

over the number the year before. Market surveys for the period thereafter 

suggested that commercial launches would multiply for the next several years at 

least.55 In that context many spaceflight advocates believed that the market had 

matured sufficiently that government control was no longer necessary. Instead, 

they asked that the federal government simply “get out of the way” and allow the 

private sector to pursue their efforts in space free from bureaucratic controls.56 

this critique has also found expression in the first decade of the 21st 

century. even as NaSa was given a new responsibility to return to the Moon, 

conservative policymakers refused to appropriate the federal funds necessary to 

accomplish the task. by 2007, accordingly, it had become highly uncertain that 

the initiative could be realized. It appeared increasingly that this proposal would 

follow the path of the aborted Space exploration Initiative (SeI) announced with 

great fanfare in 1989 but derailed in the early 1990s.57 Indeed, one candidate 

for the presidency during the 2008 election, Senator hillary rodham Clinton 

(D-Ny), has already stated her opposition to continuing george W. bush’s 

vision for Space exploration should she become president. as reported in the 

New York Times, “travel to the Moon or Mars ‘excites people,’ she said, ‘but I 

am more focused on nearer-term goals I think are achievable’.”58 It seems that 

critics of human space exploration on the left were intent on ending this large 

space initiative because they viewed it as taking funds away from more pressing 

social needs while critics on the right were unwilling to put much funding into 

it and emphasized greater private sector involvement. 

55. tim beardsley,“the Way to go in Space,” Scientific American, March 1999, special issue on “the 

future of Space exploration.” 

56. Craig r. reed, “factors affecting u.S. Commercial Space Launch Industry Competitiveness,” 

business and economic history 27 (fall 1998): 222-236; andrew J. butrica, “Commercial 

Spaceports: hitching your Wagon to a ventureStar,” Space Times: Magazine of the American 

Astronautical Society 37 (September/october 2000): 5-10. 

57. frank Sietzen, Jr. and Keith L. Cowing, New Moon Rising:The Making of the Bush Space Vision 

(burlington, ontario:apogee books, 2004); Craig Cornelius,“Science in the National vision for 

Space exploration: objectives and Constituencies of the ‘Discovery-Driven’ paradigm,” Space 

Policy 21 (february 2005): 41-48;Wendell Mendell,“the vision for human Spaceflight,” Space 

Policy 21 (february 2005): 7-10. 

58. patrick healy and Cornelia Dean,“Clinton Says She Would Shield Science from politics,” New 

York Times, october 5, 2007. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

SpaCe expLoratIoN aND the CuLt of CoNSpIraCy 

americans, certainly, and perhaps all the cultures of the world, love the idea 

of conspiracy as an explanation of how and why many events have happened. 

Certainly this is the case in one of the counter narratives of spaceflight. these 

conspiracy theories play to the innermost human fears and hostilities that there 

is a well-organized, well-financed, and Machiavellian design being executed 

by some malevolent group, the dehumanized “them,” which seek to rob “us” 

of something we hold dear. usually the “something” being robbed is one of the 

constitutionally defined rights of all americans: life, liberty, or property. 

Conspiracy theories abound in american history. oliver Stone’s film, 

J.F.K., while presenting a truly warped picture of recent american history, 

shows how receptive americans are to believing that Kennedy was killed as a 

result of a massive conspiracy variously involving Cuban strongman fidel Castro, 

american senior intelligence and law enforcement officers, high communist 

leaders in the Soviet union, union organizers, organized crime, and perhaps 

even the vice president, Lyndon b. Johnson. Stone’s film only brought the 

assassination conspiracy to a broad american public. for years amateur and 

not-so-amateur researchers have been churning out books and articles about 

the Kennedy assassination conspiracy. It has been one of the really significant 

growth industries in american history during the last 40-some years.59 

Conspiracy theories, of course, have been advanced to explain many 

other historical events in the united States. a favorite is the “backdoor to war” 

conspiracy thesis of u.S. entry into World War II. as stated, president franklin 

D. roosevelt had intelligence information about the Japanese attack on pearl 

harbor hours beforehand and with the help of other highly placed national 

leaders withheld that information from the Navy’s pacific fleet so that it would 

be destroyed—all so he could get the american people behind a war with 

germany.60 another conspiracy argues that there has been a grand intrigue in 

the 20th century “to control the foreign and domestic policies of the united 

States, subvert the Constitution, and establish a totalitarian society.”61 

59. David r. Wrone and DeLloyd J. guth, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Westport, Ct: 

greenwood press, 1980), listed more than 5,000 publications dealing with the subject. the 

number has grown substantially since that bibliography was published. 

60. Charles a. beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances 

and Realities (New haven, Ct: yale university press, 1948) makes the case for conspiracy. 

Countervailing positions are argued in roberta Wolstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision 

(palo alto, Ca: Stanford university press, 1962) and gordon a. prang, “At Dawn We Slept”:The 

Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New york, Ny: Mcgraw-hill, 1981). a superb discussion of the 

memory of the pearl harbor attack may be found in emily rosenberg, A Date Which will Live: 

Pearl Harbor in American Memory (Durham, NC: Duke university press, 2003). 

61. Chesly Manly, The Twenty-Year Revolution:From Roosevelt to Eisenhower (Chicago, IL:n.p.,1954),p. 

179, as cited in richard hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (New 
 

 

 

374 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

What are the general attributes of these historical conspiracy theories writ 

large? a central point revolves around how to define a “conspiracy.” at its most 

innocuous a conspiracy is simply the planning and execution of some activity 

by a group of people. all actions of any consequence require some planning 

with others and could be considered conspiracies in that sense. the dictionary 

definition of conspiracy, however, is “a joining secretly with others for an evil 

purpose,” a connotation first acquired during the politically charged 1960s, 

and most planning efforts, therefore, do not qualify.62 one could argue that 

conspiracies do indeed exist, even when using the dictionary definition. even 

so, much rides on what defines an “evil purpose,” for very often that is a matter 

of perspective. from the american perspective, whether or not roosevelt was 

involved matters not, in the strictest sense of the term pearl harbor was attacked 

as a result of a conspiracy, for the Japanese high command struck an evil plot 

against the united States. even so, from a Japanese perspective it was not so 

much a conspiracy as good strategic planning. the definition of a conspiracy, 

therefore, is subjective. 

at least in the minds of conspiracy theorists, however, there is always a 

belief that there is or has been a vast and well-organized plot to carry out some 

sinister goal, often the very destruction of a way of life. at its extreme form 

the theorist might consider the conspiracy the vast and prime mover of history. 

thus, americans on the political right have interpreted many of the world’s 

events in the 20th century as a “communist conspiracy” against which the 

“free world” had always to react.63 as a result, opponents fighting a perceived 

conspiracy see themselves as the last bastion of what is good and just and true 

in the world. there is an especially powerful apocalyptic vision that motivates 

those who accept such conspiracy ideologies. these opponents have often had 

an almost messianic belief in the rightness of their cause and that the time 

remaining to salvage whatever is at stake is running out. at a fundamental level, 

conspiracy theories serve as a “particular narrative form of scapegoating that 

frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common 

good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm.”64 

additionally, those who truly believe that a conspiracy has been afoot 

do not have any interest in talking over differences. they are at war with a 

malicious, sinister, powerful, ubiquitous personification of evil. that evil is 

responsible for most of the negative events that happen. It makes crises; starts 

york, Ny:vintage books, 1965), p. 25; Kevin phillips, American Theocracy:The Perils and Politics of 

Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New york, Ny:viking, 2006). 

62. The New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary of the English Language (New york,Ny: Lexicon Internationalpublishers guild group, 1989), p. 208. 

63. See Daniel bell, ed., The Radical Right (New york, Ny:vintage books, 1963). 

64. Chip berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, Right-Wing Populism in America:Too Close for Comfort (New 

york, Ny:the guilford press, 2000), p. 9. 
 

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aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

economic depressions, wars, and disasters; and enjoys the misery foisted upon 

the culture under attack. advocates of conspiracy assign demonic omnipresence 

to whatever and whomsoever they have decided are a part of the conspiracy. 

they possess a special source of power which is used malevolently against 

others, especially those who have learned about the conspiracy and are seeking 

to combat it. any suggestion from non-believers that a presumed conspiracy 

might be just as easily and accurately explained by some less diabolical method 

is met with a sharp rebuke that the non-believer is either a willing participant 

or a dupe being used by the conspirators.65 

almost from the point of the first spaceflight missions, a small group of 

americans began to spin conspiracy theories. these range from fantastical theories 

of extraterrestrial visitation, abduction, and government complicity, to the 

development of secret technologies such as the aurora ultra-secret spaceplane, to 

elaborate collusions between great powers to subvert human liberties. by far the 

most important of these were those that emerged to question the Moon landings 

undertaken by NaSa during project apollo, and it is this conspiracy theory 

that I intend to discuss in this short essay. the Moon landing had, they argued, 

been faked in hollywood by the federal government for purposes ranging— 

depending on the particular apollo landing denier—from embezzlement of 

the public treasury to complex motivations involving international intrigue 

and murderous criminality. for example, andrew Chaikin commented in his 

massive history of the apollo Moon expeditions that at the time of the apollo 

8 circumlunar flight in December 1968 some people thought it was not real; 

instead it was “all a hoax perpetrated by the government.” bill anders, an 

astronaut on the mission, thought live television would help convince skeptics 

since watching “three men floating inside a spaceship was as close to proof as 

they might get.”66 he could not have been more wrong. 

Some of those skeptical of the apollo flights made their cases based on 

naïve and poorly constructed knowledge, but imagery from space did not seem 

to help. for example, my paternal grandfather, Jeffrey hilliard Launius, was a 

75-year-old farmer from southern Illinois at the time of the first Moon landing 

in 1969. a Democrat since the great Depression of the 1930s—because, as he 

said, roosevelt gave him a job with the Work projects administration (Wpa) 

when he could not feed his family and was on the verge of losing everything— 

his denial of the Moon landing was based essentially on lack of knowledge and 

65. this conspiracy motif has been an important part of the 	“political correctness” debate 

currently raging in which everyone who does not accept at face value the arguments about 

minority oppression and the means of ending it, even though those committed to the 

goal do not themselves agree on the proper means, are charged with racism, chauvinism, 

or prejudice. See aaron Wildovsky, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (Washington, DC: 

american university press, 1991). 

66. Chaikin, A Man in the Moon, p. 100. 
 

376 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

naïveté. In his estimation such a technological feat was simply not possible. 

Caught up in the excitement of apollo 11 in the summer of 1969, I could not 

understand my grandfather’s denial of what appeared obvious to me. he did not 

assign any conspiratorial motives to the government, especially the Democrats; 

after all, it was a party he had trusted implicitly for more than 35 years. even 

now I still cannot fully fathom his conflicting position of trust of the Democrats 

in government and unwillingness to believe what they said about the Moon 

landing. In his insular world change came grudgingly, however, and a Moon 

landing was certainly a major change. as a measure of his unwillingness to 

embrace change, my grandfather farmed his entire life with horses rather than 

adopting the tractor because in his estimation tractors were “a passing fad.” Jeff 

Launius still did not believe that america had landed on the Moon at the time 

of his death in 1984. 

president bill Clinton recalled in his 2004 autobiography a similar story of 

a carpenter he worked with not long after the apollo 11 landing. as he wrote 

about him in august 1969: 

Just a month before, apollo 11 astronauts buzz aldrin and 

Neil armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, 

aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the Moon, beating by five months president Kennedy’s goal of putting a 

man on the Moon before the decade was out. the old carpenter asked me if I really believed it happened. I said sure, 

I saw it on television. he disagreed; he said that he didn’t 

believe it for a minute, that “them television fellers” could 

make things look real that weren’t. 

Clinton thought him a crank at the time and since, a homespun skeptic. he then 

allowed that a healthy criticism of everything was not necessarily a bad idea.67 

how widespread were the skeptics about the Moon landings in the 1960s? 

that is almost impossible to say. for example, the New York Times science 

reporter John Noble Wilford remarked in December 1969 that “a few stoolwarmers in Chicago bars are on record as suggesting that the apollo 11 moon 

walk last July was actually staged by hollywood on a Nevada desert.”68 More 

important, the Atlanta Constitution led a story on June 15, 1970, with: “Many 

skeptics feel moon explorer Neil armstrong took his ‘giant leap for mankind’ 

somewhere in arizona.” It based its conclusion that an unspecified “many” 

questioned the apollo 11 and 12 landings, and presumably the april 1970 accident 

aboard apollo 13, on an admittedly unscientific poll conducted by the Knight 

67. bill Clinton, My Life (New york, Ny:alfred a. Knopf, 2004), p. 244. 

68. John Noble Wilford,“a Moon Landing? What Moon Landing?” the New York Times, December 

18, 1969, p. 30. 
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The launch of Apollo 11 on July 16, 1969. On the essential character of this 

experience, Ray Bradbury wrote: “When the blast of a rocket launch slams you 

against the wall and all the rust is shaken off your body, you will hear the great shout 

of the universe and the joyful crying of people who have been changed by what 

they’ve seen.” (NASA) 
 

378 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

Newspapers of 1,721 u.S. citizens in “Miami, philadelphia, akron, ohio, 

Detroit, Washington, Macon, ga., and several rural communities in North and 

South Carolina.” those polled were asked, “Do you really, completely believe 

that the united States has actually landed men on the moon and returned them 

to earth again?” While numbers questioning the Moon landing in Detroit, 

Miami, and akron averaged less than five percent, among african americans 

in such places as Washington, DC, a whopping 54 percent “doubted the moon 

voyage had taken place.” that perhaps said more about the disconnectedness 

of minority communities from the apollo effort and the nation’s overarching 

racism than anything else. as the story reported, “a woman in Macon said she 

knows she couldn’t watch a telecast from the moon because her set wouldn’t 

even pick up New york stations.”69 

Not everyone who denied the Moon landings at the time were so naïve 

in their assessments. Some spun conspiracy theories of complex structure 

and shocking intent. as howard McCurdy opined, “to some, the thrill of 

space can’t hold a candle to the thrill of conspiracy.”70 over the years many 

conspiracy scenarios have been concocted, and it sometimes appears that the 

various theorists are even more cantankerous toward rival theories than they 

are toward NaSa and the apollo program. an early and persistent theme has 

been that as a cold war measure the u.S. could not afford to lose the race to 

the Moon, but when failure loomed NaSa faked the landing to save face and 

national prestige. It used the massive funds dedicated to the effort to “pay off” 

those who might be persuaded to tell the truth; it also used threats and in 

some instances criminal actions to stop those who might blow the whistle.71 

one of the most common assertions has been that in the latter 1960s the u.S. 

government was in disarray because of the debacle of the vietnam War, the 

racial crisis in the cities, and social upheaval. the apollo program proved an 

ideal positive distraction from this strife, a convenient conspiracy designed to 

obscure other issues. one story published in 1970 stated this belief as expressed 

by an african american preacher: “It’s all a deliberate effort to mask problems 

at home,” Newsweek reported, “the people are unhappy—and this takes their 

minds off their problems.”72 

other conspiracy motifs were more absurd. for example, William brian 

asserted that perhaps americans did go to the Moon, but they did so through the 

69. “Many Doubt Man’s Landing on Moon,” Atlanta Constitution, June 15, 1970. 

70. howard a. McCurdy,“Moonstruck,” Air & Space/Smithsonian, october/November 1998, p. 24. 

71. all of these arguments, as well as variations on them, are offered in bill Kaysing and randy 

reid, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle (N.p., 1974). this 

pamphlet has been reissued several times, notably in pomeroy, or: health research, 1976, 

and again in 2002. 

72. Newsweek, July 20, 1970, quoted in rogier van bakel,“the Wrong Stuff,” Wired 2 (September 

1994): 108-113, 155. 
 

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aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

means of some extraterrestrial technology. In his estimation NaSa employed 

captured—or perhaps given—technology from beings beyond earth to reach 

the Moon. this forced the agency to create a cover story for more sinister 

purposes. “you can’t let one bit of information out without blowing the whole 

thing,” he noted. “they’d have to explain the propulsion technique that got 

them there, so they’d have to divulge their ufo research. and if they could tap 

this energy, that would imply the oil cartels are at risk, and the very structure 

of our world economy could collapse. they didn’t want to run that risk.” 

Likewise, others suggested that astronauts found evidence of alien civilization 

on the Moon, à la the 1968 feature film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and had to fake 

imagery on the Moon to cover up that fact.73 

the first conspiracy theorist to make a sustained case for denying that 

the u.S. landed on the Moon was bill Kaysing, a journalist who had been 

employed for a few years in the public relations office at rocketdyne, Inc., a 

NaSa contractor, in the early 1960s. his 1974 pamphlet, We Never Went to 

the Moon, laid out many of the major arguments that have been followed by 

other conspiracy theorists since that time. his rationale for questioning the 

apollo Moon landings offered poorly developed logic, sloppily analyzed data, 

and sophomorically argued assertions. Kaysing believed that the failure to land 

on the Moon all sprang from the fact that NaSa lacked the technical expertise 

to accomplish the task, requiring the creation of a massive coverup to hide that 

fact. he cited as evidence optical anomalies in some imagery from the apollo 

program, questioned the physical features of certain objects in the photographs 

(such as a lack of a star field in the background of lunar surface imagery and a 

presumed waving of the u.S. flag in an airless environment), and challenged 

the possibility of NaSa astronauts surviving a trip to the Moon because of 

radiation exposure.74 

throughout the latter third of the 20th century and into the 21st, with 

confidence in the u.S. government by the american public declining—because 

of vietnam, Watergate, and other scandals and malfeasance—it became somewhat 

easier for people to believe the worst about such a cover-up. for example, 

responding to a public opinion survey in 1964, 76 percent of the americans 

polled expressed confidence in the ability of their national government “to do 

what is right” most or all of the time. this was an all-time high in the history 

of polling, and this goodwill helped lay the foundation for all manner of large 

initiatives during the 1960s, including all types of reforms. this consensus 

collapsed in the post-vietnam and post-Watergate era of the 1970s, to a low of 

73. van bakel,“the Wrong Stuff,” Wired, p. 112. 

74. Kaysing and reid, We Never Went to the Moon. 
 

 

380 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

less than 25 percent of americans believing that the government would seek to 

do right all or even a majority of the time by the early 1990s.75 

additionally, as time passed and more people were born and grew to 

maturity since the last of the Moon missions had been completed in 1972, 

youngsters became increasingly skeptical since they had no firsthand recollection 

of apollo. evidence of that issue was found in a 2004 poll about attitudes toward 

spaceflight among americans. While polls had consistently shown that only 

about six percent of the public as a whole questioned the Moon landings, and a 

whopping 89 percent firmly believed in their reality, among americans between 

18 and 24 years old “27% expressed doubts that NaSa went to the Moon,” 

according to pollster Mary Lynne Dittmar in a 2004 study. Doubt is different 

from denial, but it was a trend that seemed to be growing over time.76 

Major media sources, especially, fueled doubts. for example, folklorist 

Linda Degh asserted that the 1978 fictional feature film Capricorn One, in 

which NaSa supposedly faked a landing on Mars, may have fostered greater 

acceptance of the denials of the Moon landings. No question, the february 

2001 airing of the fox special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?, 

changed the nature of the debate. In this instance a major network presented a 

conspiracy scenario without any serious rebuttal that might have been offered.77 

as USA Today reported in the aftermath of the “news special”: 

according to fox and its respectfully interviewed “experts”— 

a constellation of ludicrously marginal and utterly uncredentialed “investigative journalists”—the united States grew so 

eager to defeat the Soviets in the intensely competitive 1960s 

space race that it faked all six apollo missions that purportedly landed on the moon. Instead of exploring the lunar surface, the american astronauts only tromped around a crude 

movie set that was created by the plotters in the legendary 

area 51 of the Nevada desert.78 

75. paul r. abramson, Political Attitudes in America (San francisco, Ca: W. h. freeman, 1983), p. 

12. See also Seymour Martin Lipset and William Schneider, The Confidence Gap (New york, 

Ny: free press, 1983). 

76. Mary Lynne Dittmar, “building Constituencies for project Constellation: updates to the 

Market Study of the Space exploration program,” presentation at building and Maintaining 

the Constituency for Long-term Space exploration workshop, george Mason university, 

fairfax, va, July 31-august 3, 2006; the gallop poll, “Did Men really Land on the Moon?” 

february 15, 2001, available online at http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=1993&pg=1

(accessed June 26, 2007). 

77. for a discussion of the claims made in this “documentary,” as well as rebuttal to it, see phil 

plait,“fox tv and the apollo Moon hoax,” february 13, 2001, available online at http://www. 

badastronomy.com (accessed october 14, 2002). 

78. “faking a hoax,” USA Today,april 9, 2001. 
 

 

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aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

While the program claimed to “Let the viewer decide” about the validity of the 

claims for denial of the Moon landings, it made no attempt whatsoever to offer 

point and counterpoint, thereby giving the viewers a seriously biased view of 

the issue and skewed evidence in favor of a hoax. 

the fox television show exposed the arguments of the Moon landing 

deniers to a much broader public than ever before. as Linda Degh noted, “the 

mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people 

can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on 

people who lack guidance.”79 Without a proper rebuttal available from NaSa— 

the agency had taken an official position before of not responding to what it 

considered absurd claims—many young people publicly began to question the 

apollo landings. Several astronauts stepped forward to affirm the legitimacy of 

the program, but others thought the charges too silly to warrant response. Many 

debated the issues in the emerging world of the Internet. Indeed, the Internet 

became a haven for conspiracy theorists of all stripes, and with the barrier for 

publication online so low anyone could put up any page they wished with any 

assertions they wished to make. but it also became a haven for counters to the 

conspiracy theorists and a healthy debate has resulted.80 

at the same time, the twin features of modern society—a youth movement 

and post-modernism—helped to raise questions about the Moon landings. 

More than half the world’s population had been born since the last of the 

Moon landings had taken place in December 1972. Consequently, they had not 

lived through the excitement of the experience. this raises the specter of how 

individuals view time and history. Mostly without even realizing it, individuals 

tend to divide time into three general, inconsistent, and individualistic spheres 

or cones of memory. the first is a sphere of personal experience. events that 

individuals participated in personally or that had salience to their individual 

lives are the first and most immediate sphere. these differ from person to 

person, and include not only activities that the individual experienced firsthand 

but events of great importance that took place in their memory. for instance, 

there are colossal events that mark the time of our lives, and they hold great 

resonance for those participating in them. virtually all americans know where 

they were and what they were doing when they learned of the 9/11 attacks in 

New york and Washington. the same is true for other dramatic incidents in 

individual lives such as the Moon landings for those who remember them. It 

is this memory of our individual and immediate experiences that govern most 

people’s perspective on the past. roy rosenzweig and David thelen in their 

study of popular uses of history in american life noted that far from americans 

79. van bakel,“the Wrong Stuff,” Wired, p. 113. 

80. a search on the term,“Moon hoax,” will yield no fewer than 5,000 sites containing information 

of one type or another relating to this subject. 
 

 

 

 

382 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

being disengaged from history, as has been routinely thought because of their 

detachment from national themes, most people have supplanted interest in 

these broader themes to the history of family and locale. Indeed, rosenzweig 

and thelen insist that americans “pursue the past actively and make it part 

of everyday life.”81 they found that no more than 24 percent of their sample 

answered that the history of the united States was the past they felt was “most 

important” to them, as opposed to the 50-60 percent who identified a more 

intimate past as central to their lives.82 

Less immediate but still resonating with americans is a sphere of history 

that is not intimate to the individual but related by members of the family, by 

close friends, and by mentors. While the person may have no individual sense of 

history about World War II, for instance, they have heard stories about it and its 

effects on families and loved ones. It has a reverberation of meaning because of 

this connection. there are dark areas in this sphere of historical understanding 

that may be further illuminated through public presentations of the past, in 

whatever those forms of presentation might take, but they will never enjoy the 

salience reserved for personal experience in most people’s minds. 

the third sphere encompassing all humans is the past that has no special 

connection through loved ones or personal experience. In that context events, 

epochs, themes, and the like discussed throughout the broad expanse of history 

have essentially an equal importance. the Crusades, the Ming Dynasty, the 

english/french/american/russian/or other revolutions all essentially stand at 

the same level for most of those who have no intimate connection to them. 

Difficulties in creating resonance with those events of the past abound, and 

always perspectives are obscure as this past is digested. It also has considerably 

more dark spaces than more immediate past events. an important challenge 

for all historians is how to breech that truly lost and forgotten past and offer 

its meaning to most people. this is done through many processes, especially 

rituals, public representations, reenactments, museums and historic sites, 

and a range of other possibilities for constructing and reinforcing meaning. 

there are numerous examples of this basic fact across a broad spectrum of 

american life, as master narratives of american history are reinforced rather 

than reinterpreted.83 

for the younger members of society, the recollection of apollo is distant 

to begin with and receding into the background quickly as time progresses. 

81. roy rosenzweig and David thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American 

Life (New york, Ny: Columbia university press, 1998), pp. 11-13, quote from p. 18. 

82. Ibid., p. 237. 

83. Jane adams,“Melting pot, Stew pot, or Salad,”available online at http://mccoy.lib.siu.edu/~jadams/ 

introduction_text.html (accessed october 28, 2005). Sociologist robert bellah calls these 

“communities of memory.” See robert N. bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and 

Commitment in American Life (New york, Ny: harper and row, 1985). 
 

 

 

 

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aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

Commemoration and ritual help to preserve these events for society as a whole, 

but if they are not taking place is the case for apollo, then events dim. 

Indeed, post-modernism suggests that reality is more a suggestion of 

meaning rather than an absolute. It blurs the line between fact and fiction, 

between realism and poetry, between the unrecoverable past and our memory 

of it.84 this raising of the inexact character of historical “truth,” as well as its 

relationship to myth and memory and the reality of the dim and unrecoverable 

past, has foreshadowed deep fissures in the landscape of identity and what it 

means to be american. truth, it seems, has differed from time to time and 

place to place with reckless abandon and enormous variety. Choice between 

them is present everywhere both in the past and the present; my truth dissolves 

into your myth and your truth into my myth almost as soon as it is articulated. 

We see this reinforced everywhere about us today, and mostly we shake our 

heads and misunderstand the versions of truth espoused by various groups about 

themselves and about those excluded from their fellowship. they have given 

and continue to give meaning and value to individual human lives and to create 

a focal point for explaining the sufferings and triumphs of the group. 

at some level there is no absolute; instead everything is constructed. If 

so, what might be the case of the Moon landings? Might this be, in essence, an 

issue of agreeing that something was true but could also be agreed that it never 

happened. If enough doubt could be cast on some particular narrative might 

it be overcome and obliterated? this has happened in history repeatedly, as 

versions of the past have replaced earlier versions that seemed so true. for more 

than a half-century, for example, the frontier thesis as enunciated by frederick 

Jackson turner reigned supreme as a critical explanation offered for the manner 

in which the u.S. character emerged. It was dismantled and destroyed and all 

but forgotten in the last quarter of the 20th century.85 

the denials of the Moon landings excite the response of crank and crackpot 

from most who hear them. Indeed, those conspiracy ideas deserve disdain. but 

so to, do many other conspiracy theories that are now major elements of the 

84. See the fascinating discussion of myth and history in hayden White, Metahistory:The Historical 

Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (baltimore, MD: Johns hopkins university press, 1973); 

and roland barthes, “the Discourse of history,” trans. Stephen bann, Comparative Criticism: A 

Yearbook 3 (1981): 3-20; Dominick LaCapra, Rethinking Intellectual History (Ithaca, Ny: Cornell 

university press, 1983); brook thomas, The New Historicism: And Other Old-Fashioned Topics 

(princeton, NJ: princeton university press, 1991). 

85. frederick Jackson turner, “the Significance of the frontier in american history,” The 

Frontier in American History (New york, Ny: holt, rinehart, and Winston, 1920), pp. 1-38; 

richard Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America 

(New york, Ny: atheneum, 1992); John Mack faragher, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: 

The Significance of the Frontier in American History, and Other Essays (New york, Ny: henry 

holt, 1994); allan g. bogue, Frederick Jackson Turner: Strange Roads Going Down (Norman, 

oK: university of oklahoma press, 1998); ray allen billington, America’s Frontier Heritage 

(albuquerque, NM: university of New Mexico press, 1974). 
 

 

 

 

 

 

384 reMeMberINg the SpaCe age 

memory of the nation. for example, how many americans believe that John f. 

Kennedy was assassinated by means of a massive conspiracy that involved the 

national security establishment? More than 45 years of a persistent churning 

over the data, near data, and wishful thinking has forced massive fissures in 

the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Might this happen in the future in 

relation to the Moon landings? 

CoNCLuSIoN 

finally, who has the right—not to mention the power—to interpret the 

past? It seems obvious that the fierceness of the discourse over the possible 

narratives of the past has arisen from the desire to secure a national identity of 

one nation, one people, coupled with a concern that the bulwarks of appropriate 

conceptions may be crumbling. viewing history as largely a lesson in civics 

and a means of instilling in the nation’s citizenry a sense of awe and reverence 

for the nation state and its system of governance ensures that this debate over 

narratives will be vicious and longstanding. the dominant master narrative of 

spaceflight fits beautifully into this approach to seeing the past. It is one of an 

initial shock to the system, surprise, and ultimately recovery with success after 

success following across a broad spectrum of activities. It offers general comfort 

to the american public as a whole and an exceptionalistic, nationalistic, and 

triumphant model for understanding the nation’s past.86 Small wonder that this 

story of spaceflight emerged as the narrative so dominant from the earliest days 

of the space program. It offered a subtle, usable past for the nation as a whole. 

but that master narrative of both spaceflight and the larger american 

history began to break down with the rise of the new social history of the 

1960s.87 by the 1980s the consensus, exceptionalistic perspective on the 

american past had crumbled throughout academia, but it had not done so 

among the broader public and in the cultural institutions that sought to speak 

to the public.88 In this setting it would seem that the alternative spaceflight 

86. on american exceptionalism see Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A DoubleEdged Sword (New york, Ny: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997); Charles Lockhart, The Roots 

of American Exceptionalism: Institutions, Culture and Policies (New york, Ny: palgrave Macmillan, 

2003); Deborah L. Madsen, American Exceptionalism (oxford, MS: State university of Mississippi 

press, 1998); David W. Noble, Death of a Nation: American Culture and the End of Exceptionalism 

(Minneapolis, MN: university of Minnesota press, 2002). 

87. peter Charles hoffer, Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud—American History from Bancroft and 

Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (New york, Ny: public affairs, 2004), p. 63. 

88. frances fitzgerald, America Revised (boston, Ma: Little, brown, 1979), pp. 53-58; Michael 

Kammen, In the Past Lane: Historical Perspectives on American Culture (New york, Ny: oxford 

university press, 1997), pp. 64-68; Neil Jumonville, Henry Steele Commager: Midcentury 

Liberalism and the History of the Present (Chapel hill, NC: university of North Carolina press, 

1999), pp. 232-235. 
 

aMerICaN SpaCefLIght hIStory’S MaSter NarratIve 385 

aND the MeaNINg of MeMory 

narratives could emerge to challenge the master narrative, creating for their 

individual and individualistic followings a uniquely boutique but satisfactory 

interpretation of space exploration’s history. 

In the context of spaceflight, the duels between these four narratives have 

represented a battle for control of the national memory concerning this one area 

of the “lifeworld” of americans. Would it be one that is unified—one people, 

one nation—or one that was fragmented and personal? this is an important issue 

and fully worthy of consideration by all in the marketplace of ideas. by taking 

action to fashion and champion alternative narratives, individuals reasserted a 

fundamental direction over meaning whether for good or ill. political scientist 

Jürgen habermas has suggested that when the “instrumental rationality” of the 

state intrudes too precipitously into the lifeworld of its citizenry, they rise up 

in some form to correct its course or to cast it off altogether. the lifeworld is 

evident in the ways in which language creates the contexts of interpretations 

of everyday circumstances, decisions, and actions. he argues that the lifeworld 

is “represented by a culturally transmitted and linguistically organized stock 

of interpretive patterns.”89 for a not inconsequential proportion of americans 

the interpretation of space exploration that dominated the discourse has 

intruded into their lifeworld, as their alternative narratives certainly suggest. 

accordingly, they have taken direct action to alter this perspective. over time, 

their alternative narratives have come to challenge the master perspective 

invoked routinely. 

this leads back to the question posed above, who has the authority to decide 

what the history says? an old baseball joke is apropos here. three umpires were 

discussing how they call balls and strikes behind the plate. the first said, “I call 

them as they are,” a pre-modern, absolutist position. the second said, “I call 

them as I see them,” a position reflecting rationality and modernity. the third 

opined in a fit of post-modern existential angst, “they ain’t nothin’ til I call 

them.” It seems that this last perspective is the critical element in considering 

these various narratives about the history of the Space age. perhaps the reality 

of what happened does not matter all that much; the only thing that is truly 

important is the decision about its meaning. that may well be an intensely 

personal decision predicated on many idiosyncrasies and perspectives. When 

will historians begin to explore the process whereby this has taken place and 

seek to document and understand its evolution? 

89. Jürgen habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action,Volume 2: Lifeworld and System,A Critique of 

Functionalist Reason (boston, Ma: beacon press, 1987), p. 124.