Societal mpact of Spaceflight

Steven J. Dick

Roger D. Launius

Editors

NASA 

SP-2007-4801

Since the dawn of spaceflight, advocates of a 

robust space effort have argued that human 

activity beyond 

arth makes a significant 

difference in everyday life. ssertions abound 

about the “impact” of spaceflight on society 

and its relationship to the larger contours of 

human existence. ifty years after the Space 

ge began, it is 

time to examine the effects of spaceflight on society in a historically rigorous way. as the Space ge indeed had a significant effect 

on society? f so, what are those influences? 

What do we mean by an “impact” on society? 

nd what parts of society? onversely, has 

society had any effect on spaceflight? What 

would be different had there been no Space 

ge? he purpose of this volume is to 

examine these and related questions through 

scholarly research, making use especially of 

the tools of the historian and the broader social sciences and humanities. erein a 

stellar array of scholars does just that, and 

arrives at sometimes surprising conclusions. nce contemplated, the subject is broad, rich 

and stimulating. Spaceflight has commercial 

and economic dimensions, as well as social, cultural, and ideological ramifications. t 

touches on enduring merican values of 

pioneering, progress, enterprise, and rugged 

individualism. Worldwide it encompasses 

international cooperation and competition, 

and affects foreign policies, national security, 

and questions of the global environment. Viewing arth from space, and space 

from the vicinity of 

arth, alters world 

views, conceptions of self and others, and 

understandings of our place and purpose in 

the universe.

On the cover:

Top: This view of the rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 

astronauts as they came from behind the Moon after the 

lunar orbit insertion burn in December, 1968. Although the 

photo is commonly viewed as situated here, with Earth 

about five degrees off the horizon, the astronauts saw it as 

they rounded the moon with Earth to the left. 

Bottom: Many humans thrill to the spectacle and the 

promise of spaceflight. 

Steven J. Dick is the hief istorian for 

NS. e worked as an astronomer and 

historian of science at the U.S. Naval 

bservatory in Washington, D, for 24 years 

before coming to NSeadquarters in 2003. 

mong his most recent books are Critical Issues 

in the History of Spaceflight (2006, edited with 

Roger 

aunius), Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea 

and the Stars (2005, edited with Keith 

owing),

The Living Universe: NASA and the Development 

of Astrobiology (2004), and Sky and 

cean Joined:

The U.S. Naval bservatory, 1830–2000 (2003). 

e is the recipient of the Navy eritorious 

ivilian Service edal and the NSroup 

chievement ward, and he is a member of the 

nternational cademy of stronautics and the 

nternational stronomical Union.

Roger D. Launius is a member of the Division 

of Space istory at the Smithsonian nstitution’s 

National ir and Space useum in Washington, 

D. Between 1990 and 2002, he served as 

hief istorian of NS. e has written or 

edited more than 20 books on aerospace history, 

including Space: A Journey to 

ur Future (2004), 

Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars (2003), 

and Flight: A Celebration of 100 Years in Art and 

Literature(2003). 

is research interests encompass 

all areas of U.S. and space history and policy 

history, especially cultural aspects of the subject 

and the role of executive decision-makers and 

their efforts to define space exploration.

On the back cover:

Eagle Nebula—The picture was taken on April 1, 1995 with 

the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 

2. The color image is constructed from three separate images 

taken in the light of emission from different types of atoms. 

Red shows emission from singly-ionized sulfur atoms. Green 

shows emission from hydrogen. Blue shows light emitted by 

doubly-ionized oxygen atoms.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration 

NASA History Division 

Office of External Relations

Washington, DC 

2007

Steven J. Dick

Roger D. Launius 

Editors
 Societal

Impact

Spacefl

o

i

f

ght

 Societal

Impact

Spacefl

o

i

f

ght

Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius

Editors

National aeronautics and Space administration

Office of External Relations

History Division

Washington, Dc

2007

NaSa Sp-2007-4801
Library of congress cataloging-in-publication Data

Societal impact of spaceflight / Steven J. Dick and Roger D. Launius, editors.

 p. cm. — (the NaSa history series, NaSa Sp-2007-4801)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. astronautics and civilization. 2. astronautics—United States—History. I. Dick, Steven J. II. 

Launius, Roger D. 

cB440.S63 2007

303.48’3--dc22

 2007042444
INtRODUctION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

SEctION I Societal Impact of Spaceflight in Context

SEctION II Turning Point Impacts

Space in the ost- old War Environment 

SEctION III Commercial and Economic Impact
SEctION IV Applications Satellites, the Environment, 

and National Security

 

 

SEctION V Social Impact

 

 

 

 

SEctION VI Spaceflight, Culture and Ideology

vi Societal Impact of Spaceflight
SEctION VII Afterword

INDEx . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .659

Societal Impact of Spaceflight vii
viii Societal Impact of Spaceflight
Introduction 

Fifty years after humanity first broke the gravitational bonds of Earth, 

the societal impact of spaceflight is a compelling subject whose time has 

come. It was recognized early in the Space age that spaceflight would affect 

society. NaSa’s founding document, the National aeronautics and Space act 

of 1958, specifically charged the new agency with eight objectives, including 

“the establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained 

from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of 

aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.” although 

the Space act has been often amended, this provision has never changed, and 

still remains one of the main objectives of NaSa.1 Despite a few early studies, 

the mandate to study societal impact went unfulfilled as NaSa concentrated on 

the many opportunities and technical problems of spaceflight itself. 

It is time to take up the challenge once again. multidecade programs to 

explore the planets, build and operate large space telescopes and space stations, 

or take humans to the moon and mars, require that the public have a vested 

interest. the same is true of the space activities now spread around the world. 

But whether or not the ambitious space visions of the United States and other 

countries are fulfilled, the question of societal impact over the past 50 years 

remains urgent and may in fact help fulfill current visions or at least raise the 

level of debate. 

the subject of the societal impact of spaceflight, however, is not as simple 

as it may seem. Questions abound. Has the Space age in fact had an impact 

on society? If so, what are those influences? What do we mean by “impact,” 

“society,” and “spaceflight”? and, realizing that society is not monolithic, what 

parts of society might have been affected? conversely, has society had an effect on 

spaceflight? to put it another way, in the currently popular mode of counterfactual 

history, What would be different had there been no Space age?2 

It is with such questions in mind that the NaSa History Division and the 

National air and Space museum’s Division of Space History jointly organized 

a conference on the subject in Washington, Dc from September 19–21, 

2006. Because the scope of the societal impact of spaceflight is enormous, 

the planners had their work cut out for them in trying to establish some 

thematic coherence rather than merely presenting a hodgepodge of papers. 

1. the National aeronautics and Space act and its complete legislative history may be found at http:// 

www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/spaceact-legishistory.pdf.the passage quoted here is on page 6. 

2. In the prologue to his book The Spaceflight Revolution (NaSa History Series Sp-4308,Washington, 

Dc,1995),James Hansen (one of the authors in this volume) discusses at some length the importance 

and uses of counterfactual “what if ” history in the context of spaceflight. 
x Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

the themes that emerged, all infused with the underlying questions above, 

form the sections contained in this book. 

First, it would seem obvious that certain turning points in the history 

of spaceflight must have had an impact: Sputnik, the moon landing, and 

the Space Shuttle disasters are etched in memory for better or worse. But 

unpacking the nature and extent of that impact is no simple task. Secondly, a 

commercial and economic component to spaceflight is undeniable. It ranges 

from a far-reaching aerospace industry at one end of the spectrum to the 

famous (and sometimes literally legendary) “spinoffs” at the other end; it is 

a part of national and international political economy; and it has sometimes 

measurable but often elusive effects on daily life and commerce. Economic 

impact is closely related to a third area: applications satellites, which are in turn 

often inseparable from environmental issues and national security. Imaging the 

Earth from space and global space surveillance have played an arguably central 

role in the increasingly heated debate over climate change, and changed the 

manner in which national security issues are understood and interpreted. Just 

how central is a matter that only historical analysis can reveal. In a fourth 

domain, that of social impact, space activities have affected science, math, 

and engineering education; embodied questions of status, civil rights, and 

gender among other social issues; and led to the creation of “space states” such 

as california, Florida, and texas. Finally, spaceflight has affected culture in 

multiple ways, ranging from worldviews altered or completely transformed by 

the images of Earth from space and the spectacular views of space from Earthorbiting spacecraft, to our place in the universe made possible by studies of 

cosmic evolution and the search for extraterrestrial life and the embodiment 

of these and other themes in literature and the arts. Several essays in this 

volume also address issues of spaceflight, ideology, and culture, in particular 

the space movement and its links to ideas of progress and utopia. 

these overarching themes in turn raise further questions. What is the 

difference between social impact and cultural impact? What is the interplay 

between spaceflight and those enduring american values of pioneering, 

progress, enterprise, and rugged individualism? How does this interplay 

differ from experiences in the Soviet/Russian, European, or chinese milieu? 

How has spaceflight affected conceptions of self and others, as well as our 

understanding of purpose in the universe? In the end, all the themes in this 

volume form overlapping domains, and the attentive reader will find a synergy 

between the thematic sections in the book. 

although we believe we have captured many of the overarching themes, 

gaps undoubtedly remain, and at a lower level there is certainly no claim 

to be comprehensive, only an offer of representative exemplars from the 

major themes. In the area of commercial impact, for example, aside from 

applications satellites only one paper (Jennifer Ross-Nazzal) explicitly 
INtRODUctION xi 

addresses a commercial spinoff of the space program—the area most people 

think of immediately when and if they think at all about spaceflight and 

society. History, rather than public affairs, has an important role to play here 

in analyzing commercial impacts. an entire volume could be devoted to this 

subject alone, and further volumes in the NaSa History Series will do so. 

the themes of this volume also tie into deeper threads of contemporary 

intellectual argument. One has to do with the meaning of culture. more than 

50 years ago two anthropologists collapsed 164 distinct definitions of culture 

into one: “[c]ulture is a product; is historical; includes ideas, pattern, and 

values; is selective; is learned; is based upon symbols; and is an abstraction 

from behavior and the products of behavior.”3 more recently clifford Geertz 

defined culture as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embedded 

in symbolic forms by means of which men [people] communicate, perpetuate 

and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.”4 according to 

Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson—famed for his work on sociobiology—each 

society creates culture and is created by it.5 In short, culture and society are 

moving targets, evolving with time and in space (perhaps literally in outer 

space); not only does chinese culture differ from Western culture, both were 

different 50 years ago than they are now. 

another broadly related intellectual theme is postmodernism, the 

construction of our worldview. In the context of this volume one might 

well ask about the societal and cultural impact on spaceflight rather than of 

spaceflight. Glen asner points out in his paper that little attention is given 

to the possibility of reverse effect in this volume, despite explicit requests 

in the call for papers (John Logsdon, with his examination of the impact of 

the post-cold War environment, is one exception). as asner puts it “the 

concept of societal impact is problematic to the extent that it is based on an 

assumption that the influence of spaceflight on society is more worthy of 

analysis than other conceptualizations of the relationship, such as the influence 

of society on spaceflight or the mutual shaping of spaceflight and society.”6 

He suggests possibilities for examining the history of spaceflight by focusing 

on status, race, and gender in the context of work, the local community, and 

3. alfred L. Kroeber and clyde K. m. Kluckhohn, Culture:A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, 

papers of the peabody museum, Harvard University, v. 47, no. 12, pp. 643-4, 656 (cambridge ma: 

the peabody museum, 1952). 

4. clifford Geertz,The Interpretation of Cultures (NewYork:Basic Books,1973),p.289.For more on the debate 

over the nature and meaning of culture see adam Kuper, Culture:The Anthropologists’ Account (Harvard 

University press: cambridge, ma, 1999). For debated differences between the concepts of culture and 

society a good starting point is Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing, Social and Cultural Anthropology: 

The Key Concepts (Routledge: London and NewYork, 2000), entries on “culture” and “society”. 

5. E. O.Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (Knopf: New York, 1998) 

6. Glen asner, this volume. 
xii Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

education. this means recognizing as viable subjects for historical analysis all 

individuals and social groups involved in space endeavors, regardless of their 

social standing. martin collins makes a similar point in the final paper in this 

volume, where he notes that Sputnik, and by extension other events in the 

history of spaceflight, was “a manifestation and symbol of deeper structures 

of economic and cultural order.” We would do well to ponder his call for 

“clarifying explanatory aims and tools—of placing spaceflight in history.”7 

Despite the importance of the subject, very few systematic studies of the 

societal impact of space exploration have been undertaken over the last 50 years. 

One exception that stands out from four decades ago is The Railroad and the 

Space Program: An Exploration of Historical Analogy. Funded by NaSa through 

the american academy of arts and Sciences, The Railroad and the Space Program 

focused on the uses of historical analogy to illuminate the problem of societal 

impact.confidentintheuseofhistoricalanalogyassuggestive,butnotpredictive, 

of the future, the authors of the volume elaborated on two technological events 

whose beginnings were separated in time by 150 years. the railroad was, they 

said, an engine of social revolution that had its greatest impact only 50 years 

after the start of the railways in america. as a transportation system, the railway 

had to be competitive with canals and turnpikes and, 20 years after the start 

of railways in america, more miles of canals were being built than railroads. 

It was not at all clear that railroads could be economically feasible. However, 

though many technological, economic and managerial hurdles needed to be 

overcome, railroads are still with us. In the course of the nineteenth century 

they represented human conquest of natural obstacles, with consequences for 

humans’ view of nature and our place in it. moreover, secondary consequences 

often turned out to have greater societal impact than the supposed primary 

purposes for which they were built. 

the space program has had, and still has, it technological challenges, and 

the economic benefits may be even longer-term than those of the railroad. 

But by conquering the third dimension of space, as aviation did to a very 

small extent in the thin skin of Earth’s atmosphere and as the railroad did in 

two geographical dimensions, in the long run the space program may have 

an impact that exceeds that of the railroad. although originally suspicious of 

parallels with the past, present, and future, the authors in the end saw “the 

possibility of moving up onto a level of abstraction where the terrain of the 

past is suggestive of the topography of the present and its future projection.”8 

they cautioned that in taking such an approach, as much empirical detail 

7. martin collins, this volume. 

8. Bruce mazlish (ed). The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy. 

(cambridge, ma: mIt press, 1965). 
INtRODUctION xiii 

should be used as possible and analogies drawn from vague generalities should 

be avoided. Four decades later, The Railroad and the Space Program still makes 

for relevant reading. 

In addition to that early study, there have been sporadic forays. On the 

occasion of the 60th anniversary of the British Interplanetary Society, NaSa 

was heavily involved in a special issue of its journal devoted to “the impact 

of space on culture.”9 there NaSa scientists charles Elachi (now Director 

of the Jet propulsion Laboratory) and W. I. mcLaughlin, as well as historian 

Sylvia Kraemer, among others, discussed the impact of space endeavors on 

space science, politics, the fine arts, and education. In 1994 the mission from 

planet Earth program in the Office of Space Science at NaSa sponsored a 

symposium entitled “What is the Value of Space Exploration?” a variety of 

speakers ranging from carl Sagan to Stephen Jay Gould discussed the scientific, 

economic, cultural, and educational impact of space exploration.10 

more recently, in 2005 the International academy of astronautics 

(Iaa), which has a commission devoted to space and society, sponsored the 

first international conference on space and society in Budapest, Hungary.11 

the Iaa and the European Space agency (ESa) jointly sponsored a study 

published as The Impact of Space Activities upon Society,

12 in which well-known 

players on the world scene briefly discussed their ideas of societal impact, 

ranging from the practical to the inspirational. 

In addition to these activities, the authors of more general studies of 

spaceflight have on occasion tackled the subject of societal impact. In her 

book Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped our Vision of a World Beyond, 

marina Benjamin argues that space exploration has shaped our worldviews in 

more ways than one. “the impact of seeing the Earth from space focused our 

energies on the home planet in unprecedented ways, dramatically affecting 

our relationship to the natural world and our appreciation of the greater 

community of mankind, and prompting a revolution in our understanding of 

the Earth as a living system,” she wrote. Benjamin thinks it no coincidence 

that the first Earth Day on 20 april 1970 occurred in the midst of the apollo 

program; or that one of the astronauts developed a new school of spiritualism 

while others have also been profoundly affected spiritually; or that people 

9. British Interplanetary Society,“the Impact of Space on culture,” Journal of the British Interplanetary 

Society, 1993; 46(11). 

10. NaSa. What is the value of space exploration? July 18–19, 1994, NaSa History Reference 

collection. 

11. Iaa, 2005. meeting agenda at http://www.iaaweb.org/iaa/Publications/budapest2005fp.pdf 

12. European Space agency, The Impact of Space Activities upon Society, ESa BR-237, 2005. 
xiv Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

“should be drawn to an innovative model for the domestic economy sprung 

free from the american space program by NaSa administrator James Webb.” 

Space exploration shapes world views and changes cultures in unexpected 

ways; by corollary, so does lack of exploration.13 

Others have demonstrated the complex relation of space goals to social, 

racial, and political themes (see Kim mcQuaid in this volume). One such study 

is De Witt Kilgore’s Astrofuturism: Science, Race and Visions of Utopia in Space, 

where the author examines the work of Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Robert 

Heinlein, arthur c. clarke, Gentry Lee, Gerard O’Neill, and Ben Bova, among 

others, in what he calls the tradition of american astrofuturism.14 

Finally, we fully recognize that this volume is centered on Western 

culture and especially the United States. and although Western space 

programs may have had worldwide effects by their very scope and nature, we 

consider this analysis only a beginning and hope it will generate more robust 

discussion and comparison with the impact of space programs in other parts 

of the world. It also needs to be said that this conference and this volume were 

decidedly not designed as commercials for NaSa or spaceflight in general. 

as scholars, our goal is not propaganda, but to use rigorous scholarly methods 

to examine societal impact. Only then can we begin to hope to measure the 

real impact of spaceflight. 

In closing, we wish to thank our organizing committee, which included 

the staff of the NaSa History Division (Glen asner, Nadine andreassen, 

colin Fries, Stephen Garber, John Hargenrader, and Jane Odom), Roger 

Launius and his staff at the Smithsonian National air and Space museum 

(NaSm), Linda Billings, Giny cheong, John cloud (National Oceanic and 

atmospheric administration [NOaa]) and a variety of others from whom 

we sought advice. We thank Scott pace, NaSa associate administrator 

for program analysis and Evaluation; Donald Lopez, NaSm Deputy 

Director; and ted maxwell, NaSm associate Director for collections and 

Research, all of whom gave opening remarks at the meeting. Our thanks 

also to our session chairs: William Becker (George Washington University), 

13. marina Benjamin, Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped our Vision of a World Beyond (Free press: 

New York, 2003). 

14. De Witt Douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: Science, Race and Visions of Utopia in Space (University of 

pennsylvania press: philadelphia, 2003). 
INtRODUctION xv 

Dwayne Day (National Research council), cathy Lewis (NaSm), michael 

ciancone (NaSa Johnson Space center), and William Sims Bainbridge 

(National Science Foundation). Our thanks to NaSa’s printing and Design 

office for seeing this volume through the press. and finally, our thanks 

to the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn museum, which provided an 

appropriately artistic and congenial venue for the meeting. 

Steven J. Dick, NaSa chief Historian 

Roger D. Launius, National air and Space museum 

Washington, Dc December 2007 
xvi Societal Impact of Spaceflight
Section I 

Societal impact of Spaceflight 

in context 

~


chapter 1 

Has Spaceflight Had an Impact on Society? 

an Interpretative Framework 

howard e. mccurdy 

s a person who works with political scientists, i must confess that the effort to aassess the societal impact of spaceflight reminds me a bit of the story about the 

mayor who reduced crime.You may recall that rudolph giuliani, the get-toughon-crime U.S. attorney for southern new York State, narrowly defeated incumbent 

David Dinkins for the new York city mayoralty post in 1993. at the time, crime 

in new York city seemed to be out of control. giuliani embraced the “broken 

window”theory of crime prevention,drawn from a 1982 article by James Q.Wilson 

and george l. Kelling and promoted by William J. Bratton, giuliani’s head of 

police. in essence, the theory suggests that tolerance of low-level vandalism (broken 

windows) encourages additional petty crime and eventually more serious offenses. 

giuliani and Bratton adopted a “zero-tolerance” policy toward petty crimes such 

as graffiti marking, subway turnstile jumping, and “squeegee men” who demanded 

payment for cleaning the windshields of automobile drivers stuck in traffic. Upon 

implementation of the policy—a turning point in the history of new York city— 

crimes rates dropped suddenly and dramatically and continued to fall thereafter.1 

the story set off a frenzy of methodological investigation among social scientists 

interested in the societal impact of rudolph giuliani’s policy toward crime. from the 

scientific point of view,giuliani had proposed a theory.as good social scientists,analysts 

used the tools of statistical analysis and econometrics to compare the explanatory power 

of giuliani’s theory relative to other theories of crime.the findings become elaborate at 

this point, but in general were not kind to the idea that giuliani’s zero-tolerance policy 

affected crime. for example, economist Steven D. levitt with co-author Stephen J. 

Dubner suggest that the drop in crime could more easily be explained by demographic 

factors such as a decline in the number of angry young males.2 

1. James Q.Wilson and george l.Kelling,“BrokenWindows,” Atlantic Monthly (march 1982), pp. 29–38. 

2. Steven D. leavitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics:A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side 

of Everything (new York:William morrow, 2005); see also george l. Kelling and catherine coles, 

Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities (new York: martin 

Kessler, 1996). 
	 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

i was reminded of the giuliani story while scanning back issues of naSa’s 

Spinoff publication. for the past 30 years, naSa’s commercial technology program 

has produced a book-sized publication that annually lists 0 to 50 space technologies 

adopted by the commercial sector. the effects imputed to the apollo flights to the 

moon alone are impressive.according to the publication,project apollo contributed to 

the development of computed axial tomography (cat) scan machines, kidney dialysis, 

cordless power tools, athletic shoe designs, freeze-dried foods, and the cool suits worn 

by national association for Stock car auto racing (naScar) race drivers. in total, 

naSa officials have identified 1,00 space technologies that have “benefited U.S. 

industry, improved the quality of life and created jobs for americans.” i must admit that 

i approach such claims of societal impact with the same degree of skepticism that social 

scientists direct at giuliani’s theory of crime prevention.perhaps the naSa Space flight 

program gave us freeze-dried foods and other such benefits;perhaps it did not.Without 

extensive investigation of a scientific sort, it is difficult to tell.3 

in some ways, claims of societal impact tell us more about ourselves than they 

do about the societal changes we think we observe. giuliani’s theory, embraced 

by the few republicans remaining in a hugely Democratic city, might say more 

about the social preference of upper-middle-class americans for neatness and order 

than the prevention of crime. giuliani’s zero-tolerance policy may or may not 

have affected a drop in crime, but it did make new York city a friendlier place 

for middle- and upper-middle-class families. in a similar way, images of the space 

program reveal much about the fabric of american society. the images tell us a 

great deal about who we think we are and where we believe we might like to go. 

in preparing Space and the American Imagination, i concentrated on the latter. 

i tried to place visions about space travel, which are plentiful, into the broader context 

of the social movements upon which they draw.thus,efforts to view space as the “final 

frontier”could be viewed as an attempt to revitalize the values thought to flow from the 

experience of westward migration in northamerica.the fact that so many advocates of 

spaceflight emphasize the frontier analogy says something about the impact they would 

like to have uponamerican society.the next step,obviously,requires an examination of 

the impact that the experience actually produces relative to the expectations proffered. 

Both subjects—the study of impacts and the examination of expectations— 

present methodological challenges. in this chapter, i will comment upon those 

challenges and the manner in which they affect our effort to understand the 

societal impact of spaceflight.the chapter deals with the methodological challenges 

presented by efforts to understand the material consequences of spaceflight, its 

cultural effects, and its unanticipated consequences. 

3. naSa	 Scientific and technical information (Sti), “apollo’s contributions to america,” 21 

october 2005, http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/apollo.htm (accessed 27 august 2006). 

. howard e. mccurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington: Smithsonian institution press, 

1997). 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 5 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

Assessing Impacts 

among the 1,00 spinoffs ascribed to the U.S. civil space program, one of the 

most interesting involves the relationship between spaceflight and the computing 

industry. the relationship illustrates the difficulties of assessing impact. naSa 

scientists and engineers installed integrated circuits (ics) in their lunar and planetary 

spacecraft prior to the widespread use of these devices.the people designing the 

apollo flight computer, for example, incorporated ics—an achievement driven 

by their realization that clunky, universal automatic computer (UniVac)-type 

computing machines would be too large for a spacecraft with severe mass constraints. 

the consequent utilization of ics for a wide range of earthly applications has been 

called “one of the most significant occurrences in the history of mankind.”5 it is 

tempting to see a relationship between spaceflight and the ic/personal computer 

(pc) revolution, and one can find occasional references to pcs as a spinoff of the 

space program, along with teflon® and Velcro® straps.6 

as might be anticipated, the actual relationship between spaceflight and 

computing is more complex.no simple cause-and-effect relationship can be shown. 

as the author of one naSa history office publication concludes: 

Since naSa is well known as an extensive user of computers— 

mainly because spaceflight would not be possible without them— 

there is a common sense that at least part of the reason for the rapid 

growth and innovation in the computer industry is that naSa 

has served as a main driver due to its requirements.actually, the 

situation is not so straightforward. in most cases, because of the 

need for reliability and safety, naSa deliberately sought to use 

proven equipment and techniques . . . [g]eneralizations cannot 

be made, other than that there was no conscious attempt on the 

part of naSa in its flight programs to improve the technology 

of computing.7 

Social scientists view statements about impacts arising from historical events with 

a great deal of suspicion.methodologically,such statements take the form of interrupted 

time-series analysis.this is one of the weakest forms of policy analysis and one that 

social scientists often urge investigators to avoid.When done in a retrospective fashion, 

the technique can be quite misleading. Knowing that a change in society followed a 

5. Wikipedia, “integrated 	circuits,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_circuit, 25 august 2006 

(accessed 27 august 2006). 

6. See John Savard,“microcomputers as a Space Spinoff,” http://www.gatago.com/sci/space/policy/21491345. 

html,27 June 2006;and eleanora.o’rangers,“naSa Spin-offs:Bringing Space Down to earth,”http:// 

www.space.com/adastra/adastra_spinoffs_050127.html,26 January 2005 (both accessed 27august 2006). 

7. James e.tomayko, Computers in Spaceflight:The NASA Experience, naSa history office, contractor 

report 182505, march 1988, p. 2. 
6 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

turning point in no way verifies that the event caused the change.the change could be 

due to other factors or it could have occurred in the absence of the intervening event. 

absent statistical controls or experimental methods, it is quite impossible to know. 

policy analysts utilize a number of techniques that compensate for the limitations 

of interrupted time-series analysis.they engage in comparative studies; insist that 

statements about cause and effect be grounded in theory; and require analysts to 

derive predictions from the hypotheses proposed. 

comparative analysis helps to remove many of the shortcomings associated with 

the study of societal impacts. conclusions drawn from a single set of events in a single 

society are the equivalent of hypotheses tested using a sample of one. Such tests have 

a wide margin of error. the incorporation of information from other settings can 

broaden the analysis and enhance its reliability. What may appear to be anomalies 

in one setting may seem common when viewed comparatively. the unexpected 

difficulties of producing a large, cheap, reliable space shuttle in the United States were 

repeated with the Soviet Buran spacecraft, which turned out to be so expensive that 

Soviet officials abandoned the program. conversely, what appears to be common 

may turn out to be unique. one of the universal benefits of human spaceflight, 

for example, is thought to be national prestige.this has both external (impressing 

other nations) and internal (building national confidence) dimensions.8 assessing 

whether such activity actually produces such effects can be enhanced by examining 

the process in many nations, including the reactions of those that do not engage in 

human space travel.What seems to be generally believed (that spaceflight confers 

prestige) can be tested for its effects. comparative work of this sort is underway by 

asif Siddiqi, James t.andrews, James hansen, and margaret Weitekamp, and much 

of it appears in this publication. 

grounding statements in theory and making predictions based on those 

theories also helps. the history of spaceflight suffers from no lack of predictions; 

notoriety often flows to those persons whose predictions turn out to be true. one 

of the most notable is arthur c. clarke’s anticipation of communication satellites, 

famously presented in a 195 edition of Wireless World. in that publication, clarke 

pointed out that a communication station placed in geostationary orbit “could act as 

a repeater to relay transmissions between any two points on the hemisphere beneath” 

and that three such stations would provide “complete coverage of the globe.” clarke 

did not actually predict the use of such stations—“[S]uch an undertaking may seem 

8. See John m. logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest (chicago: 

University of chicago press, 1976) and roger D. launius,“compelling rationales for Spaceflight: 

history and the Search for relevance,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. Dick 

and roger D. launius, ed. (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-2006-702, 2006), pp. 37–70. 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 7 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

fantastic,” he said—but, rather, pointed out its feasibility and advantages relative to 

ground-based transmitters. nonetheless, the article is generally credited as having 

anticipated the use of communication satellites and is often presented as part of 

narratives assessing the impact of such.9 

regrettably, such statements are not very helpful in assessing societal impact— 

even when the statements are true. a correct prediction offered in the absence 

of a supporting theory is as unreliable as an ex post facto statement about cause 

and effect. Such a prediction is subject to a number of methodological pitfalls, 

the most striking being what is known as the “Jeane Dixon effect.” Dixon was a 

psychic who famously predicted the election and assassination of president John f. 

Kennedy.John allen paulos,a temple University professor and commentator on the 

general public’s misunderstanding of mathematic principles, noted how the science 

of probabilities ensures that someone like Dixon will make a fair number of correct 

predictions if that person makes a sufficiently large number of forecasts.adding to 

the accumulated tally of her errors,Dixon predicted that World War iii would begin 

in 1958; that labor leader Walter reuther would run for president in 196; and 

that the Soviet Union would win the race to the moon.10 the Dixon effect refers 

to the tendency of observers viewing events with the advantage of hindsight to 

overlook false forecasts while applauding the ones that did come true. 

By grounding a prediction in theory, the suggestion of cause and effect can be 

assessed twice.the effect can be checked on the basis of whether or not it occurred 

and the theory can be checked for its underlying logic.a correct prediction, such as 

those that Dixon did make, cannot be judged to reveal an effect if the underlying 

theory is flawed. Dixon derived her predictions from the practice of astrology, a 

clearly misdirected theory.clarke offered his speculations regarding communication 

satellites without regard to any theory at all.like numerous other pieces anticipating 

some development in spaceflight,clarke’s article speculates neither on the likelihood 

that his proposal might be adopted nor on the possible impact of worldwide 

communication. he merely comments on the technical feasibility of orbiting 

communication stations and predicts that the coverage they would provide would 

be cost-effective relative to the ground-based systems the stations would replace. it 

should be noted, in this respect, that clarke also predicted that his communication 

platforms would take the form of space stations with people on-board and that their 

development would be expedited by the use of nuclear-powered rockets by 1965.11 

9.arthur c.clarke,“extra terrestrial relays:can rocket Stations give World Wide radio coverage?” 

Wireless World (october 195), p. 306. See also irving fang, A History of Mass Communication: Six 

Information Revolutions (Boston: focal press, 1997), p. 210, and Donald h. martin, Communication 

Satellites, th ed. (el Segundo, ca:aerospace press, 2000). 

10. John allen paulos, Beyond Numeracy: Ruminations of a Numbers Man (new York: alfred a. Knopf, 

1991), p. 0. 

11. clarke,“extra terrestrial relays,” pp. 306, 308.
8 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

a sound assessment of societal impact is enhanced to the degree that the 

analysis is rooted in sound theory, derives testable predictions from the theory, and 

utilizes more than one case as a basis for testing the statements proffered. Such 

standards are hard to apply to the material effects of spaceflight, such as commercial 

products or applications in the realm of national defense.assessing cultural impacts 

is even more challenging. 

Cultural Effects 

events in spaceflight have social,cultural,and ideological effects.in many ways, 

these are more interesting than the material spinoffs from the space program, since 

they involve both imagination and effect. in an odd sort of way, the effects of 

spaceflight influence their causes. put more simply, what people imagine might 

happen in space serves as a basis for making it occur.the anticipation of cultural 

impacts thus provides the motivation to undertake the activities necessary to produce 

the change. many chapters in this book are concerned with the social, cultural, and 

ideological effects of events in space. 

the cultural effects of spaceflight (a term meant to also include social and 

ideological effects) bounce between the relativism inherent in postmodern analysis 

and the reality of space physics. postmodern analysis postulates the notion that 

people ultimately determine the types of worlds in which they live through the 

thoughts they have; physics presents principles that are hard to violate. one is 

relative, the other deterministic. 

By imagining space or, more specifically, anticipating the events that will occur 

there,people may shape their future.the direction of that shaping can be conservative 

or radical. i would like to suggest that the dominant forms of spaceflight anticipation, 

especially in the United States, are conservative. in america, expectations about space 

have been offered as a means of reinforcing the dominant values in society, including 

many that existed before space travel began.this may help to explain why modern 

conservatives are more supportive of space exploration than are american liberals. 

expectations regarding the cultural effects of spaceflight are often expressed 

metaphorically.metaphors are figures of speech that contain an implied comparison, 

easing the challenge of explaining strange and often unfathomable phenomena to 

an often inattentive public.the comparison of spaceflight to terrestrial expeditions 

of discovery, for example, casts the complexity of interplanetary travel in terms 

the general public can more readily understand. in the United States, spaceflight 

has been described using metaphors that characterize the most salient features 

of american life. the metaphors are many. the exploration of space, we are told, 

will be like frontier life—resurrecting the experience of westward migration in 

an extraterrestrial realm.the exploration of space will provide sources of business 

opportunity in the same way that industrial and postindustrial developments gave 

the United States the most prosperous economy in the history of the world. Space 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 9 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

will be the new military “high ground,” similar to the roman roadways and the 

aviation hardware that conferred national power upon the nations that pursued 

the supporting technologies. Spaceflight—or at least the investigative part of it— 

will help to maintain the scientific revolution that made empiricism the primary 

means for studying natural phenomena. Spaceflight will continue to serve as a 

demonstration of national prowess, in the same manner that expositions and world 

fairs have provided national demonstrations of technology. Spaceflight will allow 

a “revenge of the nerds,” elevating the status of people who did not have much 

social standing during their adolescent years.these metaphors confer expectations 

regarding the impact of spaceflight, especially in america. 

although the use of metaphors eases the task of explaining prospective impacts 

of spaceflight, it also gives those expectations a distinctly conservative flavor. if 

spaceflight continues over many centuries,it might produce transformations as radical 

as those that the renaissance imposed on the medieval world. Spaceflight might 

lead to fundamental alterations in the human species, or to scary new discoveries 

that result in a total reorganization of society. it might be like nothing we have 

ever experienced before. Science fiction writers such as h. g.Wells, isaac asimov, 

and arthur c. clarke have explored some of these possibilities.12 the dominant 

metaphors (at least those presented in the United States) do not anticipate radical 

change. instead, the american vision of spaceflight promises to conserve the values 

associated with the continental frontier, our business civilization, the scientific 

revolution, national security, overall progress based on technology, and the tendency 

to elevate scientists, engineers, and other experts to positions of power in society. 

collectively, these are distinctly american values. 

the rhetoric of spaceflight demonstrates the presence of these expectations, at 

least in the United States. america is thought to be a frontier nation, with many of 

its characteristics shaped by the presence of open land and the absence of established 

institutions such as those found in feudal europe.the innovative spirit,the preference for 

democracy,and the absence of social barriers that would otherwise impede cooperation 

and perpetuate inequality are all thought to flow from the american frontier.at least, 

that is how it has appeared to many of the people whose european ancestors arrived 

in america after 1600.13 Space travel is commonly presented as a means of extending 

12. See the concepts of evolutionary biology in h. g.Wells, The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, 

frank D. mcconnell, ed. (new York: oxford University press, 1977); global transformation in 

arthur c. clarke, Childhood’s End (new York: harcourt Brace & World, 1953); and psychohistory 

in isaac asimov, Foundation (new York: gnome press, 1951). for an analogous view, also see ray 

Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near:When Humans Transcend Biology (new York:Viking, 2005). 

13. frederick Jackson turner, “the Significance of the frontier in american history,” in John m. 

farager, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner (new York: henry holt, 199). 
10 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

these traditions.“Without a frontier from which to breathe new life,” robert Zubrin 

argues,“the spirit that gave rise to the progressive humanistic culture that america has 

represented for the past two centuries is fading.” Zubrin advocates the settlement of 

mars as a means of perpetuating the values associated with the american frontier.1 

according to political scientist Dwight Waldo,america is a distinctly businessoriented civilization. this is a central feature of american life. Wealth and power 

flow from the strength of business enterprise and the corporations around which the 

economy is structured. not surprisingly,americans advocate corporate methods as 

the best means for organizing the global economy and the government bureaucracies 

that regulate it. americans also anticipate the extension of business activities into 

space. in 2001, journalist lou Dobbs announced that space will provide the next 

great business frontier;it will create “entirely new forms of technology,new forms of 

manufacturing,new forms of recreation,and even new materials,”he said.according 

to this prophesy, space commerce will provide business opportunities as large as 

those emerging from the internet revolution, and will cease to be the province of 

government agencies interested primarily in science and exploration. in this sense, 

spaceflight serves to extend the values associated with corporate capitalism.15 

america’s status as a world superpower is largely based on a military apparatus 

that relies upon technology to project force and reduce risk. in this context, the 

cosmos is consistently represented as the new military“high ground.”Senate majority 

leader and later president lyndon B. Johnson embraced this point of view when he 

helped launch america’s entry into space by declaring that “control of space means 

control of the world.”advocates of both robotic and human spaceflight continue to 

use national security arguments as a justification for U.S. supremacy in this realm.16 

americans are quintessential progressives, generally accepting the promethean 

notion that progress as a whole is good for humankind and that such progress 

typically occurs through advances in science and technology. historically, not 

all cultures have embraced the doctrine of progress through technology. Some 

groups elevate the attainment of spirituality through religious faith and salvation, a 

perspective that exhibits mosques and cathedrals rather than rocket ships as symbols 

of perfection. in the eighteenth century, the doctrines of natural rights and reason 

formed the basis for the concept of human perfection. Space travel and its various 

1. robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars:The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (new York:free 

press,1996),p.297.See also national commission on Space (thomas o.paine,chair), Pioneering the 

Space Frontier (new York: Bantam Books, 1986). 

15. Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State:A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration 

(new York: ronald press, 198), p. 5; lou Dobbs with h. p. newquist, Space:The Next Business 

Frontier (new York: pocket Books, 2001), p. 2. 

16. Statement of Democratic leader lyndon B.Johnson to the meeting of the Democratic conference 

on 7 January 1958, Statements of lBJ collection, Box 23, lyndon Baines Johnson library,austin, 

texas; see also office of Science and technology policy, executive office of the president, the 

White house,“U.S. national Space policy,” 31 august 2006. 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 11 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

spinoffs emphasize a view of progress rooted in the age of enlightenment and the 

scientific revolution that accompanied it.these are cultural choices, unattached to 

any absolute requirement that human civilizations advance in one particular way. 

the cultural manifestations of spaceflight also help to answer the classic social 

question:Who should rule? throughout history, this question has been answered in 

different ways. in some societies, priests rule; in others, hereditary monarchs. plato 

favored guardians,who ruled on the basis of their innate understanding of the good. 

the doctrine of technological progress favors rule by experts, in which scientists, 

engineers, and other experts employ objective methods to discover the “one best 

way” of organizing social affairs, typically accompanied by an emphasis on the need 

for efficiency in a machine-based civilization.the concept that experts should build 

and operate the machinery of a technological society seems intuitively obvious, but 

it is not a choice that has been pursued by all civilizations at all times.17 

two concepts help frame the use of metaphors as a means of explaining 

both past and anticipated impacts of spaceflight. one is the doctrine of american 

exceptionalism; the other is the vocabulary of postmodern analysis. the doctrine of 

american exceptionalism, rooted in works such as those by alexis de tocqueville, 

frederick Jackson turner, louis hartz, and aaron Wildavsky, traces the power of the 

american experience to relatively unique material and social conditions.these include 

the absence of feudal institutions and the existence of an open frontier—conditions 

thought to encourage equality,cooperation,creativity,democracy,and a liberal tradition 

as the term is used in its classical,lockean sense.18 Spaceflight,in this regard,is presumed 

to provide an analogous force, encouraging the perpetuation of traditions thought to 

have made america unique.Without such a continuing force, advocates of the doctrine 

suggest,america will become more like the rest of the world.the doctrine ofamerican 

exceptionalism is speculative and controversial,but serves as a larger framework through 

which the presumed impact of spaceflight can be examined. 

postmodern analysis provides a number of concepts useful for examining the 

manner in which imagination shapes future events. proponents of this perspective 

emphasize the roles that the broadcast media and similar technologies play in 

decentralizing power and framing ideas within the public at large. Under these 

conditions, ideas are thought to take shape in the minds of the beholders and lack an 

17. See Sylvia D. fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo (Washington: naSa Sp-10, 1992); 

homer h. hickam, Rocket Boys:A Memoir (new York: Delacorte press, 1998); Jeff Kanew, Revenge 

of the Nerds [film] (20th century fox, 198), and Waldo, The Administrative State. 

18. alexis de tocqueville,	 Democracy in America (new York: Vintage Books, 195); turner, “the 

Significance of the frontier in american history”; louis hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America:An 

Interpretation of American Political Thought Since the Revolution (new York: harcourt, Brace & World, 

1955);aaron Wildavsky, The Rise of Radical Egalitarianism (Washington:american University press, 

1991). See also Seymour martin lipset, American Exceptionalism:A Double-Edged Sword (new York: 

W.W. norton, 1996).
12 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

objective reality.this is not a totally new concept and may be associated with periods 

other than the postmodern one. in separate works, Joseph corn and roderick nash 

demonstrate the manner in which mental images have shaped the development of 

aviation and theamerican environmental conservation movement.nash,in particular, 

shows how modern conservation required for its birth and sustenance a reformulation 

of the popular conception of wilderness. By reframing “wilderness” from a condition 

of savage peril to a citadel of spiritual renewal,writers and artists made new government 

policies possible. a similar process guided the history of aviation. people imagined 

effects from aviation that far exceeded the material benefits of this new technology 

and which, in turn, helped to elicit government support.19 

expectations regarding spaceflight are expressed through a number of forms 

familiar to people engaged in postmodern analysis. one is hyperreality, or the 

reappropriation of familiar cultural symbols through the mass media. thus, gene 

roddenberry presented the original Star trek television series not so much as a 

work of science fiction but as a reinterpretation of the hollywood Western in an 

extraterrestrial setting. as his director’s notes reveal, this was a deliberate decision. 

the hollywood Western was a proven product;resetting it in space helped to ensure 

an audience for what might have otherwise been a quickly forgotten series. 

the concept of simulacrum also guides postmodern analysis. this concept 

characterizes the process of making imperfect copies of original forms, as a paintby-numbers kit might reproduce a work of art by Vincent Van gogh.Visions of 

spaceflight abound with simulacrum, from winged spaceships that resemble jet 

fighters to robots that often resemble human beings. 

postmodern analysis provides a framework through which visions of 

spaceflight may be examined in a context that is larger than the subject itself. 

the postmodern concept of cultural relativism rejects the traditional notion that 

societies progress in predictable ways, as from agrarian to industrial, in favor of the 

more existential belief that people become what they choose to be.this directly 

contradicts the dominant interpretation in which spaceflight is seen as moving 

along a forward line of progress that nature provides.20 the postmodern framework 

accepts aspirations for space travel as social creations that vary according to the 

predispositions of the beings that create them.these contrasting points of view add 

conceptual depth to what might otherwise remain a relatively narrow assessment 

of impacts in a single field. 

19. Joseph J. corn, The Winged Gospel:America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 (new York: oxford 

University press, 1983); roderick f. nash, Wilderness and the American Mind, th ed. (new haven: 

Yale University press, 2001). 

20. See arthur c. clarke, 2001:A Space Odyssey (new York: new american library, 1968). 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 13 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

implemented visions of spaceflight eventually confront physical conditions;the 

laws of physics provide the ultimate methodological check on anticipated effects. 

Some of the more interesting checks occur in the social realm.take, for example, 

the widespread belief that space represents some sort of “final frontier.” this line 

of reasoning draws heavily on the american mythology of frontier life.Yet many 

other societies have confronted physical frontiers – and not always with the same 

results. an obscure but interesting article in the Journal of the British Interplanetary 

Society, using a comparative perspective, suggests that the conditions present in 

extraterrestrial colonies may lead to social and political effects quite different than 

those remembered from the american frontier. in america, frontiers are thought to 

have promoted equality, cooperation, and rural independence. conditions in space, 

however, may lead to the creation of societies that are autocratic, corporate, and 

feudal in nature.this is certainly the history of civilizations, such as ancient egypt, 

that employed hydraulic technologies to open barren lands. in this respect, any 

extraterrestrial colonies that actually arise may less resemble the mythical conditions 

thought to exist on the american frontier than the egyptian-like civilization 

presented in roland emmerich’s classic science fiction film Stargate.

21 

in presenting the ultimate justification for spaceflight, advocates such as carl 

Sagan and robert goddard argued that it would be necessary for the survival of 

humankind. carl Sagan insisted that no technological civilization could expect to 

live long without moving onto other planets, whereas robert goddard observed 

that humans would eventually need to disperse earthly life forms before the Sun 

grew cold. asked to address the British interplanetary Society, philosopher and 

science fiction writer olaf Stapledon posed a critical challenge in this regard. “if 

one undertakes to discuss what man ought to do with the planets,” Stapledon said, 

“one must first say what one thinks man ought to do with himself.”22 

put another way, exactly what aspects of human society do the advocates of 

spaceflight propose to preserve? the answer, taken generally from the words of 

spaceflight advocates, is that they plan to conserve the values associated with american 

exceptionalism and capitalist democracy.these are the frames through which spaceflight 

is most commonly viewed inamerica and they tend to create the principal expectations 

regarding the societal impacts that spaceflight is presumed to have. 

21. David Sivier,“the Development of politics in extraterrestrial colonies,”Journal of the British Interplanetary 

Society (September/october 2000); see also Karl a. Wittfogel, Oriental Despotism (new haven:Yale 

University press,1957) and roland emmerich, Stargate [film] (metro-goldwyn-mayer,199). 

22. carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (new York: random house, 

199); esther c. goddard and g. edward pendray, ed., The Papers of Robert H. Goddard (new York: 

mcgraw-hill, 1970) Vol. 3, p. 1612; olaf Stapledon,“interplanetary man?” in robert crossley, An 

Olaf Stapledon Reader (Syracuse, nY: Syracuse University press, 1997), pp. 232–233. 
1 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Unanticipated Consequences 

finally, how does one deal with unanticipated impacts? Some effects appear 

outside the cultural anticipation imposed on spaceflight and do not receive a decent 

share of predictions in advance. commenting on the nature of the universe in 

general, British geneticist, biometrician, and physiologist J. B. S. haldane suggested 

that in some respects it “is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we 

can suppose.”23 for some of its ultimate effects, the impact of spaceflight may turn 

out to be stranger than people are able to imagine in advance. 

two recent developments help to illustrate this situation.the first is the sofar disappointing pursuit of extraterrestrial life. the widespread expectation that 

spaceflight will result in the discovery of extraterrestrial life permeates the early 

literature on spaceflight, from the contemplation of environmental conditions on 

mars to the presentation of alien forms in science fiction.2 in a fashion similar to 

other metaphors imposed on space travel, the vision of a universe teeming with 

life derives much of its force from the widespread expectation that expeditions in 

the extraterrestrial realm will be similar to earlier ventures in the terrestrial one. 

terrestrial explorers returned with tales of exotic species and strange cultures, 

fueling expectations that extraterrestrial journeys would reveal the same. 

throughout the first 50 years of spaceflight, at least, this expectation has 

not been fulfilled. confounding widespread expectations, robotic spacecraft have 

revealed the surface of mars to be essentially sterile, not the “abode of life” that 

writers such as percival lowell and Willy ley portrayed. inspection of Venus, which 

was often portrayed in pre-Space age writings as a paleozoic planet, has exposed a 

hellish place much too warm to permit the development of complex life.25 

Just as the anticipation of observed impacts can be checked with reference to 

their underlying theories,so the significance of unexpected effects can be gauged by 

the emergence of new hypotheses. grand experiments, including those taking the 

form of government policy, often produce results unanticipated by previous theory 

or experience. Such results, where significant, commonly prompt the presentation 

of new theories which, in turn, can be tested in conventional ways.the appearance 

of a new theory serves as an important marker for the presence of a significant 

unanticipated result or event. 

23. J. B. S. haldane, Possible Worlds and Other Papers (new York: harper & row, 1927), p. 298. 

2. See Steven J. Dick, Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (new York: 

cambridge University press, 1998). 

25. See percival lowell, Mars as the Abode of Life (new York: macmillan, 1908); isabel m. lewis,“life on 

Venus and mars?” Nature Magazine (September 193), p. 13. 
haS Spaceflight haD an impact on SocietY? 15 

an interpretatiVe frameWorK 

During the early stages of space exploration, statements anticipating the 

ubiquity of extraterrestrial life forms were common. Defending the search for 

extraterrestrial life in a 1975 issue of Scientific American, carl Sagan and frank Drake 

announced that “our best guess is that there are a million civilizations in our galaxy 

at or beyond the earth’s present level of technological development.” By 1990, this 

expectation had been sufficiently degraded to allow peterWard and Donald Brownlee 

to issue a contrary hypothesis. life on earth, they suggested, might be a result of a 

combination of events with a very low probability of occurrence. Simple life forms 

might be widespread in the universe, they allowed, but “[c]omplex life—animals and 

higher plants—is likely to be far more rare than is commonly assumed.”26 

the emergence of another new theory accompanied a different impact that 

was largely unanticipated in early writings about spaceflight. prior to the Space age, 

few people wrote extensively about the effect that viewing the whole earth from 

a distance would have on human conceptions of their home planet, in spite of the 

obvious analogy provided by the intellectual shift accompanying the movement 

from the aristotelian to the copernican vision of the cosmos.With the advent of 

spaceflight, new images of earth appeared. apollo astronauts provided the most 

dramatic ones, from the 1968 photograph of earth rising over the moon to the 

iconic 1972 whole earth image that decorates the earth Day flag. 

these images coincided with the emergence of the gaia hypothesis—the 

strange new suggestion that the whole earth and its biota might have the capacity 

to regulate conditions in such a manner as to produce conditions favorable to the 

maintenance of life. James lovelock formulated this hypothesis in the early 1960s 

partly as a response to requests from naSa to develop instruments that could detect 

signatures of life in planetary atmospheres.27 the gaia hypothesis did not receive 

much attention until images of the whole earth began to appear. imagining earth 

as a single, self-regulating system is much easier when one sees the whole planet as 

it appears from afar. in addition to sponsoring the research that spawned this theory, 

spaceflight might have created a perspective that hastened its acceptance.again, this 

particular effect had not been much anticipated. 

26. carl Sagan and frank Drake,“the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” Scientific American (may 

1975), pp. 80–89; peter D.Ward and Donald Brownlee, Rare Earth:Why Complex Life Is Uncommon 

in the Universe (new York: copernicus, 2000), p. xiv. 

27. See James lovelock,“gaia as Seen through the atmosphere,” Journal of Atmospheric Environment 

6 (1972), pp. 579–580; lynn margulis, Symbiotic Planet:A New Look at Evolution (newYork: Basic 

Books, 1998). 
16 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Summary 

the assessment of societal impacts arising from the interjection of any new set 

of events can be quite challenging, no matter where it is conducted.the temptation 

to draw connections where none exist,or to ignore the implications of unanticipated 

effects, is strong, outweighed (one hopes) by the desire of analysts to tell the story 

as truthfully as possible. 

this chapter offers a number of methods for deepening the study of societal 

impacts insofar as they arise from the spaceflight venture and improving the reliability 

of the conclusions drawn.the use of interrupted time-series analysis—commonly 

characterized as turning points—contains weaknesses that can be partly overcome 

through comparative analysis.the examination of predictions can be enhanced by 

insisting that they be examined in the context of supporting theories. in a similar 

manner, the significance of unanticipated societal impacts can be measured through 

the acceptance rate of new theories suggested by the precipitating events. When 

assessing the cultural effects of spaceflight,findings can be strengthened by observing 

the material and ideological characteristics of the societies in which those effects are 

presumed to occur. as noted in this chapter, many of the cultural effects ascribed 

to spaceflight in the United States have the quality of conserving values thought by 

americans to distinguish their nation. it would be interesting to know whether the 

promotion of spaceflight in other nations has reinforced social values different than 

those found in the United States. 
Section II 

turning point impactS 

~


chapter 2 

What Are Turning Points in History, and 


What Were They for the Space Age?1


roger D. Launius 

Debates over “turning points” in history have sometimes become quite difficult 

and controversial among observers of the past.at sum they signify, represent, 

and define lasting changes in the climate of the times. the definition of turning 

points is exceptionally idiosyncratic, and their delineation also shifts over time as 

perspectives change and events become more distant. For most people who look 

back on the twentieth century, 1929 and 1941 demonstrated turning points as the 

nation changed in fundamental ways in response to the beginning of the great 

Depression and as the united States entered World War ii. on the other hand, 1963 

and 1987 were probably not turning points despite the Kennedy assassination and 

the stock market crash, respectively.therefore, to a very real extent turning points 

reflect the sea change that follows an event rather than the event itself.additionally, 

not all turning points need be marked by a dramatic event. For instance, no one 

event marked the shift from the conformist 1950s to the radical 1960s and 1970s, 

although many observers agree that these decades were indeed turning points. 

in the context of spaceflight,what are the turning points? most would probably 

agree that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 represented a turning point, although later 

in this essay i will make a case in opposition to this belief. But what about the 

Kennedy decision to go to the moon, the moon landings themselves, the first flight 

of the Space Shuttle, the losses of Challenger and Columbia, and the rise of china as 

a player in human spaceflight? this list might be expanded indefinitely.this essay 

explores what constitutes a turning point in history and examines some turning 

points in the history of the Space age. 

1. the author thanks the following scholars 	for offering helpful suggestions about this essay: 

David c.arnold,William e. Burrows, erik conway, Jonathan coopersmith, Deborah g. Douglas, 

Donald c. elder, mark a. erickson, James rodger Fleming, amy Foster, anne collins goodyear, 

adam L. gruen, richard p. hallion, peter L. hays, J. D. hunley, Stephen B. Johnson, Katy Kudela, 

Laura Lovett, Dick myers, anna K. nelson, randy papadopolous, erik p. rau, philip Scranton, 

James Spiller, James a.Vedda, and David Ward. 
20 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Defining a Turning Point 

in a recent search of amazon.com for the words “turning point” in the titles of 

books, i found 1,134 relevant titles.these ranged from The Turning Point: Jefferson’s 

Battle for the Presidency by Frank van der Linden to The Higher Freedom: A New 

Turning Point in Jewish History by David polish,to The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s 

First Victory and the Decisive Turning Point in American Politics by matthew Dallek.2 

and the term is hardly new. hoffman nickerson used it in 1928 to describe the 

battle of Saratoga during the american revolution.3 postmodern scholars such as 

Fritjof capra have employed it as well.4 it appears in historical work of all types 

and varieties, schools and subjects, and grade levels and sophistication. indeed, the 

concept of a turning point is ubiquitous in the literature of history. and not just 

in the written word—professors, pundits, politicians, and plebeians all use it in all 

manner of settings and circumstances. many course offerings at the nation’s colleges 

and universities include “turning point(s)” in their titles. 

at a core level, a turning point may be defined as an event or set of events 

that, had it not happened as it did, would have prompted a different course in 

history. Dictionaries define it as “a point at which a significant change occurs.”5 

the classic youngster’s encyclopedia, World Book, defines it as “a point at which a 

notable or decisive change takes place; critical point; crisis:the Battle of gettysburg 

was a turning point in the civil War.”6 the use of the term comes up in the most 

interesting places. Encyclopædia Britannica incorporates 560 entries in which the 

term is used. not so unusual is the statement that the Battle of midway “marked 

the turning point of the military struggle between” the united States and Japan in 

1942, and “the year 1206 was a turning point in the history of the mongols and in 

world history: the moment when the mongols were first ready to move out beyond 

the steppe.”7 more obtuse are such interpretations as the death of antiochus in 129 

Bc marking “a turning point in the history of the eastern mediterranean: greco2. Frank van der Linden, The Turning Point: Jefferson’s Battle for the Presidency (golden, co: Fulcrum 

publishers, 2000); David polish, The Higher Freedom:A New Turning Point in Jewish History (chicago: 

Quadrangle Books, 1965); matthew Dallek, The Right Moment: Ronald Reagan’s First Victory and the 

Decisive Turning Point in American Politics (new York: Free press, 2000). 

3. hoffman nickerson,the Turning Point of the Revolution;or,Burgoyne in America (new York:houghton 

mifflin, 1928). 

4. Fritjof capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (new York: Simon and 

Schuster, 1982). 

5. “turningpoint,”merriam-WebsteronlineDictionary,http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/turning%20point 

(accessed 21 august 2006). 

6. World Book encyclopedia and Learning Sources, http://www.worldbook.com/wb/dict?lu=turning%20point 

(accessed 21august 2006). 

7. “midway,	 Battle of,” encyclopædia Britannica online, http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9052586? 

query=turning%20point&ct=eb (accessed 21 august 2006);“genghis Khan,” encyclopædia Britannica 

online, http://search.eb.com/eb/article-41207?query=turning%20point&ct=eb (accessed 21 august 2006). 
What are Turning Points in History, and 21 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

macedonian domination received a decisive blow; it would survive for only 46 

more years.”8tying the demise of greek domination nearly two generations later to 

the death of antiochus seems tenuous at best. 

From a sociological perspective, a turning point represents a lasting shift in 

the zeitgeist or “spirit of the age.” Several ingredients must be present. the shock 

to the system of civilization is profound and it may be measured in several ways. 

according to sociologist ted goertzel, one of the most reliable indicators is the 

response of the financiers. “Financial markets are one of the quickest and most 

sensitive indicators of a country’s mood,” he noted.“panic can move quickly after a 

shock . . . and markets can spiral out of control.” public opinion polls may also take 

the temperature of the society and its reaction to some major event,9 but those will 

work only for recent events where the data and structures that goertzel understands 

are available. clearly, there is no manner in which the mongol invasions of genghis 

Kahn, the death of antiochus, or even the Battle of midway can be assessed using 

financial data and public opinion polls. 

political scientists would employ analytical models such as Frank Baumgartner’s 

and Bryan Jones’s punctuated equilibrium analysis, which suggests that the policy 

process is comprised of long periods of stability that are then interrupted by 

predictable periods of instability which lead to major policy changes. Baumgartner 

and Jones describe “a political system that displays considerable stability with regard to 

the manner in which it processes issues, but the stability is punctuated with periods of 

volatile change.” in times of stability the public is limited in its ability to effect change 

to the overall system, and most people are not even focused on making changes 

because they are relatively content with the current situation.only in times of unique 

crisis and instability do enough members of society rise up to undertake fundamental 

change, often from a perceived threat or dramatic event.10 a turning point, therefore, 

results from a punctuation in the equilibrium of everyday life.this theory—clinical 

and sterile as it might actually be—has been applied to all manner of decisive events 

in history and is consistently reaffirmed in the discipline of political science. 

other social science disciplines approach the issue of marked change in 

different ways and with differing analytic tools, but all, it seems, recognize a turning 

point in the stream of time as little more than an artificial construct that facilitates 

interpreting dramatic changes in society. indeed, it seems as subjective a term as 

“scientific revolution” was for thomas Kuhn, who defined it as a “noncumulative 

developmental episode in which an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part 

8. “iran,ancient,” encyclopædia Britannica online, http://search.eb.com/eb/article-32135?query=turning 

%20point&ct=eb (accessed 21 august 2006). 

9. ted goertzel, “September 11, 2001: a turning point for america’s Future?” undated paper in 

possession of author. 

10. Frank r. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones, Agendas and Instability in American Politics (chicago: 

university of chicago press, 1993), pp. 3–24; Frank r. Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones,“agenda 

Dynamics and policy Subsystems,”the Journal of politics 53 (november 1991): pp. 1044–1074. 
22 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

by an incompatible new one.”11 as with “scientific revolution,” assigning turning 

point status to an event is very much up to the individuals analyzing it and its 

effects. indeed, people at the time may well not recognize a turning point as such. 

as historian erik rau remarked: 

[h]istorians today think of the Battle of Saratoga as a turning point 

in the history of the american revolution, but many at the time 

would have had no reason to believe this.this makes the turning 

point of Saratoga no less real to us in understanding Saratoga, 

but it may not have influenced very many people’s behavior on 

the ground at the time.You can’t see Saratoga as a turning point 

until after the war is over and you take stock of what happened.a 

turning point is ultimately a construct of historical reflection, and 

a historical unit of analysis, rather than an event that reveals itself 

to the people living through it at the time.12 

another analogous term that has gained credence in recent years is the 

singularity-rooted balance of equations,which is now applied far beyond its original 

application and is a statement of the power of nomenclature in modern society. 

again, there is no firm definition acceptable to all.13 

of course, when considering turning points in history we are treading a path 

well-worn by earlier historians, some of whom were illustrious in their own time and 

still evoke hushed tones of reverence in seminars on historiography.at sum,the issue of 

a turning point in history is really about assigning significance to historical events, and 

many in this profession have pondered this problem.carl L.Becker,for one,explored this 

in his seminal paper,“What are historical Facts?” first presented at the research club 

of cornell university on 14 april 1926. using as an example Julius caesar’s crossing of 

the rubicon in 49 Bce,Becker argues that we have chosen to single this out and assign 

it significance, indeed marking it as a turning point in roman history. Why? many 

others had crossed the rubicon at many other times, yet they are unremembered.Why 

is caesar’s crossing in the year 49 Bce significant? only considered in the context of 

what were the significant results of his entry into rome may we begin to explore this 

event.and considered in relation to the web of interconnection, it is actually a symbol 

standing for the historical record—a convenient shorthand—that allows us to explain 

significance.Becker reasoned that any “historical fact is not the past event,but a symbol 

which enables us to recreate it imaginatively.”14 

11. thomas h.Kuhn,The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (chicago:university of chicago press,1962),p.92. 

12. erik p.rau e-mail to author,“turning points in history,”17august 2006,copy in possession of author. 

13. a noncosmological use of this term may be found in ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near:When 

Humans Transcend Biology (new York:Viking, 2005). 

14. carl L. Becker, “What are historical Facts?” in Detachment and the Writing of History: Essays and 

Letters of Carl L. Becker, ed. phil L. Snyder (ithaca, nY: cornell university press, 1958), pp. 41–64; 

quotes from pp. 45–46. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 23 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

Becker traveled into similar territory in his presidential address before the 

american historical association in 1931, where he declared “everyman his own 

historian.” he asserted that history is an artificial extension of memory and “in 

this sense is story, in aim always a true story; a story that employs all the devices of 

literary art (statement and generalization, narration and description, comparison 

and comment and analogy) to present the succession of events in the life of man, 

and from the succession of events thus presented to derive a satisfactory meaning.” 

he added that “in every age history is taken to be a story of actual events from 

which a significant meaning may be derived.”15 turning points in history are all 

about assigning significance to events of the past,and they are exceptionally slippery 

and idiosyncratic to the individuals assigning that significance. at the same time, 

some historians handle this issue with style and grace and aplomb. 

one example of the difficult task of assigning significance to events will suffice, 

and the process will conjure an image of a turning point.at the five-year anniversary 

of the 11 September 2001 attacks on theWorldtrade center and the pentagon, most 

people would probably consider this instance as a clear point of demarcation in which 

the trajectory of the world as we understood it shifted appreciably. in the aftermath 

of 9/11, feelings of insecurity at home and hysteria in Washington abounded. major 

changes in governmental policies and partisan politics resulted.a sense that the nation 

as a superpower might be at risk abounded and the response needed to be swift and 

decisive. military action resulted, some of it taking a course unanticipated by those 

planning it.there were hearings and finger-pointing, and floodgates of government 

funding opened for all manner of presumed security-enhancing programs and 

intelligence specialists. additionally, president george W. Bush was criticized for the 

9/11 attacks and his failure to prepare for such an eventuality.16 

But is it appropriate to view 9/11 as a turning point?” at one level, perhaps, 

but some have argued that this event was simply one chapter of a much longer story. 

as cambridge university historian Brendan Simms recently commented: 

Without the attacks on the World trade center and the pentagon, 

we may say with a reasonable degree of confidence that airline 

travel would have been easier. But beyond that, it becomes 

difficult to speculate. Some sort of attempt to topple hussein 

was brewing in any case. oil prices would still have risen given 

the increase in global, particularly chinese and indian, demand. 

the iranian nuclear issue would be equally acute.and needless 

to say, the issue of palestine would still be with us. 

15. carl L. Becker,“everyman his own historian,” American Historical Review, 37 (January 1932): pp. 

221–236, quote from 231–232. 

16. this includes everything from such polemics as gore Vidal, “the enemy Within,” The Observer 

(London), 27 october 2002, to more the reasoned analysis of the national commission on 

terrorist attacks upon the united States, The 9/11 Commission Report (Washington, Dc: u.S. 

government printing office, 22 July 2004). 
24 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Simms agrees with former chinese premier Zhou en-lai’s quip about the 

significance of the French revolution: it is too early to tell.17 

Likewise, rutgers university sociologist ted goertzel questions 9/11 as a 

turning point in history. he cites polls suggesting that u.S. attitudes were mostly 

unchanged by the attacks and that efforts to return to normalcy motivated many 

people affected. he found that “the stock market recovered quickly from the shock 

of 9/11” and that the “domestic political climate does not seem to have shifted.” 

in only one major area did goertzel find a significant shift in national perspective, 

noting that the “country’s foreign policy mood has shifted from introverted to 

extroverted.” indeed, he found that the following major elements remained firm 

both before and after 9/11: 

•  american military hegemony is strong

•  the stock market recovered from its initial shock

•  america is firmly in an extroverted foreign policy mood; an

•  Western “sensate” popular culture seems irresistible

For goertzel, 9/11 as a turning point is more nuanced and not nearly as 

straightforward as many have suggested.18 

With the foregoing discussion,it appears that turning points in history resemble 

so many other constructs in history, such as periodization, dialectic, causation, and 

significance, in their lack of firm definition. undoubtedly, however, they are part of 

the toolbox used by historians and they appear throughout the master narrative of 

human history. Since turning points in history seem remarkably similar to beauty 

(that is, they exist in the eye of the beholder, thereby demonstrating the need for 

sagacious historians),do they still offer useful frames of reference for historical study? 

i asked several friends, colleagues, fellow travelers, and critics to offer their thoughts 

on turning points in space history,and what i received was a remarkable set of broad 

observations. many of the ideas presented proved remarkably reflective and some 

were profound.as Dick myers observed,“Like so many things in our existence, the 

definition depends upon the context . . . i think that one defines it in the concrete, 

not the abstract.” in considering the histories of the space age, historians working 

in this arena have the power to define turning points however they wish.they will 

“be unique to that topic . . . [and] are defined by the context in which they occur or 

are said to occur—the context in which historians, etc. are explaining and analyzing 

and trying to understand.”19 

17. Brendan Simms, “9/11: historic turning point, or Bump in the road?” Los Angeles Times, 10 

September 2006. 

18. adam clymer,“u.S.attitudes altered Little by Sept.11,pollsters Say,” New York Times,20 may 2002; 

ted goertzel,“9/11 as a turning point in history,” undated powerpoint presentation in possession 

of author. 

19. Dick myers e-mail to author,“turning points in history,” 16 august 2006,copy in possession of author. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 25 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

historian philip Scranton carried this line of thinking a bit further. he 

suggested that there might be multiple framings of historical turning points: 

[F]irst from the perspective of contemporary actors (then 

refracted through the longer term assessments of historians— 

hence Sputnik was a major break for those working in the 

world of 1957–58, but not so big a deal fifty years on) and 

alternatively, the turning points historians construct in their 

narratives and periodizations, years or events which may not 

have seemed such a big deal to the folks at the time. once in a 

while (i’d try 1968) both actors and historians agree that there’s 

a major shift that’s been launched.that frames a third, probably 

pretty small, category.20 

art historian David Ward offered an additional thought on this subject. he 

noted that the concept of turning points had value for political, diplomatic, military, 

and economic history, but was much less useful in social and other types of history. 

as Ward commented, it would be “rather hard to pin down the moment when 

modernism [in art] arrived.”21 

Deborah g. Douglas criticized the concept of turning points in history and 

suggested that they represent 

[ . . . ] the spaces/places in time that the historical community 

feels it has some fundamental understanding of and can 

therefore use in analysis and,more importantly,in our narratives. 

Depending on your disciplinary point of view, you may find 

yourself attracted or repelled by the particular term turning 

point but i suspect that has more to do with the time scale of 

your study and your literary tastes.22 

She allowed that “the concept is popular but it is also formulaic and didactic— 

too amateurish, really—for good writers and readers.” 

turning points are also representative of the dominant culture in which 

they are situated. For example, how would noted marxist historian howard Zinn 

interpret the turning points usually associated with the twentieth century? his 

warning is apropos in this context: “there is an underside to every age about 

which history does not often speak, because history is written from records left 

by the privileged.We learn . . . about the thinking of an age from its intellectual 

elite.”23 moreover, how would a Vietnamese scholar approach a history of the 

20. philip Scranton e-mail to author,“turning points in history,” 17 august 2006, copy in possession 

of author. 

21. DavidWard e-mail to author,“turning points in history,”21 august 2006,copy in possession of author. 

22. Deborah g. Douglas e-mail to author, “turning points in history,” 16 august 2006, copy in 

possession of author. 

23. howard Zinn, The Politics of History (Boston: Beacon press, 1970), p. 102. 
26 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

1960s or, more to the point, a how would a chinese scholar focusing on aerospace 

history? the reality is that turning points lack clear cohesion across a broad 

spectrum. graphically demonstrating the lack of clear definition and meaning of 

a turning point, Douglas suggested a game: 

assemble on cards a large number of events that might be considered 

turning points in space history. Shuffle the deck, pick 10 at random, 

and spend 5 minutes making up a story.Do it again a couple of times 

and compare your stories.are you fitting your ‘turning points’ into 

your preconceived narrative or do you have vastly different stories?24 

this approach might yield really interesting results and is grist at least for a session 

at one of the major historical conferences. 

Despite the ease with which we might appropriately dispense with turning points 

as a useful analytical tool in history, they are everywhere in the national discourse. in 

twentieth-century america, events commonly assigned turning point status include 

the following, ranked by opinion leaders in a poll conducted in 1999. 

Top 25 News sTories of The TweNTieTh CeNTury25 

1 U.S. drops atomic bomb 1945 

2 Men first walk on the Moon 1969 

3 Japan bombs Pearl Harbor 1941 

4 Wrights fly first airplane 1903 

5 U.S. women win the right to vote 1920 

6 JFK assassinated in Dallas 1963 

7 Nazi Holocaust exposed 1945 

8 World War I begins 1914 

9 Court ends “separate but equal” 1954 

10 U.S. stock market crashes 1929 

11 Antibiotic penicillin discovered 1928 

12 DNA’s structure discovered 1953 

13 Soviet Union dissolves 1991 

14 President Nixon resigns 1974 

15 Germany invades Poland 1939 

16 Communists take over Russia 1917 

17 Ford creates assembly line 1913 

18 Soviets launch first satellite 1957 

19 Einstein conceives relativity 1905 

20 Birth control pill OK’d by FDA 1960 

21 New polio vaccine works 1953 

22 Hitler named chancellor 1933 

23 M. L. King, Jr., assassinated 1968 

24 Allies invade France on D-Day 1944 

25 Deadly AIDS disease identified 1981 

24. Douglas e-mail to author,“turning points in history,” 16 august 2006. 

25. “Stories of the 	century, 1900-2000,” newseum, http://www.newseum.org/century/finalresults.htm 

(accessed 13 September 2006). 
What are Turning Points in History, and 27 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

For the period since 2000, almost certainly the 2001 terrorist attacks on the 

World trade center and the pentagon and the 2003 invasion of iraq would be 

assigned important status as turning points in history. 

the reality is that accepting all of these events, as significant as many are, 

as turning points demonstrates the less than useful nature of the term. certain 

events are immediately considered turning points, such as pearl harbor and the 

atomic bomb,whereas others are assigned this status only in retrospect,such as the 

stock market crash and the oil embargo.turning points of national significance 

probably take place less often than this list suggests, and the probability that 

any individual would witness more than a handful of them during his or her 

lifetime is small. instead, the 25 events listed here are within the memory of 

many people still alive, and even those of us a little younger can remember more 

than dozen of them. 

Constructing Turning Points 

in Space History 

rather than playing the game as outlined by Debbie Douglas, let me suggest 

some turning points in the history of spaceflight. i will then analyze three of them, 

“turning” the concept on its “pointed” head: 1) a recognized turning point which i 

will argue might not be one after all; 2) an event not usually thought of as a turning 

point but which i will assert is appropriately considered one; and 3) an event that 

was immediately labeled a turning point at the time it took place but, as time passes, 

appears much less so than previously thought. 

Based on inputs from several close observers of the history of spaceflight,major 

turning points in the field may include the following: 

1.robert goddard’s first liquid-fueled rocket (1926). 

2.Development of ballistic missiles (1944). 

3.Launch of Sputnik (1957). 

4.Flight of Yuri gagarin (1961). 

5.JFK’s announcement of apollo landing decision (1961). 

6.Launch of the first operational applications satellites (1962). 

7.apollo 11 lunar landing (1969). 

8.nixon’s Space Shuttle decision (1972). 

9.First flight of the Space Shuttle (1981). 

10.Challenger accident (1986). 

11.Demise of the Soviet union as competitor in space (1991). 

12.Decision to turn the Space Station into a multinational program involving 

russia (1992). 

13.Columbia accident (2003). 

14.Bush’s announcement of the Vision for Space exploration (2004). 

15.Flight of SpaceShipone (2004).
28 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

What is most interesting about this list, compiled from inputs from many 

sources, is the lack any mention of planetary exploration or earth science, and only 

a passing reference to applications satellites. most are also political turning points, a 

few are technological, and none is social or scientific in focus.What is included (and 

especially what is excluded) in this list represents a fascinating avenue for further 

exploration, but i must leave that for another time and place. 

Sputnik 

Virtually everyone would agree that the launch of Sputnik 1 on 4 october 

1957, represented an undisputed turning point in space history. most observers 

chart the beginning of the Space age from that date. indulge me while i argue an 

alternative position—that it did not represent a turning point at all but, rather, a 

continuation of the events that had been moving along the same path from at least 

World War ii. in the summer of 1957, six months into Dwight D. eisenhower’s 

second term and before the Sputnik turning point in history, the president asked 

the national Security council (nSc) to review the u.S. space program to ensure 

that the level of investment and progress being made was adequate. he intended to 

field the first intercontinental ballistic missiles (icBms) and reconnaissance satellites 

by the time he left office.these capabilities in the new high ground of space would 

Figure 2.1— The launch of Sputnik 1 is usually viewed as the beginning of the space age and a critical turning point 

in history. Is it conceivable that it was less pivotal than usually thought? (NASA photo no. GPN-2002-000166). 
What are Turning Points in History, and 29 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

ensure that the united States could compete effectively with the Soviet union in 

the cold war rivalry that gripped the world.eisenhower learned that between 1953 and 

1957 the nation had spent $11.8 billion on military space activities, mostly on ballistic 

missile and reconnaissance satellite development.“the cost of continuing these programs 

from FY 1957 through FY 1963,” the ncS reported,“would amount to approximately 

$36.1 billion, for a grand total of $47 billion.”26 

By any measure, this should be considered a significant investment on the part 

of the eisenhower administration, and it suggests that eisenhower had developed a 

strategy for ensuring u.S. technological comparability, and eventual superiority, in 

the global game of one-upmanship and rivalry that was the cold war.When adjusted 

for inflation, only presidents ronald reagan and Bill clinton, surprisingly, made 

similar investments in space technology.27 those assets also found use on both the 

military and civilian sides of the space program during subsequent years.28 in an 

irony of proportions too great to ignore, in 1 october 1957, after the launch of 

Sputnik 1, eisenhower found himself branded by the Democrats as an incompetent 

for allowing the Soviet union to beat the u.S. into orbit by launching the first 

satellite. For example, eisenhower argued that “i am always a little bit amazed about 

this business of catching up. What you want is enough, a thing that is adequate. 

a deterrent has no added power, once it has become completely adequate, for 

compelling the respect of any potential opponent for your deterrent and, therefore, 

to make him act prudently.”29 

moreover, eisenhower had long followed a path toward the development of 

launch vehicles for use in the icBm program;satellite technology for reconnaissance 

and communications; infrastructure required to support these activities such as 

tracking and launch facilities; and utilitarian science that either directly supported 

those missions or was a natural byproduct of them.an example of such a byproduct 

was when, early in the military rocket research program, scientists won the 

opportunity to place on some of the test vehicles instruments that provided data 

about the upper atmosphere, solar and stellar ultraviolet radiation, and the aurora. 

this became a very successful scientific program that was carried out with limited 

26. S. everett gleason,“Discussion at the 329th meeting of the national Security council,Wednesday, 

July 3, 1957,” 5 July 1957, nSc records, Dwight D. eisenhower presidential papers, eisenhower 

Library,abilene, KS, p. 2. 

27. reagan spent $233.02 billion on space issues in his eight years in office. clinton spent $230.14 

billion during his eight years in office. in contrast, eisenhower’s spending was $183.69 billion. all 

of these are in inflation-adjusted dollars. calculated using data in appendix e-1a,“Space activities 

of the u.S. government,” Aeronautics and Space Report of the President, Fiscal Year 2003 Activities 

(Washington, Dc: naSa np-2004-17-389-hQ, 2004), p. 140. 

28. much has been made of dual-use technology over the years, and space access has been an especially 

important part of this capability. on space access, see To Reach the High Frontier:A History of U.S. Launch 

Vehicles,ed.roger D.Launius and Dennis r.Jenkins (Lexington:university press of Kentucky,2002). 

29. “the president’s news conference of 3 February 1960,” Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 

Dwight D.Eisenhower,1960 61 (Washington,Dc:u.S.government printing office,1964),p.24. 
30 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

fanfare and funding. as a result, scientists taking part in this program used all the 

military’s captured V 2s, persuaded the Department of Defense (DoD) to develop 

new sounding rockets to replace them, and continued to use the nation’s rocket 

development program for scientific research throughout the 1950s.30 

eisenhower’s space program also placed considerable emphasis on satellite 

technology. During the mid-1950s, the president was preoccupied with the 

need to conduct surveillance of Soviet union activities and its growing nuclear 

capability.this led to the development of both surveillance aircraft and satellites on 

an aggressive basis in the 1950s. as the 1960 downing of the u-2 reconnaissance 

airplane revealed, however, aircraft overflights had severe shortcomings.a spacecraft 

was much less vulnerable. eisenhower authorized the Vanguard satellite program 

in part because he wanted to establish the principle of overflight (namely, that a 

satellite did not intrude upon a nation’s airspace when crossing its territory and 

was not subject to interception), and an internationally supported scientific satellite 

served this purpose better than any military launch.31 

nothing summarizes this balanced, measured approach toward space activities 

better than a statement eisenhower made in 1959 at a meeting with top advisors. 

he outlined three major goals that had to be accomplished: 

the first is that we must get what Defense really needs in space; 

this is mandatory. the second is that we should make a real 

advance in space so that the united States does not have to be 

ashamed no matter what other countries do; this is where the 

super booster is needed. the third is that we should have an 

orderly, progressive scientific program, well balanced with other 

scientific endeavors.32 

Withinthecontextofthisphilosophy,eisenhowerwaswillingtoexpendresources 

sufficient to meet major objectives, but not to open the floodgates of government 

expenditures for activities that he believed did not have a viable component. 

30. the military 	created the V 2 upper atmosphere panel in 1946 to oversee this activity. in 

1948 it became the upper atmosphere rocket research panel, and in 1957 the rocket and 

Satellite research panel. See Lyman Spitser Jr., “astronomical advantages of an extra-terrestrial 

observatory,” The Astronomy Quarterly 7 (September 1946): pp. 19–20; James a.Van allen, Origins 

of Magnetospheric physics (Washington, Dc: Smithsonian institution press, 1983); homer e. newell, 

Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp 4211, 1980); george 

K. megerian,“minutes of V-2 upper atmosphere research panel meeting,”V-2 report no. 13, 29 

December 1947;george K.megerian,“minutes of meeting of upper atmosphere rocket research 

panel,” panel report no. 35, 29 april 1953, both in naSa historical reference collection. 

31. r. cargill hall,“the origins of u.S. Space policy: eisenhower, open Skies, and Freedom of Space,” 

Colloquy, 14, no. 3 (December 1993); r. cargill hall,“origins of u.S. Space policy: eisenhower, open 

Skies,and Freedom of Space,”in Exploring the Unknown:Selected Documents in the History of the U.S.Civil 

Space Program,Vol.i,gen.ed.John m.Logsdon (Washington,Dc:naSa Sp-4407,1995),chapter 2. 

32. Brig.gen.a.J.goodpaster,“memorandum of conference with the president,october 12,1959,”23 

october 1959,records of the White house office of Science and technology, Box 12, eisenhower 

Library,abilene, KS. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 31 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

eisenhower was also not unreceptive to increases in funding for space activities 

purely to further scientific understanding. the experience of approval of the 

international geophysical Year (igY) satellite effort is instructive on this score. as 

early as 1950, a small group of scientists in the united States began discussing 

among themselves the possibility of using earth-circling satellites to obtain 

scientific information about the planet.33 in 1952,urged on by these same american 

scientists, the international council of Scientific unions (icSu) proposed the 

igY, a cooperative scientific endeavor to study solar–terrestrial relations during a 

period of maximum solar activity. Some 67 nations agreed to conduct cooperative 

experiments to study solar–terrestrial relations during a period of maximum solar 

activity in 1957–1958. 

in october 1954, at the behest of essentially this same group of u.S. scientists, 

the icSu challenged nations to use their missiles being developed for war to launch 

scientific satellites to support the igY research program. in July 1955, largely the same 

enclave of american scientists convinced eisenhower that the united States should 

respond to the icSu call for participation in the igY by launching a scientific satellite. 

eisenhower’s decision called for existing organizations within the DoD to develop and 

launch a small scientific satellite,“under international auspices, such as the international 

geophysicalYear,in order to emphasize its peaceful purposes[;] ...considerable prestige 

and psychological benefits will accrue to the nation which first is successful in 

launching a satellite . . . especially if the uSSr were to be the first to establish a 

satellite.”the result was project Vanguard, carried out under the supervision of the 

naval research Laboratory. eisenhower also approved a budget of $23.5 million, 

modest but considered adequate for the effort by scientific and technical personnel 

consulted by the administration.34 

although some have asserted that Sputnik represented the “shock of the 

century,” there did not seem to be much shock immediately after the launch of 

Sputnik 1. most recognized that it did not pose a threat to the united States and 

33. this group included Lloyd Berkner, Joseph Kaplan, Fred Singer, James Van allen, and homer 

newell.the fingerprints of these core leaders are all over every decision relative to the igY satellite 

program and the u.S. decision by eisenhower to sponsor a satellite. See the discussion of this 

effort in constance mcLaughlin green and milton Lomask, Vanguard:A History (Washington, Dc: 

Smithsonian institution press, 1971), pp. 6–39; rip Bulkeley, The Sputniks Crisis and Early United 

States Space Policy: A Critique of the Historiography of Space (Bloomington, in: indiana university 

press, 1991), pp. 89–122; r. cargill hall, “origins and early Development of the Vanguard and 

explorer Satellite programs,” Airpower Historian 9 (october 1964): pp. 102–108. 

34. national Security council, nSc 5520 “Draft Statement of policy on u.S. Scientific Satellite 

program,” 20 may 1955; united States national committee for the international geophysical Year 

1957-1958,“minutes of the First meeting,technical panel on earth Satellite program, 20 october 

1955,” both in naSa historical reference collection; Don irwin to mr. rockefeller and general 

parker,“pentagon Briefing on earth Satellite program,”12 october 1955;richard hirsch to elmer 

B. Staats,“pentagon meeting on earth Satellite program,” 13 october 1955, both in White house 

office of Special assistant for national Security affairs, nSc, ocB central Files, Box 11,“ocB 

000.9 (national & physical Sciences),” eisenhower Library.abilene, KS.
32 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

thus no one took immediate action to respond to it. instead, congratulations ensued 

and people were excited by the Soviet success. at the same time, eisenhower 

acknowledged the need to “take all feasible measures to accelerate missile and 

satellite programs.”35 he also moved to assure the american public that all was well, 

accepting the findings of representatives of the international affairs Seminars of 

Washington who reported on 15–16 october 1957: 

if there was any trauma following the russian sputnik [sic], 

it occurred in Washington and not among the general public. 

Washington, for its part, took its cue from the newspapers and 

other issue makers.the misevaluation by leadership of the extent 

of public interest, as measured by the amount of news, coverage 

and the words of the issue makers, led to words and actions which 

further confused the issue. this situation points up the general 

problem for a democracy of:who is the‘public’to which leadership 

attends and who in fact do the issue makers represent?36 

as it turned out,failure to appreciate the ability of eisenhower’s political enemies to 

use Sputnik as a wedge issue in the 1958 campaign hurt his administration. 

in his first press conference after the launch of Sputnik 1,on october 9 eisenhower 

calmed speculation and said it did not raise his apprehension“[ ...] one iota.i see nothing 

at this moment, at this stage of development, that is significant in that development as 

far as security is concerned.”37 others in the administration did the same.38 The NewYork 

Times disparaged the Soviet “attempt to persuade people, especially in asia and africa, 

that moscow has taken over world leadership in science.” 

Life magazine was no less derogatory, warning that, at best, the “Sputniks give 

this old communist swindle a new lease of plausibility.”39 What concerns that the 

public might have had about Sputnik 1 died down in the latter part of october 

1957. For instance, there was little discussion of the satellite issue in the popular 

press during the latter part of the month and it did not come up in the president’s 

press conference of 30 october 1957.40 

While advocates of more aggressive space activities and political opponents of 

the White house still criticized, public confidence in the nation’s leadership did not 

35. Dwight D. eisenhower, TheWhite HouseYears:Waging Peace (garden city, nY: Doubleday, 1965), p. 211. 

36. international affairs Seminars of Washington, “american reactions to crisis,” 15–16 october 

1958, naSa historical reference collection. 

37. Facts on File, XVii, no. 884, p. 330. 

38. ibid., p. 331; richard m. nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (new York: grossett & Dunlap, 

1978), p. 111. 

39. “Soviet claiming Lead in Science,” New York Times, 5 october 1957: p.a2;“a proposal for a ‘giant 

Leap,’” Life, 16 november 1957: p. 53. 

40. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957 (Washington, Dc: u.S. 

government printing office, 1958), pp. 774–787; naSa clippings file, “october 1957,” naSa 

historical reference collection. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 33 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

seem to suffer appreciably until Sputnik 2 was launched on 3 november 1957.this 

time the Soviet union counted coup on the united States with an impressive 1,121 

pound spacecraft that included a dog named Laika. if anything, the turning point in 

history came following the 6 December 1957 failure of theVanguard launch.after the 

two successful Soviet Sputniks, and this rather spectacular failure on national television, 

dramatic actions appeared necessary. accordingly, it seems that Sputnik may not have 

been such a significant turning point in history as many have thought.it represented one 

stage of a succession of activities in the history that we all understand, nothing more. 

What would have been different had there not been a Sputnik? the u.S. 

rocketry programs were well in hand in 1957 and there is every reason to believe 

they would have continued on as they did.41 the same is true of the satellite 

reconnaissance effort.42 Space science was being pursued expeditiously through a 

variety of avenues; even with efforts to send probes to the moon, and except for 

an acceleration of effort probably would have been continued along pretty much 

the path that came with this turning point.43 communications satellites were being 

pursued by at&t and might have even achieved success earlier had there been less 

government involvement.44 in all, Sputnik has been assigned significance far beyond 

what it truly deserves.45 

41. See eugene m. emme, ed., The History of Rocket Technology: Essays on Research, Development, and 

Utility (Detroit, mi:Wayne State university press, 1964); richard p. hallion, “the Development 

of american Launch Vehicles Since 1945,” in Space Science Comes of Age: Perspectives in the History 

of the Space Sciences, paul a. hanle and Von Del chamberlain, ed. (Washington, Dc: Smithsonian 

institution press, 1981), pp. 115–134; roger D. Launius,“Between a rocket and a hard place:the 

challenge of Space access,” in Space Policy in the 21st Century,W. henry Lambright, ed. (Baltimore, 

mD: Johns hopkins university press, 2002), pp. 15–54. 

42. three important books on the early satellite reconnaissance program have been published: Dwayne 

a. Day, John m. Logsdon, and Brian Latell, ed., Eye in the Sky:The Story of the Corona Spy Satellite 

(Washington, Dc: Smithsonian institution press, 1998); robert a. mcDonald, Corona Between the 

Sun and the Earth:The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space (Bethesda, mD:aSprS publications, 

1997);curtis peebles,The Corona Project:America’s First Spy Satellites (annapolis,mD:naval institute 

press, 1997). See also William e. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (new 

York:random house,1987);Jeffrey t.richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space:The U.S.Keyhole Spy 

Satellite Program (new York: harper and row, 1990). 

43. the early history of this effort is well told in homer e.newell, High Altitude Rocket Research (newYork: 

academic press, 1953); r. cargill hall, “early u.S. Satellite proposals,” Technology and Culture 4 (Fall 

1961): pp. 410–434; r. cargill hall,“origins and Development of theVanguard and explorer Satellite 

programs,” Airpower Historian 11 (october 1964):pp.101–112;r.cargill hall, Lunar Impact:A History of 

Project Ranger (Washington,Dc:naSa Sp 4210,1977);David h.DeVorkin,Science with aVengeance:How 

the Military Created the US Space Sciences AfterWorldWar II (newYork:Springer-Verlag,1992). 

44. this is the thesis of David J.Whalen,The Origins of Satellite Communications,1945–1965 (Washington, 

Dc: Smithsonian institution press, 2002). 

45. one could make the case that considerable resources were spent on useful activities such as science and 

technology, education, and retraining of workforces. even so, some scholars minimize its long-term 

effect. See herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 2nd ed. (newYork: routledge, 

1995); andrew Fraknoi, “Space Science education in the u.S.:the good, the Bad, and the ugly,” 

contained in this collection;“the nationalization of u.S. Science,” Fortune (September 1976): p. 158. 
34 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Kennedy’s role 

What about an event that is not considered a turning point in space history,but 

perhaps should be? the assassination of John F. Kennedy looms large in the history 

of the united States during the middle part of the twentieth century, no doubt, 

but what role did it play in the unfolding of the history of spaceflight? if Kennedy 

had not been assassinated, would anything relative to apollo have changed? Few 

refer to this event as something of significance in the history of apollo, but it may 

well be that Kennedy’s death solidified support for the moon landings. Despite 

public support for apollo, we know that Kennedy had expressed concerns about 

the program and the funds that it sucked out of the treasury. in late may 1961, his 

budget director had warned JFK of the large price tag of apollo and, when he met 

nikita Khrushchev in Vienna the following month, Kennedy suggested that the 

united States and the Soviet union explore the moon as a joint project.the Soviet 

leader reportedly first said “no,” then replied, “Why not?” and then changed his 

mind again, saying that disarmament was a prerequisite for u.S.–uSSr cooperation 

in space.46 in the fall of 1963, in what might be considered an american version 

of glasnost more than 20 years before the term became famous, JFK aggressively 

pursued a venture to turn the apollo program into a joint effort. he privately 

met with naSa administrator James Webb on 18 September and told him to 

prepare for a joint program. as Webb recalled, “he didn’t ask me if he should do 

it; he told me he thought he should do it and wanted to do it and that he wanted 

some assurance from me as to whether he would be undercut at naSa.” on 20 

September 1963,Kennedy made a well-known speech before the united nations,in 

which he again proposed a joint human mission to the moon. he closed by urging, 

“Let us do the big things together.” publicly, the Soviet union was noncommittal. 

Pravda, for example, dismissed the 1963 proposal as premature. Some have suggested 

that Khrushchev viewed the american offer as a ploy to open up Soviet society 

and compromise Soviet technology.Whatever the case Kennedy was assassinated in 

november, 1963 and Khrushchev was deposed the next year, and nothing came of 

the offer.47 thereafter Lyndon B. Johnson and naSa administrator James e.Webb 

constantly defended the apollo program as the dying wish of this slain president. 

46. Dodd L.harvey and Linda c.ciccoritti,U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in Space (miami,FL:university of miami 

center for advanced international Studies, 1974), pp. 78–79.a State Department memo covering the 

two leaders’ discussion inVienna does not mention Khrushchev’s fleeting acquiescence,instead focusing 

on Khrushchev’s desire to have progress in disarmament before consenting to a joint lunar landing 

program. See 6/4/61 memcon between JFK and Khrushchev, 6/4/61, Luncheon, Soviet embassy, 

Vienna in the Kennedy presidential Library, Box 126, naSa historical reference collection. 

47. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, John F. Kennedy, 1963, p. 695, cited in harvey and 

ciccoritti, U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in Space, p. 123; “text of president Kennedy’s address on peace 

issues a u.n. general assembly,” New York Times, 21 September 1963: c6;Yuri Karash,“the price 

of rivalry in Space,” Baltimore Sun, 19 July 1994: p. 11a;Walter a. mcDougall, . . . the Heavens and 

the Earth:A Political History of the Space Age (new York: Basic Books, 1985), p. 395. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 35 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

that was a very powerful argument to be made in the political arena and they 

achieved success in protecting the program, even as everything else at naSa began 

to suffer budget cuts from the mid-1960s onward. 

had Kennedy served two full terms, it is quite easy to envision a point in the 

mid-1960s, probably near the time that project gemini was successfully underway, 

in which he might have decided that the international situation that sparked 

announcement of a lunar landing by the “end of the decade” had passed and he 

could have safely turned off the landing clock. had he done so,apollo might have 

stretched out for many more years, and perhaps have ultimately been successful; 

but, just as likely, it could have become something akin to the current, open-ended 

Space Station program without clear objectives and no time frame for completion. 

JFK’s assassination, therefore, could be interpreted as a turning point in the history 

of spaceflight although it is not usually accepted as such. 

Figure 2.2—The decision of John F. Kennedy to land Americans on the Moon by the end of the decade is viewed 

as a pivotal event in the history of the Space Age. But evidence suggests that he was reconsidering this decision 

at the time of his assassination in November 1963. Had his death not occurred and he been allowed to serve a full 

term or perhaps two terms in the White House, how might the Moon landing program have unfolded? Accordingly, 

the Kennedy assassination may be an unrecognized turning point in the history of the space program. Here Kennedy 

is depicted in a motorcade with Mercury astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962. 

(NASA photo no. GPN-2002-000050). 
36 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

apollo 

Finally, there are events that were hailed at the time as turning points in history 

and accepted as such by virtually everyone,but which now invite reconsideration.the 

most obvious that i would point to is the apollo 11 landing on the moon on 20 July 

1969. immediately thereafter, president richard nixon told an assembled audience 

that the dates encompassing the flight of apollo 11 represented the most significant 

week in the history of earth since the creation.48 perhaps he was caught up in the 

moment, but at least at that time the president expressed the view that this was both 

a path-breaking and permanent endeavor, a legacy of accomplishment that future 

generations would reflect upon as they plied intergalactic space and colonized planets 

throughout the galaxy. undoubtedly, he believed it a turning point in history. others 

did as well.apollo suggested thatamerica had both the capability and the wherewithal 

to accomplish truly astounding peaceful goals.all it needed was the will.49 

now, more than a generation removed from the last of the apollo missions 

to visit the moon in December 1972, that turning point appears far less significant 

than it did during the time of apollo.advocates of human exploration have tended 

to view the astronauts who landed on the moon as people akin to fifteenth-century 

voyagers of discovery such as christopher columbus—the vanguards of sustained 

human exploration and migration. But as time progresses, those first space ventures 

may well prove to be more like Leif erickson’s voyages from Scandinavia several 

hundred years earlier—an exploratory dead end. 

Maxims of Turning Points 

in Space History 

i would close this essay by offering 10 maxims for anyone considering the 

place of turning points in the history of spaceflight.50 

1. turning points signify a critical juncture in the coalescence of a set of events 

that signal a shift in the stream of history. 

2. turning points most often represent attempts by observers to assign significance to 

events,either at the time or thereafter.Depending on perspective,countervailing 

issues, and subsequent developments, they may shift or become meaningless or 

meaningful.they are also subject to “political spin” and the vicissitudes of the 

“master narrative.” 

48. CBS Evening News Transcript, 10:56:20 PM EDT, 7/20/69 (new York: cBS news, 1969), p. 159. 

49. Congressional Quarterly (25 July 1969):p.1311;The Futurist (october 1969):p.123.on the possibilities 

raised by apollo, see roger D. Launius, “perfect Worlds, perfect Societies:the persistent goal of 

utopia in human Spaceflight,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 56 (September/october 

2003): pp. 338–349. 

50. the following is based on the comments of richard p. hallion, “turning points in aerospace 

history: Some thoughts,” 16 august 2006, copy in possession of author. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 37 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

Figure 2.3—Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, poses for a photograph 

beside the deployed United States flag during an Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA) on the lunar surface. The 

first Moon landing is universally viewed as a pivotal event in history. With the passage of time, and the failure to 

continue lunar exploration beyond the Apollo program, it seems less a turning point and more a “blip” in the flow of 

history. How should it be interpreted in the future? (NASA photo no. GPN-2001-000012). 

3. turning points provide a short-hand of analysis that may be used effectively, but 

too often they mash hackneyed and amateurish analysis.they are like george W. 

pierson’s characterization of the “Frontier thesis” of Frederick Jackson turner: 

“too optimistic, too romantic, too provincial, and too nationalistic” to be of 

great utility for the historian’s task.51 

4. turning points adhere to the standard of definition employed by Justice potter 

Stewart when confronted with defining pornography:“i shall not today attempt 

further to define the kinds of material . . . but i know it when i see it.”52 

they defy definition, and one person’s turning point might conceivably be 

another person’s stasis. it might be appropriate to apply something like the 

Saffir-Simpson hurricane Scale to identify importance and severity of turning 

points on a 1 to 5 scale. 

51. Quoted in richard hofstadter, The Progressive Historians:Turner, Beard, Parrington (new York:alfred 

a. Knopf, 1969), p. 149. 

52. Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 u.S. 184 (1964). 
38 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

5. turning points are often vague and imprecise.their very elasticity offers a clue 

to their attraction as well as a core reason for using them with care.they may 

be invoked to argue for or against virtually anything, and accordingly they 

represent a form of historical mirage and incoherence. 

6. turning points of the most useful variety are those used in the most simple, 

concrete situations. 

7. turning points do not 	necessarily provide useful indicators of subsequent 

success or failure for the actors involved in their story. 

8. turning points most often signify a linear conception of history that rarely 

represents the reality of a complex, parallel, multicausational evolution of history. 

9. turning points are often psychological in focus, firing those experiencing them 

to undertake a different approach to what had previously been the norm.these 

are appropriately considered the fault lines in the stream of history. it might 

goad them to action, or it might lull them to complacency. it never fosters the 

status quo. 

10. turning	 points too often lead those invoking them into accepting a 

progressive interpretation of the past in which ideas of exceptionalism and 

advancement reign.53 

this last maxim is especially significant.american history has been dominated 

by a vision of progress, of moving from nothing to something—essentially the 

opposite of the law of entropy in physics. as historian richard p. hallion recently 

remarked, repeated acceptance of the turning point concept 

[ . . . ] implies a teleological, linear, sequential ‘achievement of 

events’ leading inexorably in a certain direction, usually defined 

as ‘progress.’ in fact, this ignores the inherently disordered 

nature of the historical progress, which reflects chance, national 

circumstance, individual action (and we must remember that, 

at heart, all history is the working of people through time), and 

which results in a typically simultaneous and parallel pattern of 

development, one in which exploitation and innovation is at 

least equally as important is invention.54 

With the overburdening dominance of american exceptionalism as a guiding 

principle of american historiography, it behooves historians to weigh carefully the 

usefulness—versus the possible confusions—of the use of the term turning point 

in historical explanation.this is especially the case for space historians as we enter 

a season of significant anniversaries of major events in the history of the space age, 

such as the 2007 50th-anniversary of the launch of Sputnik 1. 

53. on american exceptionalism, see Kerwin Lee Klein, Frontiers of Historical Imagination: Narrating 

the European Conquest of Native America, 1890–1990 (Berkeley, ca: university of california press, 

1997); richard t. hughes, Myths America Lives By (urbana, iL: university of illinois press, 2003). 

54. hallion,“turning points in aerospace history: Some thoughts,” p. 4. 
What are Turning Points in History, and 39 

What Were They for the Space Age? 

or perhaps i am obsessing over this issue; Debbie Douglas has suggested to me 

that this might be the case. in a note, she suggested that we might consider several 

questions when thinking about turning points as we travel along the river that we 

call the history of the Space age. i close with these questions about the study of 

space history, admitting that i have few answers and those that i do possess may be 

satisfactory only to myself.When considering the Space age: 

1. is space a “major river” (e.g., the mississippi, the Yangtze, or the amazon) or 

something a little less (e.g., the columbia or the rhine)? 

2. What are the things i need to “know before i go” and what are the “must sees” 

once i arrive? 

3. how will i see and understand the world differently because of this “experience?”55 

this last question stands at the center of the historical discipline. our answers 

could have profound implications for those studying this subject.55 

55. Douglas e-mail to author,“turning points in history,” 16 august 2006. 
40 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight
chapter 3 

In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

James t.andrews 

i

n the Soviet 1920s, a proliferation of popular books, newspaper articles, and 

pamphlets on air and spaceflight filled the popular press and Soviet readers 

became part of a cosmopolitan readership throughout europe engaged in news 

on exploration of the cosmos. indeed, as i have argued in my book Science for the 

Masses, this only continued a pre-revolutionary fascination with the stars, heavens, 

and the universe beyond. astronomy and amateur space societies proliferated in 

Soviet russia until the Stalinist 1930s and genuinely were generated from below, 

independently from the state.1 

however, to a certain degree, two catalytic time periods changed that public 

response—both 1935, in Stalin’s times, and 1957, in Khrushchev’s. in 1935, Stalin 

and the central committee sanctioned Konstantin tsiolkovskii to give a taped 

speech on may Day from red Square, which would be broadcast all over the 

former Soviet union.tsiolkovskii’s speech would be used by the regime to boast 

the preeminence of early Soviet rocket theorists over Western thinkers.along with 

Stalin’s Soviet nationalist cultural campaigns, it would begin a contest with the 

West of technological superiority that wrenched the early popular enthusiasm 

for space flight into a politicized and ultimately nationalized context. By 1957, 

with the launching of Sputnik 1, the Khrushchev regime and its successors would 

continue that program, only this time directing memorial celebrations to earlier 

rocket theorists; launching popular campaigns from above in the press and journals; 

mythologizing cosmonauts and physicists alike; and urging Soviet citizens to engage 

in the contest with the West, while focusing on its “national” resonance. 

this article will begin by analyzing in more detail how the early, more 

cosmopolitan fascination with spaceflight in russia shifted to become directed 

from above in the shaping of popular consciousness of spaceflight after both 1935 

1. See James t. andrews, Science for the Masses: The Bolshevik State, Public Science, and the Popular 

Imagination in Soviet Russia, 1917–1934 (college Station,tX:texas a&m university press, russian 

and east european Studies Series, 2003).
42 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

and 1957. it will also attempt to theorize how one can deconstruct that campaign 

in a censored state, and whether there still remained the genuine, popularly driven 

response and enthusiasm to space exploration during the Stalin and Khrushchev eras. 

indeed, some ordinary russians as well as well-known cultural critics criticized the 

campaigns to place space exploration on the national cultural agenda. Furthermore, 

this paper will explore how the popularization of space exploration in Soviet russia 

may have also had a genuine inspirational effect on future physicists regardless of the 

political context within which these texts and campaigns were created from above. 

Yet, ultimately this was a dialogical tension between state and society, and although 

the public attempted to respond in independent ways, the monumental shifts from 

1935 through 1957 nevertheless served to constrain the Soviet public’s enthusiasm 

while it directed it into “proper channels.” 

Air- and Spaceflight, the Cosmos, and the Popular 


Imagination from Tsarist to Stalin’s Soviet Times


on a cold, wintry day during Lenin’s regime in 1921, a long line of people 

waited, freezing in the moscow snow to hear another lecture in a series on the 

planet mars; it would be presented at the famed moscow polytechnic museum by 

the astronomer a. a. mikhailov.2 Soviet citizens in the 1920s had flocked to hear 

talks on astronomy, air flight, and popular rocketry, and frequented museums in 

both capital and provincial cities to expand their knowledge on these topics.these 

densely populated lectures and long lines in the 1920s were not anomalous because, 

since as far back as the late nineteenth century, russians had been fascinated by 

popular scientific themes. in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 

tsarist russia witnessed an explosion of scientific and amateur societies that helped 

sponsor lectures and events on popular topics such as air flight, astronomy, and the 

cosmos beyond.these societies proliferated before the onslaught of World War i and 

the russian revolution, while their membership grew as well. By the 1920s, after 

the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 and the russian civil War (1918–1920),a period 

called the new economic policy (1921–1927) allowed for a mixed economy to 

flourish and thus books, pamphlets, and even some newspapers could be published 

independently of the state.3Within this economic and political context of the Soviet 

1920s, air- and spaceflight, along with astronomy, became not only popular themes 

in the mass media—they literally became crazes. 

2. “otchet m.o.L.a.na pervoe polugodie 1921 goda,”gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiskoi Federatsii— 

State archive of the russian Federation (hereafter cited as garF), f. 2307, op. 2, d. 371, l.69. 

3. For a critical overview of the transitional qualities of the period of the new economic policy 

(nep), see William g. rosenberg,“introduction: nep russia as a ‘transitional’ Society,” in Russia 

in the Era of NEP, Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick et al. (Bloomington, 

in: indiana university press, 1991), pp. 1–12. 
In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 43 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

in Soviet russia during the 1920s,professors such as n.a.rynin in Leningrad 

became almost full-time popularizers of spaceflight, in particular, while the public 

eagerly consumed journal and newspaper articles devoted to this topic.4 rynin, a 

prolific writer on russian rocketry and astronautics,was also interested in organizing 

public astronautical societies in the 1920s. in the late 1920s he began to write 

and publish a multivolume encyclopedia on cosmonautics that placed him at the 

forefront of the popularization of rocketry in russia.5 

this Soviet aeronautical craze was certainly part of a pan-european phenomenon, 

as the reporting of aeronautical feats in europe were popular news items and were 

anticipated well ahead of time.this fixation with air flight in both the european 

and russian public media of the 1920s was similar to the way that u.S. and Soviet 

rocket flights were both elaborately portrayed by television reporters and eagerly 

anticipated by a viewing audience in the 1960s and 1970s.Western technological 

developments were practically revered in the Soviet newspapers of the 1920s, and 

thus readers were exposed to news on global developments in aeronautics and 

rocketry.america itself was portrayed as a symbol and emblem of how technology 

was transforming modern culture, and Soviet readers believed they were part of a 

cosmopolitan readership that could synthesize european, american, and russian 

developments in rocketry and aeronautics in general.6 

though interest in spaceflight had predated the 1917 russian revolution, 

certain groups in the Soviet 1920s (such as the Biocosmists) believed in the 

importance of spreading ideas on interplanetary travel for public consumption.the 

Biocosmists were interested in space travel as a means to achieve immortality, and 

they included amongst their group the renowned geochemist and science popularizer 

V. i.Vernadskii.this group also included, amongst their diverse members, the space 

visionary K. e tsiolkovskii, a mathematics teacher from Kaluga, russia. Besides 

tsiokovskii, other followers of this group included influential Bolsheviks such as 

Leonid Krasin (the designer of the Lenin mausoleum) andValerian muraviev (editor 

at the central institute of Labor in moscow and a devout follower of Frederick 

taylor). the Biocosmists could, to some extent, aptly be described as millenarians 

4. n.a. rynin, Mechty, legendy, i pervye fantasii (Leningrad, 1930). 

5. n. a. rynin, Interplanetary Flight and Communication (A Multi-Volume Encyclopedia) (israeli program 

of Scientific translation, published for naSa, Jerusalem, 1970). For an overview of the life of n.a. 

rynin, See Frank h.Winter,“nikolai alexeyevich rynin (1877–1942), Soviet astronautical pioneer: 

an american appreciation,” in Earth-Oriented Applied SpaceTechnology, 2, no. 1 (1982): pp. 69–80. 

6. For a look at how america was portrayed in the russian press and journals,see Jeffrey Brooks,“the press 

and its message:images ofamerica in the 1920s and 1930s,”in Russia in the Era of NEP,Explorations in Soviet 

Society and Culture,ed.Sheila Fitzpatrick et al.(Bloomington,in:indiana university press,1991);also hans 

rogger,“america in the russian mind,”Pacific Historical Review 47 (February 1979):pp.27–51. 
44 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

and utopians, as they had a belief in the unbound ability of man to transform nature 

as well as to explore and colonize the cosmos.7 

the Biocosmists were heavily influenced by the ideas and writings of the russian 

pre-revolutionary philosopher nikolai Fedorov. Fedorov had worried that earth was 

overcrowded and believed that humans could overcome this malthusian pressure by 

exploring and colonizing space.Fedorov’s vague notions of space travel as a way to achieve 

immortality for the human race was at the crux of his mystical utopian ideas and were very 

popular among russian intellectuals.8 one of Fedorov’s most avid disciples was the space 

visionary Konstantin tsiolkovskii.according to the science journalistVictor Shkolovskii, 

Fedorov had hoped tsiolkovskii would popularize notions of space flight and rocketry 

amongst the russian reading public.9 in the Soviet period,the Biocosmists became devout 

followers of Fedorov, and they spread his (and Konstantin tsiolkovskii’s) ideas in the 

popular media for an eager readership willingly consuming articles on space travel.10 

however, during the Soviet 1920s, professional science educators also served 

as popularizers of space flight and rocketry.those russian intellectuals, such as the 

Leningrad physics professor ia. i. perel’man, had more didactic purposes in mind. 

perel’man, for instance, published many articles on rocket science and space travel 

in the several widely distributed popular journals he edited, such as In Nature’s 

Workshop.these articles had an educational focus, attempting to explain the basics 

of gravitational forces and rudimentary rocketry to a popular audience.11 perel’man 

was particularly interested in spreading the ideas of the space visionary Konstantin 

tsiolkovskii, and popularized tsiolkovskii’s theories on space flight in his widely 

read book entitled Mezhplanetnoe puteshestvie (Interplanetary Travel). perel’man 

adamantly defended the notion of space flight against skeptics, explaining to readers 

how rockets could potentially overcome gravitational forces by projectiles traveling 

7. For a good overview of the participants and focus of the Biocosmists and other utopian groups, see 

richard Stites, Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution 

(new York: oxford university press, 1989), pp. 168–170. 

8. For an analysis of Fedorov and his school of mysticism, see peter Wiles,“on physical immortality,” 

Survey, nos. 56/57 (1965): pp. 132–134. 

9. See Victor Shklovskii,“Kosmonavtika ot a do ia,” in Literaturnaia gazeta (7 april 1971): p. 13. 

10. For 	an analysis of the philosophical roots of russian cosmism, see michael hagemeister, 

“russian cosmism in the 1920s and today,” in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, Bernice 

glatzer rosenthal,ed.(ithaca,nY:cornell university press,1997).hagemeister argues that the city 

of Kaluga,russia,where tsiolkovskii lived most of his life,was a center for cosmism whose followers 

professed a belief in the omnipotence of science and technology. according to some Biocosmists, 

such as tsiolkovskii, by traveling to outer space the human race could lose its corporeality and gain 

a type of immortality in infinite space and time. See a. L. chizhevskii,“Stranitsy vospominanii o K. 

e.tsiolkovskom,” Khimiia i zhizn’, no. 1 (1977): pp. 23–32. 

11. For an example of these types of articles, particularly those explaining the basis of rocketry 

and overcoming the earth’s gravitational forces, see ia. i. perel’man, “Za predely atmosfery,” in V 

masterskoi prirody, nos. 5-6 (1919): pp. 32–33. 
In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 45 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

at high speeds with the use of liquid fuels (something tsiolkovskii had dreamed 

of earlier).12 perel’man was also editor of the popular-science journal Priroda i liudi 

(Nature and People), which also carried articles on science and the cosmos. During 

the 1920s, perel’man had served in the Soviet commissariat of enlightenment 

(ministry of education), where he worked on school curricula reform. there he 

made great strides in introducing the basics of physics, mathematics, and astronomy 

into secondary school curricula—a crucial building block for young students in 

understanding rocketry and space discovery.13 

though perel’man fought hard to substantiate the importance of rocketry in 

the public mind, on some level the fascination with air flight had already forged an 

interested and impressionable public.State and privately commissioned (by each journal 

or newspaper) reader surveys in the 1920s offer historians detailed responses to reader 

interests.this survey data showed there was a genuine fascination with rocketry and 

that air flight and space exploration were extremely popular topics amongst readers. 

interestingly enough, the surveys pointedly show how readers were actively exposed to 

news and information on air- and spaceflight from Western european and american 

sources. however, during the Stalinist 1930s and 1940s, this would soon change.14 

By the mid-1930s,a cultural shift had occurred in russia under Stalin,dubbed by 

the 1940s historian nicholas timasheff as “the great retreat.”timasheff, and some 

current cultural historians, have argued that during high Stalinism russia embodied 

a retreat away from socialist cultural norms back toward greater russian, more 

nationalistic themes.15 it is within this context that the Soviet aeronautical feats during 

the 1930s were glorified and popularized through propagandistic means by the Soviet 

press.16 During the earlier 1920s, international aeronautical feats (especially those in 

theWest) were covered with the same frequency as equivalent russian achievements. 

however, during the Stalinist 1930s and 1940s, prior to the Sputnik era, russians 

began to witness a departure toward an increasingly nationalistic, triumphal manner. 

12. See ia. i. perel’man, Mezhplanetnoe puteshestvie (Leningrad, 1923). 

13. See editor’s biographical entry in V masterskoi prirody, nos. 5–6 (1919). 

14. For an overview of these sociological reader surveys, particularly focusing on reader questionnaires, 

see m.rappeport,“chto dala nasha anketa?” Nauka i teknika,13 January 1926.For a look at the specific 

reader surveys of one popular scientific journal in the 1920s, see “nasha anketa,” Iskra, no. 6 (June 

1927): pp. 38–39. 

15. See 	nicholas timasheff, The Great Retreat: The Growth and Decline of Communism in Russia 

(new York: e. p. Dutton & co., 1946). For a more current analysis of cultural practices during the 

Stalinist 1930s, see Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, Soviet 

Russia in the 1930s (new York: oxford university press, 1999). 

16. in 	the popular journals, the 1930s were characterized as years of “Stakhanovite Socialist 

aviation.” in the summer of 1936, chkalov, Baidukov, and Beliakov made their historic, nonstop 

flight in a Soviet ant-35. in 1936, Levanovskii and Levchenko flew from Los angeles to moscow, 

and molokov flew along the arctic seaboard of the uSSr.See L.Khvat,Besprimernyi perelet (moscow, 

1936).also see “po stalinskomu marshrutu,” Chto chitat’, no. 2 (1936): pp. 45–47. 
46 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

it is during this era that the visionary rocket and space theorist K.e.tsiolkovskii 

was asked to give his catalytic speech on the future of human space travel on 

may Day, 1935, from red Square. though catalytic moments are, individually, 

critical junctures in history, tsiolkovskii’s speech must be contextualized within 

the greater russian cultural nationalism propagated at the time by the Stalinist 

regime. nonetheless, this was no ordinary speech; its repercussion was extraordinary 

amongst the public, politicians, and physicists alike. his taped speech was also 

broadcast by radio throughout the former Soviet union, across 11 time zones, 

with an enormous social impact. Both Stalin, and later Khrushchev, would use the 

figure of tsiolkovskii to focus on the superiority of Soviet technology over Western 

capitalism and its scientific system. however, both during this speech and at times 

prior to this event, tsiolkovskii used these Soviet public venues to promote his 

own ideas about the future possibility of space flight.this speech was given while 

impressive Soviet airplanes flew above red Square,and tsiolkovskii described them 

as “steel dragonflies” which were only a tip of a more profound iceberg.17 

though events like this were certainly propagandistic public spectacles (see 

figure 3.1), scientists and future physicists alike were still very impressed with the 

secondary, depoliticized vision (or meaning) that tsiolkovskii’s ideas embodied. 

in his memoirs, the nuclear physicist and science advisor to gorbachev, roald Z. 

Sagdeev, acknowledged the duality embedded in these Soviet public spectacles. on 

one hand, he believed Stalin used tsiolkovskii’s 1935 broadcast from red Square to 

further build the notion of the superiority of Soviet technology in the ensuing arms 

and space race. on the other hand,tsiolkovskii’s work became better known in the 

1930s and 1940s, and many future space scientists read his popular work voraciously. 

Sagdeev argues that on 1 may 1935, enthusiastic Soviet citizens (including his 

parents, educated scientific academics) were enthralled by the speech.18 

in a recollection related to Sagdeev’s above, Valentin glushko, designer of 

energiya and many rocket engines that operated on tsiolkovskii’s dream of using 

liquid propellants, to some extent corroborates Sagdeev’s perspective in his own 

memoirs. glushko corresponded with tsiolkovskii as a teenager and was inspired 

by his popular books in the 1920s and 1930s. glushko believed that, mixed in 

with the Soviet propaganda and nationalist fervor propagated from above, was sheer 

enthusiasm and pride on the part of future scientists (and young space enthusiasts) 

17. K. e. tsiolkovskii, “osyshchestvliaetsia mechta chelovechestva, pervomaiskoe prevetstvie K. 

e. tsiolkovskogo na plenke,” a speech taped in his office/laboratory Kaluga, russia in the last 

week of april 1935.the speech is transcribed in K. E.Tsiolkovskii, Sbornik posviashchennyi pamiati 

znamenitogo deiatelia nauki (Kaluga, 1935). 

18. See 	roald Z. Sagdeev, The Making of a Soviet Scientist: My Adventures in Nuclear Fusion and 

Space from Stalin to Star Wars (new York: John Wiley & Sons, inc., 1994), pp. 4–6, 181–182. 
In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 47 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

from below.19 this reflects somewhat on the popular surge of both interest in 

spaceflight (which continued in Stalin’s time) and the symbiosis that coalesced this 

public interest with the nationalist drive from above. many physicists as well as 

ordinary citizens made pilgrimages to Kaluga, russia to see tsiokovskii before his 

death in September of 1935.tsiolkovskii’s funeral in provincial russia was almost 

a type of national, cathartic dirge and thus a reflection of the spontaneous interest 

in local space heroes. 

this genuinely popular adulation for space heroes continued into the 

Khrushchev era as well.the eminent historian of russian science,Loren r.graham, 

reported in his recent memoirs that he had a similar impression on 12 april 1961, 

when he marched through red Square at the celebration for the cosmonaut Yuri 

gagarin sponsored by the Soviet leadership. graham found this to be a mix of 

propagandistic spectacle from above and sincere, heartfelt public outpouring of 

support from below. as graham looked back at that day and canonization, he also 

ruminated on the views of Soviet citizens and their pride in gagarin: 

in later years when the Soviet union became [a] decrepit and 

failing society, i often recall that day as the apogee in Soviet 

citizens’belief that they held the key to the future of civilization. 

the celebrations on the street were genuine and heartfelt.Soviet 

science was, they were sure, the best in the world, and Soviet 

rockets succeeded where american ones failed.20 

Space Pervades the Soviet Consciousness: Sputnik, the 

Khrushchev Era, and the Public Sphere 

During the era of the Second World War, and during Soviet reconstruction in 

the late 1940s and 1950s, Soviet aeronautical and cosmonautic feats were, to some 

extent, relegated to the periphery of the public landscape while the country was 

rehabilitated physically, politically and psychologically. But with the Khrushchev era 

and the dawn of Sputnik in 1957,the country witnessed a return to the nationalistic 

fervor of Soviet aeronautical and space development; again, as momentous as 1957 

was, it built on the Stalin years but this time the regime orchestrated the public and 

social response more elaborately. 

With the launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957, as part of the myriad of celebratory 

events, a host of journals filled pages with laudatory articles on Soviet rocketry, the 

history of spaceflight, and the life of the new cosmonaut. they included eclectic 

19. See Valentin glushko’s 	reminiscences in his grandiose history of the Soviet space program, 

The Soviet Encyclopedia of the Cosmos (moscow: nauka, 1974). 

20. See Loren r.graham, Moscow Stories (Bloomington,in:indiana university press,2006),pp.18–19. 
48 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

journals such as Ogonek (Little Flame), literary journals such as Literaturnaia gazeta 

(Literary Journal),and more politicized,official ones such as Kommunist (The Communist) 

and Partiinaia zhizn’ (Party Life).While most writers (and journalists) glorified Soviet 

achievements in space,there were the occasional letters to editors (which were actually 

published in newspapers such as Komsomol’skaia Pravda) that questioned the public 

support of the space effort, but they were generally anomalous to the norm.21 

all the same, public debate on the efficacy of the space program did exist in 

the popular press under Khrushchev. Sometimes ordinary, concerned citizens wrote 

letters to editors of newspapers, such as Komsomol’skaia Pravda,that questioned why so 

much funding was shunted to the space program at a time when salaries for workers 

in factories were woefully low and consumer items were so scarce.22 other letters 

were queries regarding whether automatons could accomplish similar feats conducted 

by human cosmonauts in outer space. many of these types of letters, in general, also 

questioned the safety of space travel in rockets for Soviet cosmonauts.23 

With the above exceptions aside, however, public discourse on the space 

program was mostly constrained, and even limited to voices with large public 

reputations (such as major writers of literary significance). Some literary figures, 

such as il’ia ehrenburg, were concerned about how technology and the space 

race obscured the importance of other aspects of Soviet life on earth, such as 

the development of literature and the arts, and questioned the substantial funds 

and government subsidies put into these technical arenas.24 these critiques by 

literary figures as well as citizens may have been a repercussion or reflection of 

the Khrushchev “thaw”—the limited loosening of controls on artistic and public 

expression in the Soviet union from 1953 until approximately 1962.25 Furthermore, 

they may have reflected the need for a more outspoken segment of the cultural 

intelligentsia to remind the public of russia’s great artistic tradition (which should 

not be masked by its recent technological feats).all the same, these critiques, as well 

as ordinary citizens’ letters mentioned above, were never outright diatribes against 

the regime’s achievements in spaceflight, and much of the public discourse still 

remained, in a censored state, oriented toward glorifications of those achievements. 

21. See paul r. Josephson, “rockets, reactors, and Soviet culture,” in Science and the Soviet Social 

Order, ed. Loren r. graham (cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 1990), pp. 180–185. 

22. For an example of this, see a worker’s letter to Komsomol’skaia Pravda published under the name 

aleksei n.,“ne rano li zaigryvat’s lunoi,” Komsomol’skaia Pravda, 11 June 1960: p. 1. 

23. For 	an example of articles (as well as letters to editors) in the popular Soviet press and 

journals on the controversy of humans vs. automatons being sent into space, see B. Danilin,“Kto 

poletit v kosmos—chelovek ili avtomat?” Molodaia gvardiia 1 (1961): pp. 204–208. 

24. See il’ia ehrenburg,“o lune, o zemle, o serdtse,” Literaturnaia gazeta 1 (January 1960): pp. 3–4. 

25. For an overview of the cultural and public/civic thaw under nikita Khrushchev, see priscilla 

Johnson, Khrushchev and the Arts:The Politics of Soviet Culture (cambridge, ma:the mit press, 1964). 
In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 49 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

the historian paul Josephson,in his analysis of the public ramifications of nuclear, 

atomic, and space science, argues that celebrations and mass rallies (particularly in 

moscow) became an important site for the Soviet “masses” to become involved in the 

spectacle of display for Soviet“big science.”26 planetariums hosted lectures on outer space; 

writers produced short stories with exaggerated platitudes for adults and children; and 

Soviet composers created popular songs (especially short chastushki) celebrating Sputnik 

to be sung to children at schools.27 however,official institutions such as theacademy of 

Sciences became the greatest proponents and conduits for disseminating more detailed 

public lectures on the significance of these achievements.it was S.p.Korolev,the director 

of the post-WWii Soviet rocket program and,in actuality,the real father of the russian 

space program, who was asked to direct these celebrations at the academy; he was also 

asked to give the 1957 keynote commemorative speech for the capstone series of events 

planned in the era of Sputnik which honored Soviet space legends such as Konstantin 

tsiolkovskii (the grandfather of the russian space program—Ded cosmosa).28 

What is interesting about the various speeches given by academics such as 

Korolev, however, is that although they were prescribed to mythologize great feats 

in Soviet rocketry (and help build a pantheon of iconic figures in Soviet space 

history), the actual speeches focused as much on small (yet significant) scientific 

contributions these figures made. For instance, Korolev’s 1957 speech glorifying 

tsiolkovskii certainly painted him within the Soviet paradigm of one of the “first” 

to conceive of rockets with liquid fuel.however,Korolev also spent as much time in 

his speech, if not more, discussing the more pertinent contribution of tsiolkovskii’s 

mathematical equations on the velocity of rockets leaving earth’s atmosphere.29 

26. See Josephson’s analysis of public display of big science in the former Soviet union in his excellent 

chapter entitled “rockets,reactors,and Soviet culture,”in Science and the Soviet Social Order, graham,ed. 

27. See	 S. ostrovskii, “pesenka o sputnike,” Kul’turno-prosvetitel’naia rabota 1 (1958): pp. 30–33. these 

children’s chastushki were two- or four-line folk verses to be sung in an upbeat tempo with fervor. See g. 

Liando,“nebesnye chastushki,”Kul’turno-prosvetitel’naia rabota 1 (1958):p.34. 

28. in the 1940s during the war, but primarily after the war and into the 1950s, the Soviets make 

unsubstantiated claims of national priority in scientific discoveries. these claims ranged from the 

ludicrous assertion of the invention of the electric light,radio,and telegraph,to more specific scientific 

assertions of Soviets discoveries in a variety of disciplines, such as structural chemistry. Loren graham 

believes most of these claims were abandoned later in the Brezhnev era in the 1960s and 1970s. 

however, he rightfully asserts that a few of those disciplinary claims (particularly revolving around 

certain scientific figures) should be investigated more seriously and need to be further analyzed in 

isolation of the general nationalistic assertions. See Loren r. graham, Science in Russia and the Soviet 

Union:A Short History (newYork: cambridge university press, 1993), pp. 142–143.these assertions 

are relevant to this public debate since the Soviets glorified their early theorists of cosmonautics, such 

as tsiokovskii, claiming at times that they were the first to conceive of rocket flight. 

29. See S. p. Korolyev, “on the practical Significance of the Scientific and engineering propositions 

oftsiolkovskii in rocketry.”Lecture given on 17 September 1957,based on the centennial celebrations 

of the birth oftsiolkovskii held in moscow,in K.E.Tsiolkovskii,Izbrannyie trudy (moscow,academy of 

Sciences publishers,1963), pp. 16–18. 
50 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

though nationalistic in orientation, these public speeches at the academy 

sought the small kernel of scientific truth,so to speak,while downplaying the greater 

Soviet myth. academician Boris chertok, an engineer and the deputy director 

under Korolev, later described Korolev’s speech on tsiolkovskii as critical to the 

rocket community, if not overlooked at the time. chertok, in his recently published 

memoirs, admitted that he and Korolev agreed that it was tsiolkovskii’s velocity 

equation that was his real, lasting legacy of scientific contribution to the future of 

rocketry.30 chertok admitted that the regime exaggerated these iconic figures and,at 

times, those such as Korolev tried to focus on real scientific contributions generally 

overshadowed by the regime. ironically, it was chertok himself who believed that 

myth and reality are nebulous concepts and those lines were sometimes blurred 

historically.in his memoirs,chertok recanted a story about how mythic tsiolkovskii 

actually was, despite his real scientific contributions to rocketry: 

of the first missile decade, the last three years were certainly 

the most interesting in terms of science and engineering.the 

people who joined the missile programs during 1954–56 

to a great extent determined the subsequent development 

of our cosmonautics program. While these people were still 

relatively young, someone’s quip caught their fancy. according 

to our personal history forms, our personnel fall into one of 

two categories: they are either tsiolkovskii’s best students or 

individuals whose youth isn’t their main shortcoming.31 

Epilogue: The Mythology of Soviet Cosmonautics and 

its Social and Cultural Impacts and Ramifications 

By the height of the Khrushchev era in the early 1960s,and after Yuri gagarin’s 

historic piloted circling of outer space, the Soviet paradigm as propagated in public 

went beyond national enthusiasm toward emphasizing how the regime made 

quantum leaps to outpace the West. in april of 1961, just after Yuri gagarin became 

the first human being to rocket into space orbit, the Soviets held a gala diplomatic 

banquet in the Kremlin in his honor. at the event, the beaming Soviet premier, 

nikita Khrushchev, embraced gagarin and then made a toast. he said, “We used 

to go barefoot and without clothes and arrogant Western theoreticians predicted 

that bast-shoed russians would never become a great power.”32 Furthermore, he 

said, “once-illiterate russia, which many regarded as a barbaric country, had now 

30. Boris chertok, Rockets and People, vol. 1, naSa history Series, naSa Sp-2005-4110 (Washington, 

Dc,2005),p.3. 

31. Boris chertok, Rockets and People, Creating a Rocket Industry, vol. 2, naSa history Series, naSa 

Sp-2006-4110 (Washington,Dc,2006),p.168. 

32. Pravda, 15 april 1961: p. 2. 
In Search of a Red Cosmos: Space Exploration, 51 

Public Culture, and Soviet Society 

pioneered the path into space.”33 this speech, published the next day in Pravda 

for all Soviet citizens to read, propagated a notion that the Soviets overcame great 

adversity to show the West how they could lead in the space race. although this 

speech maintained the triumphal tone of the Stalin era, it went beyond that to 

emphasize the “promethean” nature and “quantum leaps” of russia’s advances 

ironically,Khrushchev’s boastful speech disregarded the real legacies his regime 

inherited.that is, russia had a long history of not only rocket design and invention 

stretching back to the tsarist era, but also an enthusiastic, engaged public that 

was fascinated with global discoveries in aeronautics and rocketry going back to 

the tsarist era and the cosmopolitan 1920s. in fact, russia had a tradition in the 

tsarist era of public display of rocketry going back to the eighteenth century.the 

romanov dynasty was especially well known for being fond of fireworks displays at 

public festivities in St. petersburg, which may have been a catalyst for public interest 

in rocketry. this interest, as mentioned above, was fostered in the late tsarist and 

early Soviet press and popular journals of the time, and well into the late 1920s. 

though this cosmopolitanism and enthusiasm may have changed in the 

Stalinist 1930s and 1940s as the regime propagated more nationalistic myths of 

Soviet scientific triumphs, a fascination with and national pride in space discovery 

and rocketry was still maintained in the minds of average Soviet citizens and 

physicists alike. By the time of the Khrushchev thaw, with its limited public debate, 

citizens may have questioned both the efficacy of the Soviet space program and its 

propagandistic celebrations, but they (like most citizens globally) maintained that 

fascination which stretched back to the eras of the tsars and Lenin. though we 

may not be able to document that “fascination from below” with the same set of 

sociological reader surveys and social-scientific data available to historians for the 

pre-WWii era, and though that imagination clearly was highly constrained and 

orchestrated in a censored state “from above,” it existed (legacy intact) in memories 

and oral testimony all the same. 

33. ibid. 
Figure 3.1—Photo of a 1933 public demonstration of the Stalin-era technical society, Aviation and Chemistry. 

Konstantin Tsiolkovskii (space visionary), second from the left, was more frequently asked to take part in these Stalinera festivities glorifying the regime as the 1930s unfolded. These festivities were part of a larger movement to expand 

public spectacles, while focusing on the achievements of Soviet science and technology. Photo courtesy of Russian 

Academy of Sciences Archive in Moscow. (From ARAN, fond 555, op. 2, d. 149, l.3.) 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 53

chapter 4 

Live from the Moon: The Societal 


Impact of Apollo


andrew chaikin 

i

n october 2006, newspapers and Web sites around the world carried the news 

that a 37-year-old mystery had apparently been solved:computer analysis seemed 

to reveal that the word “a,” long thought to be missing from apollo 11 commander 

neil armstrong’s first words after setting foot on the moon, had been spoken after 

all.1 now there was no need for editors to insert parentheses in armstrong’s famous 

quote, “that’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” aside from 

the relief it gave grammarians—as armstrong himself acknowledged, the sentence 

would not have made sense without the missing article—the story illustrated the 

enduring cultural impact of project apollo. 

our society’s experiences of the first human voyages to another world have 

continued to evolve, even though the last of these pioneering journeys took place 

more than three decades ago,in December 1972.that is understandable,considering 

the fact that apollo was among the most memorable events of the twentieth century. 

many observers have identified the moon missions as one of civilization’s crowning 

achievements;apollo has also been called the greatest technological feat of the last 

millennium.as one would expect for an event of such magnitude,the cultural impact 

of apollo has been multifaceted. it was an event of international importance and yet 

it touched countless lives on an intensely personal level.apollo was set in motion by 

geopolitical,cold war concerns that had little to do with exploration:president John 

F. Kennedy saw the lunar landing challenge as a way to best the Soviet union and 

show the world the strength of a free society. But like all explorations, apollo had 

some consequences that were largely unanticipated, including the profound effects 

of seeing earth from lunar distance. 

1. For example, “armstrong ‘got moon quote right’,” BBc news, 2 october 2006, http://news.bbc. 

co.uk/2/hi/americas/5398560.stm (accessed 13 august 2007). 
54 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

A Leap in Perspective 

When americans awoke on christmas morning of 1968, they were greeted 

by more than presents under the tree. newspaper, radio, and television reports were 

filled with the momentous news that three astronauts—the crew of naSa’s apollo 

8 mission—were on their way back to earth after becoming the first human beings 

to orbit the moon. For the u.S. space program,apollo 8 represented a major step 

toward achieving the national goal, set by president Kennedy in 1961, of landing 

men on the moon before the end of the 1960s.the news that three astronauts had 

flown around our nearest celestial neighbor sparked feelings of national pride and 

accomplishment, but it was also clear that other impacts were being felt from this 

extraordinary feat. 

in particular, there was a new awareness of earth and its place in universe. 

through their spacecraft windows, the crew of the moonward-bound apollo 8 

had seen their home planet shrink until it was small enough to cover with an 

outstretched thumb.But it wasn’t just earth’s small size that impressed the astronauts; 

it was the fact that our planet was so clearly alive and, in that way, apparently alone 

in the universe. in contrast to the bleak and lifeless moonscape, earth represented, 

in the words of apollo 8 command module pilot Jim Lovell,“a grand oasis in the 

big vastness of space.” 

the fact that millions of people heard Lovell’s words live, during a television 

broadcast by the astronauts from lunar orbit, was one way in which apollo was 

unlike any previous exploration in human history. no longer did the populace have 

to wait for news reports to trickle in from the frontier; now they were eyewitnesses 

to the event and its impact unfolded in real time. only the astronauts could actually 

see what earth looked like from 230,000 miles away, but anyone following the 

mission could share, in some measure, that unprecedented leap in perspective. 

poet archibald macLeish expressed this in a reflection entitled “riders on earth 

together, Brothers in eternal cold” that was printed on the front page of The New 

York Times on christmas Day: 

To see the earth as it truly is, small blue and beautiful in that eternal 

silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, 

brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know 

now they are truly brothers.2 

this transcendent idea stood in stark contrast to the previous events of 1968. 

the nation was becoming increasingly divided over such issues as the escalation of 

theVietnamWar, racial tensions, and the troubles of the inner cities. in a year that saw 

more than its share of horrors, including the assassinations of martin Luther King, 

2. archibald macLeish,“a reflection: riders on earth together, Brothers in eternal cold,” The New 

York Times, 25 December 1968: p. 1. 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 55 

Jr. and robert Kennedy, apollo 8 provided an uplifting end. one of the countless 

telegrams received by the astronauts after their return said,“You saved 1968.”3 

Still, not all reactions to the moon mission were positive. atheist madeline 

murray o’hare protested the fact that during their second lunar-orbit telecast on 

christmas eve the astronauts had read from genesis; she later sued, unsuccessfully, 

to block any form of public prayer by astronauts during space missions. But for 

most earthlings the impact of apollo 8’s new perspective on their home was lasting 

and positive. it was captured in stunning clarity in the astronauts’ photographs, one 

of which—an image of earthrise taken by Bill anders—was later made into a u.S. 

postage stamp. many observers have noted the timing of apollo 8 with respect to 

the increase in environmental activism; futurist Stewart Brand maintains it is no 

coincidence that the first earth Day, a nationwide observance of environmental 

issues,took place in april 1970,some 16 months after americans first saw how their 

world looked from the moon. it is worth noting that for the astronauts themselves 

the arresting sight of their world as a lovely and seemingly fragile “christmas 

ornament” rising above the lunar horizon was the greatest surprise of the mission. 

anders would later recall thinking,“We came all this way to explore the moon, and 

the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.”4 

Shifting Priorities 

as momentous as apollo 8 was, its historical impact was equaled, even 

surpassed, by that of apollo 11, the first landing of humans on another world.When 

neil armstrong and Buzz aldrin took history’s first moonwalk on 20 July 1969, an 

estimated 600 million people—one-fifth of the world’s population—witnessed it 

on live television and radio.it was difficult not to feel the enormity of the event,and 

some observers viewed it as a turning point in the course of civilization—especially 

science fiction writers, many of whom had envisioned the event in the decades 

before it happened. one was robert heinlein, who had penned the story for the 

1950 film Destination Moon; on the day of the moonwalk he appeared as a guest on 

cBS news’ television coverage of the mission.“this is the greatest event in all the 

history of the human race up to this time,” heinlein said.“today is new Year’s Day 

of the Year one. if we don’t change the calendar, historians will do so.”5 

and yet no one could ignore the fact that the first moon landing, taking place 

at a time of continuing turmoil in the united States, was also evoking dissent. on 

3. Frank Borman has mentioned this telegram in a number of interviews.See,for example,American Experience, 

pBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/moon/peopleevents/e_1968.html (accessed 13august 2007). 

4. Bill anders interview with the author, July 1987. 

5. Man on the Moon [DVD] (apollo 11 chapter), marathon music and Video, distributed by eDi, 

eugene, or, 2003. 
56 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

the day before the apollo 11 launch, ralph abernathy, chairman of the Southern 

christian Leadership council, came to the Kennedy Space center with a small 

group of protesters to draw attention to the plight of the nation’s poor. and in 

new York city on the day of the landing, a member of harlem’s black community 

voiced the same concern to a network tV reporter: 

The cash they wasted, as far as I’m concerned, in getting to the moon, 

could have been used to feed poor black people in Harlem, and all over 

this country. So, you know, never mind the moon; let’s get some of that 

cash in Harlem.6 

a defense of the apollo expenditures (the estimated total was $24 billion) 

came from arthur c. clarke, the writer and futurist who had collaborated with 

director Stanley Kubrick to create the screenplay for Kubrick’s 1968 epic science 

fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey. in his comments, clarke looked to apollo’s 

long-term benefits: 

I think in the long run the money that’s been put into the space program 

is one of the best investments this country has ever made . . .This is a 

downpayment on the future of mankind. It’s as simple as that.7 

another celebrated science fiction visionary,ray Bradbury,was even more forceful. 

he encountered negative sentiments while appearing on a televised panel discussion on 

the moonwalk in London.there he found himself confronted by criticism of apollo 

from his fellow guests,who included irish political activist Bernadette Devlin.Bradbury 

responded with his own big-picture perspective, as he later described it: 

This is the result of six billion years of evolution. Tonight, we have 

given the lie to gravity.We have reached for the stars . . .And you refuse 

celebrate? To hell with you!8 

in general, reactions to apollo 11 were divided between those who felt that 

reaching for the moon was out of step with urgent needs on earth, and those who 

insisted that apollo’s cost was outweighed by its long-term significance.how people 

gauged the importance of the first human footsteps on another world depended 

very much on who was being asked. 

Still, it was clear that apollo 11’s cultural imprint was indelible.the quote that 

accompanied neil armstrong’s first lunar footstep became instantly immortal and 

became the source of countless spinoffs. (Less than a month after the moonwalk, 

one appeared at new York’s Shea Stadium, where a teenaged fan cheered the mets 

baseball team and their manager, gil hodges, on the way to their first winning season 

6. ibid. 

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

American People by CBS News over the CBSTelevision Network (newYork: cBS news, 1970), p. 60. 

8. ray Bradbury speech, San Francisco palace of Fine arts, 10 July 1972 (recording provided to the 

author by space artist Don Davis). 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 57 

with a homemade sign:“one Small Step for hodges,one giant Leap for met-kind.”)9 

another way in which the success of apollo 11 entered the culture was in a new phrase 

that entered the language:“if they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they [fill in 

the blank]?”the blank ranged from curing cancer to solving the problems of the inner 

cities.10 this questioner was usually unaware of the fact that,unlike many of the difficult 

problems of the day,the moon landing was a feat of engineering for which the enabling 

scientific discoveries had already been made. But it underscored the way in which the 

success of apollo 11 had permanently altered the public’s sense of what a group of 

human beings dedicated to a single goal was capable of accomplishing. 

acknowledgement of the moon landing also showed up in popular songs written 

shortly afterward. Singer-songwriter Joni mitchell wrote in her song,“Willy,” 

He stood looking thru the lace at the face on the conquered Moon.11 

Less enduring was a composition entitled “american moon,” which proclaimed, 

Apollo Eleven delivered our heavenly right to say, 

“The man in the moon is a citizen of the U.S.A.” 

Stand up and brag for your grand old flag 

Waving on the moon tonight, oh yes, 

Waving on the moon tonight.12 

“american moon” reflected the way in which apollo 11 could be viewed 

through the lens of nationalism: By winning the space race with the Soviet union, 

apollo had given a boost to the nation’s prestige in the world and, for many 

americans, a heightened a sense of national pride. But seen through another lens, 

particularly that of the nation’s disadvantaged,the view was starkly different.to black 

poet gil Scott-heron,apollo was emblematic of the nation’s racial inequalities. he 

expressed this in “Whitey on the moon,” which begins, 

A rat done bit my sister Nell. 

(with Whitey on the moon) 

Her face and arms began to swell. 

(and Whitey’s on the moon) 

I can’t pay no doctor bill (but Whitey’s on the moon) 

Ten years from now I’ll be payin’ still. 

(while Whitey’s on the moon)13 

9. Joseph Durso,“mets complete a Four-game Sweep of padres with pair of 3-to-2 Victories,” The 

New York Times, 18 august 1969: p. 41. 

10. See, for example, “the moon and middle america,” Time, 1 august 1969; evan Jenkins, “For 

ph.D.’s, no end to Lean Years,” The New York Times, 8 January 1973: p. 72. 

11. Joni mitchell,“Willy,” Ladies of the Canyon, 1970 (cD 1990, reprise, Burbank, ca, 6376-2). 

12. Lyrics are printed on the Web site of the Smithsonian’s national museum of american history 

at http://americanhistory.si.edu/ssb/6_thestory/6d_views/main6d1b_ll.html (accessed 13 august 2007). 

the author saw the song performed by Judy carne on The Ed Sullivan Show on 26 october 1969. 

13. Now andThen:The Poems of Gil Scott-Heron (edinburgh, Scotland: payback press, 2000), p. 21.
58 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Apollo Fades from View 

For many people, the moon program began and ended with apollo 11; the 

night they saw two americans leave their footprints on another world would prove 

to be their only vivid memory of apollo. But in truth, apollo was far from over. 

Six more landing attempts followed, all but one of which were successful, while the 

magnitude of apollo’s lunar explorations quickened at a truly extraordinary pace. 

in the summer of 1971, just two years after armstrong and aldrin explored a bland 

acre of moonscape for two and a half hours, apollo 15 astronauts Dave Scott and 

Jim irwin were living on the moon for three full days.their moonwalks lasted up 

to seven hours—a full working day on the surface of the moon—and they drove a 

battery-powered rover for miles across the surface and even up the side of a lunar 

mountain, where they picked up rocks almost as old as the solar system itself. By 

that time, however,apollo had largely faded from the nation’s consciousness. 

public interest in the moon program had begun to fall off after apollo 11. 

in november 1969, apollo 12 astronauts pete conrad and alan Bean achieved 

history’s second lunar landing and made two moonwalks. once again there were 

live pictures from the surface of the moon, this time in color. But in news coverage 

there were expressions of apathy; one tennessee resident was quoted as saying,“it’s 

old hat, it’s not like the first time.”14 in a sense, that reaction was predictable, given 

the fact that apollo’s stated objective of achieving a lunar landing before the end 

of the 1960s had already been accomplished. in a culture attuned to “firsts,” even 

the second occurrence of something as extraordinary as landing men on the moon 

could not generate the same level of excitement. 

But there were other factors that exacerbated the decline in interest. one was the 

sheer strangeness of the events. unlike science fiction writers (and their readers), most 

americans had little familiarity with space technology and although tV commentators 

struggled mightily to convey the nuts and bolts of the apollo program, arcane concepts 

like space rendezvous were, literally and figuratively, over viewers’ heads. in addition, 

naSa (and for that matter,the astronauts themselves) tended to emphasize the technical 

elements of the program rather than the human experiences that would have been easier 

for the public to relate to.then there was lunar science, which increasingly became the 

focus of both the astronauts and mission planners as the landings progressed.talk of 

breccias and vesicles, of coarse-grained basalt and plagioclase feldspar was not easy for 

nonscientists to follow.the cultural divide between scientists and the rest of the populace 

was nothing new—it had been described a decade earlier by c.p.Snow in an essay entitled 

TheTwo Cultures—but apollo seemed to throw that gap into vivid relief.15 

14. Douglas robinson, “Second 	moon Visit Stirs Less public excitement,” The New York Times, 

20 november 1969: p. 30. 

15. this effect of apollo is described by Kerry Joels in “apollo and the two cultures,” in Apollo: 

Ten Years Since Tranquillity Base (Washington, Dc: national air and Space museum, 1979). 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 59 

Still another factor was the increasing dissent over the war in Vietnam. 

among young people especially, one of the effects of the war was a mistrust of the 

government’s use of technology; there was little distinction between the technology 

of warfare and the technology of space exploration.and though apollo’s successes 

had briefly raised the national mood, they could not compete with americans’ 

mounting preoccupation with the war. in april 1970, when an oxygen tank aboard 

apollo 13 exploded 200,000 miles from earth, the crisis sparked a resurgence of 

interest in the moon program, as naSa struggled to save Jim Lovell and his crew 

from a lonely death in space. But even then it was clear that the war was still on 

many people’s minds. During the crisis a student at Duke university was asked 

by a professor, “Do you think they’ll get them back?” the student responded by 

talking about the american troops in Vietnam.16a couple of weeks after apollo 13’s 

safe return, four students were killed by national guardsmen during an antiwar 

demonstration at Kent State university, intensifying the country’s conflict over the 

war. interest in apollo never recovered to earlier levels. 

this was despite the fact that tV pictures of the astronauts’ activities on the 

moon had greatly improved; the last three apollo landings carried a higher-quality 

color tV camera which could be controlled from earth. and the scenery visited 

by these teams was some of the most impressive landscapes on the moon, with 

towering mountains, a winding canyon, and giant boulders. But even this could 

not reverse the dwindling tide of public attention. By the time of the final apollo 

missions, television networks no longer covered the moonwalks in their entirety. 

The Astronauts Revealed 

apollo ended at a time when many americans were turning inward. the 

1970s saw increasing numbers of people engaged in a search for self-awareness and 

the realization of one’s own potential.although the quest for enlightenment often 

spilled over into self-indulgence, prompting writer tom Wolfe to christen the 1970s 

“the me decade,” there was more interest than ever before in personal experience 

as a gateway to understanding. So in the mid-1970s, when several apollo astronauts 

began to describe their experiences before, during, and after their lunar missions, 

they found an extremely receptive audience. people wanted to know what the 

astronauts thought and felt as they left earth far behind, orbited the moon, and 

walked on its alien surface. they wanted to hear how they had been affected by 

their incredible voyages. underneath their curiosity, many harbored a hope that 

somehow these men had been transformed by their journeys. 

and in a couple of instances, the experiences of a lunar astronaut fulfilled that 

wish.apollo 15’s Jim irwin returned from the moon and revealed that he had felt 

16. this incident was described to the author by science journalist mark Washburn in 1988. 
60 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

the presence of god there. he soon left naSa to pursue a new life as a Baptist 

minister, working to share his faith. But no apollo veteran’s testimony matched the 

mood of the period better than apollo 14’s ed mitchell. Long interested in psychic 

phenomena, mitchell had conducted an experiment in extrasensory perception 

during the trip to and from the moon with a handful of volunteers on earth. made 

public only after he and his crewmates returned, mitchell’s experiment spawned a 

flurry of media reports. in the years that followed, mitchell said he had experienced 

a shift in consciousness during the trip home from the moon,giving him a profound 

awareness of the universe as a conscious,evolving entity.in 1972 mitchell left naSa 

to pursue the scientific study of consciousness and psychic phenomena.17 one of 

his first subjects was uri geller, whose claimed feats of telekinesis (such as spoon 

bending) made him an international celebrity in the early 1970s. 

needless to say, these kinds of experiences and activities did not fit with the 

public’s image of the astronauts. During the apollo program the media, especially 

Life magazine, had portrayed the astronauts as all-american heroes with rock-solid 

temperaments, heartland opinions, and unwavering morals.their wives, meanwhile, 

were expected to maintain composure at all times, despite the stresses imposed on 

them by their husbands’dangerous profession and by the demands of sudden celebrity. 

as the 1960s progressed, however, the Life magazine image of the astronauts and 

their wives began to seem incongruous with emerging trends in popular culture. 

the apollo missions took place at a time when the antihero was on the rise, as 

exemplified by such films as Cool Hand Luke (1967), Bullitt (1968), and Midnight 

Cowboy (1969).against that backdrop, some saw the astronauts as hopelessly square, 

in a camp with what newly elected president richard nixon had called “the silent 

majority.” certainly, that did not make it any easier for those segments of the public 

to relate to the apollo missions. 

So it came as a bit of a shock—and, some observers said, a relief—when 

astronaut memoirs revealed very human traits.18 For apollo 11’s Buzz aldrin, it 

wasn’t the moon that changed him most dramatically,but what awaited him back on 

his home planet. in his 1974 autobiography Return to Earth,aldrin candidly related 

his struggle with alcoholism and manic depression, which came in the wake of the 

intense public attention he received after apollo 11.19 if that was not in line with 

the public’s perceptions of astronauts, then neither was the apollo 15 astronauts’ 

involvement in a plan to sell first-day covers carried on their moon mission to a 

17. mitchell has described his experiences in his own book, The Way of the Explorer (new York: 

g. p. putnam’s Sons, 1996). 

18. howard 	muson, “comedown from the moon—What has happened to the astronauts,” 

The New York Times, 3 December 1972, Sunday magazine: p. 37. 

19. edwin e.aldrin, Jr. with Wayne Warga, Return to Earth (new York: random house, 1973). 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 61 

german stamp dealer, as described in Jim irwin’s book To Rule the Night.

20 in 1977 

even more damage was done to the astronauts’ image by The All-American Boys, the 

memoir of Walt cunningham, who had been a crewman on earth-orbit apollo 7 

mission in 1968; it described, among other things, his colleagues’ extramarital affairs.21 

and in his 1979 landmark portrait of the early astronauts, The Right Stuff, tom Wolfe 

showed the humanity not only of the men but also their wives, who had secretly 

harbored fears and anxieties they never shared with the public—or each other. 

For all the upheavals surrounding their image,the astronauts themselves remained 

relatively anonymous despite their status as the only humans in history to have visited 

another world. in 1975 a new television ad campaign by american express featured 

celebrities whose faces were largely unknown to the public; one was apollo 12 

commander pete conrad. Looking into the camera, conrad asked, “Do you know 

me? i walked on the moon.”and conrad was not the only one who went through 

his post-apollo life so unrecognized. 

nevertheless, even as the astronauts themselves receded from the public’s 

consciousness, new reminders of their journeys became firmly embedded in pop 

culture.When a new network called musictelevision (mtV) debuted in the summer 

of 1981, its trailers featured pictures and film clips of astronauts on the moon. For 

mtV’s target audience, some of whom had been small children at the time of apollo 

11, these images must have seemed like just another slice of 1960s nostalgia. 

History Doesn’t Repeat 

By the time moonwalkers were bouncing across mtV trailers, the moon itself 

was nowhere to be seen in naSa’s activities. in april 1981, after a six-year hiatus in 

american human spaceflight missions, naSa achieved the first flight of its reusable 

Space Shuttle. Buoyed by naSa’s promise that the Shuttle would make spaceflight 

routine, many people responded with high enthusiasm.and in the first several years 

of Shuttle missions there was plenty of action to excite space buffs; they could witness 

spacewalking Shuttle astronauts repairing satellites and flying through the void with 

self-propelled maneuvering units.(moonwalking,on the other hand,was now coming 

to be known as a dance move performed by michael Jackson.) 

the fact that the Shuttle never ventured beyond low-earth orbit was lost on some 

americans, for whom going to the moon had become synonymous with the idea of 

spaceflight.no longer exposed to the intricacies of apollo,people underestimated the 

difficulty of lunar voyages and did not realize that no one had been to the moon since 

20. James B. irwin with William a. emerson, Jr., To Rule the Night:The Discovery Voyage of Astronaut 

Jim Irwin (Boston: g. K. hall, 1974; philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott co., 1973). 

21. Walter cunningham with mickey herskowitz, The All-American Boys (new York: macmillan 

co., 1977). 
62 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

1972. this was evident from a comment by apollo 17 commander gene cernan, 

who said in late 1986,“people don’t have any concept.they think all astronauts do the 

same thing, go to the moon. [they say,] ‘oh, doesn’t the shuttle go to the moon?’” 22 

the reality was that not only were humans no longer going to the moon, but naSa 

had no plans to send them there. 

and by late 1986 the dream of using the Shuttle to make spaceflight routine had 

been shattered by the explosion of the Shuttle Challenger in January of that year.in the 

wake of the disaster,there was renewed focus on naSa’s uncertain future;even before 

the accident, a presidential commission had been convened to study possible longrange plans for the agency to pursue.proposed scenarios included a return of humans 

to the moon, followed by piloted expeditions to mars. however much enthusiasm 

there might have been for this prescription—and there was a great deal among space 

advocates—there were uncertainties about how to enact it.Was it simply a matter of 

convincing the president to call for such a program, as John Kennedy had in 1961? 

many space advocates thought so, and believed history would repeat itself. 

they got a chance to test their belief on 20 July 1989, the 20th anniversary 

of the apollo 11 lunar landing, when president george h.W. Bush declared that 

america was going back to the moon, “this time to stay,” and after that to mars. 

the so-called Space exploration initiative (Sei) called for a 30-year effort. But 

because of the plan’s projected cost, public reaction was decidedly mixed and there 

was strong congressional resistance. even naSa itself failed to embrace the plan. 

Sei never got off the ground. 

more than a decade later, Bush still remembered in detail the stinging defeat 

of his space initiative, especially the expectation he’d been given by space advocates 

that he could launch a major space program just by following Kennedy’s example. 

Summing up the experience, he told naSa administrator Sean o’Keefe in 2003,“i 

was set up.We were all set up.”23 

as it turned out,theapollo model for how to launch an ambitious space program 

was not valid.and by 1991,with the end of the cold war,the old forces that had given 

rise to apollo were no longer in the equation. in the wake of Sei’s failure there was a 

growing awareness of something sharp-eyed observers had noted long before:apollo 

had been a historical anomaly. 

Apollo as a Multigenerational Experience 

By the 1990s the generation that had been children during the apollo missions 

had grown up. it included countless scientists and engineers, and even a number of 

astronauts and flight controllers, who had been inspired to pursue their careers by the 

22. author interview with gene cernan, December 1986. 

23. Sean o’Keefe, personal communication, December 2003. 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 63 

moon missions. it also included storytellers who were moved to revisit the apollo 

saga. one was film director ron howard, who brought apollo’s most dramatic 

mission, 1970’s harrowing apollo 13 flight, to the screen in 1995.With a cast headed 

by oscar-winner tom hanks as Jim Lovell, the film depicted the struggle, in space 

and on the ground,to rescue Lovell and his crew.one of the year’s top-grossing films, 

Apollo 13 was more than a retelling of events; it was a celebration of the courage and 

ingenuity that characterized the entire apollo program.the astronauts were not the 

only heroes featured; the film also spotlighted the mission controllers in houston in 

all their engineering-nerd glory.the film even spawned a couple of new catchphrases: 

“houston, we have a problem”24—the first announcement from hanks’ Jim Lovell 

that apollo 13 was in trouble—and the rallying cry spoken by ed harris as Flight 

Director gene Kranz,“Failure is not an option.” 

Apollo 13 brought the drama of the moon program to a new generation of 

young people and reminded adults of what they had lived through but might not 

have fully absorbed. Writing about the film in The New York Times, science writer 

John noble Wilford, who had covered the apollo missions, saw it as a reminder of a 

particular spirit of exploration.“one can imagine that the story of apollo 13, perhaps 

now or in other retellings by generations to come,” wrote Wilford, “will evoke a 

time when people took risks to reach grand goals, a time when the astronauts were 

themselves lionized and we still embraced heroes.”25 

the resurgence of interest in apollo was furthered when hanks went on to 

produce a 12-part miniseries for hBo on apollo, From the Earth to the Moon (based 

in part on this writer’s book about the apollo astronauts and their missions, A Man on 

the Moon). in a sense, the various retellings of the apollo saga, so many years after the 

events, filled an important cultural gap.With all the distractions now long gone—the 

political discord,the distrust of technology,the antihero culture—the public was ready, 

at last, to celebrate the moon program with new appreciation and understanding of 

what it had accomplished. 

The Moon Hoax 

evendecadesafterithappened,somewereunwillingtocelebrateapollo,especially 

the people who believed it had never happened.this was not a new phenomenon; 

even at the time of the first moon landings there were some who insisted apollo 

was a government hoax and that the moonwalks had been filmed somewhere in 

24. the film’s dialogue was a slight rewording of the actual transmission from apollo 13, “houston, 

we’ve had a problem.” 

25. John noble Wilford, “When We Were racing With the moon,” The New York Times, 25 June 

1995: p. 2. 
64 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

the nevada desert.26 (a group called the international Flat earth Society, meanwhile, 

refused to be swayed by the astronauts’ own reports and photos showing that the 

planet is, in fact, a sphere.) in 1978, the film Capricorn One portrayed a faked mars 

mission;although the director,peter hayms,did not believeapollo had been faked,he 

was nevertheless fascinated by the notion that such a hoax was possible. interestingly, 

he had written the script in 1972 but met strong resistance to the idea in hollywood. 

By the late 1970s, when he sold the film, that resistance was gone—in part, because 

of a new level of distrust of government in the wake of theWatergate scandal that had 

made the idea of a faked space program more acceptable to studios.27 

Capricorn One was well received by audiences, but the idea that apollo itself 

had been a hoax was never embraced by a large percentage of americans. a 1999 

gallup poll revealed that “[t]he overwhelming majority of americans (89%) do not 

believe the u.S. government staged or faked the apollo moon landing. only 6% of 

the public believes the landing was faked and another 5% have no opinion.”28 Still,the 

hoax theory continued to have a presence in the culture, as evidenced in February 

2001 when the FoxtV network aired a program called “conspiracytheory: DidWe 

Land on the moon?”29 the producers used faux-scientific analyses of the astronauts’ 

photographs to“disprove”their validity;in truth,the show’s popularity revealed,above 

all, a lack of scientific literacy among its followers. 

Despite its obvious flaws, the hoax theory has persisted largely because the 

apollo missions were so difficult for most people to relate to. in 1969 the writer 

norman mailer, commissioned by Life magazine to cover apollo 11, had observed 

after watching the moonwalk,“the event was so removed,however,so unreal,that no 

objective correlative existed to prove it had not conceivably been an event staged in a 

television studio—the greatest con of the century . . . .” in the same breath, however, 

mailer acknowledged the impossibility of carrying out such a hoax. “it would take 

criminals and confidence men mightier, more trustworthy and more resourceful than 

anything in this century or the ones before. merely to conceive of such men was the 

surest way to know the event was not staged.”30Years later,neilarmstrong put it more 

simply:“it would have been harder to fake it than to do it.”31 

26. John noble Wilford, “a moon Landing? What moon Landing?” The New York Times, 18 December 

1969:p.30. 

27. Benedict 	nightingale, “What if a mars Landing Were Faked? asks peter hyams,” The New 

York Times, 28 may 1978: p. D10. 

28. http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=1993&pg=1 (accessed 13 august 2007). 

29. For 	an in-depth discussion of the Fox broadcast and the moon hoax theories, see http:// 

www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html (accessed 13 august 2007). 

30. norman mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), p. 130. 

31. neil armstrong, personal communication, 2003. 
Live from the Moon: The Societal Impact of Apollo 65 

Conclusion: Ahead of Its Time 

today,more than three decades after the program ended,apollo remains a unique 

event in the history of space exploration.there is no shortage of reminders of the 

moon voyages, including DVDs of the moonwalks, memorabilia, and other apollorelated products.actual apollo hardware and lunar samples are on display at museums 

around the world.32 But the reality of humans walking on the moon has receded into 

our past.there is something strangely out of place about an event so futuristic that 

happened so long ago. gene cernan described this feeling in his 1999 autobiography, 

The Last Man on the Moon, when he wrote, “Sometimes it seems that apollo came 

before its time. president Kennedy reached far into the twenty-first century, grabbed 

a decade of time and slipped it neatly into the 1960s and 1970s.”33 

if the first human voyages to the moon had taken place the way science fiction 

writers and space visionaries had predicted—after a step-by-step progression from 

the first satellites to the first human spaceflights, then the establishment of a space 

infrastructure including reusable space shuttles and permanent space stations in earth 

orbit—they would not have seemed so unreal.the public would have had decades 

to get used to the reality of spaceflight, and space technology would have become 

a familiar part of the culture. as it actually happened, however, the populace was 

relatively unprepared for what took place from December 1968 to December 1972, 

when humans journeyed from their home planet to another celestial body. 

in January 2004, president george W. Bush announced the Vision for Space 

exploration, including return to the moon. unlike his father’s ill-fated Space 

exploration initiative, the new program did not rely on substantial increases in the 

naSa budget.and it came at a time when public support for the space program was 

high.34 if all goes according to plan,astronauts will be back on the moon no later than 

2020 and our culture will once again be faced with absorbing the reality of humans 

walking on another world. 

Will apollo turn out to be the momentous punctuation mark in human history 

that heinlein, clarke, and Bradbury predicted at the time of apollo 11? it seems 

inescapable that it will,because no matter how far humans are able to go in their quest 

to explore the universe, the apollo missions will stand as the opening chapter. Future 

generations will no doubt judge the program’s significance not only by what apollo 

achieved, but what it led to. if, as space visionaries have long maintained, human 

32. For a listing of museum displays of apollo command modules, see “Location of apollo command 

modules,” national air and Space museum Web site, http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/imagery/apollo/ 

spacecraftcm.htm (accessed 13 august 2007). 

33. gene cernan and Don Davis, The Last Man on the Moon: Astronaut Eugene Cernan and America’s 

Race in Space (new York: St. martin’s press, 1999), p. 344. 

34. Leonard 	David, “nSB report Finds Steady public Support For naSa,” 25 may 2004, 

http://www.space.com/spacenews/archive04/nsbarch_052504.html (accessed 13 august 2007). 
66 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

expansion into the solar system to become a multiplanet species is inevitable, then 

apollo will surely be seen as the first “giant leap” of that journey. 

in our time,however,apollo’s greatest impact has yet to be completely incorporated 

into the culture. Sending the first explorers to the moon showed us that humans have 

the ability to accomplish seemingly impossible things when they work together. and 

the testimony and photographs of the men who made those voyages revealed earth as a 

precious oasis of life in a vast and hostile universe,a world to be cherished and protected. 

absorbing these lessons is often at odds with the short-term focus of our day-to-day 

culture.But apollo’s impact will always be there to be revisited and re-experienced,and 

to guide us in charting our long-term future. 

Author’s acknowledgment: I would like to thank my wife,Vicki, fellow writer and Apollo 

devotee, for providing many helpful comments during the writing of this chapter. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 67

chapter 5 

Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight 

in the Shuttle Era 

Valerie neal 

mong public policy analysts and pundits,it is conventional wisdom (and has been aalmost since the Space Shuttle appeared) that the united States lacks a unifying 

societal consensus about the fundamental purpose or goal of contemporary human 

spaceflight. thirty years and more than 115 missions after the first Shuttle orbiter 

Enterprise made its debut in 1976, the debate continues along much the same lines as 

it began:What purpose justifies the cost and risk of placing people in space? in what 

intellectual framework does this enterprise make civic sense? Both the proponents 

and opponents of human spaceflight have struggled to express a credible, broadly 

persuasive rationale that appeals to or reflects supporting societal values. 

advocates in the mercury-gemini-apollo era of the 1960s were not so tasked.the 

politics of the time and presidential leadership gave rise to two readily intelligible frames 

of reference for nascent human spaceflight: a competitive space race with the Soviet 

union,and a pioneering venture into a new frontier.Both resonated with theamerican 

public’s hopes, fears, and values. naSa did not need to craft a compelling rationale for 

sending people into space; politicians and the media purveyed these messages. 

Steeped in cold war anxieties about a possibly mortal adversary, citizens could 

understand the importance of an all-out thrust into space,especially after the Soviets 

made the first forays there.there was little disputing whether it was worth the cost 

and risk; the affirmative response accorded with a people accustomed to victory 

and anxious about the bomb.a Time magazine cover in December, 1968, with an 

astronaut and cosmonaut sprinting toward the moon,captured the patriotic urgency 

of this race against time, perceived as a race for survival against communism. 

Likewise,the effort to reach the moon resonated with a widely held view ofamerica 

as a pioneering nation with a frontier heritage.president Kennedy and his speechwriters 

masterfully worked with this deeply ingrained sense of national identity as a metaphor 

for exploring the new ocean of space.racing and pioneering merged in triumphant 

images of the u.S. flag and astronauts on the dim landscape of another world. 
68 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

But what vision came after? Without a race to win or a frontier to conquer, 

continued human spaceflight demanded a new purpose that made sense as a national 

endeavor. how would naSa make the case and what role would the media play 

in defining its purpose? how would society find meaning in continued spaceflight? 

could human spaceflight fit into other frames? 

over the past five decades naSa, the media, and interested sectors (aerospace 

industry, scientific community, political figures, grass-roots groups, and others) plus 

thoughtful individuals have engaged in an ongoing process of asserting and contesting 

the value of human spaceflight by advancing a variety of visions or metaphors meant 

to answer such questions and sway public opinion.the continual effort to define 

the purpose of human spaceflight and reach a societal consensus on its value can be 

viewed as an extended exercise in the social construction of meaning. in the Shuttle 

era, at least five reference frames have been crafted, promoted, critiqued, refined, 

accepted, rejected, or transformed in the process of shaping and communicating the 

meaning of human spaceflight. these frames reveal much about what americans 

hope for—and doubt—in our national ventures into space. 

Frame Analysis as an Interpretive Tool 

to pursue these questions about the meaning of Shuttle-era human spaceflight, 

it is helpful to apply some concepts, terms, and techniques from the literature of 

“frame analysis”that has become prominent in social science disciplines,especially in 

media studies and the study of social movements.1 in this context human spaceflight 

can be considered a social movement that has an action agenda, an imperative to 

muster resources, and a need to mobilize public support in order to carry out its 

agenda. naSa is the hub of this social movement, with aerospace companies, space 

societies, other government entities, and auxiliaries in the advocacy community, 

including some in the media. 

to analyze how social movements motivate public support, some scholars 

focus on framing processes, and they use the term “framing” for the “construction 

of meaning.” Framing is the packaging of messages that resonate with core values 

and appeal to supporters. a “collective action frame” is a construct of ideas and 

1. erving goffman, Frame Analysis (new York: harper & row, 1974); William a. gamson and andre 

modigliani, “media Discourse and public opinion on nuclear power,” American Journal of Sociology 95 

(1989):pp.1–37;Williama.gamson,David croteau,William hoynes,andtheodore Sasson,“media images 

and the Social construction of reality,”Annual Review of Sociology 18 (1992):pp.373–393;Zhongdang pan 

and gerald m. Kosicki,“Framing analysis:an approach to news Discourse,” Political Communication 10 

(1993): pp. 55–73; robert D. Benford and David a. Snow,“Framing processes and Social movements:an 

overview and assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000):pp.611–639. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 69 

meanings based on shared beliefs and values that will motivate support.2 it is the 

conceptual analogy to a structural framework or a picture frame.the space race and 

the space frontier are such conceptual frames. 

Frames are “the basic frameworks of understanding available in our society for 

making sense out of events”;they help to render events meaningful,organize experience, 

guide action, and simplify and condense aspects of the world.3 they are intended to 

motivate support and disarm opposition, to inspire adherents, and to legitimize the 

activities and campaigns of a social movement. Frames provide context for a proposed 

action or policy. opponents may contest or challenge them with counter-frames.4 

the mobilizing potency of a frame lies in its credibility and resonance. it must 

be consistent with the facts and goals of the movement, and it must resonate with 

the beliefs, values, and interests of the targeted support community or constituents. 

even more broadly, it should have “narrative fidelity” or coherence with cultural 

assumptions and myths in the public domain. activists use cultural resources— 

beliefs, values, myths—as a “tool kit” to make their cause appealing and believable, 

and audiences also use them to gauge resonance.5 

Because framing is an intentional process,frames need not be static.they can evolve 

as circumstances change, either to account for unexpected events or to better appeal to 

the target community.to mobilize support,a frame may need to be fairly elastic.6 

Social movement activists are not the only ones developing frames of meaning. 

media discourse also participates in the process of constructing meaning. analysis 

of media discourse relative to a variety of social movements (e.g., the women’s 

movement, nuclear power, civil rights) reveals sophisticated frames or “interpretive 

packages” that are promulgated to make sense of issues and events. Like frames, 

interpretive packages have a central organizing idea, often presented in shorthand 

through symbols, metaphors, visual images, and icons.the media provide both an 

accessible forum for public consideration of issues and for suggested interpretations 

that help to shape the social construction of meaning.7 

2. Benford and Snow, “Framing processes,” cited above, explicate these and other key concepts and 

vocabulary in frame analysis scholarship. 

3. goffman, Frame Analysis, 10; Benford and Snow,“Framing processes,” pp. 613–614. 

4. Benford and Snow, “Framing processes,” discuss frame disputes, contested framing processes, and 

counter-framing, pp. 625–627. 

5. Benford and Snow, “Framing processes,” pp. 619–622, 629; gamson and modigliani, “media 

Discourse,” pp. 1–10. 

6. Benford and Snow,“Framing processes,” discuss framing processes and dynamics, pp. 622–632; Scott 

Davies, “the paradox of progressive education: a Frame analysis,” Sociology of Education 75, no. 4 

(october 2002): pp. 269–286, esp. 270–273, refers to “two faces” (stable and changeable) of frames. 

7. gamson and modigliani, “media Discourse”; gamson et al., “media images”; nadya terkildsen and 

Frauke Schnell,“how media Frames move public opinion:an analysis of the Women’s movement,” 

Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1977): pp. 879–900; Frank D. Durham,“news Frames as 

Social narratives:tWa Flight 800,” Journal of Communication 48,no.4 (autumn 1998):pp.100–117. 
70 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

this paper applies frame analysis concepts to human spaceflight during the 

three-plus decades of the Shuttle era. primary sources for this analysis are selected 

elements of societal discourse that helped shape or curb public expectations of 

contemporary spaceflight—in this study, naSa’s publicity materials, The New York 

Times (news, editorials, and opinion pieces), and editorial cartoons from a variety of 

papers. The NewYorkTimes was selected for its breadth of coverage of Shuttle missions 

and spaceflight,its often critical editorial stance,and the long tenure of reporter-analyst 

John noble Wilford, who often wrestled with the meaning of human spaceflight. 

other newspapers, magazines, and electronic media that could be fruitfully explored 

are not included in this brief study; likewise, speeches, transcripts of congressional 

hearings,and other official documents might be examined for a broader study.among 

the techniques of frame analysis is close textual study with attention to keywords and 

themes, a rhetorical approach that is suitable for the sources examined. 

Framing Human Spaceflight: A New Era in 


Space Transportation


With the Space Shuttle,naSa introduced a new frame of reference to justify human 

spaceflight and capture popular interest and political support.it was“a new era”in space 

transportation, setting human spaceflight into a long tradition of optimistic, progressive, 

utopian visions of a brighter future.the cultural context for a new age or new era extends 

to the origins ofamerica as a new world,a key concept of national identity.the frame of 

newness also harkened to a history ofamerican innovation in transportation;automobiles 

and aircraft had already brought about new eras in travel, with widespread social impact. 

placing human spaceflight and the Shuttle into this frame—radically different from the 

pioneering race of the 1960s—gave it a familiar appeal. 

naSa promoted this theme through varied channels, including informative, 

colorful public affairs brochures disseminated to the media and elsewhere.as soon as the 

decision to develop the Space Shuttle was made in 1972,naSa began to frame the new 

era for the public.artist robert mccall was commissioned to paint scenes of typical 

Shuttle missions for a brochure that literally framed new ways of doing things in space.8 

a 1977 pamphlet titled The Shuttle Era claimed,“now a new era nears . ..the coming of 

age in space”when people will be able to do important work there in ways never before 

possible.9 at about the same time, the Shuttle contractor rockwell international began 

to release public relations materials to promote “a promising new era.”10 

8. Space Shuttle (Washington, Dc: national aeronautics and Space administration educational 

publication ep-96, June 1972). 

9. The Shuttle Era,Space Shuttle Fact Sheet naSa-S-76-815a (Washington,Dc:national aeronautics 

and Space administration, march 1977). 

10. rockwell international Space Division,	 Space Shuttle Transportation System: A Promising New 

Era for Earth, September 1976, and Space Shuttle:A Promising New Era for Earth, January 1977. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 71 

Crews from several missions in the 1980s relished their role in delivering and repairing satellites, adopting such business-like 

monikers as Ace Satellite Repair Co. and Ace Moving Co., with “We pick up and deliver” and “The sky’s no limit” as mottos. 

routine space transportation was the central tenet of the new era. in this 

frame, spaceflight would no longer be a pioneering adventure; it would become 

commonplace and practical, in earth orbit, not outward-bound. in a burst 

of metaphors, naSa claimed that people would travel a highway to space in a 

workhorse shuttle vehicle that would operate like an airliner. that mixed image 

might have been a clue that the new-era routine transportation frame was strained. 

naSa further elaborated the concept of routine access to space with 

purposes that could appeal to special interests and make sense to the public at large. 

commercial enterprise could use the shuttle to cash in on space by launching 

satellites or developing manufacturing capabilities there. Knowledge would increase 

as observatories were placed in orbit or scientists conducted laboratory science 

in space. national security would be enhanced by regular delivery of defense 

department payloads. all these activities on the Shuttle would lead to practical 

benefits on earth. naSa thus plugged into the frame something to appeal to 

each necessary constituency—business, science, and military—and purposes that 

moreover would resonate with the public. 

With promised economic,scientific,and security benefits,citizens could understand 

a practical approach to human spaceflight.add to that the typical american consumer’s 

desire for the latest-model vehicle or the newest technology,as well asamericans’regard 

for the nation’s transportation systems, and the new era of routine space transportation 

was a potent frame for human spaceflight on the Space Shuttle. in this context, the 

purpose of human spaceflight was not exploration; it was useful work. the Shuttle 

served as icon for this whole frame of meaning.to see the stubby-winged shape of the 
72 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

orbiter or the whole launch configuration with boosters and fuel tank was to recognize 

the new era—and new meaning—of human spaceflight.humans were curiously absent 

from these early depictions; the Shuttle vehicle, often called a spaceplane or a space 

truck, symbolized the practical new purpose of people in space. 

The New York Times director of science news John noble Wilford was among 

the first journalists to introduce the Shuttle-era frame of reference to the public. 

his 1977 feature article, “another Small Step for man: Shuttling into Space,” 

laid a bridge from the past to the future as the first Shuttle Enterprise engaged in 

atmospheric flight tests. echoing neil armstrong’s famous words on the moon, 

Wilford placed the Shuttle on the next rung of the ladder to humanity’s destiny 

in space and recognized it as a revolution in space travel. he foresaw that the “era 

of the spaceplane” meant hauling orbital freight on regular flights and handling 

satellites by the three rs—release, retrieve, repair.the Shuttle would not be used 

for exploration.But,because it would offer the ability to do new things in space,the 

Shuttle might have a far-reaching impact, as did the automobile and airplane.11 at 

the end of the 1970s decade (just a bit prematurely),Wilford announced a variant of 

the new era concept: the “commuting age Dawns in Space.”12 

When the new era truly dawned in 1981 as Space Shuttle Columbia roared 

into orbit, the new frame of reference crafted by naSa and presented in the media 

was in place.there might have been a different meaning construction—perhaps a 

mythic journey or another metaphor—but none other was offered. already there 

were skeptics and critics, but the news media in unison trumpeted a new era of 

routine transportation to space. 

Framing Human Spaceflight: A Business 

a corollary to the new era of routine space transportation also was promoted: 

spaceflight as a business.naSa claimed that the reusable Shuttle would lower the cost of 

spaceflight and make transportation to and from earth orbit economical.the foundation 

for Shuttle-era spaceflight would be a business model inspired by the commercial airline 

industry.naSa managers studied airline operations and sought to drum up the customer 

market,contracted with payload owners for orbital flights,plotted the mission manifests, 

and calculated the operating margins to turn spaceflight into,if not a flourishing,at least 

a break-even business.With a sufficient number of vehicles and frequency of flights, the 

Shuttle might bring down the cost of spaceflight and pay for itself. 

this business-model frame served to defend the Shuttle against critics who argued 

that the program was unnecessary and too expensive, and it dovetailed well with the 

11. John 	noble Wilford, “another Small Step for man: Shuttling into Space,” The New York 

Times, 7 august 1977, Sunday magazine: pp. 7, 28, 54 ff. 

12. John nobleWilford,“commutingage Dawns in Space,”The NewYorkTimes,30 December 1979. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 73 

concept of routine transportation for useful work in space.transportation businesses on 

earth—interstate trucking,railroads,shipping,as well as airlines—were familiar analogues 

to give meaning to a space transportation enterprise.this blend of concepts exemplified 

frame enhancement or frame elaboration,a strategy for broadening the appeal of a social 

action agenda,often by appropriating some elements of an adversary’s position.human 

spaceflight in this frame did not mean adventure and exploration; it meant efficiently 

running a business for practical benefits if not profits. 

the business-model frame proved vulnerable to critique by standard business 

accounting and auditing principles; it invited measurement of costs and gains. naSa 

had provided the quantifiable metrics for judging the performance of human spaceflight: 

flight rates and flight costs.as the Shuttle became operational in the 1980s, it was not 

difficult for stakeholders in the business to do cost-benefit audits and assess the return 

on investment in human spaceflight.the value of work performed by the astronauts was 

more difficult to measure quantitatively,so the cost of operating the Shuttle served as the 

primary measure for judging the value of human spaceflight.thus, the business frame 

that was meant to promote also became a frame for critiquing spaceflight. 

Reality Check: The Early Shuttle Era in Practice 

a brief survey of reporting and editorializing about spaceflight during the first 

five years of the Shuttle era shows how these two theoretical frames of meaning 

fared in practice. reactions to the first 23 Shuttle missions (1981–1985) in The New 

York Times served as “reality checks” for assessing actual spaceflight in the new era 

within the routine transportation and business frames.greeting the Shuttle as a bold 

new approach to human spaceflight and the first mission as a triumphant return to 

space, the paper proclaimed “columbia . . . opening a new era of Space Flight.”13 

Yet chief Shuttle observer John noble Wilford cautioned from the outset that the 

future was by no means certain; it might prove difficult to fulfill the optimistic 

predictions of the new era. 

a week before Columbia’s first launch, Wilford published another long, 

thoughtful essay, this one on “Space and the american Vision.”14 Four years had 

elapsed since his “Shuttling into Space” article—years during which the Shuttle 

had been plagued with technical problems, cost increases, and delays.Wilford again 

framed the meaning of the new era of human spaceflight, but now the routine 

transportation scheme did not seem as plausible or resonant as before, and the 

Shuttle had not even flown yet.there was a note of ambivalence about the Shuttle 

13. articles in The New York Times by Wilford and others, april 1981; headline from 15 april 1981: 

pp.a21. 

14. John noble Wilford, “Space and the american Vision,” The New York Times, 5 april 1981, Sunday 

magazine: pp. 14 ff, 118 ff. 
74 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

era in his rhetoric as he tried to reconcile america’s spacefaring destiny with the 

spaceplane’s mundane mission of hauling orbital freight. 

Because 13 of the first 23 missions were indeed freight-hauling flights to deliver 

satellites for commercial customers, The NewYorkTimes reporters generally conveyed 

Shuttle mission news within the routine transportation frame, featuring the three rs 

of space trucking (release, retrieve, repair). But they also made room in stories for 

questions about the cost of Shuttle missions and reported all manner of technical 

glitches and delays that belied the concept of routine spaceflight.the terms “failure,” 

“delay,” and “problem” repeated frequently in news accounts subtly challenged the 

accepted frames of reference and sowed doubts about the fit between these frames and 

reality.Yet the Shuttle came to be understood as a space truck delivering large cargos 

to orbit—an image that some of the astronaut crews happily fostered—and successive 

satellite deliveries helped to establish a semblance of routine spaceflight.15 

attention to five missions in 1984 and 1985 elevated the space truck to new 

heights of interest by putting humans squarely in the focus.these missions added a 

Buck rogers gloss to the notion of routine work in space and made vivid the role 

of human spaceflight.16 the common theme of these servicing and salvage missions 

was satellites gone awry—humans to the rescue.the drama of astronauts flying away 

from the Shuttle in jet backpacks, grappling errant satellites, wrestling them into the 

payload bay, and then conducting repairs, put a human face on the new-era frame. 

the Shuttle image broadened from delivery truck to tow truck to service station, 

and the astronauts earned credit as orbital repairmen. extravehicular activity (eVa) 

figured heavily in these missions and was a visibly effective way to demonstrate 

human capability in space.the missions showed off new astronaut tools—the piloted 

maneuvering unit backpack, the remote manipulator system robotic arm, the power 

hand tools—that gave working in space a vivid dexterity.the message in the media, 

and from naSa, was that “nothing like this has ever been done before.” 

By the end of 1985, with 23 Shuttle missions completed, The New York Times 

(and other news media) had validated the new era of routine space transportation 

concept as the meaning frame for human spaceflight. however, a noticeable current 

of critique ran through some of the news reports, and more so in editorials and 

opinions. alert journalists noted that about two-thirds of the launches had been 

15. typically The New York Times ran a news article each day of each mission; several in the days just 

before launch and after landing;at least one article for every delay or significant problem;and occasional 

analytical pieces.the mission-related coverage during the 1981–85 period totaled hundreds of articles. 

16. the five missions were, in 1984, the 10th (StS 41-B), featuring first flights in the manned 

maneuvering unit; the 11th (StS 41-c), the Solar max observatory repair mission; the 14th (StS 

51-a), the first satellite retrieval to return the Westar and palapa communications satellites; and in 

1985, the 16th (StS 51-D), another satellite delivery mission, and the 20th (StS 51-i) to deliver 

three satellites and retrieve/repair another. See The New York Times articles by Wilford and others in 

January–april and november 1984, and april and august–September 1985. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 75 

The quintessential frames for the meaning of human spaceflight are images of a single astronaut poised against black space, 

the vivid Earth, or the landscape of another world. They resonate with adventure, risk, courage, heroism, discovery, and beauty. 

delayed by weather or technical problems; several missions had been delayed in 

returning or brought home early for the same reasons; and five years into the new 

era the launch schedule was always subject to change. By these measures,“routine” 

transportation seemed ephemeral. of the satellites deployed from the Shuttle, 

enough had failed to reach their intended orbits or operate properly that salvage 

missions were required, making the satellite deployment role for the Shuttle look 

less rosy.Worrisome repeated problems such as damaged tiles, fluid leaks, computer 

malfunctions, locked brakes, and blown tires also clouded the picture of routine 

transportation. occasional serious anomalies discovered after landing—evidence of 

a fire and explosion in the engine compartment, a large hole in a wing with partial 

melting of the structure—gave pause for observers to wonder how safe the Shuttle 

really was.17 Despite the frequency and variety of missions in this new era, evidence 

mounted that human spaceflight was not yet routine. 

only a few of the early Shuttle missions provoked editorial commentary in The 

New York Times,which began to challenge the concepts of routine space transportation 

and useful human spaceflight.a skeptical editorial—“is the Shuttle Worth rooting 

For?”—appeared on the eve of the first Shuttle launch.While acknowledging the 

Shuttle as “an unquestionable technological achievement,” the editors noted that it 

was “a technology in search of a mission” that might become a white elephant.the 

17. ninth mission (StS-9, 1983), aft compartment fire upon landing; 16th mission (StS 51-D, 1985), 

damaged wing. 
76 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

reason for their ambivalence: uncertainty that the Shuttle would really cut the cost 

of operating in space.18 a few days later, the editors tempered their end-of-mission 

congratulations with the question, “now that we own a successful space shuttle, 

what do we do with it?”their standard:“What can a reasonable society afford?”19 

the next editorial on the Shuttle suggested limiting the number of spaceplanes to 

allow for continued planetary exploration.20 

to mark the third successful Shuttle mission,The New York Times acknowledged 

that Columbia “almost succeeded in placing the stamp of routine on shuttling 

into space,” but charged that naSa was not using the magnificent machine with 

sufficient style. it deserved a purpose greater than trucking freight. in this instance, 

reality fit within the routine transportation frame but the frame itself was challenged 

as unimaginative. however, no alternate frame was tendered.21 

the tension between spacefaring and freight-hauling was a latent stress on the newera routine transportation and business frames of reference.Wilford’s occasional reflections 

on the Shuttle missions showed the stress fractures in these frames, and revealed how 

they were becoming dissonant,rather than resonant,with some important societal values. 

“this is no adventure in exploration; this is a freight run,” he wrote upon witnessing the 

eighth launch. it did not inspire the same thrill as a mission to the moon. he began to 

try to reframe human spaceflight by defining for it a purpose worthy of a spacefaring 

people with a tradition of exploration.With naSa under pressure to make spaceflight an 

economical business,he argued that the nation should aspire to a new vision of its future in 

space.although the Shuttle and a future space station would expand human activities 

in space,he looked to the robotic voyages of discovery in the solar system as the model 

for inspiring wonder and rekindling the spirit of the apollo era.22 

Before 20 missions had flown, Wilford wrote a piece measuring actual 

performance against promise, in effect measuring the fit between the routine space 

transportation frame and reality.using such metrics as number of missions projected 

vs. accomplished and number of satellites scheduled vs. orbited, he showed the large 

gap between hopes and reality.these discrepancies were prompting a reevaluation of 

the Shuttle program by its customers and critics,and even its proponents.regardless 

of spectacular achievements, the frame for human spaceflight in the Shuttle era was 

getting out of alignment with reality.23 

18. “is the Shuttle Worth rooting For?” The NewYorkTimes, 9 april 1981: p.a22. 

19. “Down to earth,” The New York Times, 14 april 1981: p.a30. 

20. “What Does the‘S’in naSa mean?”The NewYorkTimes,4 november 1981:p.a30. 

21. “too Fine a machine,” The New York Times, 31 march 1982: p.a30. 

22. John 	noble Wilford, “Big Business in Space,” The New York Times, 18 September 1983, 

Sunday magazine: pp. 46–47 ff., 50, 83. 

23. John	 noble Wilford, “gap Between early hope and present accomplishment grows Large; 

Space Shuttle re-evaluated,” The NewYorkTimes, 14 may 1985: p. c1. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 77 

other observers also subjected Shuttle-era human spaceflight to a cost-benefit 

analysis and found that the numbers did not add up to economical space transportation. 

historian of technology alex roland published one of the most strident critiques of 

this type in the popular magazine Discover. in “the Shuttle: triumph or turkey?” 

he appraised its cost, technical failures, maintenance demands, uncertain schedule, 

deployment mishaps, and other shortcomings against the promises of routine space 

transportation, and found the sophisticated, versatile Shuttle wanting.“Judged on cost, 

the shuttle is a turkey . . . . it costs too much to fly . . . . and cost is the principal 

criterion by which it should be judged.”in setting a cost-benefit frame over the Shuttle, 

roland was not reframing human spaceflight itself; indeed, he did not comment on 

the value of the missions or crews.rather,he faulted the vehicle—the icon of human 

spaceflight—to attack the credibility of naSa’s new-era and business frames for the 

unrealized promise of routine, reliable, economical space transportation.24 

editorial cartoons from this period also had perspectives on the new-era frame 

of reference, as they quite literally distilled an idea or opinion within an inked frame. 

editorial cartoonists across the country treated the Shuttle and human spaceflight as 

subjects.25 in the early 1980s many of them responded to the concept of routine space 

transportation with pride or humor.they tended to treat the first Shuttle mission as a 

patriotic and technical triumph, featuring uncle Sam and the u.S. flag on track toward 

america’s destiny in space. Some depicted passengers lined up with a Shuttle timetable, 

waiting for pickup.others drew the Shuttle as a space truck and astronauts as handymen 

on the satellite delivery and servicing missions. they depicted the foibles of launch 

delays and technical problems—a Shuttle on the launch pad covered in cobwebs, suited 

astronauts growing old while waiting to fly,tiles falling off the Shuttle,a tanker truck of 

superglue at the pad, a countdown clock with a ridiculously high number. 

the editorial cartoonists, inspired by the news and their own idiosyncratic 

perspective on things, independently endowed the Shuttle and human spaceflight 

with meaning inside the frames they drew.26 their charter for the Shuttle, as for 

other topics, was to distill the essential meaning of things stripped of hype. perhaps 

earlier than others, they began to see (and lampoon) a misalignment of naSa’s 

frame of reference and reality. 

24. alex roland,“the Shuttle:triumph orturkey?”Discover (november 1985):pp.29–49;quotes,45. 

25. the naSa historical reference collection at naSa headquarters in Washington, Dc, contains 

many cartoon files catalogued by year and topic in the series cartoons. 

26. Various	 scholars have examined editorial cartoons as effective keys to frames of meaning: 

William a. gamson and David Stuart, “media Discourse as a Symbolic contest: the Bomb in 

political cartoons,” Sociological Forum 7, no. 1 (march 1992): pp. 55–86; edward t. Linenthal, Symbolic 

Defense:The Cultural Significance of the Strategic Defense Initiative (urbana, iL: university of illinois press, 

1989);thomas h. Bivins,the Body politic:the changing Shape of uncle Sam,” Journalism Quarterly 

63 (Spring 1987): pp. 13–20; roger a. Fischer, “oddity, icon, challenge:the Statue of Liberty in 

american cartoon art, 1879–1986,” Journal of American Culture 9, no. 4 (Winter 1986): pp. 63–81. 
78 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Reframing Human Spaceflight: Scientific Research 

Social movement scholars have defined several processes for invigorating 

or strengthening a contextual frame to make it less vulnerable to criticism and 

more appealing to supporters. clarification and expansion of the concept (frame 

amplification and frame extension) can be effective strategies for protecting a core 

concept and expanding its appeal to a broader community.27 

as editorial and opinion writers began to critique the practice and meaning 

of human spaceflight in the Shuttle era, naSa did what social action movements 

often do to maintain support. it began to extend the frame, stretching its elastic 

boundaries to include other appealing elements. as soon as the Shuttle became 

operational, naSa began to retool for another big engineering project. presidential 

approval to begin development of an orbital station complex came in 1984. human 

spaceflight now encompassed not only the Shuttle but also a space station,promoted 

as “the next logical step” to a “permanent presence” in space.28 

this expanded package of meaning protected the Shuttle as essential to the 

assembly and routine supply of the space station,and both were deemed essential for the 

continuation of human spaceflight.however,to avoid a completely circular justification 

for the Shuttle and station,naSa elaborated the purpose of human spaceflight to include 

scientific research, a dimension of useful work that would bring benefits through new 

knowledge.this elaboration evolved in relation to three human spaceflight programs: 

Spacelab, Space Station Freedom, and the international Space Station. 

Scientific research was a secondary theme in the early Shuttle era. Just four of 

the first 25 Shuttle missions had focused on science instead of commercial or national 

security payloads.29 in the 1990s science became a major focus on half of the missions, 

with some 30 flights completely dedicated to research and other flights carrying at least 

a few experiments. the Spacelab suite of laboratory module and instrument pallets, 

developed by the european Space agency and installed in the payload bay, effectively 

turned the Shuttle into a temporary orbital research station generally staffed by ph.D.’s. 

these missions included experiments in various disciplines where flight crews could 

carry out research with the goal of pushing the frontiers of knowledge.30 

a primary scientific objective was to study space motion sickness and adaptation 

27. David a. Snow, e.	 Burke rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and robert D. Benford, “Frame 

alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation,” American Sociological Review 

51, no. 4 (august 1986): pp. 464–481, esp. 469–473. 

28. Space Station Freedom Media Handbook (Washington, Dc: naSa, may 1992). 

29. Spacelab 1 (StS-9, 1983), Spacelab 3 (StS 51-B, 1985), Spacelab 2 (StS 51-F, 1985), and 

Spacelab german D-1 (StS 61-a, 1985), the 9th, 17th, 19th, and 22nd shuttle missions. See The 

New York Times articles november–December, 1983;april–may and July–august, 1985. 

30. examples of public affairs 	material framing human spaceflight as scientific research are the 

naSa marshall Space Flight center pamphlet Spacelab, 13-m-883, which describes the facility and 

its uses, and the naSa information Summaries pmS-008a (hqs),“Space Station,”august 1988. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 79 

to weightlessness—topics that put the spotlight on the role of humans in space.another 

was to investigate the properties of materials and processes in microgravity.investigations 

in life and materials science included both basic and applied research. these Shuttle 

missions refined the ability of astronaut crews to collaborate with scientists on the ground 

while carrying out experiments, thus opening the space environment to hundreds of 

researchers. enabling members of the worldwide scientific community to participate 

directly in space missions broadened the appeal of human spaceflight in those disciplines 

based on laboratory methods. astronomers and space physicists generally were not 

persuaded that human spaceflight was necessary; automated instruments and satellites 

were more effective and less expensive means for conducting their research. 

naSa and the media began to stretch the human spaceflight frame beyond the 

Shuttle,seeing the Shuttle-borne laboratory as a precursor to a space station.the newera frame now began to imply a very long-term, perhaps permanent human presence 

in space.the effort to promote a space station, known first as Freedom and then as the 

international Space Station, relied on the key ideas of orbital research,“cutting-edge 

science,” a “world-class laboratory,” “frontiers of knowledge,” and other superlatives 

to bolster the meaning of continued human spaceflight. the purpose of human 

spaceflight on the space station was to advance science,which would yield discoveries 

for benefits on earth and enable future exploration. if the stretch occasionally seemed 

improbable—that research on the space station might lead to cures for cancer or 

aiDS or osteoporosis—it also showed that naSa was seeking new constituencies, 

especially women, to garner public support for an expensive new program.31 

The New York Times editorial column stridently challenged this framing of 

human spaceflight on the grounds of cost, size, purpose, utility, scientific potential, 

necessity, and logic. especially during the precarious years of the late 1980s and early 

1990s when the space station program was in political trouble, The New York Times 

urged its cancellation and a redirection of human spaceflight. calling the proposed 

orbital research station an extravagant folly and the arguments for a permanent human 

presence there specious, the editors found in it no compelling national purpose or 

social value.The NewYorkTimes attempted to reframe its meaning as a grandiose fiasco. 

only when the station was scaled down in size and purpose did the editors briefly 

give it credence but never full support.32 

31. naSa press release 92-92, “goldin Says america needs Space Station Freedom now,” 24 

June 1992; naSa press release 92-119, “naSa, nih Sign agreement on Joint, Space-related 

research,” 21 July 1992; Boeing, “the Space Station Brochure,” early 1990s; “Space Station 

Freedom: gateway to the Future,” naSa publication np-137, 1992; “the international Space 

Station:the naSa research plan,” naSa np-1998-02-232-hQ, 1998. 

32. examples of strident critiques of the space station basis for human spaceflight that appeared 

in The New York Times include “naSa’s Black hole in Space,” 29 march 1990: p.a22;“Space Yes; 

Space Station no,” 6 June 1991: p. a24; “naSa’s untouchable Folly,” 14 July 1991: p. e18; “the 

Wrong Space Station,” 29 July 1992: p.a20;“is naSa among the truly needy?” 6 march 1995: 

p.a14.two qualified exceptions were “how to put Space in its place,” 12 December 1990: p.a22 

and “Space, in proportion,” 6 march 1991: p.a24. 
80 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

influential voices outside The NewYorkTimes also doubted the value of the space 

station and the meaning of human spaceflight in scientific research. Space scientist 

James a.Van allen was one of the earliest and most earnest critics. he made the point, 

often repeated in The NewYork Times, that “the overwhelming majority of scientific 

and utilitarian achievements in space have come from unmanned, automated and 

commandable spacecraft.” robotic satellites and planetary probes had advanced the 

frontiers of knowledge quite successfully and at far less cost than people could.Van 

allen argued that the space station would seriously diminish,not expand,opportunities 

for scientific advances. he found the human spaceflight-for-science frame to be 

disingenuous and the high value placed on piloted flight to be excessive.33 

Van allen suggested that the cultural obsession with human spaceflight defied 

reason when the motive was science, but he granted the power of popular interest 

in science fiction and the space program’s potential for creating real adventure. 

arguments of scientific productivity, however, did not derail the space station and, 

20 years after Van allen wrote, his critique has been partly vindicated. instead of 

“the tidal wave of basic science” that naSa had predicted for the space station, 

a trickle has flowed.34 circumstances have required crews to spend more time 

operating and maintaining the international Space Station than exploiting its 

capabilities for laboratory science. if there have been discoveries from cuttingedge experiments aboard the station, they have not been well advertised.a reality 

check of this frame now would likely show it out of alignment with its premises 

and less resonant with societal values than at its origin. 

Frame Shift: Human Spaceflight as Heroism 

Scholars of meaning construction in social movements and the media note 

that occasionally an event creates some perturbation in the prevalent meaning frame 

of an issue. Such a crisis may provoke reconsideration or even reconstruction of 

meaning.a crisis becomes a critical discourse moment that can change the basis of 

meaning, introduce new values, and prompt a shift to a new frame of meaning.35 

Such a critical moment occurred in January, 1986. 

the year began with news that the Voyager 2 spacecraft had reached the 

neighborhood of uranus, its first planetary encounter since leaving Saturn five years 

earlier. images from the spacecraft showed new moons, rings, colors, mountains, craters, 

and other intriguing features. as naSa and the media hailed this ongoing mission 

33. James a. Van allen, “Space Science, Space technology and the Space Station,” Scientific American, 

254, no. 1 (January 1986): pp. 32–39. 

34. naSa administrator Daniel goldin quoted in naSa press release 92-92, “goldin Says america 

needs Space Station Freedom now,” 24 June 1992. 

35. gamson 	and modigliani, “media Discourse and public opinion,” and Benford and Snow, 

“Framing processes.” 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 81 

of discovery, The New York Times published two editorial odes to Voyager as space 

exploration “at its most intelligent and productive” and “at its best.” By comparison, 

human spaceflight seemed adrift, with naSa flying politicians and a teacher to hold 

public attention. in a terrible coincidence, the second of these pieces appeared on 

January 28, the morning of Challenger’s final launch. its barbed closing line chided,“if 

naSa wants lasting public support for a vigorous space program, the wonder of seeing 

new worlds will do it a lot more good than soap opera elevated to earth orbit.”36 

What happened that morning, witnessed by millions of television viewers, was 

nothing as trivial as a soap opera.the catastrophic loss of the Shuttle and death of seven 

crewmembers barely a minute after liftoff seared the nation, shaking national pride and 

confidence about the technology and safety of human spaceflight.the dimensions of 

the tragedy broadened and deepened during the weeks of investigation, with stunning 

revelations of flawed technology and questionable decision making within naSa. 

the Challenger accident shattered the new-era frame of routine spaceflight.What 

some had suspected suddenly became clear—space transportation was not yet routine, 

measured not by a dry financial cost-benefit analysis but by the cost of human life. 

the risk of spaceflight had been absent in the new-era frame of reference.that this 

was a basic freight-hauling mission to deliver a satellite—a task that did not inherently 

require a human crew—made their deaths even more tragic. Spaceflight deemed as 

routine as airline flight implied safety.as the pace of Shuttle missions had quickened, 

the public had understandably become complacent about spaceflight, perhaps the 

inevitable result of the frame of reference that had given meaning to the Shuttle era. 

With the accident and loss of life, the disparity between reality and the 

conceptual frame of meaning for human spaceflight was too great to hold. it lost 

credibility and resonance in the shock of tragedy.the astronauts’ deaths demanded 

greater significance than the space truck rationale could provide. Both the Shuttle 

and human spaceflight would be questioned and revalued, first to make sense of the 

tragedy and then to reconceive america’s future in space. 

the public search for meaning immediately defaulted to the 1960s frame of 

pioneering exploration and heroism on the space frontier. From president reagan’s 

consoling remarks to media coverage, official tributes, and personal mourning, the 

theme was courage and sacrifice in the cause of exploration. 37 the very purpose 

that the Shuttle did not actually have—exploration—became the cause for which 

the Challenger crew sacrificed their lives. invoking the quest of exploration elevated 

the Challenger mission to a noble cause and valued the deaths as heroic.the routine 

space transportation frame could not bestow that meaning. 

36. “adrift in Space,” The New York Times, 7 January 1986: p. a20 and “on to neptune,” The New 

York Times, 28 January 1986: p.a24. 

37. transcript of president reagan’s statement to the nation, reprinted in The New York Times, 29 

January 1986: p.a9. 
82 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

The New York Times reported the details of the accident and subsequent 

investigation and also immediately began to offer perspective on the news.an analysis 

piece “Should u.S. continue to Send people into Space?” appeared as soon as 

January 30 under a heading“issue and Debate.”John nobleWilford’s articles included 

reflections on human vulnerability, trust in technology, and the unrelenting dangers 

and risks of exploration as germane to a reappraisal of spaceflight.this bleak time in 

the space program was an opportunity to set new goals and a clearer mission for the 

Shuttle and beyond.he noted that human spaceflight was bound to continue,because 

“With the loss of the Challenger and its crew of seven,we learned,to our surprise,how 

much these adventures into space, into the future, mean to us as a people.”38 

editorialcartoonstelegraphedthesocietalimpactofspaceflightasscoresofcartoonists 

responded to the Challenger tragedy.39 the primary themes, as in the president’s address, 

were national sorrow and heroism,variously depicted as uncle Sam with head bowed,the 

flag on the moon at half-mast, or an eagle shedding a tear. Some cartoonists framed the 

accident in a spiritual dimension, showing the Shuttle as a constellation, the astronauts as 

new stars, or the Shuttle and crew entering heaven.there were no cartoons featuring a 

space truck or astro-delivery-nauts, no suggestions of routine spaceflight.a few editorial 

artists who also wrote about responding to the Challenger accident described the meanings 

they sought to distill within their drawings as the fragility of mankind’s wings, shattered 

faith in space technology,or inexpressible sorrow for a profound loss to the nation.40 

Framing the Challenger accident within the heroic cause of exploration—really 

a return to the meaning frame of the 1960s—was powerful, perhaps instinctive. it 

gave meaning to a shocking tragedy and resonated with societal values of patriotism 

and faith that offered consolation for the present and hope for the future. the 

exploration frame appealed to public sentiment, which translated into expressions 

of increased public support for the space program. in the immediate aftermath of 

the Challenger accident, the supportive public and the Shuttle’s critics seemed to be 

oddly in accord in revaluing the meaning of human spaceflight as exploration, not 

freight-hauling and similar practical work. 

38. David rosenbaum, “Should u.S. continue to Send people into Space?” The New York Times, 

30 January 1986: p.a18; John noble Wilford,“Faith in technology is Jolted, but there is no going 

Back,” The New York Times, 29 January 1986: p. a7; John noble Wilford, “the challenger’s Fate, 

the Shuttles’ Future,” The New York Times, 2 February 1986: p. e1; John noble Wilford,“america’s 

Future in Space after the challenger,” The New York Times, 16 march 1986: p. 85 ff. 

39. Files in the history office at naSa headquarters in Washington, Dc, contain some 150 Challengerrelated cartoons published in 1986. 

40. examples include garner’s drawing in 	The Washington Times, 19 January 1986: 11a; Swann’s 

drawing in The Huntsville Times, 19 January 1986; marlette’s drawing in The Charlotte Observer, 28 

January 1986 and in Doug marlette, Shred This Book! (atlanta: peachtree publishers, 1988), pp. 

86–88; ohman’s drawing in Newsweek, 10 February 1986: p. 21, and in Jack ohman, Back to the ’80s 

(new York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), pp. 136–137. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 83 

the new-era routine spaceflight frame had originated with naSa and then 

was promoted to the public. however, the reframing of human spaceflight after the 

Challenger accident seems to have arisen outside the agency. The New York Times 

became a forum for reappraising the state of human spaceflight by publishing its 

own perspectives and those of several prominent citizens. immediately after the 

accident, a New York Times editorial addressed “the challenge Beyond challenger” 

with thoughts for reordering the nation’s priorities in space. the coincidence of 

the Shuttle’s destruction and Voyager’s success illustrated a need to establish goals 

in space and use humans only when necessary.as most of the tasks for the Shuttle 

crews could be performed better by rockets or automation, a better goal for human 

spaceflight might be a mission to mars to “satisfy humanity’s sense of adventure.”this 

surprising proposal, given that robots could also explore mars, was a concession that 

humans might have some role in space more justifiable than then-current roles.41 

For weeks, The New York Times’s editorials and op-eds reflected on both the 

routine spaceflight reference frame and the need to reorient the role of human 

spaceflight. in their quest to find a justifiable purpose for sending people into space, 

the only one tentatively suggested was a piloted mission to mars.42 as a critical 

discourse moment, the Challenger accident prompted a shift from the routine 

spaceflight frame to its direct opposite: exploration. 

Frame Transformation: 


Human Spaceflight as Exploration


From 1986 into the 1990s, and then again after the 2003 Columbia accident, 

considerable energy went into transforming the meaning of human spaceflight. 

Shuttle flights continued to carry out satellite delivery and science missions, and 

then preparatory and actual space station missions. human spaceflight continued 

within the meaning frames of transportation and science, but on another track a 

new frame—exploration—was taking shape through various task force/advisory 

committee studies and media discourse.the framers shaped this concept largely in 

antithesis of the others,a counter-frame based on opposition to the status quo.their 

purpose was to transform the meaning of human spaceflight by situating it within 

a different set of traditions and values.43 

41. The New York Times, 31 January 1986: p.a30. 

42. “risk and routine,” The New York Times, 7 February 1986: p. a34; tom Wicker, “icon and 

o rings,” The New York Times, 18 February 1986: p.a23;“the Seal on naSa’s Fate,” The New York 

Times,22 February 1986:p.a22;“the Frailties of machines and men,”The New York Times,2 march 

1986: p. e22;“how to regain Face in Space,” The New York Times, 28 may 1986: p.a22. 

43. Frame transformation is discussed in Benford and Snow, “Framing processes” and Snow et al., 

“Frame alignment processes.” 
84 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Within weeks of the Challenger accident, an alternative plan for human 

spaceflight appeared.the national commission on Space, created by congress and 

appointed by the president, released a report of its year-long project to develop an 

exciting vision and goals for the twenty-first century. ambitious and optimistic, it 

was an antidote to the malaise spawned by the accident. this new vision was crafted 

in public dialogues around the country as the commissioners sought to hear what 

citizens expected of their space program. in a word—exploration. 

the advisory commission’s report, Pioneering the Space Frontier, focused 

on exploration and settlement within the solar system as the extended home of 

humanity.american leadership could open this new frontier to science, technology, 

and economic enterprise. the elaborate plan envisioned a massive infrastructure: 

space station, different types of vehicles and spaceports, a lunar outpost, a mars 

base, and related technologies.the Shuttle era was confined to an orbital beltway 

near earth, but in the future era humans would move out on a “highway to space” 

and a “bridge between worlds,” to set up residence and do useful work producing 

propellants and other life- necessary resources.this vision was a hybrid of the familiar 

frontier and transportation frames for human spaceflight applied to a new setting and 

purpose.colorful cover art and illustrations engagingly framed this rather industrialized 

vision of the space frontier,published as a report dedicated to the Challenger crew,who 

in president reagan’s words were “pulling us into the future.”44 

naSa also engaged in its own reappraisal of the future of human spaceflight. 

astronaut Sally ride chaired an internal agency planning group that prepared a 

report on Leadership and America’s Future in Space.

45 it, too, proposed an eventual 

human mission to mars, but at a more measured pace and scale than the national 

commission had proposed. these and other studies were gestures toward a 

transformational vision of human spaceflight beyond the Shuttle era, but they were 

not converted to action plans. 

near the one-year anniversary of the Challenger accident, an encouraging 

piece by space scientist carl Sagan appeared in The New York Times.“it’s time to go 

to mars,” he wrote, in a systematic program of exploration advancing from robotic 

rovers to sample-return missions and then to “the first human footfalls on another 

planet.” unlike the national commission’s vision of productive industry on mars, 

Sagan’s vision focused on the values of adventure, excitement, inspiration, valor, 

prestige, and purpose in the space frontier. he argued that exploration of mars 

for the sake of knowledge could revitalize the moribund space program and make 

possible a new goal,“establishing humanity as a multiplanet species.”46 

44. Pioneering the Space Frontier: The Report of the National Commission on Space (new York: Bantam 

Books, 1986). 

45. Sally K.ride,Leadership andAmerica’s Future in Space (Washington,Dc:naSa,august 1987). 

46. carl Sagan,“it’s time to go to mars,” The New York Times, 23 January 1987: p.a27. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 85 

Variants of the exploration of mars arose as forces inside and outside naSa 

tried to reframe the purpose of human spaceflight.the mars goal seemed a worthy 

commitment for astronauts, and it might align the human and robotic flight programs 

in a complementary rather than competitive enterprise.it could also reassertamerican 

leadership in space in an inspiring,challenging adventure.By spring,1987,John noble 

Wilford could report in The NewYorkTimes that “momentum is building in the space 

agency and among . . . leaders to make mars the next major goal of the american 

civilian space program.”47 exploration,specifically the exploration of mars,had gained 

credibility and resonance as the future meaning of human spaceflight. 

the 20th anniversary of the apollo 11 landing highlighted the discrepancy 

between current human spaceflight and aspirations for a new purpose. president 

george h. W. Bush marked the anniversary in 1989 by endorsing a spacefaring 

initiative to return to the moon and move on to mars.apparently formalizing the 

frame shift from Shuttle-era concepts to exploration, the announcement was more 

rhetoric than mandate, for he set no schedule and made no funding commitment 

for such an enterprise. it met with skepticism among political leaders and space 

policy analysts as too costly. The New York Times dismissed it as “mr. Bush’s giant 

step back in space . . . a failure of imagination” because it sounded like apollo 

redux without a compelling reason.48the president’s new frame for the meaning of 

human spaceflight seemed rickety but it did authorize naSa to chart a path out of 

earth orbit through a new space exploration initiative. 

Despite the ferment,the transformation process was slow,and in the meantime 

human spaceflight was still riding the Shuttle and preparing a space station.the new 

York times published numerous impatient,frustrated editorials on the theme “stuck 

in earth orbit for no good reason.”the editorial page framed the Shuttle as fragile, 

vulnerable, neither fully safe nor fully reliable, with nowhere to go. the planned 

space station was decried as an extravagant folly, a “black hole,” a fiasco, purposeless 

or a “potpourri of purposes,” grandiose,unsuitable for anything except being a place 

for the Shuttle to go.the space agency was “an aged and faltering institution,”ailing 

and “pinched in scope and vision.”the drumbeat message: cancel the space station 

and do something more imaginative than carry astronauts and cargo to low earth 

orbit.49 The New York Times’s editorial position framed human spaceflight as properly 

47. J. n. Wilford, “exploration of mars is advised as goal for naSa,” The New York Times, 18 

march 1987: p. B6 and “the allure of mars grows as u.S. Searches for new national goal,” The 

New York Times, 24 march 1987: p. c1. 

48. “mr. Bush’s giant Step Back in Space,” The New York Times, 21 July 1989: p.a28. 

49. typical 	The New York Times editorials in this vein include “naSa’s Black hole in Space,” 29 

march 1990: p.a22;“rethink Space,” 21 July 1990: p. 20;“those hisses on the Launching pad,” 19 

September 1990: p. 22;“Space Yes, Space Station no,” 6 June 1991: p.a24;“naSa’s untouchable 

Folly, 14 July 1991: p. e18;“the Wrong Space Station,” 29 July 1992: p.a20;“is naSa among the 

truly needy?”, 6 march 1995: p.a14. 
86 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

grounded in wonder, imagination, excitement, frontiers, discovery, and a clear goal 

worthy of risking human life. 

as momentum built in the media and advisory and advocacy bodies for 

missions to the moon and mars, naSa began to elaborate and extend the space 

station concept to more explicitly embrace exploration.50 in the 1990s the agency 

started describing the orbital research center as a stepping-stone or a bridge to 

future exploration.the language of future spaceflight borrowed from the builder’s 

lexicon, as planners worked on “blueprints” and “architectures” for exploration. 

adding an overlay of exploration to the space station partially reframed it to disarm 

critics and strengthen support. 

The NewYorkTimes editors disagreed with that gloss,as did another naSa critic, 

science journalist timothy Ferris, writing for the op-ed page. The New York Times 

charged that the space station was not designed to be a way station to other worlds, 

a launching pad for planetary exploration, or a stepping-stone to anywhere. “the 

shocking surprise is how little the station would contribute to the nation’s long-range 

space goals,”really only life science research.51 the week before the first element of the 

international Space Station was placed in orbit in 1998, Ferris wrote a critical op-ed 

piece titled “naSa’s mission to nowhere.” in his view, the station “touted as a giant 

leap into space and a step toward the stars in truth . . . is little more than a motel 6 

in low [e]arth orbit . . . . [i]t will be of almost no use in getting to mars, the moon, 

or anywhere else—except into debt.” Ferris argued that a far better plan would be 

to abandon the space station and mount “an international effort to put a colony on 

mars” to make humanity a two-planet species. it could have great scientific value and 

also be a grand adventure, a future where we “really get somewhere.”52 

With effort focused on assembling and operating the space station, the space 

exploration initiative withered until another critical discourse moment forced 

the issue again.the second Shuttle tragedy, the loss of Columbia and crew during 

reentry in February 2003, again thrust the purpose of human spaceflight into the 

media spotlight for debate whether this type of orbital mission was worth the risk 

and cost of human lives.again the public responded to the tragedy by revering the 

astronauts as heroic explorers, and editorial cartoonists depicted the apotheosis of 

the Shuttle and crew as stars in the heavens.53 

50. other reports from this period included Report of the Advisory Committee on the Future of the U.S. 

Space Program (augustine committee) (Washington,Dc:u.S.government printing office,1990) and 

America at the Threshold:America’s Space Exploration Initiative, report of the Synthesis group (Stafford 

committee) (Washington, Dc: u.S. government printing office, 1991). 

51. Space Yes; Space Station no,” The New York Times, 6 June 1991: p. a24; “naSa’s untouchable 

Folly,” The NewYorkTimes, 14 July 1991: p. e18;“the Wrong Space Station,” The NewYorkTimes, 29 

July 1992: p.a20. 

52. timothy Ferris,“naSa’s mission to nowhere,”The NewYorkTimes,29 november 1998:p.WK9. 

53. cartoon series file 2003 in the naSa historical reference collection at naSa headquarters. 
Framing the Meanings of Spaceflight in the Shuttle Era 87 

as the exploring Voyager mission starkly contrasted with the earlier Shuttle 

tragedy, the call of distant worlds also beckoned after the Columbia tragedy. The New 

York Times responded to the tragedy not with a call to halt human spaceflight but 

to redirect it to exploration. “curiosity and the quest for knowledge . . . make it 

inevitable that humans will continue to venture into space . . . to engage in the sheer 

thrill of exploration and new discoveries.”54 Soon robust robots roaming on mars 

captured public attention with the vicarious thrill of exploration, in contrast to the 

handicapped human spaceflight program. editorial cartoonists depicted the Shuttle 

as physically decrepit, geriatric, on life support, with the astronauts idled on earth 

while robots explored mars.55 

in 2004 president george W. Bush urged a new vision for space exploration 

for the future beyond the Shuttle and space station. Like the space exploration 

initiative 15 years earlier, this presidential charter stimulated planning studies inside 

and outside naSa. But this time naSa took the challenge seriously enough to 

reorganize for action, aiming for a transformation of both the rhetoric of human 

spaceflight and the agency itself. emphasizing sustained and affordable programs to 

satisfy the spirit of discovery, planners have been careful not to make exaggerated 

claims about the benefits of exploration.human spaceflight now is being framed not 

as a practical or a business enterprise but more lyrically,as exploration resonant with 

mystery, curiosity, adventure, and reinvigoration after a long stay in earth orbit. 

naSa’s slogans for the space exploration vision,“the new age of exploration” 

and “a renewed Spirit of Discovery,” herald a return to a cultural tradition of 

exploration that expands knowledge and fuels wonder.this framing approach differs 

rhetorically from the previous initiative; publicity materials depict people on mars as 

explorers, not as miners, and prose addresses compelling questions of scientific and 

societal importance more than technology. it is too early to know if or how that 

renewal will occur,but the current vision for space exploration seems to be reasonably 

framed for broad appeal. it takes human and robotic explorers out of competition and 

elevates scientific discovery as their shared goal. more modest in promises than earlier 

frames yet potentially more heroic, exploration aims at the worthier purpose that 

critics and advocates of human spaceflight have long demanded.56 

54. “the call of Distant Worlds,” The New York Times, 9 February 2003:WK14. 

55. cartoon	 series files 2003–2005 in the naSa historical reference collection at naSa 

headquarters. 

56. TheVision for Space Exploration (Washington,Dc:nationalaeronautics and Spaceadministration,2004). 
88 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Conclusion 

this frame analysis of the Shuttle era has focused on the social construction of 

meanings for human spaceflight. Five meaning frames have been probed: a new era of 

routine transportation, business, scientific research, heroism, and exploration. naSa 

was the primary,but not sole,shaper of these meanings;the media,represented here by 

The NewYorkTimes,and the public also exerted a strong influence by critiquing the fit 

between frames and reality.When a frame became dissonant with societal expectations, 

either naSa subtly revamped it or the media and public pressured for change. 

the varied meanings of human spaceflight in the Shuttle era can be interpreted 

as arising from processes of frame development, frame extension, frame shifts, and 

transformations—all strategies used by social action movements to appeal to and 

sustain their supporters and also used by media to give readers a context for thinking 

about issues.these frames helped society make sense of the costly, risky endeavor 

of human spaceflight by anchoring it in traditions and values that matter to citizens. 

curiously, the keenest consensus about the meaning of human spaceflight arose not 

from its successes but from the two Shuttle tragedies.these critical moments forced 

a societal discourse about the defining purpose of human spaceflight that prompted 

reframing and transformation. it seems ironic that robotic planetary missions also 

inspired efforts to reframe the meaning of human spaceflight as exploration. 

that in the course of more than 30 years the meaning of human spaceflight 

has been malleable may attest to societal wisdom and adaptability to changing 

circumstances, or it may indicate a restless desire to try something new. in any case, 

human spaceflight remains anchored in american culture and resilient in meaning. 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 89

chapter 6 

Space in the Post–Cold War 


Environment


John m. Logsdon 

i

n a thoughtful report issued in December 1992, one year after the dissolution 

of the Soviet union, a blue-ribbon panel of the Vice president’s Space policy 

advisory Board observed that “[t]he u.S.civil and national security space programs 

have evolved within a policy framework that reflected the international tensions, as 

well as the economic and technological constraints and alliance relationships of the 

cold War period.”the panel suggested that “[t]he end of the cold War, advances 

in technology, and other developments present new opportunities for cooperation 

and progress in space.” given this reality, the group found it necessary to “transform 

the u.S. space program to meet the challenges of the new post cold War era.”1 the 

report suggested the steps needed for such a transformation; its recommendations 

have as much relevance now as they did in 1992. 

the title of this report, “a post cold War assessment of u.S. Space policy,” 

carried with it an underlying assumption.that assumption was that the “cold war”— 

the protracted geopolitical, ideological, and military struggle that emerged after 

World War ii between the united States and its allies and the Soviet union and its 

allies, that never erupted into direct military conflict between the united States and 

the Soviet union, and that ended with the collapse of the Soviet union in 1991— 

1.	Vice	President’s	Space	Policy	Advisory	Board,	“A	Post	Cold	War	Assessment	of	U.S.	Space	Policy:	A	 

Task	Group	Report,”	December	1992,	pp.	v,	vii.	During	the	administration	of	President	George	H.	 

W.	Bush,	there	was	in	the	Executive	Office	of	the	President	a	National	Space	Council,	chaired	by	 

Vice	President	Dan	Quayle	and	supported	by	a	small	staff.	Supporting	the	Space	Council	was	a	Vice	 

President’s	Space	Policy	Advisory	Board,	which	was	activated	only	in	mid-1992.	The	members	of	 

the	Task	Group	that	prepared	this	report,	in	addition	to	the	author	of	this	paper,	were	all	individuals	 

with	long	and	diverse	experience	in	the	space	sector.	They	included	Laurel	Wilkening,	Chair;	James	 

Abrahamson;	Edward	“Pete”	Aldridge;	Joseph	Allen;	Daniel	Fink;	John	Foster,	Jr.;	Edward	Frieman;	 

Don	Fuqua;	Donald	Kutyna;	and	Bruce	Murray.	The	report	can	be	found	at	 http://history.nasa. 

gov/33080.pt1.pdf and	http://history.nasa.gov/33080.pt2.pdf	(accessed	9	November	2006). 
90 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

had had an important and continuing influence on the content and character of the 

u.S. space program. given the credentials of the panel, the members of which had 

long and varied involvement with the space sector, its assessment ought to reflect a 

reasoned perspective regarding the impact that the end of the cold war should have 

on the way the united States would henceforth carry out its space efforts. 

the panel’s report made a key observation that is central to the argument of 

this paper—that “the quest for leadership has been a fundamental objective of the 

u.S. space program.” Since the end of World War ii, the “u.S. ability to influence 

the shape and flow of events around the world has been a core national interest.” 

Successive presidents “have recognized the contributions that the u.S. space 

program made to the perception of the united States as a leading nation.” With 

respect to the cold war,“in the 1960s, and for most of the next two decades, space 

leadership clearly meant besting the uSSr in visible, challenging space exploration 

endeavors.” But, the panel observed, it was global space leadership that was the basic 

goal, with u.S.–Soviet space relations an important, but not the only, venue for 

achieving that leadership.at the time the panel report was issued in 1992, the thencurrent national space policy stated that “a fundamental objective guiding united 

States space activities has been, and continues to be, space leadership.”2 

if this perspective is valid, then the end of the cold war would not have changed 

the importance of space leadership as the underlying goal of the u.S. space program, 

although different means for achieving that goal would have had to be pursued.if that is 

the case, then the end of the cold war would be less of a watershed in u.S. space policy 

than is usually thought.this paper will provide evidence in support of this conclusion. 

the relationship between the cold war and u.S. efforts toward leadership in 

space is thus far from straightforward.the quest for global leadership, rather than 

direct u.S.–Soviet competition, has been the primary political influence on the 

evolution of the u.S. space program. as the 1992 panel observed, during those 

times in the 1957–1991 period when the Soviet union loomed as a direct peer 

competitor of the united States, global space leadership indeed meant leadership 

in comparison to the Soviet union. But at times when u.S.–uSSr relations were 

not actively competitive, such as after the cuban missile crisis, the period of u.S.– 

Soviet détente during the nixon administration, and the latter years of the reagan 

administration when the spirit of glasnost colored relationships between the two 

countries, the u.S. quest for space leadership continued.that did not change with 

the disappearance of the Soviet union in 1991. 

2. ibid., pp. 1-2. national Space policy nSpD-1, 2 november 1989, http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/ 

awcgate/nspd1 (accessed 8 november 2006). 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 91 

The Cold War and the U.S. Civilian Space Program 

the focus of this paper is on the u.S. civilian space program, and particularly 

that major portion of the civilian program carried out by naSa. certainly the 

u.S.–Soviet strategic and military rivalry during the cold war was a major influence 

on u.S. national security space efforts, but those will not be discussed in what 

follows. So, rather than repeat the word “civilian” below, the reader should assume 

that all references are to the civilian sector of u.S. space activities.the issue to be 

discussed is how the intertwining between the desire for global space leadership and 

the need to demonstrate space superiority vis-à-vis the Soviet union shaped u.S. 

space efforts in the 1957–1991 period. 

president Dwight D. eisenhower, even after assessing the international and 

domestic political impacts of Soviet space successes in the aftermath of Sputnik, came 

to the conclusion that space leadership,particularly in highly visible space achievements, 

was not needed to preserve u.S.global standing overall.his efforts to avoid having a u.S. 

space program driven primarily by competition with the Soviet union have been well 

documented.as two careful analysts commented,“[g]iven the political pressures for an 

all-out space race with the Soviet union, the degree to which eisenhower controlled 

the space policy agenda in the late 1950s stands as a considerable achievement.”even so, 

“[i]t would be inaccurate . . . to suggest that he was ever really in command of events.” 

in fact,they conclude,“[e]arly u.S.space policy was indeed heavily determined by what 

the Soviet union did.”3the eisenhower administration in January 1960 issued a formal 

statement of national space policy that reflected the tension between trying to develop 

a u.S. space effort based on its inherent merits and one that was competitive with the 

uSSr.the policy suggested that: 

[t]o minimize the psychological advantages which the uSSr 

has acquired as the result of space accomplishments, select from 

among those current or projected u.S.space activities of intrinsic 

military, scientific or technological value, one or more projects 

which offer promise of obtaining a demonstrably effective 

advantage over the Soviets and, so far as is consistent with solid 

achievements in the overall space program, stress these projects 

in present and future programming.4 

3. David callahan and Fred i. greenstein,“the reluctant racer: eisenhower and u.S. Space policy,” 

in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, roger D. Launius and howard e. mccurdy, ed. 

(urbana, iL: university of illinois press, 1997), pp. 39–40. 

4. national aeronautics and Space council, “u.S. policy on outer Space,” 26 January 1960, in 

Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume i, 

organizing for exploration,John m.Logsdon et al.,ed.(Washington,Dc:national aeronautics and 

Space administration Special publication-4407, 1995), pp. 367–368. 
92 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

this statement captures well the ambivalent stance of the eisenhower 

administration; while desiring a space program of substantive value, it was virtually 

impossible to avoid the influence of Soviet achievements in space because of their 

propaganda impacts on u.S. interests abroad and on national morale at home. 

although president John F. Kennedy is best known with respect to space for 

challenging the Soviet union to a race to the moon, the reality is that he, too, was 

ambivalent about linking space achievement to cold war competition; he saw space 

cooperation between the u.S. and the Soviet union as an alternate path to u.S. 

leadership.Kennedy’s first inclination upon taking office was to use space as an area for 

tension reduction with the Soviet union; in his inaugural address, the new president 

addressed the Soviet leadership, saying “Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of 

science instead of its terrors.together let us explore the stars.”5 in the early months 

of the Kennedy administration, there was a concerted effort to find feasible areas of 

u.S.–uSSr space cooperation. But the 12 april 1961 flight of the first human in 

orbit, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri gagarin, and its international and domestic aftermath 

convinced Kennedy that he had to compete in space with the Soviet union in order 

to avoid a significant loss of u.S. national prestige and to demonstrate that the united 

States, not the Soviet union, was the superior technological and military power.6 

Kennedy’s advisors were blunt in their linkage between space achievement and 

cold war competition.in their 8 may 1961 memorandum recommending that Kennedy 

set a lunar landing as a national goal, naSa administrator James Webb and Secretary 

of Defense robert mcnamara argued that “[o]ur attainments [in space] are a major 

element in the competition between the Soviet system and our own . . . . in this sense, 

[they] are part of the battle along the fluid front of the coldWar.”as he announced his 

decision to go to the moon, Kennedy equated the venture with u.S. leadership, saying 

it was “time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement.”7 

the tension between the imperative to beat the Soviet union to the moon 

and the desire for overall space leadership was implicit in the program that the 

president approved in may 1961, which had as its central focus the lunar landing 

objective but also called for an across-the-board acceleration of u.S. space efforts. 

this tension surfaced in an argument between Kennedy and naSa administrator 

James Webb as the president met with his advisors on 21 november 1962 to discuss 

the naSa budget. Kennedy declared “[t]his is important for political reasons, 

international political reasons.this is, whether we like it or not, in a sense a race . . . . 

5. public papers of the presidents of the united States: John F. Kennedy, 1961 (Washington, Dc: u.S. 

government printing office, 1962), p. 2. 

6. See John m. Logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest 

(cambridge, ma: mit press, 1970) for a detailed account of this decision. 

7. James e.Webb and robert mcnamara,“recommendations for our national Space program:changes, 

policies, goals,” 8 may 1961, reprinted in Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, p. 444. John F. Kennedy, 

“urgent national needs,” Speech to a Joint Session of congress, 25 may 1961 in ibid., p. 453. 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 93 

everything that we do ought to really be tied into getting onto the moon ahead of 

the russians.”Webb retorted “Why can’t it be tied to preeminence in space?” 

as he prepared to leave the meeting, the president asked Webb to prepare a 

letter stating his position on why space preeminence, and not just being first to the 

moon,should be the country’s goal:“i think in the letter you ought to mention how 

the other programs which the agency is carrying out tie into the lunar program, 

and what their connection is, and how essential they are to the target dates we’re 

talking about, and if they are only indirectly related, what their contribution is to 

the general and specific things possibly we’re doing in space.”8 

Webb’s letter was sent to the president on november 30. in it,Webb said that in 

his view“[t]he objective of our national space program is to become preeminent in all 

important aspects of this endeavor and to conduct the program in such a manner that 

our emerging scientific, technological, and operational competence in space is clearly 

evident.”Webb emphasized that “[t]he manned lunar landing program, although of 

highest national priority, will not by itself create the preeminent position we seek.”9 

president Kennedy seems to have accepted the basic argument made by James 

Webb—that preeminence in space should be the guiding objective of the national space 

program. in a 17 July 1963 press conference, Kennedy responded to a press report that 

the Soviet union was not planning to send its cosmonauts to the moon, saying,“the 

point of the matter always has been not only of our excitement or interest in being 

on the moon; but the capacity to dominate space, which would be demonstrated by a 

moon flight,i believe,is essential to the united States as a leading free world power.that 

is why i am interested in it and that is why i think we should continue.”10 

John Kennedy never gave up on the hope that the space relationship between 

the u.S. and the Soviet union could be changed from competition to cooperation. 

With the october 1962 successful outcome of the cuban missile crisis in hand, in 

1963 Kennedy sought to engage the Soviet leadership in reducing global tensions 

through such agreements as the Limitedtest Bantreaty. Space was part of this “peace 

offensive.”on 20 September 1963,Kennedy went before the generalassembly of the 

united nations and said “[i]n a field where the united States and the Soviet union 

have a special capacity—in the field of space—there is room for new cooperation . . . 

i include among these possibilities a joint expedition to the moon.”11 

8. “transcript of presidential meeting in the cabinet room of theWhite house, november 21, 1962.” 

this transcript can be found at http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv/ (accessed 7 november 2006). 

9. James e. Webb, administrator, naSa, Letter to the president, 30 november 1962, in Logsdon, 

Exploring the Unknown, p. 461. 

10. “news conference 58,” John F. Kennedy Library and museum, http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/ 

Archives/Reference+Desk/Press+Conferences/003POF05Pressconference58_07171963.htm (accessed 25 august 2006). 

11 public papers of the presidents of the united States: John F. Kennedy, 1963, (Washington, Dc: u.S. 

government printing office, 1964), pp. 567–568. 
94 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

Kennedy’s top advisor theodore Sorenson later explained this apparent 

switch in policy: 

i think the president had three objectives in space. one was 

to ensure its demilitarization. the second was to prevent the 

field to be occupied [by] the russians to the exclusion of the 

united States.and the third was to make certain that american 

scientific prestige and american scientific effort were at the top. 

those three goals all would have been assured in a space effort 

which culminated in our beating the russians to the moon.all 

three of them would have been endangered had the russians 

continued to outpace us in their space effort and beat us to the 

moon. But i believe all three of those goals would also have 

been assured by a joint Soviet-american venture to the moon. 

the difficulty was that in 1961, although the president favored 

the joint effort, we had comparatively few chips to offer. 

obviously the russians were well ahead of us at that time . . . . 

But by 1963 our effort had accelerated considerably.there was 

a very real chance we were even with the Soviets in this effort. 

in addition, our relations with the Soviets, following the cuban 

missile crisis and the test ban treaty, were much improved—so 

the president felt that,without harming any of those three goals, 

we now were in a position to ask the Soviets to join us and 

make it efficient and economical for both countries.12 

Like Dwight eisenhower before him, John F. Kennedy tried to avoid direct 

competition with the Soviet union as the defining feature of the u.S. space effort, 

in his case by trying several times during his brief presidency to turn space into 

an area for cooperative tension reduction rather than zero-sum competition. even 

so, much more than eisenhower, Kennedy was willing to accept the alternative of 

u.S.–uSSr competition if the cooperative option was not feasible. it is impossible 

to know what might have happened in this respect if Kennedy had been able to 

complete two terms as president. But with his assassination, the apollo program 

came to be seen as one of his legacies, and there was no possibility of shifting 

it to a cooperative undertaking. getting to the moon before the Soviet union 

became the defining goal of the u.S. space effort between 1963 and 1969.When, in 

1968, it appeared as if the Soviet union might send cosmonauts around the moon, 

without landing, before the united States, the apollo schedule was modified to 

insert the apollo 8 circumlunar mission in December 1968. although the public 

record supports the argument that this shift was made for programmatic reasons 

12. theodore Sorenson interview by carl Kaysen, 26 march 1964, in John F. Kennedy presidential 

Library,Boston,ma. 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 95 

having to do with the fact that the lunar landing module was not ready for a 

scheduled December 1968 test flight, some (including members of the apollo 8 

crew) have suggested that the threat of being beaten to the moon by the Soviets was 

an important factor in the decision to fly apollo 8 to lunar orbit.13 

the next major opportunity for determining the character of the u.S. space 

effort came in 1969, as it became clear that the u.S. would soon achieve Kennedy’s 

goal of a lunar landing “before the decade is out.” on February 13 of that year the 

new president, richard m. nixon, asked for a “definitive recommendation on the 

direction which the u.S.space program should take in the post-apollo period.”the 

president chartered a Space task group chaired by Vice president Spiro agnew to 

prepare that recommendation; the group’s report was submitted to president nixon 

on September 15. it noted that “for the short term, the race with the Soviets has 

been won” and that “[p]ublic frustration over Soviet accomplishments in space, an 

important force in support of the nation’s acceptance of the lunar landing in 1961, 

is not now present.today, new Soviet achievements are not likely to have the effect 

of those in the past.”Based on this reasoning, the Space task group proposed that 

the political goal of the post-apollo program should be “to promote a sense of 

world community” by expanded international participation in u.S. space efforts, 

rather than to pursue another unilateral demonstration of u.S. strength through 

space achievements.14 

the absence of visible Soviet competition in space at the end of the 1960s 

made such an approach feasible and reduced somewhat the political saliency of 

the u.S. space effort to overall u.S. foreign policy objectives.15 as they discussed 

the significant cuts to the naSa budget that had been made in the immediate 

aftermath of the apollo 11 and 12 missions, president richard nixon told naSa 

administrator thomas paine that “[o]ne of our main troubles . . . is that the Soviets 

have not been flying dramatic missions for a long time” and that “[i]t was an 

unfortunate truth that new Soviet spectaculars were what the public needed to get 

interested in u.S. space activities.”16 

Such an approach reflected a more muted view of the impact of the cold war 

per se on u.S. space efforts. rather than make bilateral space competition “part of 

the battle along the fluid front of the cold War,”the united States would use its space 

13. See robert Zimmerman, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8 (new York: Dell, 1999) for a discussion 

of the various factors leading to the decision to fly the mission. 

14. Space task group report to the president, “the post-apollo Space program: Directions for 

the Future,” September 1969,appendix a, pp. 7, 16, 27. 

15. although 	the u.S. intelligence community was aware of Soviet development of systems 

capable of sending cosmonauts to the moon and of the failures of those systems, this information 

was not publicly available, and the Soviet union denied that it had a lunar landing program. 

16. thomas o. paine, “meeting with the president,” 22 January 1970; memorandum for the record, 

22 January 1970,naSa collection,university of houston,clear Lake Library. 
96 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

capabilities as part of its strategy of global leadership, potentially in partnership with 

many other nations.as long as the Soviet union remained a strong military and political 

power, there would be a challenge to u.S. leadership, but the events of the 1960s, from 

the cuban missile crisis to the apollo 11 lunar landing, had changed the nature of the 

cold war threat and its impact on u.S.space activities.the link between space capabilities 

and the u.S. global image was not lost on nixon and his closest advisors. one of them, 

caspar “cap”Weinberger, commented as additional cuts to the naSa budget were 

being contemplated in mid-1971 that such cuts would provide confirmation that “our 

best years are behind us,that we are turning inward,reducing our defense commitments, 

and voluntarily starting to give up our super-power status, and our desire to maintain 

world superiority.” nixon responded,“i agree with cap.”17 

Weinberger’s memorandum came in the midst of the debate over whether to 

develop the Space Shuttle as the next major u.S. space program.there is little specific 

mention of u.S.–Soviet competition in the arguments naSa put forth in trying to 

convincetheWhitehousetogoforwardwiththeShuttle,althoughnaSaadministrator 

James Fletcher did suggest in his “best-case” paper that “man has learned to fly in space, 

and man will continue to fly in space.this is a fact. and, given this fact, the united 

States cannot forgo its responsibility—to itself and to the free world—to have a part in 

manned space flight.” he added,“For the u.S. not to be in space, while others do have 

men in space, is unthinkable, and a position which america cannot accept.”18 

rather than continue to compete with the Soviet union in space during the 

1970s, the united States pursued a cooperative strategy. the Space task group had 

suggested that “[i]n the case of the uSSr, experience over the past ten years makes 

clear that the central problem in developing space cooperation is political rather than 

technical or economic.”19 as part of its strategy of détente with the Soviet union, the 

nixon administration approved the apollo–Soyuz test project; the 1975 “handshake 

in space” was intended to symbolize a new era in u.S.–Soviet relations, both in space 

and overall.this initial high-profile cooperative venture was potentially to be followed 

by a docking between a Space Shuttle and a Soviet Salyut space station and then by 

joint development of a larger space station.20 however, this cooperation fell victim to 

increased u.S.–uSSr tensions in the wake of the Soviet invasion of afghanistan, and 

was never pursued. 

17. caspar Weinberger, memorandum for the president, “Future of 	naSa,” 12 august 1971 in 

Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, p. 547. 

18. James c. Fletcher,“the Space Shuttle,” 22 november 1971 in ibid., p. 556. 

19. Space task group, p. 17. 

20. a. p. aleksandrov, uSSr academy of Sciences, and a. m. Lovelace, naSa, “agreement between 

the uSSr academy of Sciences and the national aeronautics and Space administration of the uSa on 

cooperation in thearea of manned Space Flight,”11 may 1977,in Exploring the Unknown:Selected Documents 

in the History of the U.S.Civil Space Program, Volume ii,external relationships,John m.Logsdon,Dwaynea. 

Day,and roger D.Launius,ed.(Washington,Dc:naSa Special publication 4407,1996),p.215. 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 97 

Like Dwight eisenhower 20 years earlier, president Jimmy carter was not 

convinced that civilian space leadership was an essential element of u.S. global power. 

in his first space policy statement,issued on 11 may 1978,carter listed “united States 

space leadership” as his third priority for civil space efforts. Later that year, another 

White house policy statement noted that “[i]t is neither feasible nor necessary at this 

time to commit the uS to a high-challenge,highly-visible space engineering initiative 

comparable to apollo.”21 in this view,carter was an exception to the judgment of the 

four presidents who had preceded him that space leadership was important. 

as he entered the White house in 1981, president ronald reagan brought 

with him a strongly anticommunist perspective that colored his stance toward the 

Soviet union in the first several years of his presidency.the u.S.–Soviet agreement on 

space cooperation that had been initiated in 1972 and renewed in 1977 was allowed 

to lapse in 1982. in the first reagan administration statement of space policy, issued 

that same year,“space leadership” was once again identified as one of the “basic goals” 

of u.S. space activities.22 

as naSa sought presidential approval for development of a space station in late 

1983, administrator James Beggs told president reagan that “president Kennedy’s 

decision to go to the moon chartered a course that resulted in leadership in space 

for the united States”; that “president nixon, against the wishes of many, continued 

america’s commitment to leadership in space by approving the Space Shuttle”; and 

that “this focus on leadership in space was reaffirmed in your Space policy.” Beggs 

suggested that “[i]n the 1990s, leadership in space will have a new dimension, 

something perhaps that presidents nixon and Kennedy could not foresee when they 

committed america to leadership in space . . . [t]he new dimension will be the 

presence of the private sector in space.” Beggs referred to the Salyut space station as 

“the centerpiece of the Soviet program” and said, “[W]hat worries me is what the 

Soviets are up to. What are they planning to fly in the late 1980s and the 1990s? 

Will they be successful in their plans to dominate space?” Beggs concluded his sales 

pitch by noting that “[o]ur leadership in space these past 25 years told the world 

that america was strong and that america accepted the challenge of space, and that 

she was equal to the responsibilities of leadership.” asking the president to approve 

space station development, Beggs concluded his presentation by saying, “[t]he 

stakes are enormous: leadership in space for the next 25 years.”the final viewgraph 

accompanying his presentation to the president showed an artist’s conception of the 

21. presidential Directive/nSc-37, “national Space policy,” 11 may 1978 in Logsdon, Exploring 

the Unknown, p. 574; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, presidential Directive/nSc-42,“civil and Further 

national Space policy,” 10 october 1978, in ibid., p. 576. 

22. White house, national Security Decision Directive number 42, “national Space policy,” 4 July 

1982 in Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, p. 590. 
98 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

space station with the highlighted legend “a highly visible symbol of u.S. strength.” 23 

once again, the goal of space leadership and cold war competition were intertwined 

for a sympathetic president. 

president reagan not only approved space station development;as he announced 

his decision in his 25 January 1984 State of the union address, he also said,“naSa 

will invite other countries to participate so we can strengthen peace, build prosperity, 

and expand freedom for all who share our goals.”24 although canada and europe 

had made contributions to the development of the Space Shuttle in the 1970s, this 

announcement escalated international cooperation in the development of the next 

major u.S.space program to a central feature of u.S.space strategy,marking a definite 

transition from the unilateral demonstration of national power that had fueled the 

apollo program to an approach where the u.S. would demonstrate its leadership as 

the managing partner in a long-term,highly visible,multilateral undertaking.Still,the 

invitation to participate was limited to u.S. allies; the existence of the cold war still 

conditioned the u.S. move toward a cooperative approach. 

By the end of ronald reagan’s second term in office, the end of the cold war 

was well in sight,as the reforms of mikhail gorbachev took hold and the Soviet union 

struggled with its internal economic and political problems. even so, in the aftermath 

of the Soviet launch of its very large energia booster in may 1987, following on the 

launch of the core of the mir space station a year earlier,time magazine headlined the 

cover story of its 5 october 1987 issue:“Surgingahead:the Soviets overtake the u.S. 

as the no. 1 Spacefaring nation.”the article suggested that the Soviet union “had 

surged past the u.S. in almost all areas of space exploration” and that “if unchallenged, 

moscow is likely to become the world’s dominant power in space by the twenty-first 

century.”25 twenty-five years earlier, this sort of report might have provoked a debate 

over how to respond to a new Soviet space challenge, but there was no such reaction 

in 1987. the u.S. space effort was focused on recovering from the January 1986 

challenger accident and on getting started with the space station, and Soviet space 

achievements were not perceived as a major threat to u.S. interests. 

rather, the united States revived its space cooperation agreement with the 

Soviet union in 1987, and a year later mikhail gorbachev suggested to ronald 

23. naSa,“revised talking points for the Space Station presentation to the president and the cabinet 

council,” 30 november 1983 in Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, pp. 595–600. 

24. president ronald reagan,“Speech on the State of the union,” 25 January 1984, http://www.reagan. 

utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1984/12584e.htm (accessed 8 november 2006). 

25. michael D. Lemonick, “Surging ahead: the Soviets overtake the u.S. as the no. 1 Spacefaring 

nation,” in Time, 5 october 1987, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,965658,00. 

html (accessed 13 September 2006). 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 99 

reagan that the two countries cooperate in a human mission to mars.26 the final 

reagan administration statement of space policy, issued on 11 February 1988, stated 

that “[a] fundamental objective guiding united States space activities has been, and 

continues to be, space leadership.”the statement went on to say that “[L]eadership in 

an increasingly competitive international environment does not require united States 

preeminence in all areas ....it does require united States preeminence in key areas of 

space activity critical to achieving our national security,scientific,technical,economic, 

and foreign policy goals.”27 

The Impact of the End of the Cold War:


Leadership Through Cooperation


this lengthy excursion into the three-way relationship between the cold war, 

the u.S. quest for space leadership, and the choices that have defined the u.S. civilian 

space program was intended to demonstrate that even before the end of the cold 

war the quest for global leadership, rather than direct u.S.–Soviet competition, had 

been the primary political influence on the evolution of the u.S. space program. 

cold war competition was, of course, the single most important contextual factor 

influencing this quest for leadership in the 1957–1991 period, but it was a secondary, 

not fundamental, consideration. 

if this analysis is accepted, then the end of the cold war should have had a 

significant, but not decisive, impact on space in the post-cold war era. an obvious 

impact, of course, was that the russian Federation, which inherited most Soviet 

space capabilities, became a politically attractive space partner for the united States 

rather than a peer competitor. this was especially the case, given the economic 

problems faced by the new russian government headed by Boris Yeltsin and the 

desire of president george h.W. Bush and the successor clinton administration to 

support Yeltsin’s democratic reforms. 

the united States was quick to recognize the changed situation. in 1992, the 

united States and russia reached initial agreement to have the u.S. Space Shuttle 

rendezvous with the Soviet mir space station; this initiative resurrected a cooperative 

concept that had been agreed to 15 years earlier. then, in 1993, the White house 

embraced a proposal suggested by the naSa administrator and the russian space 

leadership to invite russia to join the space station program together with the united 

States “friends and allies” that had been partners in the program since its inception. in 

26. memorandum of conversation, “the president’s First one-on-one conversation with general 

Secretary gorbachev,” 29 may 1988, http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive/displaydocument. 

asp?docid=110610 (accessed 8 november 2006). 

27. White house, office of the press Secretary,“Fact Sheet: presidential Directive on national Space 

policy,” 11 February 1988, in Logsdon, Exploring the Unknown, p. 602. 
100 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

essence, the u.S. and the Soviet union merged their future human spaceflight efforts; 

the activity which had been the central focus for competition for more than 30 years 

became a highly visible arena for post-cold war cooperation.28 

a more fundamental impact of the end of the cold war was the need for a 

redefinition of the meaning of space leadership, from being superior in space to 

the Soviet union in all or most areas, to some other definition. the 1992 report 

“a post cold War assessment of u.S. Space policy” recognized this need. it noted 

that “[W]ith the end of the cold War . . . the term ‘space leadership’ takes on new 

meaning.” it suggested that “[t]o remain a leading nation in space continues to be 

in the u.S. interest.” the report also recognized that “[S]pace leadership must be 

earned.By maintaining unsurpassed technological capabilities in key areas and using 

those capacities effectively and efficiently, the united States will have the capability 

to act independently, visibly, and impressively when and where it chooses.”the task 

group concluded that 

Future space leadership, then, requires combining challenge, 

openness, quality of execution, and productive application of 

results. proceeding ahead with a well-conceived, successfully 

executed national space program aimed at concrete objectives 

that are scientifically, economically, and socially beneficial, and 

that serve important u.S. interests, is the best way to ensure 

leadership in space. Leadership, in this sense, becomes both a 

goal in itself and the result of excellence in formulating goals for 

space and achieving them as planned. 

it is this concept of leadership that should guide future u.S. 

activities in space.29 

although there had been a growing emphasis on u.S. leadership in cooperative 

space activities beginning with the 1969 Space task group report, which increased 

with the 1984 decision to make the space station a cooperative undertaking,the 1992 

report suggested that the u.S. develop a “cooperative strategy” as a “central feature of 

its future approach to overall space policy.”the panel recommended that 

the united States should take the initiative in shaping a common 

international agenda in selected areas of civilian and national 

security space activity . . . . enhanced international cooperation 

should be sought not only for its programmatic benefits, but 

also because it is the preferred way for the united States to 

influence the direction of future space undertakings around 

28. For a discussion of the evolution of u.S.–russian cooperation in human spaceflight, see John 

m. Logsdon and James millar, “u.S.–russian cooperation in human Spaceflight: assessing the 

impacts,” Space Policy (august 2001). 

29. Vice president’s Space policy advisory Board,“a post cold War assessment,” pp. 13, 15. 
Space in the Post–Cold War Environment 101 

the world. Broader national security, political, technological, and 

economic benefits for the united States can flow from a carefully 

crafted ‘cooperative strategy’....30 

in the 15 years since these words were written, they appear to have been 

reflected in the u.S. strategy for space. a statement of national space policy issued 

in 1996 reflected a definition of leadership as both a desirable goal and a product 

of excellence in formulating and executing the nation’s space program. that 

policy noted that “[F]or three decades, the united States has led the world in the 

exploration and use of outer space” and that “[W]e will maintain this leadership 

role by supporting a strong, stable, and balanced national space program.”the 1996 

policy also recognized the desirability of enhanced international cooperation,saying 

that “[t]he united States will seek greater levels of partnership and cooperation in 

national and international space activities.”31 

Whether the u.S. civilian space program has over the past 15 years been 

implemented at the level of excellence that translates into recognized leadership is, 

at minimum, questionable, but that is a topic for a different paper.the u.S. approach 

to fulfilling its leadership role in the partnership now known as the international 

Space Station has also had its ups and downs. in recent years, the national and naSa 

leadership appear to have recognized the importance of getting the space program 

back on a positive track if the united States is to be more than a leader in rhetoric. 

the most important step in this direction, of course, was the White house decision 

to make human and robotic exploration of the solar system the overriding goal of the 

u.S.civilian space program.international participation in space exploration under u.S. 

leadership was an important element of that decision.theWhite house also made the 

tough decision that its leadership role in space required the united States to honor 

its international commitments with respect to the space station, even as pressures 

to retire the Space Shuttle and accelerate progress in space exploration argued for a 

different decision.as the 1992 report suggested, naSa has taken the lead in crafting 

a “cooperative strategy” with respect to space exploration, and space agencies from 

around the world are working with naSa to flesh out the substance of that strategy. 

recent events, then, suggest that the 1992 assessment of what actions would 

best serve u.S.interests with respect to the contributions of its space efforts to broader 

national goals is now being pursued.theVice president’s Space policy advisory Board 

concluded that the end of the cold war called for a u.S. space program based on 

excellence in formulation and execution, one which was carried out in concert with 

other nations.the most recent national space policy, approved on 31 august 2006, 

states that the first priority goal of the u.S. in space is to “strengthen the nation’s 

30. ibid., p. 42. 

31. the White house, national Science and technology council,“Fact Sheet: national Space policy,” 

19 September 1996, http://history.nasa.gov/appf2.pdf (accessed 9 november 2006). 
102 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

space leadership.”the policy also states that it is in the u.S. interest to “encourage 

international cooperation with foreign nations and/or consortia on space activities that 

are of mutual benefit and that further the peaceful exploration and use of space,as well 

as to advance national security, homeland security, and foreign policy objectives.”32 

Leadership in space has been an important goal for the united States for almost 

50 years. the path to that leadership for the first 30-plus years of the Space age, 

during the cold war, was primarily by besting the Soviet union in visible space 

achievements. even so, from at least 1969 on, there has been a cooperative aspect 

to u.S. space strategy.With the end of the cold war, leadership in space cooperation 

became the primary path to leadership overall.that shift in focus, from competition 

to cooperation, is the primary space impact of the end of the cold war. 

32. the White house, office of Science and technology policy,“Fact Sheet: national Space policy” 6 

october 2006, http://www.ostp.gov/html/US National Space Policy.pdf (accessed 13 July 2007). 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 103

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler

chapter 7 

The TaikonauT as Icon: the Cultural and 


Political Significance of Yang Liwei, 


China’s First Space Traveler


James r. hansen 

i

n 2005 the government of the people’s republic of china (prc) sponsored the 

development of a new video game featuring heroes from chinese history.the 

plan was to wean chinese young people off their growing addiction to Western 

video games and replace it with something appropriate to chinese values. unlike 

american video games in which players slay dragons, fight aliens, beat up bad guys 

(or, more likely, be the bad guys themselves), in the new game “chinese heroes” 

players click on icons of select chinese heroes to learn about their noble experiences 

and carry out healthy and constructive tasks like moving bricks and darning socks. 

an official with china’s general administration of press and publication, which 

sponsored the game’s development by a Shanghai gaming company,hoped the game 

“will teach players about chinese ethics.”1 

Five heroes are featured in the video game: 

•	 Bao Zheng: an eleventh century statesman renowned for his battle against 

government corruption, strong sense of fair play, ability to tell truth from 

falsehood, and determination to mete out justice without fear or favor; 

•	 Yue Fei, a twelfth century general who, with only 800 soldiers, defeated an 

invading army 500,000-strong.Before he left home to join the army at age 18, 

his mother allegedly tattooed four characters on his back which meant “Serve 

the country loyally,” a constant reminder to protect china at all costs; 

•	 Zheng he, the eunuch admiral of the ming dynasty whose “treasure ships” 

sailed across the indian ocean to africa in the early fifteenth century; 

1. Kou Xiaowei,an official with china’s generaladministration of press and publication,quoted in“game 

on for chinese heroes,” 29 august 2006, http://english.aljazeera.net (accessed 12 June 2006). 
104 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

•	 Zheng chenggong, a pirate who seized taiwan from Dutch colonial rule in 

1661; and 

•	 Lei Feng, the people’s Liberation army soldier and faithful party member 

credited by chairman mao for his cheerful selflessness and modesty. 

how popular the game “chinese heroes” will become for the estimated 

20 million chinese now playing video games daily is questionable. it may not 

be serious competition for american video games such as “grand theft auto,” in 

which the starring role is played by an “unstoppable bad-ass” who wreaks havoc 

in a gritty miami Vice-like environment and where the player can customize his 

character with every manner of tattoo,“jack” a cop’s car, watch a pimp “beat down” 

a prostitute, and start an epic gun battle using a flamethrower, grenades, sniper rifle, 

colt-45 pistol, aK-47, or sawed-off shotgun.the director of the Beijing internet 

addiction treatment centre, tao ran, has expressed doubt that chinese heroes 

will appeal very much to china’s youth, saying, “teenagers seek adventure and 

fulfillment in dramatic and skill-demanding games. if hero games do not focus on 

killing and domination, gamers will definitely not play them.”2 

one very powerful way that china has successfully combined graphic violence 

with its traditional appreciation for certain select types of heroes is in its martial arts 

movies. notable within this extremely popular genre is the 2003 oscar-nominated 

film, Hero, the most expensive chinese film ever made. Set during the Warring 

States period (shortly before the unification of china in the third century Bc), the 

film tells the story of assassination attempts on the king of chin by three legendary 

warriors who seek revenge for chin’s subjugation of their lands.the king justifies 

his actions as necessary for the peace of china, a justification that the sole surviving 

assassin (played by actor Jet Li) ultimately understands and accepts. only a strong 

leader, the first “emperor,” can unite all of china, and only through unification can 

the chinese people ever escape civil war and find peace. 

Western critics assailed the film’s message as “totalitarian” and “pro-chinese 

reunification” (vis-à-vis taiwan), and for promoting a “sinister ethic that blatantly 

justifies the murder and repression of political opponents.”that is why, critics said, 

the Beijing government so strongly endorsed the film—because the chin emperor 

stood for today’s rulers.3 But other observers viewed the film differently, saying 

that it was a tale of sacrifice and love, one that embraced confucian values and the 

ancient chinese ethic that the very best people in society must care for the people 

first. as director Zhang Yimou said about his film, “the final assassin understands 

2. ibid. See also “a clash of cyber cultures,” The Standard: China’s Business Newspaper, 24 September 

2005, http://www.thestandard.com.hk (accessed 12 June 2006). 

3. See, for example, Shelly Kraicir’s review of the film,“absence as Spectacle: Zhang Yimou’s ‘hero,’” 

in Cinema Scope Magazine 5 (Spring 2003): p. 9. 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 105 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

that if he doesn’t kill the emperor, it’s better for the people, because the civil war 

will end.the number one martial arts fighter decides not to kill the king, for the 

sake of peace.”4 

ten months after the film opened in hong Kong, the chinese launched 

another “hero,” this time in the form of 38-year-old Yang Liwei. the rocket 

carrying the yˇuhángyuán (or chinese word for astronaut) was a Long march 2F, 

one in a series of guided missiles named after the historic journey of 6,000 miles of 

1934–1935 in which an army of 80,000 soldiers led by mao Zedong, surrounded 

by the nationalist army of chiang Kai-shek, fled their bases in south china and 

escaped to the north, with only some 8,000 surviving the trek.the Long march 

became the central metaphor of chinese revolutionary mythology and a source of 

inspiration for all subsequent red guards.5 

after several years of speculation about the possibility of a piloted spaceflight 

by the chinese, the launch finally came on 15 october 2003, 56 years to the month 

after the launch of the world’s first satellite, the Soviet union’s Sputnik (4 october 

1957), from Jiuquan Satellite Launch center on the high gobi Desert, some 1,600 

kilometers northwest of Beijing—about as far off the beaten path as one can find 

even in a country as large as china.Yang Liwei’s spacecraft, the Shenzhou V (Divine 

Vessel V), closely resembled the russian Soyuz, which hardly surprised Western 

observers given that chinese engineers had been working closely with the russians 

since 1994 and had benefited from access to complete blueprints and the full-scale 

Soyuz spacecraft.6 

4. Zhang Yimou, quoted in Liza Bear,“Fighting for peace (and art Films), Zhang Yimou on ‘hero,’” 

27 august 2004, indieWIRE, http://www.indiewire.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

5. on the Long march of 1934–1935, see harrison e. Salisbury, the Long March:The Untold Story 

(new York: harper & row, 1980); Jean Fritz, China’s Long March (new York: putnam, 1988); and 

Benjamin Yang, From Revolution to Politics: Chinese Communists on the Long March (Boulder, co: 

Westview press, 1990). For a firsthand chinese account of the Long march, see changfeng chen, 

On the Long March with Chairman Mao (Beijing: Foreign Language press, 1972.) on the Long 

march family of rockets, see hormuz p. mama,“china’s Long march Family of Launch Vehicles,” 

Spaceflight 37 (September 1995). 

6. the best overview of the chinese space program can be found in Brian harvey, China’s Space 

Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight (chichester, u.K.: Springer, 2004). harvey also 

provides a good bibliography. one of the most active publishing analysts of the chinese missile 

and space programs is great Britain’s philip S. clark. in the u.S., James r. oberg follows chinese 

developments closely; several of his papers have appeared in ieee Spectrum. See also “testimony 

of James oberg: Senate Science,technology, and Space hearing: international Space exploration 

program, 27 apr. 2004,” http://www.spaceref.com. See also chen Lan,“Dragon in Space:a history of 

china’s Shenzhou manned Space programme,” Spaceflight 46 (april 2004): pp. 137–144. 
106 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

inside the Shenzhou V spacecraft, the taikonaut, as Western journalists had come 

to call a chinese astronaut,7 spent a little more than 21 hours in space,orbiting earth 

14 times before reentering the atmosphere and parachuting down onto the steppe 

of central inner mongolia. the instant Yang Liwei made orbit over the pacific at 

9:10 a.m. Beijing time on october 15, the chinese knew they had accomplished 

something remarkable: their countryman,Yang Liwei, had made the history books, 

joining the elite company of russia’s Yuri gagarin and america’s alan Shepard as 

“first men” into space.8 

Who was Yang Liwei? What was his background and training? Why was he 

selected for china’s pioneering mission? how did chinese society react to the 

news of his spaceflight? What sort of icon did Yang become; what sort of hero 

did he represent? Just as there is no way to fathom what the u.S. space program 

has meant to america without understanding what americans wanted from their 

heroes—what they projected onto their heroes over the past 45 years—there is also 

no way to understand what the chinese are after in space, or here on earth, without 

understanding the iconography that has developed around their astronauts. 

What is known about Yang Liwei in the West is what official chinese sources 

have told us.9 Yang was born on 21 June 1965,in northeast china’s Lioaning province, 

a major industrial region not far from the Yalu river that forms the chinese border 

with north Korea.Yang’s mother was a teacher and his father an economist,meaning 

that his family, by chinese standards, was by no means humble or poor.according 

to official biographies,Yang had a “happy and tranquil childhood” and was “very 

intelligent and a good team leader of his playmates.”10 excelling in mathematics 

and math competitions,Yang scored high on entrance exams and went to the best 

7. the Western term taikonaut blends the chinese word for outer space (taikong) with the english 

word “astronaut.”the term is not used by the chinese themselves. apparently the term was coined 

in may 1998 by a malaysian journalist, chiew LeeYih, who first used it in newsgroups.the chinese 

word term for space, taikong, literally means “great emptiness.” in the chinese language itself, the term 

yˇuhángyuán (“universe navigator”) has long been used for“astronaut.”official english texts issued by the 

chinese government actually use the term “astronaut.” 

8. “china puts its First man in Space,” BBc news (15 october 2003), http://www.news.bbc.co.uk; 

“World acclaims Launch,” china Daily, 13 october 2003, http://www.chinaembassy.org; John 

pomfret,“china Launches its First manned Space mission,” The Washington Post, 15 october 2003: 

p. a1; Brian Berger, “Shenzhou 5 Launch introduces new Dynamic in Space,” SPACENEWS, 

20 october 2003: p. 6; Deborah Zabarenko, “united States Shrugs off china Space Launch,” 

Reuters English News Service, 22 January 1999; philip S. clark,“Shen Zhou 5—Flying the red Flag,” 

Spaceflight 46 (February 2004): pp. 54–60; tim Furniss, “china celebrates First manned orbital 

mission,” Spaceflight 45 (December 2003): pp. 488–489. 

9. on what is known about the life of Yang Liwei prior to his Shenzhou V mission, see Brian harvey, 

China’s Space Program,pp.2–14.See also “the making of china’s astronaut,”Xinhaunet,17 october 

2003, http://www.chinaview.com, and “First chinese astronaut talks about eight Years in training,” 

24 July 2006, http://www.spacedaily.com (both accessed 12 June 2006). 

10. “the making of china’sastronaut,”17 october 2003, http://news.xinhuanet.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 107 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

middle school in his county. Joining the people’s Liberation army at age 18,Yang 

was recruited by one of the chinese air Force’s top aviation colleges, where he 

earned the highest grade in every class he took. upon graduation, he became a 

fighter pilot and was rated as an “elite” member of his air Force division. 

if there is a chinese equivalent to “the right Stuff,”Yang Liwei had it.as an 

attack aircraft pilot, he demonstrated his crisis management during a very lowflying exercise over northwest china’s barren Xinjiang region. Losing one of his 

jet engines,Yang,“with great calmness,” radioed his situation, skillfully climbed to 

4,921 feet (1,500 meters), managed to get his plane over snow-covered mt.tienshan, and landed “without hesitation”11 even after his other engine had flamed 

out. climbing out of the cockpit, dripping wet with sweat, amid cheers from his 

colleagues,Yang was greeted by his division commander who awarded him with an 

on-the-spot promotion. 

in all,Lt.col.Yang accumulated more than 1,350 hours of flying time in the air 

Force. in 1996, from a pool of 1,500 candidate pilots, he was chosen for spaceflight 

training along with 12 others, and went to a special institute in Beijing where he 

passed a rigorous 30-course curriculum.“to establish myself as a qualified astronaut,” 

Yang was later quoted as saying,“i studied harder than even in my college years and 

received tougher training that even that which made me a fighter pilot.”12 During 

the first two years of training, he reportedly never went to bed before midnight 

and rarely even left the training center. in a bid to improve his english, he often 

called his wife from his apartment in Space city, asking her to help him practice. 

So dedicated was he to training that his wife once found him moving rapidly in 

circles at home on a swivel chair. his training directors described him as “a soberminded person with a superb capability for self-control.” in a critical series of final 

simulations leading to his selection for Shenzhou V,Yang identified and remedied all 

the “faults” his instructors had set up for him.after each, when the instructor asked 

him whether he had made any errors,Yang confidently replied,“no errors at all!”a 

psychologist who asked him how he would feel if he were to fly a real spacecraft got 

the answer,“i’ll be more relaxed than talking to you, so let me go for the flight!”13 

the chinese government tried to keep the identity of its first taikonaut a 

secret,but a few days before the launch Yang’s identity was discovered and his picture 

published in the hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po.

14 originally, Beijing agreed to 

a live broadcast of the launch, but apparently lost its nerve at the last minute.thirty 

minutes after Shenzhou V successfully reached orbit, the government’s flagship 

11. ibid. 

12. ibid. 

13. ibid. 

14. harvey, China’s Space Program, p. 2. 
108 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

television station cut into regular programming to make the proud announcement. 

televised replays of the launch quickly followed, beginning a day of saturation 

coverage in the chinese media. Yang was shown walking out of his quarters in 

his flight suit and getting on a bus taking him to the launch pad.Waiting for him 

at the bus was the president of china, hu Jintao, who made a few remarks about 

the great significance of the mission for china. in the u.S. space program, remarks 

made by astronauts at launch and during their missions—such as “Light this candle,” 

“the clock has started,” and “godspeed, John glenn”—became colloquial. the 

most widely reported remark made by Yang Liwei came when he met his president 

at the bus. “i will not disappoint our motherland,” he said. “i will complete each 

movement with total concentration,and i will gain honor for the people’s Liberation 

army and for the chinese nation.”15 

What the chinese people seem to have appreciated most during the flight of 

ShenzhouV wereYang Liwei’s communications with his 8-year-old son, ningkong.16 

in a confucian society (which,of course,china has remained despite its communism), 

the father–son relationship is fundamental not only for the family but for all society 

and politics.17 Whereas in the u.S. the most memorable in-flight comments from 

america’s astronauts have rarely had much to do with children or family, in china a 

great emphasis was placed onYang talking lovingly while in space to his “dear wife” 

and “dear son.”What americans seemingly most remember have been the vintage, 

off-color vernacular of our “space cowboys”—comments like gus grissom’s “no 

bucks, no Buck rogers” or “the issue here is not pussy; the issue is monkey,” or alan 

Shepard’s “please, dear god, don’t let me f*** up.”these earthy types of american 

expressions, it seems clear, will never pass from the lips of any taikonaut. 

15. Quoted in pomfret,“china Launches its First manned Space mission,” p.a17. 

16. on the celebrity ofYang Liwei’s son ningkong see Joe mcDonald,“chinese astronaut an instant hero 

ButWhere is he?” Associated Press, 22 october 2003, http://www.space.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

17. on confucian values in modern china, see thomas a. Wilson, ed., On Sacred Grounds: Culture, 

Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius (cambridge, ma: harvard university asia 

center, 2002); honghe Liu, Confucianism in the Eyes of a Confucian Liberal: Hsu Fu-kuan’s Critical 

Examination of the Confucian Political Tradition (new York: p. Lang, 2001); howard giskin and Bettye 

S.Walsh, eds., An Introduction to Chinese Culture through the Family (albany, nY: State university of 

new York press, 2001); and theodore huters, r. Bin Wong, and pauline Yu, eds., Culture & State in 

Chinese History: Conventions,Accommodations, and Critiques (Stanford, ca: Stanford university press, 

1997). on the persistence of confucianism within communist china, see Zongli tang and Bing 

Zuo, Maoism and Chinese Culture (new York: nova Science publishers, 1996); edward Friedman, 

National Identity and Democratic Prospects in Socialist China (armonk, nY: m. e. Sharpe, 1995); and 

Deborah Davis-Friedmann, Long Lives: Chinese Elderly and the Communist Revolution (Stanford, ca: 

Stanford university press, 1991). 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 109 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

in the chinese press, a great deal was made about Yang as husband and family 

man.according to his wife,Zhang Yumei,18 a middle-school teacher,Yang is a caring 

husband, and to his son, a hero. Following the launch, his wife said she would never 

forget the expression in her husband’s eyes when she was about to be carried into 

the operating room for a kidney biopsy in 2001:“Just at the moment when i was to 

enter the operating theater,i saw the expression of extreme care,love,and regret like 

i’ve never seen. i felt as if a knife had pierced my heart.”19 During her recovery,Yang 

sat constantly at her bedside—that is, until time came to leave for more taikonaut 

training when, as a supremely dedicated member of the people’s Liberation army, 

he declined an offer from his commander to postpone it. Following his return from 

space, a picture showing Yang and his wife embracing appeared in virtually every 

chinese newspaper. its caption said that his wife asked her husband what wonderful 

things he saw in space.“i saw our planet,” he told her.“it’s so beautiful, like you.” 

From all across china came an outpouring of national pride over the spaceflight 

of Yang Liwei. The People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the chinese communist 

party,ran 100,000 extra copies that were quickly snapped up.in some towns,there were 

spontaneous parades and demonstrations. Schoolchildren exhibited their pictures of 

spaceships and astronauts. hundreds of wall posters appeared, many of them combining 

themes of twenty-first century technology with more traditional styles of socialist 

realism. postage stamps were printed inYang’s honor. The People’s Liberation Army Daily 

trumpeted:“For china this is the beginning and there will be no end.”20 

a week after this flight,Yang, accompanied by his son ningkong, opened an 

exhibition in Beijing of his Shenzhou V capsule,spacesuit,and parachute—an exhibit 

that subsequently made a road show across china.Yang’s immediate political value lay 

in hong Kong, where his visit, at the special invitation of the regional government, 

lasted a full six days.21 For 155 years hong Kong had been a British colony, until its 

sovereignty transferred in 1997 and it became a “special administrative region” of 

the prc. under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, china promised 

that hong Kong with its 6.8 million people would enjoy a relatively high degree 

of autonomy until at least the year 2047. under the “one country,two Systems” 

18. it is curious (though not in the least significant) that the name ofYang Liwei’s wife, ZhangYumei, 

is so close to the name of the director of the film “hero” (and other celebrated chinese films), 

ZhangYimou. 

19. Quoted in pomfret,“china Launches its First manned Space mission,” p.a17. 

20. Quoted in John pomfret, “china’s First Space traveler returns a hero,” The Washington Post, 16 

october 2003: p.a22. 

21. andrew Brown, “china astronaut on charm offensive,” 1 november 2003, http://www.cnn.com; 

Joe mcDonald, “china’s First man in Space going public,” Associated Press, 24 october 2003, 

http://www.space.com;“hK newspapers hail Space hero Yang Liwei,” Xinhaunet,1 november 2003, 

http://news.xinhaunet.com (all accessed 12 June 2006). 
110 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

policy, hong Kong would retain its own legal system, currency, customs policy, 

cultural delegation, international sport teams, and immigration laws. Late into 2003, 

however, the issue of unification remained deeply troubled. morale in hong Kong 

was low; its economy weak due to perceived government meddling; and officials 

of the new regime were so unpopular that the city had been hit by unprecedented 

antigovernment protests, not to mention an outbreak of severe acute respiratory 

syndrome (SarS) that in one stretch had attacked 685 and killed 116 people. 

colonel Yang’s visit was widely interpreted—more before it began than after 

it ended—as a cynical bid to promote chinese nationalism by elevating hong 

Kong’s confidence and restoring the city’s image. Several hong Kong and taiwan 

newspapers criticized the taikonaut’s visit as a thinly veiled attempt to boost proBeijing political parties in the region’s upcoming elections.correspondents reported 

that many hong Kong residents were indifferent to Yang’s feat.22 “it’s nothing 

new—america did it years ago,” a local businessman was quoted as saying.“i won’t 

feel anything just because of his visit,” admitted a downtown shopkeeper.23 “it’s just 

a gimmick,” declared an accounting clerk.a 21-year-old female university student 

stated,“i always liked Britain better.”as for Yang’s spaceflight, she said it was being 

“blown totally out of proportion.”24 

But even before Yang arrived, there were signs that many people in hong 

Kong were not so jaded.a survey by the hong Kong Federation of Youth groups 

showed that 71 percent of hong Kong young people felt excited and more proud 

of being chinese by the news of the Shenzhou V flight. Support for his visit came 

from nearly 50 organizations in hong Kong, not all of them so pro-Beijing, and 

his itinerary attracted people of all ages and from walks of life. For the first time 

in the history of hong Kong’s Science museum, an exhibit was kept open around 

the clock, for four straight days, to meet the popular demand.When the taikonaut 

arrived, several thousand people waving chinese and hong Kong flags lined the 

streets.“it’s worth the wait,”said a 73-year-old man.“i never thought i would live to 

see the day that china could proudly stand alongside the united States and russia 

as nations that sent a man into space!”“i think they should make a cartoon strip of 

Yang,” said an 11-year-old boy.25 “i just want to shake hands with uncle Yang,” said 

an elementary school student. a young female student picked by her schoolmates 

22. “hong Kong ho-hum over chinese astronaut’s Visit,” Taipei Times, 1 november 2003: p. 5;“Kids 

and Flags but Still no genuine cheer for astronaut,” Taipei Times, 2 november 2003: p. 5. 

23. Quotes in “hK Welcomes china’s Space hero,” BBc news, 31 october 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk 

(accessed 12 June 2006). 

24. Quotes in min Lee,“First chinese taikonaut Visits hong Kong,” Associated Press, 31 october 2003, 

http://www.space.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

25. Quotes in alan Low, “Spaceman Yang gets Star treatment,” The Age, 2 november 2003, http:// 

www.theage.com.au (accessed 12 June 2006). 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 111 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

to ask a question of Yang explained to a tV reporter,“i know it will be difficult, but 

i want to be the first woman astronaut of the nation.”26 

chinese authorities hoped that the taikonaut would be an inspirational force for 

all chinese—especially in hong Kong,where the recent mood had been downbeat. 

“the moral encouragement that you have brought to the hong Kong people is 

enormous,” declared hong Kong’s chief executive,tung chee-hwa, at the Science 

museum’s ribbon-cutting.at hong Kong Stadium,a capacity crowd of 40,000 gave 

Yang a standing ovation as he entered and was driven around the stadium in a golf 

cart. inside was a party of local pop celebrities and movie stars, including Jackie 

chan, with whom he sang a song. Jackie chan asked the children of hong Kong 

to take Yang as their model, stressing that success in life depended upon dedication 

and heartfelt effort.27 Yang did not make a speech at the stadium, but the crowd was 

pleased just to see him in the flesh.“i’m just happy he is here,” said one young man, 

“because he was brave enough to fly into space,and that courageous act has brought 

prestige for chinese everywhere.” 28 

in a country where the concept of celebrity was relatively new but quickly 

growing—including the likes of pop singer gao Feng, nBa basketball player Yao 

ming, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon film star Zhang Ziyi, fashion model Sun na, 

olympic diving star guo Jinjing, and badminton superstar Lin Dan—it was clear 

inside the stadium that the people saw in the taikonaut not just celebrity but a man 

with a special aura or mystique.“uncle Yang looks more handsome in person than 

on the tV screen,” said a primary school student who came to the stadium with 

her father.29 Following the event, the Chinese Language Daily commented,“Yang is 

not just a star.the welcome he received from hong Kong residents exceeded that 

of any star. he is the superstar supported by hong Kong residents of different age 

groups and different walks of life.”30 

interestingly,the qualities of Yang’s character that appealed most to the chinese 

were not those connected to the glamour and glitz of the silver screen or pop music, 

but to characteristics more essentially chinese. one hong Kong schoolteacher said, 

26. Quoted in “hong Kong people greet hero Yang Liwei,” People’s Daily, 1 november 2003, http:// 

www.english.people.com.cn (accessed 12 June 2006). 

27. immediately afterYang Liwei’s visit to hong Kong, hong Kong’s moral and civic education Section 

of the education and manpower Bureau made available on its Web site a battery of teaching resources 

based onYang’s ShenzhouV flight.the title of theWeb site material was“perseverance and commitment: 

Space mission ofYang Liwei.” See also “Yang Liwei’s Space mission online for moral education,” The 

People’s Daily, 8 December 2003, http://www.china.org.cn (accessed 12 June 2006). 

28. Quote in Low,“Spaceman Yang gets Star treatment.” 

29. Quoted in “Yang Liwei meets hK community,” Chinese Language Daily, 2 november 2003, http:// 

www.chinadaily.com.cn (accessed 12 June 2006). 

30. See Low,“Spaceman Yang gets Star treatment.” 
112 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

“it is really an unforgettable experience to see Yang in hong Kong, and i admire his 

modesty and calmness very much.” newspaper article after article described Yang 

as “looking healthy and respectful and speaking in appropriate terms, with honest 

and cordial attitude.” in return,Yang spoke very gently and respectfully about his 

hosts. in brief remarks at the museum exhibition, the taikonaut said he was “deeply 

moved” by the warmth of his reception from the “big chinese family.”at another 

event, he stated that “the hong Kong compatriots make me feel at home.their 

enthusiasm has made my heart beat faster than when i was in the spacecraft.”31 

Leaving the city after six days, he paid his final respects,“hong Kong is much more 

beautiful than i had imagined. it is like a pearl.” 

Before he left,Yang visited the Bank of china tower, in the central city, where 

the bank president presented a check of a half-million hong Kong dollars (about 

$64,000 uSD) to the china Space Foundation, in support of china’s research and 

development of space technology.Yang also went on a sightseeing visit to tsing 

ma Bridge, the world’s longest road-and-rail suspension bridge, which links the 

new hong Kong international airport to Kowloon and hong Kong island.32 in 

both places, people saw the human embodiment of the chinese space program 

juxtaposed with other vital symbols of china as a progressive force in the world. 

Leaving hong Kong, Yang Liwei next traveled to macao, china’s second 

Special administrative unit, whose sovereignty had transferred from portugal to 

Beijing in 1999. Some of macao’s problems in 2003 were different from hong 

Kong’s—notably involving labor unrest due to economic transformations that 

had transformed the oldest european colony in china from a tiny fishing village 

with gambling dens into a well-established tourist spot with huge, modern casinos. 

But, as with hong Kong, national unification under Beijing’s leadership was the 

overarching concern.a visit from the new chinese hero might help. 

During a two-day visit, Yang visited several of macao’s historic landmarks 

and then met for an entire afternoon with 1,000 students and teachers, answering 

questions. he visited the recently installed macao garrison of the people’s 

Liberation army and attended a luncheon hosted by the garrison. as a result of 

those two days, an ad hoc consortium in macao raised more than 14 million patacas 

(about $1.75 million uSD), for the china Space Foundation—an organization that 

promotes china’s space industries but which is not to be confused with the china 

national Space administration, the counterpart to america’s naSa. most of this 

money came from “political and business dignitaries” (macao’s chief executive was 

reported to have made a personal contribution of 300,000 patacas), but some of it 

(how much was not reported) came from students and common folks. according 

31. Quoted in “Yang Liwei meets hK community.” 

32. “china’s First Spaceman tours hong Kong,” Xinjuanet, 2 november 2003, http://www.pladaily.com. 

cn (accessed 12 June 2006). 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 113 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

to Beijing, this sizeable donation from the 450,000 people residing in the macao 

Special administrative region “embodied a strong sense of patriotism of the macao 

compatriots.”on a per capita basis,the gift represented a donation of 31 patacas (or $4 

uSD) for every resident.to put that into perspective, if every american today gifted 

$4 to the u.S. space agency, naSa would cash a check for some $1.2 billion.33 

Leaving macao,“great heroYang”next stopped in the northern coastal metropolis 

of tianjin, the largest open-water seaport in north china, which, along with Beijing, 

Shanghai,andchongqingconstitutesoneoftheprc’sfouradministrativemunicipalities. 

Whytianjin after hong Kong and macao? perhaps it was becausetianjin had been one 

of the places slapped with a travel advisory by the World health organization for its 

SarS outbreak a few months earlier.Some of the most violent protests against locating 

SarS clinics in local communities had taken place intianjin,and it may have been that 

Beijing wanted a visit from the taikonaut to rejuvenate the city’s spirit. it may also have 

had something to do with the fact that tianjin is the center for many of china’s pillar 

industries: machinery, electronics, chemicals, and metallurgy. 

the impact ofYang Liwei’s historic spaceflight ranged far beyond the first three 

spots strategically selected for his immediate post-flight tour. it triggered nothing less 

than a nationwide frenzy—what oneWestern observer called a“flowering of patriotic 

kitsch.” in Shanghai, an estimated half-million people queued in freezing conditions 

to see china’s first astronaut. at a high profile rally in Beijing,Yang was conferred 

the title of “Space hero.” a decree issued by the general political Department of 

the chinese people’s Liberation army instituted Yang as a “model” for all chinese 

soldiers.the decree ordered all members of the pLa and the chinese people’s armed 

police to learn fromYang and his “heroic achievement.”“military activities in various 

forms should be conducted to study the spirit of the astronauts,” the decree said.34 

one of the most interesting things that happened after the Shenzhou V flight 

was the immediate commercialization of Yang’s name. everything from rice to milk 

to action figures quickly bore the taikonaut’s image, name, or title.35 the chinese 

government tried to put a stop to this by trademarking and copyrighting Yang’s 

name and likeness, but with limited effect.36 even Yang’s home county in northeast 

china got into the act. trying to cash in on his fame, Suizhong county leaders 

registered his name as a trademark for local produce, selling “great hero Yang” 

lettuce and cabbage and renaming a special white pear after him. 

33. “china’s Space heroVisits hong Kong garrison,” PLA Daily, 5 november 2003, http://www.english. 

chinamil.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

34. “china’s First astronaut crowned ‘Space hero,’” Xinhaunet, 7 november 2003, http://www.chinaview. 

com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

35. Sangwon Suh, “hong Kong: Selling chinese milk and patriotism,” International Herald Tribune, 9 

march 2004, http://www.iht.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

36. Barry gottlieb,“Don’ttouchthat name,”Alternet,28 october 2003, http://www.alternet.org (accessed 

12 June 2006). 
114 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

at one point Beijing felt it had to put him on ice for a while, to temper the 

individual side of the achievement which it at first had been aggressively promoting. 

commenting on Yang’s public absence, a professor of public policy at Qinghua 

university in Beijing said,“it is normal thatYang Liwei has been regarded as a national 

hero and a good example for the young to learn from.”however,“[t]he government 

should make sure there aren’t excessive reports about one individual, because behind 

the success there was a whole project and system supporting the mission.” “Yang 

Liwei’s name will long be recalled,” said a message posted on a Web site run by the 

party newspaper, People’s Daily, “while nobody will talk about the politicians!” 37 

But in the spring of 2004 the attention on “great hero Yang”again heightened 

when the taikonaut toured the u.S. in new York, he met with Secretary-general 

of the united nations Kofi annan and presented two u.n. flags he had carried 

with him on Shenzhou V. in Washington,Yang visited the office of Florida Senator 

Bill nelson, the only serving member of congress to have flown in space; while 

there, he also met apollo 11 astronaut Buzz aldrin.Yang toured the Kennedy Space 

center, met mickey mouse at Disney World,38 and got a Vip’s view of the Johnson 

Space center in texas.Yang’s american tour was widely reported in the chinese 

press and was even shown on chinese television. 

What seems clear is thatYang’s hero status signified some sort of sea-change in 

chinese society and politics,because such publicity for a living person had been almost 

unknown in china’s communist system prior to Yang. china had lauded “national 

martyrs” such as Wang Wei, the fighter pilot who died in a 2001 collision with a u.S. 

navy plane, but when looking for people to serve as communist “models,” the party 

usually picked plumbers and bus drivers for brief fame as“model workers.”it has tried 

hard not to celebrate the cult of any individual other than leaders of the regime. 

But there was Yang after his spaceflight, an instant hero, an icon, lionized in 

the state-run press not only as the country’s first person in space but also as an elite 

pilot, a star student, communist party member, devoted family man, and national 

treasure.Yang’s was an image crafted seemingly for a ruling party in need of a hightech hero to bolster chinese nationalism and pep up its own reputation—the same 

party whose very existence depended on the group being more important than any 

individual, and whose power often depended on its leaders hogging the spotlight. 

compared to china’s bland,group-oriented leadership,Yang apparently had struck 

an extraordinarily responsive chord.even his 8-year-old son became a celebrity,showing 

up over and over again in the chinese media.on one occasion,party officials visited his 

school and honored his class with the honorary title “Space Squadron.”Standing beside 

37. Quoted in mcDonald,“chinese astronaut an instant hero But Where is he?” Associated Press, 22 

october 2003. 

38. “china’s First ‘taikonaut’ rides mission Space at epcot,Walt Disney World in Florida,” Disney 

press release, 28 may 2004, http://www.hongkongdisneyland.com (accessed 12 June 2006). 

39. Quoted in mcDonald,“chinese astronaut an instant hero,” Associated Press, 22 october 2003. 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 115 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

a model rocket, young ningkong gave a speech praising his father’s accomplishment. 

“people asked me if i was afraid about Daddy going into space and i said ‘not a bit,’ 

because i knew that china’s space technology was very advanced and Daddy was really 

awesome,” he said.“i want to be like Daddy and travel to outer space some day.” 39 

Whether or notYang Liwei’s son ever travels to space, it seems more and more 

clear that other chinese youth of his generation will be doing exactly that—to orbit, 

to a chinese space station, and perhaps to the moon and to mars.though impossible 

for any Western analyst to predict with confidence what the chinese will do next in 

space, or when they will do it, it seems clear from the public reaction to the october 

2003 Shenzhou V flight that the chinese people are excited by their prospects in 

space—excited in some ways that Beijing did not fully anticipate and could not fully 

control. interestingly, when the two-man crew of Shenzhou VI flew into space in 

october 2005, the government essentially hid those taikonauts from view.there were 

a few celebratory events in hong Kong and china,but nothing likeYang Liwei’s road 

show, over which the government felt for a time that it had lost control.40 

WhetherYang’s visits to hong Kong and macao effectively served the nationalistic 

and political purposes Beijing had in mind is not so certain.chinese officials commented 

at the time that they hoped his visits would instill pride for the larger “motherland” 

among the residents of china’s two Special administrative regions, but although the 

events with Yang sold out and were hugely popular, they do not seem to have had 

exactly the desired effect.indeed,people living in those recently transferred sovereignties 

celebrated the taikonaut but without associating him all that much with the Beijing 

government or by warming to the mainland’s way of life. 

evidence of this dissonance can be seen in the reaction to the subsequent 

announcement that the chinese national anthem and a 45-second video featuringYang 

and olympic diving star guo Jinjing were to be broadcast on hong Kong’s chineselanguage tV stations every night. co-produced by hong Kong’s committee on the 

promotion of civic education and its commission onYouth,the video (the soundtrack 

of which was The March of the Volunteers, the chinese national anthem) aimed at 

“enhancing the sense of national unity.” But critics in hong Kong asked, “Does the 

government really believe that civil awareness can be raised by broadcasting the national 

anthem? Following this logic, will the government increase the number of times the 

video is shown if they believe people’s civil awareness is not high enough?” one hong 

Kong political commentator remarked,“people will only treat it as propaganda.”41 

40. on 	Shenzhou VI, see edward cody, “china Sends 2nd. manned Spacecraft into orbit,” The 

Washington Post, 12 october 2005: p.a2; guy gugliotta,“china Keeps reaching for the Stars,” The 

Washington Post, 15 october 2005: p. a12; and “astronauts’ Safe return Sparks Big celebrations,” 

China Daily, 17 october 2005, http://english.sina.com/china (accessed 12 June 2006). 

41. Quotes in martin Wong,“hong Kong: national anthem to be Broadcast Before news,” South China 

Morning Post, 1 october 2004, http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu (accessed 12 June 2006); “hong Kong: 

chinese national anthemVideo Draws Fire,” South China Morning Post, 7 october 2004: p. 1. 
116 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight 

the effects of Yang’s visits, then, were not exactly what Beijing was after; 

rather, the effects are best understood as a cascade of unintended consequences that 

may, if examined carefully, tell us something very important about how china has 

been changing, and will continue to change, as the twenty-first century heirs to the 

“middle Kingdom” move out slowly but surely into exploring the universe.42 

it would be prudent, especially for those whose heritage is not chinese, to 

be extremely cautious in drawing conclusions about what the prc might do in the 

future in terms of space exploration, based on what we think we know about china’s 

past. one of the principal lessons of chinese history that has been related over and 

over again in theWest concerns the overseas voyages ofadmiral Zheng he,one of the 

heroes of the prc’s new video games.as the lesson goes, a confucian faction, after 

gaining control over the ming court in the early fifteenth century, put an abrupt halt 

to the grand naval expeditions.the conservatives felt that “barbarian” nations offered 

little of value to add to the prosperity already present in the middle Kingdom, and, 

anyway,it was improper for decent chinese to go abroad while their parents were still 

alive.Western historians have speculated on how differently world history might have 

turned out had the ming emperors sustained a vigorous colonial policy instead. 

advocates of a vigorous american human spaceflight program have made a 

similar object lesson of china’s turning away from foreign ventures: by withdrawing 

from exploration,american society, too, will stagnate and open itself to exploitation 

by others. Space enthusiast robert Zubrin, in his 1999 book Entering Space, declared: 

By accepting the challenge of the outside world, Western 

civilization blossomed outward to dominate the globe.in contrast, 

the grand chinese civilization grew demoralized in its stagnation 

and implicit acceptance of inferior global status and decayed, 

ultimately to be completely disrupted and remade by expansive 

Western influences. 

only twenty-five years ago, the united States, following in the 

footsteps of the ming emperors, abandoned its own pioneering 

program of space exploration. at that time, american leaders 

could console themselves with the equivalent of the advice of 

the ming court bureaucrats—exploration is too expensive, and 

nothing of value exists beyond what is familiar. 

42. another bellwether of the underlying changes taking place in china today may be seen in the 

newest chinese history textbooks being introduced into some schools in Shanghai. instead of 

straight-jacketing students with texts based in communist ideology and the teachings of mao, the 

emphasis of the new textbooks is on producing innovative thinking and preparing students for 

global discourse. not that history and politics have been completely disentangled; far from it. But 

the new textbooks reflect a new emphasis, one that is indicative of what one of its authors, a 

Shanghai scholar, calls a sea-change in thinking about what students need to know. See Joseph 

Kahn,“Where’s mao? chinese revise history Books,” The New York Times, 1 September 2006. 
The TaikonauT as Icon: The Cultural and Political 117 

Significance of Yang Liwei, China’s First Space Traveler 

“now we know better,” Zubrin has insisted. “the universe has presented us 

with its challenge.to remain who we are, we must accept.We must enter space.”43 

But Zubrin’s analysis and others like it, which suggest there is something 

implicit in the confucian mindset and within the social order of china’s “inner 

space” that ultimately works against exploration of “outer space,” may be fallacious. 

rather than any inherent chinese cultural inertia favoring the familiar and avoiding 

the unexpected, perhaps the underlying factor forcing china’s ming emperors 

to withdraw from their foreign ventures was something quite different, and very 

particular, historically speaking. For example, in his 2005 book, Why Geography 

Matters, michigan State university geography professor harm de Blij argued that, 

just as the ming were poised to round the cape of good hope and enter the 

atlantic, “disaster struck at home.” a geological event, a “Little ice age” in north 

china, resulted in major famine and social disorder.the ming rulers were forced 

to end their maritime expeditions, ordering the country’s shipyards to build only 

barges that could navigate china’s internal waterways with cargoes of rice. if the 

environmental crisis had not occurred, china might very well have become the 

world’s dominant colonial power.44 

it thus seems inappropriate, if not foolish, to believe that anything innate in 

the country’s historical character will stop china from becoming one of the world’s 

predominant space powers. if the iconography surrounding taikonaut Yang Liwei 

is any sort of reliable indicator, chinese society is already well on its way toward 

successfully mixing its traditional confucian values, communist ideology, and drive 

for economic and high-tech industrial competitiveness into an effective recipe for 

an expansive program of human spaceflight. 

43. robert Zubrin,entering Space:Creating a Spacefaring Civilization (newYork:tarcher/putnam,1999),p.xi. 

For more from Zubrin on the mings’ turning away from overseas exploration,see pp.18–20. 

44. harm de Blij, Why Geography Matters:Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of 

China, and Global Terrorism (new York: oxford university press, 2005), pp. 78–79. 
118 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight
Section III 

commercial and economic 

impact 

~

118 SocietaL impact oF SpaceFLight
chapter 8 

Commercial and Economic 


Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview


philip Scranton 

“present efforts to accelerate the transfer of military/ 

space technologies to commercial application appear 

handicapped by insufficient knowledge of how technology is 

applied at the level of the firm . . . most contributions [do not] 

come in the form of direct and readily identifiable results of 

a particular effort.” denver research institute, The Commercial 

Application of Missile/Space Technology (denver, co: dri, 

September 1963), vi, p. 1. 

“over the past quarter century, two-thirds of our space 

dollars have been invested in manned spaceflight, with little to 

show for the investment save circus. By and large it has been 

wonderful circus, just as the [early aviators’] barnstorming was, 

but hardly more productive . . . the real payoff in space—the 

work of the communications satellites, the weather and earth 

resources satellites, the scientific probes—has been funded by 

the remaining one-third of the civilian space budget.” alex 

roland, “Barnstorming in Space,” in Space Policy Reconsidered, 

radford Byerly, ed. (Boulder, co:Westview press, 1989), p. 42. 

apart from wowing the public and energizing thousands of american engineers 

and scientists,what is spaceflight actually for? apart from creating platforms for military 

surveillance and intelligence functions, what is spaceflight actually for? apart from 

sustaining layers of enterprises and competencies in the aerospace, instrumentation, 

electronics, materials, project management, and consulting segments of the 

economy (along with a modest cohort of university-based researchers, including 

some historians), what is naSa’s work actually for? if not articulated in just this 

fashion, similar questions about the private sector payoffs of public sector spending 

on space have persisted from the agency’s earliest years.By 1962,naSa had created 

a “technology utilization program” in response to congressional sniping, and soon 
122 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

began releasing annual reports of technology spinoffs.1 Yet recently an economist 

argued that neither naSa’s direct or indirect impact on the economy (in terms 

of employment, multiplier effects, spinoffs, or statistically-estimated influences on 

growth) could be established as sufficiently sizable to justify ongoing costs.2 even 

so, from naSa’s earliest years, observers have argued that there is no effective way 

to reach quantitatively sound answers to questions about economic impact and 

the effective use of public funds for aerospace. instead, as roger launius suggested 

in a recent historiographical study, settled camps of celebrants and critics seem to 

commence with their conclusions and search about for evidence to support them.3 

this is not likely to change, but i hope not to reinforce that practice here. 

like many public programs, naSa’s work has been expected to be productive 

not simply in terms of internal criteria (setting and reaching goals, effective 

management, etc.), but also in terms of wider contributions to society and the 

nation. one persistent strain in the calls for this broader influence and performance 

has been the expectation that naSa’s work will generate substantial and substantive 

commercial and economic innovations and opportunities. the folkloristic notion 

that the main thing spaceflight delivered to american consumers was the powdered 

breakfast drink tang4 evokes the narrow domains in which such expectations have 

often been defined and the relatively unsystematic way in which actual contributions 

have been gauged in differently positioned literatures. 

this essay, which introduces a group of more tightly focused and empirically 

rich studies, will undertake to outline a framework that may help situate the economic 

and technical contributions that naSa’s work provided to american business and 

thereby to the nation’s citizens. contrary to consumer expectations, virtually all these 

contributions have been indirect,as a denver research institute (dri) study explained 

in the early 1960s, and hence imperceptible to most observers. Second, as alex roland 

1. alfred alibrando,“naSa technology Utilization Scrutiny due,” Aviation Week and Space Technology 

79 (5 august 1963): pp. 28–29. See also “aerospace in perspective: Utilization,” Space/Aeronautics 

43 (January 1965): pp. 80–87, and NASA Spinoffs:Thirty Year Commemorative Edition, Sarah gall and 

Joseph pramberger, ed. (Washington, dc: naSa technology transfer division, 1992). 

2. molly K.macaulay,“the economics of Space,”in Space Politics and Policy:An Evolutionary Perspective, 

eligar Sadeh, ed. (dordrecht,the netherlands: Kluwer, 2002), pp.181-200, see esp. pp. 183–185. of 

course,economic justification is constrained by seriously imperfect quantification and measurement 

issues, and cannot reach economic dimensions of spacefaring that are not quantifiable, such as 

enhancing the climate for or urgency of innovation, except through dubious proxies (e.g., r&d 

spending) whose limited utility, though long recognized, has not undercut their wide use. 

3. roger d. launius,“historical dimensions of the Space age,” in ibid., pp. 3–26, esp. 4–11. 

4. indeed, this association is erroneous in the specifics as well, in that tang was used in but not 

developed for naSa flights. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink) (accessed 11 July 2006). 

general foods created tang circa 1957, but it became famous when used in the gemini program 

in 1965. Similar delusions about the naSa origins of teflon® and Velcro® abound, but frame the 

popular expectations for space outcomes—consumer goods as economic spinoffs. 
Commercial and Economic 123 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

has grumbled, it does seem that our obsession with human flights, along with their 

vast expense, has overshadowed efforts at communications exostructure building which 

have had long-term significance—notably, as almost all parties agree, multiple satellite 

networks (agency, private, and military), the subject of another section in this book. 

two contextual claims lead off my discussion. first, spacefaring innovations 

were embedded in a more complex, indeed transnational, culture of technological 

experimentation that intensified in the early years of the cold war. as a result, 

explained the dri report,“[n]o clear line can be drawn between space and nonspace knowledge [bases] because the two are closely interwoven.”5thus, identifying 

the space program’s “firsts” is a rather inconsequential exercise. instead, it makes 

more sense to highlight those situations where naSa projects added critical 

momentum and capability to nascent innovations, providing essential test-beds for 

them (and the funding for revision and redesign), and to explore projects where 

the complexity of naSa-posed problems galvanized cross-disciplinary amalgams 

of technique and materials, with implications for the industrial world outside. for 

example, the dri’s research identified 185 spaceflight spinoffs by 1962, including 

plastic coatings, microminiature welding devices, and high-capacity infrared sensors 

already installed in manufacturing facilities.6 thus, one key background argument 

here is that a sizable share of naSa undertakings can plausibly be described as 

“experimental development”projects,in which exploratory engineering,risk-laden 

fabrication and testing, and integrative scientific practices strove to overcome the 

liabilities inherent in complexity, incomplete information, inhospitable conditions 

of human work and artifact usage, and the necessity of customized production. 

Second, though we still have inadequate information regarding many of its 

dimensions, the military’s role in space projects and technologies enlarged naSa’s 

programs,such that naSa-anchored innovations had an impact on the development 

of defense and intelligence capabilities (and the hardware and software behind 

5. denver research institute, The Commercial Application of Missile/Space Technology (denver, co: denver 

research institute, 1963), p. iv. for a contemporary appreciation of the dri study, see “Scientific 

horizons toWatch,” Factory 122 (february 1964):pp.88–91.for a later,detailed analysis by dri staffers, 

see robert h.Waterman and lloyd g. marts, “Space-related technology: its commercial Use,” in 

Advances in Space Science andTechnology,Vol.6 (newYork:academic press,1964),pp.173–244. 

6. “hitchhiking on Space technologies,” Steel 153 (23 december 1963): pp. 26–30. naSa’s louis 

fong then estimated that the space effort had yielded some 850 “innovations thought to have 

industrial potential.” among the 185 that had been utilized, Steel reported specifics on 22 items. 

Sundstrand had found oil field applications for a low-speed pump “originally designed for missiles,” 

hills-mccanna was selling a commercial version of an aerospace ball valve, and general dynamics 

had already sold 5,000 units of a mechanical warning device indicating shock levels on packages, 

created for missile shipment containers. 
124 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

them) and, by extension, on the enterprises designing and fabricating such devices.7 

as researchers noted more than 40 years ago: “Because of the interaction among 

[the military,naSa,other agencies,industry,and universities],attribution of a given 

technological advance to a particular source is often impossible.”8 

the idea for military uses of space evidently arose in the immediate postwar 

years, as the douglas aircraft company’s research and development division (which 

soon became rand) informed the army air forces that it might be possible 

to create and launch a “world-circling spaceship,” which could play a role in the 

technology-intensive wars of the future. the proposal, filed away for more than 

a decade, resurfaced after Sputnik and, much altered, laid the foundations for the 

military satellite command and control networks “designed specifically to support the 

nation’s top secret national reconnaissance program [nrp].”9 operated in parallel 

with naSa satellite projects, the nrp was another element in the rivalries between 

the air force and the spaceflight agency.the question of space weapons is outside our 

scope here, but “the non-weapon military uses of space,” as colin gray termed them, 

have been diverse and significant.from early,high-resolution film canister devices and 

the Vanguard/minitrack system of the 1950s10 through the fourth-generation, tenton Big Bird satellite in the 1970s, surveillance, missile tracking, and data gathering 

from space were clear military priorities, along with advance warning capabilities 

of attack, assessment of Soviet bloc activity, secure communications, navigation 

assistance, weather monitoring, extensive mapping, and continuing “measurement of 

the [e]arth’s gravitational and magnetic fields (essential for the accuracy of inertiallyguided missiles).”11 Both naSa and military agencies engaged much the same set of 

7.	 See peter l. hays,“naSa and the department of defense: enduring themes in three Key areas,” 

in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. dick and roger d. launius, eds. (Washington, 

dc:naSa Sp-2006-4502,2006),pp.199–238.in discussion after his presentation at the conference 

this volume reprises, hays suggested that the military (nonpublic) segment of naSa budgets was 

as large or larger than the civilian segment in many years following the end of the apollo era. for 

another hays analysis of these issues, see peter l. hays,“Space and the military,” in Sadeh, ed., Space 

Politics and Policy, pp. 335–369. 

8. denver research institute, Commercial Application of Missile/Space Technology, p. vi. 

9. david christopher arnold, Spying from Space (college Station, tX: texas a&m University press, 

2005), p. 7. for a contemporary overview of military space activity, see “aerospace in perspective: 

control,” Space/Aeronautics 43 (January 1965): pp. 88–101. 

10. the first 	recovery of a photographic capsule was reportedly from discoverer 13 in august 

1960. See colin gray, American Military Space Policy (cambridge, ma:abt Books, 1982), pp. 23–25. 

11. ibid., p. 35. 
Commercial and Economic 125 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

prime and subcontractors for satellite projects,which created opportunities for,but not 

guarantees of, technical cross-fertilization between public and classified initiatives.12 

in consequence, it may be crucial, in thinking about commercial/economic 

impacts of spaceflight, to posit naSa as the globe’s largest dispersed technologydevelopment unit, inextricably blending national security concerns, engineering 

ambitions, policy negotiations, and scientific aspirations into projects that energetic, 

at times urgent, collaborators shaped into material forms and functions. from this 

perspective, in the long run counting spinoff items may be less rewarding than 

recognizing naSa’s historic role as the hub of Big engineering inamerica,reshaping 

the model for high-tech contracting (and subcontracting), and as the nation’s public 

research and development (r&d) division, taking on challenges and complexities 

that no corporate enterprise would or could have shouldered during the cold war.13 

in the remainder of this discussion, i will sketch three domains where 

spaceflight’s nonsatellite commercial and economic impacts can be situated, then 

will focus briefly on three of the third domain’s components and add a fourth. in 

considering areas where spaceflight has economic implications, we may loosely 

divide this terrain into segments which attend to (1) the impact of operations in space; 

(2) the impact on enterprises of producing and managing space projects; and (3) the 

impact of operations derived from experimental development for space. 

the first segment represents the realm of “space commerce,” dominated by 

satellite capabilities and the information and revenue streams they generate. in 

addition, commercial users must cover transportation charges for putting artifacts in 

12. the	 technical press was intensely interested in the components manufacturing potential for 

satellite operations. exemplary articles from the early 1960s include “future Space Satellites and 

missions,” Electronic Industries 21 (June 1962): pp. K12–K16, and “how to get Your products into 

orbit,” Steel 153 (29 July 1963): pp. 79–84, with specifications on satellite components at pp. 82– 

83. See also octave romaine, “oao: naSa’s Biggest Satellite Yet,” Space/Aeronautics 37 (february 

1962): pp. 54–58; and donald fink, “ge designs navigation Satellite network,” Aviation Week & 

SpaceTechnology 80 (30 march 1964): pp. 49–51.the substantial earth-based tracking and monitoring 

systems that had to be built in tandem with satellite launches received equal attention,not least because 

they involved, in some measure, familiar construction tasks. See “Space tracking is Big Business,” 

Electronics 32 (6 march 1959):pp.24–25;“earth Based electronics,”Electronics 34 (17 november 1961): 

pp. 108–118. for satellite manufacturing, see h. l.Wuerfel and r. p. dunphy [rca], “the relay 

communications Satellite:a Study in the achievement of high reliability,” Industrial Quality Control 

22 (January 1966): pp. 355–368. for a British view stressing the need for european satellites with 

applications different from those envisioned by the U.S., see alan h. Stratford, “the economics of 

telecommunications Satellite Systems,” Journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society 66 (June 1962): pp. 

364–370. for a later naSa overview, see edgar cortright,“Space Science and applications:Where 

We Stand today,” Astronautics & Aeronautics 4 (June 1966): pp. 42–48. (By 1966, naSa’s cortright 

explained,“more than 60 successful satellites and deep-space probes” had been launched [p. 42].) 

13. for a sense of the speed and uncertainty of technological development at this time, see ronald 

Kohl, “technology in turmoil,” Machine Design 38 (29 September 1966): pp. c1–c20. arguably, 

the U.S. air force pioneered Big engineering in and after World War ii in aircraft, propulsion, and 

avionics. nuclear submarine work brought the navy alongside before naSa was created. 
126 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

space,most of which appear to accrue to government units,some in partnerships with 

private sector organizations.We also have had the recent appearance of individual space 

travel (ballistic launches only, i believe), though again with the revenues flowing from 

private to public coffers, usually inadequate to cover costs and not as yet generating 

anything like nodes of investment opportunity. as political scientist James Vedda has 

pointed out: “in space commerce, the quest continues for affordable, reliable, and 

flexible access to space.” here we find “the slowest rate of improvement of all space 

technologies,” even as the sophistication and significance of satellites has soared.14 

outside of communications, where waves of innovation have followed 

like clockwork, notions that commercial materials processing, pharmaceutical 

development, or crystal growing would become the base for space manufacturing 

never got past the experimental or prototyping phase. in the early 1980s, Johnson & 

Johnson partnered with mcdonnell douglas to attempt purifying a drug component 

in space, while 3m and John deere arranged materials testing studies and fairchild 

laid plans for an industrial space platform.these schemes vaporized even before the 

Challenger accident in 1986, as markets had been substantially overestimated and 

costs severely underestimated. in 1984 the annual market for space materials testing 

or production had been gauged at $40 billion or more;a few years later that number 

shrank to $2 billion, but realistically was closer to zero. Beyond the stunning costs of 

getting into space with appropriate materials and tools lay the challenges of creating 

human-free operations (as peopled production in space added orders of magnitude 

to costs) and of dealing with the narrow range of products that could be sold at 

prices which could realize profits. nor were questions of quality and reliability 

easily solved. in the late 1980s, drug-industry consultant John naugle judged that 

only goods priced above $2,000 per pound could be economically manufactured 

in space, and only if there was a $500 million annual market awaiting them (to help 

offset operating costs of $100–$200 million).as he summarized: 

a space manufacturer thus must pay for a long, costly r&d 

process, make a large initial capital investment, and wait a long 

time for a return on his investment. during the r&d process, 

his ground-based competitors will be hard at work to produce 

the product more cheaply . . .these factors combine to suggest 

why pharmaceutical manufacturers have not leaped to enter the 

market in space processing.15 

14. James Vedda, “Space commerce,” in Sadeh, ed., Space Policies, pp. 201–227, quote from p. 210. 

Stephen Johnson orally confirms government losses in providing commercial launch services. 

15. John	 naugle, “a manufacturer’s View of commercial activity in Space,” in Economics and 

Technology in US Space Policy, molly K.macauley,ed. (Washington,dc:resources for the future,1987), 

pp. 70, 76. for satellite innovations, helpful sources include office of technology assessment, Civilian 

Space Policy and Applications (Washington, dc: U.S. congress, office of technology assessment, 1982), 

especially chapter 8,and Stephen Johnson,“Space Business,”in Sadeh,ed., Space Politics and Policy. 
Commercial and Economic 127 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

naugle also argued that three situational shortcomings further hampered 

planning for the industrialization of space: the lack of “assured transportation” up 

and back; the problem of “launch insurance”; and the absence of a spacelab where 

firms could “conduct proprietary experiments.”16 two decades down the road it 

does not appear that space-based processing is much nearer to being realized. 

Second, spaceflight has had durable, creative impacts on corporations that secured 

prime and subcontracts for vehicles, craft, components, instrumentation, engines, et al. 

not only did serving naSa invite key cold war technology-intense firms to diversify 

beyond weapons systems—creating new divisions and goals, space demand also played 

a role in building markets for design and program management specialists ( e.g.,trW’s 

Systems technology division and intellitronics laboratories)17 and for technology/ 

innovation consultants. as Stephen Johnson is focusing on business in considerable 

detail, a quick view of mcdonnell in 1959 and 1966 will offer a snapshot of one firm. 

in the 1959 fiscal year, mcdonnell aircraft company (mac), a St. louis 

powerhouse, recorded sales of $436 million, with an orders backlog of $650 million. 

it had just undertaken its first mercury spacecraft contract for a modest $20 million, 

less than 5 percent of the firm’s annual turnover. at the time, mac’s space efforts 

were confined to the Quail decoy missile and the talos ramjet (subcontracted from 

Bendix), whereas its core competencies lay in jet aircraft design and assembly—the 

f4h phantom ii,the rf-101cVoodoo for reconnaissance photography,the f101B 

interceptor, and the f3h demon series of all-weather fighters.18 

Seven years later, mac was winding up its role in the gemini program (5 

successful flights in 11 months) and had adapted a gemini capsule for use with 

the planned air force manned orbiting laboratory (which never flew; cancelled 

in 1969). it also had undertaken extended, self-financed research into “advanced 

orbital spacecraft, laboratories, [and] military systems in space,” investing another 

$1.3 million in “studies related to mars exploration.” if mac’s aircraft backbone 

remained the phantom (seven models in production, 99 units contracted in 1966 

for the USaf [$272 million]), the company had branched out into work on navy 

surface-to-surface missiles, hypersonic air-breathing planes (with naSa), an aircraft 

collision-avoidance instrumentation system,19 and a critical-patient monitoring 

system for hospitals (derived from piloted flight instrumentation).at least two dozen 

additional projects were being researched, ranging from special materials to human 

16. naugle, in Economics and Technology, p. 78. 

17. aerospace industries 	association of american, Aerospace Year Book 1960 (Washington, dc: 

american aviation publications, 1960), pp. 191–192. 

18. ibid., pp. 129–131. See also “mcdonnell is optimistic on future,” Aviation Week 72 (9 may 

1960): p. 103. 

19. the 	1992 NASA Spinoffs, 61, volume credits collision avoidance instrumentation to an 

ames-faa collaboration in the 1980s and does not mention mac’s earlier effort. 
128 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

performance simulation and plasma physics.20 put simply, spacefaring transformed 

mac from a military hardware builder into a multidimensional, edge technology 

developer. as i have argued elsewhere, to date historians have underinvested in 

examining the business trajectories of major aerospace manufacturers and the 

industrial districts they often anchored.21 

the impacts of experimental development for space are more distributed and 

perhaps diffuse, but they were extensive. this refers to the transformations of 

materials, processes, and instruments that aerospace design and fabrication triggered 

for particular purposes, but which were available for adoption and adaptation 

throughout industry. the 1963 denver team identified six areas of transfer from 

space to commercial sectors: stimulation of research; improved processes or 

techniques; improved products; new products; increased availability of materials and 

instrumentation; and cost reductions. one of these was speculative and ultimately 

marginal (cost reductions), and one was obvious (stimulating research), whereas 

products,new or improved,have often become the focal point of commercialization 

arguments. in general, criticism focused at the product innovation dimension has 

paid considerable attention to issues of technical complexity and ostensibly narrow 

markets, but the sheer volume of the spinoffs that naSa publications have heralded 

may suggest that the durable impact here was through extensive, cross-sectoral, 

technical fertilizations, rather than in delivering market blockbusters.22 

here we will follow dri’s concern for novel or improved processes,techniques, 

materials, and instrumentation, innovation efforts that commenced at the outset of 

20. aerospace industries association of america, The 1967 Aerospace Year Book (Washington, dc: 

Spartan Books, 1967), pp. 131–133. for complementary, contemporary views of this process, see 

‘“arms makers” reshuffled by Shift to missiles,’ Financial World 113 (3 february 1960): pp. 3, 27; 

“new Business from Space age,” FW 116 (15 february 1961): pp. 4–5; and “air force contractors: 

Who’s tending the Store,” Forbes 85 (1 June 1960): pp. 25–28. for similar portraits of individual 

firms, see “profitable plain Jane” [northrop], Forbes 88 (1 September 1961): pp. 26–27, and “martin 

marietta—Space leader,” FW 117 (6 april 1962): pp. 8, 24. 

21. for a challenging policy perspective on this issue, see robert Butterworth, Growing the Space 

Industrial Base: Policy Pitfalls and Prospects, air War college, maxwell paper no. 23, (maxwell afB, 

September 2000).See also Joan Bromberg,NASA and the Space Industry (Baltimore:the Johns hopkins 

University press, 1999).a well-known and crucial liability in the economics of space business was the 

unreliability of the monopsonistic market (there being only one buyer) and persistent uncertainties 

about whether unplanned costs necessary for redesigns and fixes in experimental development 

would be covered by naSa. note that mcdonnell (above) spent its own funds on preliminary 

experiments regarding future aerospace projects in the 1960s; this, of course, affected the bottom 

line and aerospace stock prices were mercurial throughout this era. 

22. the institute noted that “the 	more subtle forms of technology transfer have had and will 

continue to have the greatest impact—not the direct product type of transfer which is most often 

publicized.” (Commercial Application, p. 5) See also NASA Spinoffs, 1992, and Sean o’Keefe, Spinoff 

2002, 40th Anniversary (Washington, dc: naSa technology Utilization program, 2002). one 

Web site visited in July 2006 indicates that something on the order of 1,400 spinoffs have been 

documented in its publications: http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm (accessed 16 July 2006). 
Commercial and Economic 129 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

space initiatives and continue to influence present practice. from day one, operational 

requirements for spaceflight components were sufficiently demanding that both 

new materials and revamped processes for fabrication had to be devised. in addition, 

challenges on the organizational side of project efforts promoted a variety of managerial 

techniques, some new, some solidified after earlier cold war experimentation, and 

some whose limits naSa work suggested.these will be briefly highlighted. 

on the manufacturing process front, we can note innovations such as chemical 

milling and high-energy forming (cited in the 1963 denver assessment referenced 

in the epigraph of this chapter), as well as electron-beam, thermal, numerical control, 

ultra-cold, and electrical discharge machining; electrolytic grinding; plasma and 

induced magnetic field welding;plus stretch,magnetic,and shear forming.23 chemical 

milling initially proved valuable in shaping large components (such as missile 

bulkheads) to close tolerances. regarded in 1961 as a “recent development,” it would 

shortly become a major element in fabricating computer components, for it involved 

protecting part of a surface with a masking agent,immersing the object in “an etching 

bath,which may be acidic or basic,to remove [material] from specific areas to produce 

the desired configuration,” then stripping off the masking agent.this technique was 

particularly suited to “[d]esigns normally not considered producible by mechanical 

means,” and could serve as an alternative to “mechanical milling [for] complicated 

shapes.”24 according to J. B. mohler, the Boeing engineer who outlined the process 

and offered a dozen pointers for implementation,“all the common metals and most of 

the less common” had been successfully shaped through chemical milling, though he 

did not anticipate its use with semiconductors in integrated circuit production,which 

soon overshadowed its relevance to aerospace components.25 

more dramatic, though likely having a narrower impact, was high-energyrate forming (herf, also known as explosive forming), again initially connected 

23. W. d. nelson et al., “trends in aerospace manufacturing,” Metal Progress 79 (april 1961): pp. 

106–110; “technology review, State of the art: production engineering,” Space/Aeronautics [r&d 

handbook] 38 (1963): pp. i-3 to i-10; leo gatzek [north american],“fabricating metals for Space 

Vehicles,” Mechanical Engineering 87 (october 1965): pp. 46–49;“how manufacturing methods cope 

with future Space projects,”IronAge 184 (1 october 1959):pp.86–88.for recent assessments of several 

of these innovations, see a. g. mamalis et al., “electromagnetic forming and powder processing: 

trends and developments,” Applied Mechanics Reviews 57 (July 2004): pp. 299–324; K. h. ho et al., 

“State of the art in Wire electrical discharge machining,” International Journal of Machine Tools and 

Manufacture 44 (2004): pp. 1247–1259; and J. c. rebelo et al,“an experimental Study on electrodischarge machining,” Journal of Materials Processing Technology 103 (2000): pp. 389–397. 

24. J. B. mohler [Boeing], “introduction to chemical milling,” Materials in Design Engineering 53 (april 

1961):pp.128–132.Quotes from pp.128–129. 

25. ibid., 129. mohler	 listed “aluminum, magnesium, titanium, tool steels, stainless, steels, monel, 

inconel, and various superalloys” as ready targets, with less experience as yet in chemically milling 

“molybdenum, tungsten, beryllium, and tantalum.” on chemical milling and electronics, see William 

t. harris, Chemical Milling:The Technology of Cutting Materials by Etching [oxford Series on advanced 

manufacturing] (oxford, U.K.: oxford University press, 1976). 
130 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

with missile building. Used early on to create hemispheric domes for polaris and 

minuteman missiles, explosive forming involves fashioning a die that mirrors the 

shape desired, tightly fixing a component blank to the die, and evacuating air from 

the space between the two pieces, lowering the apparatus into a large vat of water, 

then setting off an underwater explosive charge just above the blank’s geometric 

center.the water pressure blast at hundreds of feet-per-second (vs.roughly 5 fps [1.6 

m/sec]for conventional forming) shapes the blank instantly to the die form and the 

product needs little further machining.By 1961 ryan aeronautics had made domes 

4.5 feet (1.37 m) across with this process, and the company’s James orr speculated 

that dies 50 to 60 feet (15.2 to 18.3 m) in diameter could be constructed “in ground,” 

like swimming pools, to create very large metallic components. explosive forming 

was not a cost-saver, though; rather, it improved quality.aerojet-general estimated 

that making 42-inch (1.07 m) missile domes by standard methods (welding smaller 

pieces) cost $60 each,whereas explosive forming raised the per-item charge to $100. 

the difference was that diameter, contour, and thickness tolerances were far closer. 

an aerojet spokesman added: “[c]onventional methods simply aren’t satisfactory 

for many of today’s missile requirements.” initially, the refractory metals (titanium, 

molybdenum, et al.) could not be explosively formed except at high temperatures, 

which made the water bath approach impossible; here ryan substituted sand 

successfully, and fashioned a prototype titanium army helmet, using embedded 

electric rods to heat both the die and blank. herf-work continues to the present, 

though more often for complex, customized items than for serial production.26 

26. explosive forming was employed, confirming orr’s ambitions, to create the domes for the Saturn 

rockets’fuel tanks.photos in roger Bilstein’s Stages to Saturn (rep.ed.,gainesville,fl:University press of 

florida,1996),p.221,and mike gray’s account of fabrication,(Angle of Attack [newYork:W.W.norton, 

1992], pp. 155–156) indicate that herfed “gores (curved, tapered wedges) were formed in a 60,000­

gallon water tank,” then welded together. on explosive forming, see “naSa Studies high-energy 

forming,” American Machinist 105 (2 october 1961): p. 85; “herf: metalworking’s new frontier,” 

American Machinist 101 (3 September 1962): pp. 93–104; James orr [ryan],“explosive forming” SAE 

Journal 69 (June 1961): pp. 57–59; floyd cox,“ryan’s experience in explosive forming,” Metal Progress 

80 (august 1961): pp. 71–73; “how explosives form Space-age parts,” Steel 148 (5 June 1961): pp. 

86–88; c.W. gipe [ryan], “high energy processes Shape Space-age parts,” SAE Journal 69 (march 

1961): pp. 44–45; l. c. Stuckenbruck and c. h. martinez [north american], “explosive forming in 

the missile industry,” Machinery 67 (november 1961): pp. 99–105; and r. gorcey et al. [rocketdyne], 

“progress report on developments in explosive forming,” Machine Design 33(13 april 1961): pp. 

188–190. for a critical perspective, see “exploding the myths of explosive forming: Springback is Still 

with Us,” American Machinist 105 (26 June 1961): p. 79.“fabricating fueltanks for the Saturn rocket,” 

Modern Metals 18 (June 1962): pp. 46–48 is helpful on work in rocket building. for more on hotforming titanium, see c. f. morris, Jr. [convair],“titanium alloys hot-formed on gas-heated Stretch 

press dies,” Space/Aeronautics 34 (august 1960): pp. 117–118, 122, 126. regarding current uses, google 

Scholar search using “explosive forming” and “high energy forming” turned up more than 700 books, 

articles, and reports. for a comprehensive overview, see d. J. mynors and B. Zhang,“applications and 

capabilities of explosive forming,” Journal of Materials Processing 125/126 (2002): pp. 1–25. 
Commercial and Economic 131 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

attending to other manufacturing process novelties must await a different occasion, 

but it is worth noting that older industrial techniques also got spaceflight boosts and a few 

twists:welding and metal spinning,for example.large,cylindrical rocket motor cases could 

not be formed in one piece, and thus plates had to be welded into rings and the rings 

had to be welded together (along with interconnecting forgings calledY-rings) to form 

columns.this was a substantial fabrication challenge,asW.d.abbott noted in 1966: 

all material and all welds must . . . be tough, ductile and free of 

linear defects, particularly surface defects.the magnitude of the 

problem is more apparent when it is recognized that there are more 

than 3000 sq.ft.of surface and 500 ft.of weld on a 156 in.diameter 

rocket motor case . . .all the material and every inch of weld must 

be completely free of linear defects and gas holes or porosities no 

larger than 0.04 in. in diameter to guarantee reliability.27 

the Saturn rocket case was 60 percent larger (260 inches [6.6 m] in diameter) 

and a misery to weld. its tanks were a special nightmare:“at a time in history when 

a flawless weld of a few feet was considered miraculous, the S-2 called for a half a 

mile of flawless welds.”28 Big artifacts, big fabrication problems. 

moreover, what was being welded in many applications were not just standard 

steels,but particularly challenging specialized alloys such as the “maraging”steel used 

in rocket cases.the finished welds needed to have “essentially the same cleanliness, 

mechanical properties and fracture toughness as the base material.” neither gas 

metal-arc nor submerged-arc processes could handle these tasks. this triggered 

refinement of plasma arc approaches to welding, which used an inert gas shield, a 

“nonconsumable tungsten electrode” and a “constricting nozzle . . . to concentrate 

the available thermal energy on a relatively small area of the workpiece.”the result 

was faster,deeper welds with no contamination and remarkably few flaws.29 further 

27. W. d. abbott [excelco developments, inc.], “18% nickel maraging Steel fabrication application 

to large rocket motor cases,” Welding Journal 45 (July 1966): pp. 595–598, quote from p. 596. 

28. gray,	Angle of Attack, p. 154. on procedures for Saturn welding, see charles garland [Sun 

Shipbuilding], “fabrication of 260 inch diameter rocket cases with maraging Steel,” Welding 

Journal 45 (January 1966): pp. 22–29.the alloy’s 18 percent nickel gave it “toughness,” which meant 

stability under pressures of 200,000 psi and an ability at that strain to sustain cracks up to 1 inch long 

without failure (p. 23). See also, for the atlas,W. p. mcgregor [convair],“inert-gas tungsten-arc 

Spot Welding in missile production,” Machinery 67 (december 1960): pp. 119–121. 

29. l. J. privoznik and h. r. miller [Westinghouse],“evaluation of plasma arc Welding for 120 in. diameter 

rocket cases,”Welding Journal 45 (September 1966):pp.717–725,quotes from p.718;r.e.heise,“advanced 

fabrication methods,” Metal Progress 80 (July 1961): pp. 105–107.a titanium alloy liquid hydrogen testing 

tank,built at Beechaircraft in 1962 (24 ft.long by 8 ft.diameter) involved several of the novel techniques.its 

end closures were“stretch formed to contour,chemically milled and welded together”using an argon,plasma 

welding technique.See“titanium liquid hydrogentank,”Light MetalAge 20 (august 1962):p.7. 
132 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

elaboration of precision welding has continued over the last four decades, widening 

industrial practice and generating a considerable technical literature.30 

metal-spinning is an antique skill31 in which a vertically rotating blank comes 

in contact with a laterally moving bar, shaping the blank into a cone, a hemisphere, 

or another three-dimensional curvilinear form. installed at Boeing to attack the 

problems of shaping difficult-to-machine alloys and renamed “flowspinning,” it was 

used to create nose cones, bulkheads, and rocket cases. for rocket cases, the spinning 

lathe created a dome with vertical sides, then the top was cut off to leave a ring that 

needed no welding and thus was stronger all around. (this worked only up to case 

diameters of 50 inches [1.27 m].) here a traditional metalworking capability was 

stretched in scale and range to new applications, including work with demanding 

alloys and high-precision components.32 

new materials appropriate to space environments and launch stresses were 

at the root of many process innovations and reorientations. as convair’s c. f. 

morris explained:“By and large, conventional tooling and manufacturing methods 

are inadequate for the high strength alloys—rene 41,Vascojet, titanium, various 

stainless steels,etc.—that have recently come into use for high temperature aerospace 

30. for 	a useful overview, see e. craig, “the plasma arc Welding process: a review,” Welding 

Journal 67 (february 1988):pp.19–25.for the varieties of welding innovations,see patricio mendez 

and thomas eagar,“Welding processes for aeronautics,” Advanced Materials and Processes 159 (may 

2001):pp.39–43.a google Scholar search for “plasma arc welding”turned up nearly 1,100 technical 

papers and reports. 

31. metal spinning was introduced in the United States by the 1840s and was used to make “gold, 

silver and pewter hollowware and chalices” for generations. only afterWorldWar i were experiments 

made with “tougher metals.” See http://www.jobshop.com/techinfo/papers/metalspinpaper.shtml (accessed 

18 July 2006). it was used as well on nuclear submarine components (raymond Spiotta,“age-old 

art helps Build nuclear Submarines,” Machinery 67 (march 1961): pp. 102–105. 

32. “Boeing	 flowspins the Superalloys,” Steel 148 (february 20, 1961): pp. 62–64; “lockheed 

Wheezey-gheezey Sizes missile Shells,” Steel 148 (June 12, 1961): p. 145; lewis Zwissler [aerojet], 

“Spinning makes Stronger rocket cases,” Metal Progress 78 (december 1960): pp. 70–77. for more 

recent applications,see e.Quigley and J.monaghan,“metal forming:ananalysis of Spinning processes,” 

Journal of Materials ProcessingTechnology 103 (June 2000): pp. 114–119.another pre-WorldWar ii process 

given fresh impetus by space fabrication needs was powder metallurgy. See c. g. goetzel and J. B. 

rittenhouse [lockheed],“powder metallurgy applications in SpaceVehicle Systems,” Journal of Metals 

57 (august 1965): pp. 876–879 (with 30 citations to related studies). for more information, see gordon 

dowson,Powder Metallurgy:The Process and Its Products (newYork:hilger,1990).a related manufacturing 

dynamic which cannot be covered here is the creation of “clean rooms” for production and assembly 

of delicate electronic and instrumentation components. a quick google and google Scholar search 

turned up very little research on the history of the clean room, but Sandia labs claims it built one in 

1960 as a weapons spinoff.a 1959 trade journal article documents a clean room at Kearfott, a subsidiary 

of general precision,in little falls,nJ [“‘totally pure air’ required for plant,” Air Conditioning,Heating 

and Refrigeration News 88 (5 october 1959): pp. 6–7], and a 1963 essay in machine design pointed out 

that beyond dust and particles,organic hazards to aerospace hardware also had to be attacked [“of mold 

and missiles,” Machine Design 35 (18 July 1963): pp. 146–150]. i am not aware of an integrated study of 

the clean room’s history, but marshall University’s dan holbrook presented a preliminary inquiry into 

this topic at the 2006 Society for the history oftechnology conference. 
Commercial and Economic 133 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

structures.”33 Yet beyond heat stresses, materials innovations also had to overcome 

challenges presented by other conditions: very low temperatures, no atmosphere, zero 

gravity, sudden shocks, cyclical stresses, and vibration in its varied forms. in 1960– 

1961, hughes aircraft created test chambers to explore metals’ reactions to some of 

these conditions, trying to anticipate space-based materials difficulties. at near zero 

atmospheric pressure, they found “odd pits forming on the [metallic] specimen[s],” and 

identified a phenomenon called “metal evaporation,” which could lead to unintended 

metal plating as released molecules attached themselves randomly to other surfaces. for 

hughes, the radical implication was that “whole sections of a vehicle can disappear 

during an extended space voyage if the wrong metal is employed.”in addition,lubricants 

vaporized in zero gravity and metals would “cold weld when . . . left in contact for a 

few days.”Several“tough plastics,like vinyl ...get brittle and crumble in space,”hughes 

found,butteflon was not among them,accounting for its utility.34 Such environmental 

conditions only added to the need for special materials that could stand heat, cold, 

vibration, etc. hence, extensive trials of steel-based and nickel-chromium alloys were 

fundamental, in tandem with work on refractory metal alloying elements, ceramicmetal amalgams, honeycomb structures, and lightweight metal substitutes including 

resins, ceramics, rigidified fabrics, fiberglasses, and space-stable polymers.35 

By the mid-1960s,concerns arose that metals and alloys were reaching their limits 

of manipulability.in a 1966 Space/Aeronautics state-of-the-art review,metallurgists and 

technology managers noted the following: 

•  regarding high-strength steel alloys,“lack of adequate fracture toughness, stres

corrosion and . . . stress cracking resistance, weldability [and] nondestructive 

inspection techniques.” 

33. morris, “titanium alloys,” p. 117. candidate materials were created at what seems a remarkable 

rate in the early spacefaring years.one annual review in 1961 described 92 new materials,ranging from 

alloys to lubricants to coatings, offered by 78 different firms, ranging from ge and crucible Steel to 

rollway Bearing and Waimet alloys. “condensed review of Some recently developed materials,” 

Machinery 68 (october 1961):pp.115–124.See also Jack hauck and JohnVaccari,“aerospace materials: 

today andtomorrow,” Materials in Design Engineering 62 (august 1965): pp. 97–103. 

34. “how	 metals react in Space,” Steel 149 (2 october 1961): pp. 58–59. Zinc, cadmium, and 

magnesium alloys evaporated (reducing light weight magnesium’s attractiveness), whereas iron, steel 

alloys, titanium, platinum and tungsten did not show these patterns (adding to light-weight titanium’s 

value). See also eric linden,“aerospace electronic materials,” Electro-Technology 68 (1961):pp.125–131, 

esp. p. 128, and n. h. langdon, “polymers out in Space,” [two parts] Rubber Journal and International 

Plastics (4 february 1961):pp.174–178 and (11 february1961):pp.210–213. 

35. r. m. treco, “how Space-age energy Sources Spark rise of new materials,” Iron Age 187 (2 

march 1961):pp.87–89;a.hurlich and J.f.Watson [convair],“Selection of metals for Use at cryogenic 

temperatures,” Metal Progress 79 (april 1961):pp.65–72;“Space:a galaxy of new materials concepts,” 

Steel 153 (1 July 1963): pp. 32–39;“Structures and Materials,” Space/aeronautics 46 (mid-July 1966): pp. 

80–92,166,168–169 (three pages of citations).this last article emphasizes the relationship between new 

materials and structural dilemmas for launch, reentry, and space operations vehicles. See also “Bundled 

into orbit,” PlasticsWorld 20 (march 1962): p. 46 and “fabricating for planes and missiles,” PlasticsWorld 

20 (february 1962):pp.50–51. 
134 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

•  regarding superalloys, “further increase in temperature limits . . . appears ver

doubtful.” attempts to improve strength and stability by reducing chromium 

content have “increased hot corrosion and oxidation problems.” 

•  regarding critical light metal alloys, for aluminum, an “increase in strengt

without decrease in ductility” was needed; for titanium, ductility at extremely 

low temperatures was a problem; and for beryllium, brittle fracture issues had 

not been resolved. 

•  regarding the refractory metals, problems with “metallurgical stability an

preservation of mechanical properties in [a] variety of high-temperature 

environments.”36 

•  in consequence, designers had been placing increased emphasis on coatings

composites, and unconventional materials. for example, by 1963 aerojet 

experimented with a “filament-wound fiberglas” version of its 260-inchdiameter (6.6 m) rocket case, but encountered substantial problems, some of 

them with materials providers. charles Walance of hughes aircraft’s aerospace 

group complained:“We don’t want to make materials and components.We’re 

systems people. But we have found, in space-work, that we must do an alarming 

number of jobs ourselves because industry is unable or unwilling to attempt to 

meet our needs.”37 

the air force appears to have stepped in at about this time, creating its 

advanced filaments and composites division in January 1965. general Bernard 

Schriever argued for simultaneous efforts on multiple composite components and 

formulations, looking for a “cascade” effect—“the extra performance gain which is 

achieved when the many individual gains are examined all together.”the air force 

estimated it had taken $350–$400 million to bring titanium from experimental 

work to regular use in aircraft and aerospace devices, and believed “comparable 

development of composites will cost at least as much.”38again,composites (particularly 

resin-based ones and those using fiberglass) had been floating at the technological 

36. “Structures 	 and materials,” Space/Aeronautics 91 (1966). on refractories, see “refractory 

metals emerging as Structural materials,” Steel 148 (8 may 1961): pp. 115–130. 

37. “Space: a galaxy,” pp. 32, 35. this doesn’t seem to square with the flood of new materials 

(see note 31), though problems of communications and testing may have been involved. for a later 

overview of advanced materials and aerospace initiatives, see “testimony of gregory eyring, ota, 

July 7, 1988,” National Critical Materials Policy, hearing before the Subcommittee on transportation, 

aviation and materials of the committee on Science, Space, and technology, hr, 100th. congress, 

Second Session, no. 1241, gpo:Washington, dc, 1988, pp. 49–66. 

38. michael l.Yaffee,“composite materials offer Vast potential for Structures,” Aviation Week and Space 

Technology 82 (3 may 1965): pp. 38–53, quotes from pp. 39, 46. for a brief look at the history of 

industrial composites, see a. Brent Strong and michael miles, “metals vs. composites: Breaking 

down the elements,” available at http://mlf.byu.edu/pages/papers/files/metalPlastic.php, and a. Brent 

Strong,“history of composite materials: opportunities and necessities,” available at http://mlf.byu. 

edu/pages/papers/files/history.php (both accessed 18 July 2006). 
Commercial and Economic 135 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

edges of engineering practice since just before the World War ii, but aerospace 

demand proved propulsive through creating a renewed, complex environment of 

experiment and application.39 thus, the materials revolution percolated through 

spacefaring initiatives and was partly propelled by them. 

creativity in instrumentation is remarkably well documented as critical to 

space project capabilities, though in my view the historical issues are relatively 

under-conceptualized and have been researched in a rather scattered way. Similar 

to composites, instrumentation advances got a big boost in the 1940s. two ge 

engineers reported in 1947 that “the exacting requirements for electronic and other 

control and measuring devices during the recent war stimulated rapid progress in the 

improvement of electric instruments and associated components.”40 Yet by the early 

1960s,instrument builders were fretting over what they termed“the measurement gap,” 

echoing the “missile gap” rhetoric of the late 1950s.their concern even had a cold 

war resonance, when aerojet’sV. r. Boulton quoted a Soviet source approvingly: 

it is known that the uniformity, correctness, and correct 

employment of measures and measuring devices is a matter of 

great importance for the national economy, since the use of 

incorrect measures and measuring devices causes unproductive 

losses, leads to an increase in production rejects, and to an 

incorrect assessment of material values.41 

the U.S. industry had grown by 50 percent in four years since 1958 (estimated 

sales rising from $4 billion to $6 billion),42 spurred by the surge of aerospace 

contracting, but the high-precision requirements of space projects forced a complex 

problem to the surface. Boulton explained: 

39. Brent Strong notes that “[i]n the frantic days of the war, among the last parts of an aircraft to 

be designed were the ducts. Since all the other systems were already fixed, the ducts were required 

to go around the other systems, often resulting in ducts that were convoluted, twisting, turning, 

and place[d] in the most difficult to access locations. metal ducts just couldn’t easily be made in 

these ‘horrible’ shapes. composites seemed to be the answer.the composites were hand laid-up on 

plaster mandrels which were made in the required shape.then after the resin had cured, the plaster 

mandrels were broken out of the composite parts. literally thousands of such ducts were made in 

numerous manufacturing plants clustered around the aircraft manufacturing/assembly facilities.” 

See “history of composite materials,” note 38. 

40. d. B. fisk and J. m. Whittenton, “progress in instrument design,” GE Review 50 (october 1947): 

pp.8–11,quote from p.8. 

41. orval linebrink [Battelle], “the measurement gap,” ISA Journal 8 (february 1961): pp. 38–41; 

V. r. Boulton,“economics of instrumentation precision for Space Vehicle development,” Aerospace 

Engineering 20 (march 1961): pp. 30–31, 64–67, quote on p. 30 from Soviet journal measurement 

techniques. See also l. e. howlett, “the crisis in measurement,” The Engineering Journal 44 (april 

1961): pp. 73–76. 

42. “instruments chart rapid growth,” Iron Age 192 (19 September 1963): pp. 70–71. By 1966, 

a technical journal estimated instrumentation sales for r&d alone (not counting production and 

monitoring of installed systems) at $4.5 billion annually. See “instrumentation and the management 

of r&d,” Research/Development 17 (august 1966): pp. 23–36, data on p. 27. 
136 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

ideally a measuring system should be an order of magnitude more 

repeatable and accurate than the system under test . . . so that 

variations in the results from test to test represent primarily the 

variations in performance of the item being tested. realistically, 

the repeatability of most measuring systems is hardly as good as 

that of the systems they are used to evaluate—at least this is true of 

present day rocket propulsion systems ....the uncertainty in [our] 

evaluation results . . . is at present much too large.43 

measurement was the heart of instrumentation, of course, being concerned 

with mass, time, temperature, dimensions, force, stress, vibration, speed, altitude/ 

depth, volume, and flow, gauged through devices operated electrically, optically, 

physically, sonically, etc. Unsurprisingly, the uncertainty that concerned Boulton 

also surfaced in defining the boundaries of instrumentation, as a function and as an 

industry. during the 1950s and 1960s, monitoring and control technics, electric/ 

electronic information processing tools (computers),and simulators were all regarded 

by insiders as elements of the burgeoning instrument family.44 

naSa’s Keith glennan nicely captured the broader situation as the transition 

from mercury to gemini and apollo evolved in 1961: 

proud as we are of our space technology, we must also be 

sensible to its failings.the demand for precision measurements is 

outstripping the best that U.S.science and technology can provide. 

for upcoming space ventures, naSa needs to measure such 

things as engine parts to one-millionth of an inch tolerance, and 

rocket engine thrust to 0.5% accuracy at one million pounds.45 

devices for measuring and reporting spacecraft location through telemetry, 

for accurately assessing temperature, pressure, radiation, stresses and strains, and 

a dozen other dimensions of mission artifact conditions before and after launch 

had to be created or adapted, then tested for precision, and evaluated to discern 

whether what was being measured was directly salient to a critical factor.the rise 

of reliable, precise, and speedy instrumentation as a key dimension of technical 

practice preceded naSa’s inauguration, but its momentum accelerated at a rapid 

pace once piloted spaceflight became a national priority. in addition, the host of 

biomedical spinoffs increasingly described in naSa’s publications has its origins in 

space program monitoring and stressing of human subjects,commencing with flight 

simulators in mercury’s early months and flowing through to biomedical testing 

43. Boulton, pp. 30–31. Boulton observed that aerojet’s 	testing expenses (20,000 tests over five 

years on 20 weapons systems) amounted to as much as 70 percent of project costs—a proportion 

that could be reduced dramatically through improved instrumentation accuracy. 

44. a. g. mcnish, “fundamentals of measurement,” Electro-Technology 71 (may 1963): pp. 113–128; 

“how We’ll measure tomorrow,” Steel 151 (31 december 1962): pp. 20–24. 

45. .t. K. glennan,“taking the measure of Space,” ISA Journal 8 (february 1961): p. 39. 
Commercial and Economic 137 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

at Spacelab and during Shuttle flights. in naSa’s 30th Spinoffs Review (1992), 

instruments comprised a third of the items discussed (28 of 78), which suggests the 

durable significance of innovation in this domain.46 

finally, naSa projects provided test platforms or incubators for a number of 

managerial techniques as well: project management and team-tasking, high-level 

quality control, reliability analyses, and handling concurrency/redesign challenges. 

the project management dimension, building on air force and navy missile 

development practices, is well known. general Sam phillips brought the program 

evaluation and review technique (pert) to the latter stages of project mercury, 

and using this integrated means of charting interdependent task trajectories was 

significant in gemini’s and apollo’s ability to meet deadlines, most notably the 

end-of-decade moon landing target.along the way, naSa and the department of 

defense (dod) devised a cost-sensitive upgrading of pert and a series of now 

widely used protocols:Work Breakdown Structure (1962), the earned Value System 

(1963), and the probabilistic graphical evaluation and review technique (1966).47 

perhaps equally important, aerospace initiatives presented unique management 

problems, which reframed the notion of a project and the position of project 

manager.two parameters dominated: 

first, a specific performance requirement must be met at a 

single point in time under conditions of substantial uncertainty 

and high risk—from a technical as well as from a time-and-cost 

point of view. Second, the project is large, urgent and important 

enough to demand the concentration of company talents to 

fulfill contractual requirements. the project manager is the 

keystone of this pyramid of human and material resources.48 

alongside formalized techniques, effective project managers rapidly developed 

ad hoc and temporary, informal lines of communication in order to tackle problem 

solving, assembled special cross-disciplinary teams to attack bottlenecks, and limited 

insertion of pert and related monitoring devices. as robert rados, who was 

involved in the tiros weather satellite for naSa,explained,the project manager has 

46. naSa’s 	1992 Spinoffs volume (note 1) addresses 22 biomedical technologies, 14 industrial 

productivity,and 12 consumer/home/recreation devices,among the 78 spinoffs profiled.interestingly, 

the 2002 40th anniversary Spinoffs list (note 22) reported just 10 biomedicals (perhaps reflecting 

the reduction of piloted spaceflight), 6 industrial productivity enhancers, and 5 consumer/home 

items. meanwhile, it and communications goods and capabilities numbered 14, while 7 safety and 

security innovations made the list (some specifically referencing 9/11). interestingly, instruments 

dropped to about one-quarter of the 50 spinoffs detailed in the 2002 volume. on simulators, see 

melvin Sadoff and charles harper [naSa-ames],“piloted flight-Simulator research:a critical 

review,”aerospace engineering 21 (September 1962): pp. 50–63. 

47. grant	 cates, “improving project management with Simulation and completion distribution 

functions,”ph.d.dissertation,industrial engineering,University of central florida,2004,chapter 1. 

48. george Steiner,“the project manager’s problems,”Astronautics andAeronautics 4 (June 1966):pp.75–76. 
138 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

to “program for success,” which involves securing the “material basis for continued 

progress” on the work and “creat[ing] an atmosphere that favors ambitious, forward 

looking decisions rather than restrictive and cautious ones.”49 actualizing the concept 

of the innovation manager was crucial, as lockheed head l. eugene root emphasized 

in his 1962 presidential address to the institute of aeronautical Sciences.a key danger 

in merging the engineer/scientist and the manager lay in the skeptical, analytical, and 

conservative outlook which is the desired initial result of scientific training—question 

all propositions,demand proof through more documentation,send back for future study. 

this is a deadly trap for managers in a frontier technology.most great decisions have been 

difficult to support by the facts available at the time. innovative project managers had 

to “demonstrate the ability to make decisions” in the absence of “conclusive feasibility 

studies,” in urgent, high-risk situations with multiple uncertainties.this problem set lay 

well outside the terrain of routinized corporate management.50 

the importance of quality control and components reliability was evident to 

all parties in aerospace manufacturing and spaceflight operations, but here naSa 

practice soon indicated the limits of industrial approaches rather more than their 

utility.three problems surfaced to bedevil projects: (1) insufficient numbers of units 

or iterations in use to make statistically significant reliability or refined quality control 

procedures effective; (2) complexity of devices which presented an “overwhelming 

number of different possible modes of failure”;and (3) the persistent pattern of artifact 

redesign which made it impossible to have a stable object for quality and reliability 

testing.51 as engineers from chrysler’s missile division recounted: 

the large number of unavoidable engineering changes 

superimposed on the 60,000 to 70,000 parts in a specific missile 

system would make it virtually impossible to cope with the 

resultant complexities on a practical basis.experience has shown 

that engineering changes during the first production year of 

49. engelbert 	 Kirschner, “the project manager,” 43 (february 1965): pp. 

56–64, quote from 64.this is a remarkable review of work practice among three pms: rados on 

the tiros satellite at naSa,abraham Schnapf at tiros-rca, and William chalmers on trW’s Vela 

project. on integrative, task-based teams at rocketdyne, see “top-Speed technology puts ideas 

into orbit,” Factory 122 (September 1964): pp. 84–89. 

50. l. eugene root, “our expanding Scientific and technological challenge,” Aerospace Engineering 

21 (december 1962):pp.8–9,68–70 (quotes from p.68). 

51. W. W. hohenner, “manned rocket flight requires a trade-off Between performance and 

complexity,” Westinghouse Engineer 20 (march 1960): pp. 54–58 (quote from p. 56); dorian Shainin, 

“managing a reliability program,” Aerospace Engineering 1 (december 1962): pp. 64, 92–93; e. J. 

lancaster and r.e.Biedenbinder [USaf Ballistic Systems division],“a critique of Qualityassurance 

activity in air force Ballistic missile programs,” Industrial Quality Control 18 (January, february, and 

march 1962): pp. 9–13 (Jan.), pp. 5–9 (feb.), and pp. 5–9 (mar.). See also edward Sharp [naSalewis],“Quality to meet the demands of Space,” IQC 16 (July 1959): pp. 9–11 and John condon 

[naSa],“naSa’s reliability requirements,” IQC 22 (december 1965): pp. 287–289 
Commercial and Economic 139 

Impact of Spaceflight: An Overview 

a missile weapon system average out at approximately 1,100 

changes per week, resulting in as many as 800 modifications in 

inspection and testing instructions.52 

at times like these, the commercial impact of space initiatives was to indicate 

the limits of managerial practice and technique and the need, in complex task 

environments, to combine personalized and detail-oriented management. 

if we return at the close to the positions articulated in this essay’s epigraphs, 

we may well agree with the denver team that the commercial impact of naSa 

innovations was indirect and specialized, and that separating naSa contributions 

from those of military technology projects fragments the web of connections and 

exchanges that experimental development featured.to be sure, exploring aerospace 

technology’s uses, plus the dynamics and constraints involved in its fabrication, can 

help alleviate the handicap of “insufficient information . . . at the level of the firm.” 

Yet, while recognizing how thin historical research still is into these applications, 

we would surely be hard-pressed to concur with alex roland’s assertion that the 

nation “has little to show for [its] investment save circus.” Beneath the satellites, 

probes, and human spaceflights, for a generation or more extensive innovations in 

process, materials, and instrumentation have flowed outward from naSa projects 

and resonated through the industrial economy.their scope can more readily realized 

than their scale can be measured, but their significance is evident. 

52. J.	 f. patrick and f. g. Brune, “Quality instructions for missile production,” Industrial Quality 

Control 19 (September 1962): pp. 19–22 (quote from p. 19). patrick and Brune outlined a dataprocessing approach to tracking revisions in “inspection and test instructions” but admitted that 

“major problems of correlation, up-dating, recording, and distribution of information still remain.” 
140 Societal impact of Spaceflight
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 141

chapter 9 

The Political Economy 

of Spaceflight 

Stephen B. Johnson 

political economy has a long,distinguished history,going at least as far back as the 

eighteenth century.adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) is the most famous 

of these early works; it discussed the complex relationships between economic and 

political activities while at the same time laying the foundation for classical economic 

theory.at that time, and indeed continuing to this day, the question of appropriate 

government policies to spur economic activity to national advantage has remained 

of paramount importance to national leaders. Spaceflight is a prime candidate for 

political-economic analysis, largely because the government-industry nexus has 

remained tightly interlocked. free-market or laissez-faire policies have seldom if 

ever applied to space activities, and the classical economic theories that assume the 

existence of a free market have correspondingly little traction in describing the 

economics of spaceflight. By contrast, political economic approaches are directly 

applicable, due to the continuous and intimate interactions of government, industry, 

and academia in space activities.this essay offers a preliminary exploration of the 

political economy approach to the subject of spaceflight, so as to provide a few paths 

upon which future researchers may tread.1 

1. this approach has been tried at least once before. See m. a. holman, The Political Economy of the 

Space Program (palo alto, ca: pacific Books, 1974). many things have changed since that time, most 

prominently the massive growth of telecommunications and navigation, and the end of the cold war. 
142 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Why Pay to Go into Space? 

to begin to understand the political economy of spaceflight,investigators must 

first understand the reasons why humans are willing to devote significant resources 

to going into space. put another way, what do people “demand” that going into 

space can “supply”?2 

rocketeers achieved the first trips into space with the german V2 ballistic 

missile during World War ii. given that other weapons existed to deliver explosives 

at long distances, what characteristic made the development of ballistic missiles 

appealing? it was not merely the ability to deliver at a long distance, because the 

german luftwaffe had bombers for that purpose. rather, it was the ability to 

do this automatically (without human pilots) and at such high speeds as to make 

interception impossible (their relative invulnerability in flight) that made them of 

such great interest. many nations realized that once the V2 attained operational 

status a new and enormously destructive weapon now existed, one possessing great 

speed and invulnerability.3 

immediately, space became the new “high ground,” coveted by military and 

intelligence organizations for the same reasons they have always wanted to control the 

high ground. from high locations, one can see for very long distances to monitor the 

activities of adversaries.Vast resources have gone into the development of reconnaissance 

satellites of various kinds.the very first satellite development program in the U.S. was 

an air force reconnaissance program. although the military was the first to point 

telescopes and cameras at earth, science too can take advantage of the high ground to 

observe various natural and human-made changes to earth’s land,seas,and atmosphere. 

Weather prediction is vastly improved by viewing the atmosphere from space. 

finally, the sheer difficulty of going into space has posed a challenge and 

an adventure, which makes for dramatic entertainment and, if successful, garners 

respect.the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union had many facets, but 

the human flight program in particular was significantly influenced by the challenge 

and drama of putting and maintaining humans in space. launches have been and 

remain a very dangerous affair; the space race in the 1960s put time pressures on 

both sides to cut corners and try ever-more complex and risky activities, from 

2. this is another way of looking at rationales for spaceflight, as in roger launius’ recent article on the 

subject. this section differs from launius’ account in that i search for specific characteristics of the 

space environment that make it useful, whereas launius’ article stresses the reasons typically given by 

politicians, leaders, and others.those reasons and rationales often simply assume, without any discussion 

or direct statement, the characteristics i discuss here. See roger d. launius,“compelling rationales for 

Spaceflight? history and the Search for relevance,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. 

dick and roger d.launius,ed.(Washington,dc:naSa Sp-2006-4702,2006),pp.37–70. 

3. Benjamin King and timothy Kutta, Impact: The History of Germany’s V-Weapons in World War II 

(rockville centre, nY: Sarpedon, 1998); michael J. neufeld, The Rocket and the Reich: Peenemünde 

and the Coming of the Ballistic Missile Era (new York:the free press, 1995). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 143 

extravehicular activities (eVas) to putting men on the moon.though less dramatic, 

the Soviets set many long-duration space records on the Salyut and Mir space stations 

as their response to american lunar success. 

the robotic space race also had its sense of adventure and exploration,as the U.S. 

and Soviet Union sent probes farther and farther out into the solar system, with the 

U.S. in particular making amazing discoveries that caught the attention of the world. 

more recently, the ability to create “virtual exploration” through mars rovers in the 

1990s and 2000s brought the space program into the homes of anyone with a computer 

hooked up to the World Wide Web. this form of exploration became increasingly 

popular to a generation brought up on computer games and the internet. 

the drama of human flight and the wonder of astronomical discoveries interest 

young people as well as adults.this fact provides another justification for spaceflight: its 

ability to lure young people to careers in science and engineering.developed economies 

require scientists and engineers to function and to continue to spur economic growth 

through the development of new technologies, making education in mathematics, 

science, and engineering a priority. Spaceflight lures students into these fields (the 

“space and dinosaurs”phenomenon),and hence one of its justifications for government 

spending is as a mechanism to increase the supply of technically capable citizens. 

technical advances often bring economic opportunities and growth.Without 

question, spaceflight has created or propagated a number of technical advances, 

some of which have had significant impacts on earth. examples include digital 

imagery enhancement, which is now often used in medical applications; fireproof 

space suit materials, which are now used in firemen’s gear; and testing of food for 

astronauts, which contributed to food testing programs worldwide.these so-called 

spinoffs have frequently been cited as reasons for funding the space program.What 

has made space a particularly effective generator of spinoffs is the fact that the space 

environment is extreme or unusual in a variety of ways. these differences force 

scientists and engineers to think in new ways about how to accomplish tasks in 

space, which in turn create novel technologies and new ideas. Spinoffs have thus 

become another classical argument for government funding of space activities.4 

4. naSa publishes its annual magazine Spinoff to advertise this aspect of space. See also david Baker, 

Inventions from Outer Space: Everyday Uses for NASA Technology (new York: random house, 2000). 

the counter-argument is that you can spend the money directly on those applications on earth and 

get more “bang for the buck.”the counter-counter-argument is that just allocating money to those 

earth applications does not guarantee that people would have conceived of those solutions.in other 

words, the uniqueness of the application requires people to think differently than they otherwise 

would do,regardless of the money spent.my opinion is that spending money in two different places 

gets you two different sets of technology, both of which may be useful but in different ways.there 

has also much debate about the exact quantity and quality/nature of space spinoffs. Some argue 

that space programs are very conservative and hence are not really innovators. others note that in 

the 1950s and 1960s they were not so conservative. my view leans more toward the innovative side. 

Some areas have been consistently at the forefront of technologies, such as telecommunications, 

autonomy, lightweight materials, and certain human physiology applications. 
144 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

in the long run, space offers the potential of the resources of the universe, 

which will likely become increasingly important as earth’s resources dwindle 

through exploitation and use.to date, the only space resource that has been used 

has been solar power to power spacecraft, but the potential for mineral resources on 

asteroids and other celestial bodies exists, should the advance of technologies and 

the economics on earth or in space make it viable. 

one truly final argument has attracted lower levels of interest and funding, 

although the argument itself goes back to the beginning of modern space activities.in 

the late nineteenth century,lord Kelvin argued that the theories of thermodynamics 

implied that the Sun was only some tens of millions years old and is continuing to 

cool, implying that life on earth had not been around that long and furthermore 

could not survive much longer.5 Since then, scientific discoveries and theories have 

furthered arguments about the potential future of longevity of life on earth. By the 

1950s astrophysicists theorized that the Sun will eventually become a red giant star, 

burning out any life on earth, though billions of years in the future.6 however, by 

the 1990s, scientists had evidence that a massive asteroid hitting earth millennia ago 

had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species on earth.a similar 

strike would likewise almost certainly destroy humanity. finally, the invention of the 

atomic bomb and the hydrogen bomb by the early 1950s showed that humans had 

the potential to destroy all human life with human-made weapons. 

for all of these ills, many space enthusiasts argue that humans must leave the 

planet in order to survive. in this case, space is simply “anywhere but earth,” since 

in the long run earth is doomed.a more positive view is that humans can build a 

new utopia away from the perils and contaminating influences of earth. in both its 

negative survival and positive utopian forms, this argument entices some to support 

space advocacy groups and to become involved in the space program. although this 

“ultimate motivation” is quite important for many individuals to become involved in 

space activities and to get space activities started when little funding is available, in 

practice this has had little economic impact because funding generally requires an appeal 

to hard-headed politicians and non-space leaders who require near-term, practical uses. 

the main discernible results of these concerns are modest increases of scientific funding 

in the 1990s and early twenty-first century to search for near-earth asteroids. 

in summary, space has several enticing features that lure military, civilian, and 

commercial organizations and individuals to spend money to take advantage of 

them. Understanding the political and economic processes and structural features 

by which this money is spent is the task of political economy. Several approaches to 

5. Joe d. Burchfield, Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth (chicago: University of chicago press, 1975, 

1990), p. 43 in the 1990 edition. 

6. Jean-louis tassoul and monique tassoul, A Concise History of Solar and Stellar Physics (princeton, nJ: 

princeton University press, 2004). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 145 

space economics and commerce appear in the research and trade literature, each of 

which sheds light on different aspects of the subject. 

the Uses and abuses of economic data 

to gauge the economic impact of space activities, it is frequently desirable to 

provide quantitative measures.7 as with many other efforts to quantify social activities, 

this is an activity fraught with methodological dangers and problems. enumerating a 

few of the more common complications of providing quantitative measures will provide 

a counterbalance to the danger of believing too literally some of the more typical 

quantitative measures provided by various government and nongovernment sources. 

in general, we can characterize economic activities as chains of suppliers and 

consumers. for example, diSh network provides television service in my home, 

and i am thus a consumer of a particular satellite service and diSh network is 

the supplier. diSh network in turn purchases satellites from manufacturers such 

as Boeing or european aeronautic defence and Space company (eadS). in this 

linkage, diSh network becomes the consumer and Boeing or eadS the supplier. 

Similarly, Boeing and eadS purchase thousands of components from various 

subsystem and component vendors, and so on. 

one unfortunately common problem is to count the purchases or revenues 

at more than one location along the chain, thus doubling or tripling the estimated 

sector size.there are at least two ways to battle this problem.the simplest is to pick 

one consistent link in the chain and measure at only that location.depending on the 

interest of the analyst, different links will be of more or less interest as the measuring 

location of choice. this works well to measure the size of a given space sector, 

such as satellite manufacturing or space telecommunications.another method is to 

count only the locations where the money is actually spent on people,which ideally 

correlates to measuring the number of personnel involved at each link along the 

chain.this method is helpful in determining structural changes in a sector, such as 

determining the relative sizes and change in sizes of different companies in a supply 

chain. for example, analysis shows that in the european aerospace industry, prime 

contractors have grown in comparison to subsystem contractors in the early years 

of the twenty-first century.8 

another issue is selection of revenues or expenditures to measure money flows. 

although it is typical and often required for companies to provide revenue figures, 

it may be more useful to measure expenditures because expenditures also include 

7. the	 best overview of space economic data sources is henry r. hertzfeld, Space Economic 

Data (Washington, dc: U.S. department of commerce, office of Space commercialization, 

december, 2002). 

8. aSd-eurospace, Facts and Figures, The European Space Industry in 2005 (paris: aSd-eurospace, 

June, 2006). 
146 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

funding acquired through stock sales,bank loans,or other borrowing mechanisms.for 

example,if one tried to measure the economic impact of the communications Satellite 

corporation in the mid-1960s, measuring revenues would be deceptive because its 

revenues were very small in comparison to expenditures, as it spent funds raised from 

stock offerings.9 a similar problem applies to assessing the impact of the iridium 

venture in the 1990s. in this case, the company went bankrupt and thus its money 

spent to acquire telecommunications satellites ultimately came from outside investors 

who received little or no return on their investment. in both cases, these expenditures 

created a temporary spike in satellite communications economic activity. 

government data sources, when available, are often reliable measures but they 

only cover certain topics of interest to those government institutions.thus one can 

get accurate figures on government expenditures, including those to government 

contractors. Some organizations, such as naSa, gather their statistics into historical 

data books that are extremely useful for this sort of research.the U.S.department of 

defense’s (dod) space expenditures are well documented and can be extracted for 

those who have the patience to go through the defense budget line by line, except 

for “black” programs, which are hidden throughout the defense budget. naSa is 

required to publish its annual Aeronautics and Space Report to the President, which 

provides a quick and useful overview of government air and space expenditures. 

the department of transportation publishes quarterly reports that provide 

excellent data on the politics and economics of launchers, whereas the department 

of commerce’s office of Space commercialization performs a variety of studies 

and provide occasional reports on major space sectors.the U.S. census Bureau has 

its own economic classification system for industries in the U.S., with aerospace 

products and parts manufacturing (north american industry classification System 

[naicS] 3364) being the primary category in which space activities are classified. 

other nations usually have similar documentation, but access to the data can be 

difficult for noncitizens and,even when available,the nuances of each system require 

significant amounts of time and effort to learn. thus, an international picture of 

government space expenses is remarkably difficult to acquire. the Space policy 

institute of george Washington University performed an annual survey of civilian 

space programs and results published annually in Aerospace America.Unfortunately,in 

recent years,this survey has been halted due to increasing national barriers to release 

of this information.10 

forcorporations,spacebusinessisoftenonlyoneofseveralproductlines,andextracting 

the proportion that is space-related cannot be easily done unless the companies themselves 

release data that separates them.Space News has annual surveys leading to publication of its 

“top 50” space manufacturers, and other lists for the top telecommunications operators, 

9. david J.Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications 1945-1965 (Washington, dc: Smithsonian 

institution press, 2002). 

10. hertzfeld, Space Economic Data, p. 14; e-mail, hertzfeld to author, 8 april 2007. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 147 

direct broadcast companies,and so on.the data are only as reliable as the companies’efforts 

and willingness to provide accurate data,but are readily available and occasionally useful. 

industry associations also collect a variety of economic data on the aerospace 

industry. the aerospace industries association (aia) publishes its annual Aerospace 

Facts and Figures for the United States, while eurospace provides its Eurospace Facts 

and Figures for the space industry in europe. the two associations use different 

methodologies for somewhat different objectives. the aia data focus on overall 

aerospace manufacturer revenues and employment, and separates them into air and 

space domains. eurospace uses a sophisticated methodology to track expenditures 

at different industrial levels to do structural analyses, as well as to track the overall 

revenue and employment figures. 

finally, it is important to use launch statistics, which each nation is required 

by the registration convention to supply to the United nations. these data, by 

their nature, are a straightforward “apples-to-apples” comparison of what actually 

goes into space,without the complications of currency conversions or measurement 

complexities (though one needs to distinguish between launch attempts and launch 

successes). Simple comparisons and assessments of launches and the satellites placed 

in orbit provide an excellent counterbalance to economic data.a couple of examples 

show the criticality of using these data. one major problem in the assessment of 

space activities is estimating the economic importance of secret reconnaissance 

programs, since the economic data remains classified.to get around this problem, 

by using declassified information about the corona program and its design we can 

estimate the rough costs of a corona satellite.11 the cost of thor-delta launchers of 

the period can also be estimated from civilian launch data. combining this with the 

number of corona/reconnaissance launches that occurred (which can be extracted 

from the launch data), one can estimate annual expenditures on these programs. 

another troubling economic problem is estimation of the economic value of 

Soviet and russian or chinese programs. in the case of the former Soviet Union or 

china, budget figures are not available or, in the few cases where they are, they are 

unreliable due to the lack of convertibility between capitalist and socialist economic 

systems. in the case of russia, the value of the ruble is extremely low compared 

to the dollar or euro, so reports of russian government expenditures on space 

programs lead to a significant underestimate of its economic importance in russia 

and worldwide. for all of these types of cases, launch data can provide a means to 

provide a first order of magnitude estimate. 

overall, it is important to compare the data from these various sources to assess 

their reasonability,while recognizing the means by which,and the purposes for which, 

they were gathered. only in this way can we avoid glaring mistakes and also avoid the 

all-too-easy belief in the absolute validity of the various enumerations that exist. 

11. despite official classification of corona satellite costs, this came out in public literature in an interview of 

a major participant,frank Buzard,as $5 million per corona and about $500,000 per camera,for a total of 

some $5.5 million per corona satellite.“an interview with frankW.Buzard,”Quest 13/4 (2006):p.36. 
148 Launch Attempts

0

80604020

160140120100

19571960196319661969197219751978198119841987199019931996199920022005 

Multi-nationalOther NationIndiaJapanChinaEuropeUSUSSR 

Figure 9.1—Launch attempts by nation, 1957–2005.12 

Societal impact of Spaceflight 

12. data compiled by author, using several sources, including the 1996 TRW Space Log, the Aeronautics and Space Report 

of the President (annual),the Quarterly Launch Reports,department of transportation (quarterly),and european Space Vehicle launcher development organisation records from the eSa historical archives of the european University 

institute.there are several discrepancies between these sources, which i have tried to resolve. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 149 

National View 

one common viewpoint from which to assess space programs is a“national view,” 

in which the space activities of each nation are compared.thus one can compare national 

government space funding levels, commercial contracts of corporations categorized by 

nation, the space policies adopted by various nations, the number of satellites launched 

by each nation, and so on.the emphasis of this sort of classification is usually to assess 

the relative effectiveness of a nation’s government policies as compared to other nations’ 

policies, typically to improve economic competitiveness vis-à-vis other nations. 

to take a simple example, an annual tabulation of all orbital launch attempts— 

categorized by nation and projected from 1957 to the present—gives a simple indicator 

of the relative scale of investment by each nation in space activities.Shown in figure 9.1, 

this way of assessing space activities shows that the U.S. and the Soviet Union and its 

successors have been by far the dominant space powers.although this is not particularly 

surprising, what is surprising is how many more spacecraft the Soviet Union launched 

during the 1970s and 1980s than did any other nation.this seems to indicate that the 

Soviet Union was the dominant space power during this time.in addition,any thought 

of the supposed recent demise of russia as a space power should be exorcised by the 

continued frequency of russian launches, both to launch spacecraft from other nations 

as well as satellites from russia and the other former Soviet republics. 

When we compare instead national government budgets as shown in figure 9.2, 

we get an entirely different view of the relative economic significance of the U.S.versus 

the Soviet Union.here,the U.S.appears as the overwhelmingly dominant space power. 

instead of a time series, i here only show a single year because it is extraordinarily 

Figure 9.2—Government space spending, 2005.12 
150 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

difficult to compare budget figures for capitalist nations to their communist 

counterparts.even when the budget figures can be compared—when both nations 

are “capitalist” and their exchange rates theoretically reflect the relative value of 

their currency—these figures remain problematic. is it really true, for example, that 

russia’s program is less important at an international level than,say,Japan’s?this seems 

implausible, given the number of launches of each nation.13 

even such simple comparisons as government spending have inherent difficulties. 

to make a fully legitimate comparison, each nation must gather the relevant statistics 

and those statistics must be comparable from nation to nation. in general, however, 

the statistics, even when they are gathered, are not strictly comparable. in some cases, 

the statistics exist but remain classified. reconnaissance and intelligence budgets are a 

classic example. or, in the case of russia, some of its government space institutions are 

“commercial”in that they sell their services.for example,is U.S.government funding of 

russia to build international Space Station modules to be tracked as a U.S. or russian 

figure? Similarly,if South Korea’s government purchases a communications satellite from 

a european vendor, does this reflect South Korean or european space competitiveness? 

it depends on the question the analyst is trying to answer. 

another way to assess the relative importance of a nation’s space program would 

be to compare the number of citizens employed in that nation’s space industry.this 

is probably a more reliable way to make apples-to-apples comparisons, but the data 

are difficult to acquire. 

although most national space policies are focused on particular space sectors 

such as communications or navigation, a few affect many space activities.the most 

prominent of these in the U.S. are the international traffic in arms regulations 

(itar). Since space technologies are by their nature tied to a host of military 

concerns,they are subject to itar.this has been particularly important in the export 

of communications satellites. in 1999, congress, responding to perceived technology 

transfer of american satellite technologies to china, placed communications satellites 

on the “munitions list,”governed by itar.the transfer of export licensing authority 

from the department of commerce to the department of State significantly hurt 

american manufacturers, as the regulations have slowed and in some cases prevented 

export of american satellites, to the benefit of european companies.14 

the purpose of these national comparisons is often to assess relative national 

economic competitiveness so as to determine the effectiveness of space policies. 

although in a general sense these figures provide a relative scale of activities by different 

nations, they are largely useless for policy assessment.this is because space policies 

largely refer to specific sectors of space, such as navigation, space launch, remote 

sensing, human flight, or science. in other cases, the policies refer to intergovernment 

13. aSd-eurospace, Facts and Figures,The European Space Industry in 2005 (paris:aSd-eurospace, June, 

2006), p. 12. european governments spent €2.662 billion on space products in 2005. 

14. James a.Vedda,“Space commerce,” in Space Politics and Policy:An Evolutionary Perspective, ed. eligar 

Sadeh (dordrecht,the netherlands: Kluwer academic publishers, 2002), pp. 219–220. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 151 

relations,technology transfer,regulations over foreign corporate ownership,and so on. 

it is very difficult to translate from a policy decision or proposal to an unambiguous 

impact on the overall space budget or launch figures.these figures are generally too 

high to be of direct utility.We must use other means to be politically useful. 

Functional View 

another typical way to assess space activities is by functional view: military, 

civilian, and commercial.this tripartite division recognizes that there are three very 

different motivations, and usually three very different sets of organizations, that are 

involved in space. 

the military, which for the purposes of this paper will include civilian 

intelligence-gathering organizations, exists to provide national security. for 

millennia,the military has had its own unique set of institutions,starting with armies 

and navies, expanding to include air forces in the early twentieth century, and space 

assets with the advent of the Space age. initially controlled by the military, space 

endeavors were the province of one or more of the armed services. 

in the Soviet Union there was no strict separation of military and civilian 

efforts and, of course, no commercial activities in the socialist state.the ministry of 

armaments controlled the development of ballistic missile and space programs until 

1965, when they were transferred to the ministry of general machine Building. 

the air force trained cosmonauts, and from 1959 to 1981 the Strategic missile 

forces, a branch of the military, operated all ballistic missile and space systems.15 Was 

the launch of Yuri gagarin in april 1961 a “civilian” activity, even though it was 

operated by the military? Similarly, the Soviet space station program of the 1970s 

and 1980s consisted of stations for both military (almaz) and civilian (doS—long 

duration Station) purposes, but both programs were operated by the military and 

all were called Salyut and proclaimed to be civilian systems. 

initial space efforts in the U.S. were divided between the three military 

services: army, navy, and air force. all three services began developing ballistic 

missiles and satellites. the army’s primary space organizations, the army Ballistic 

missile agency and the Jet propulsion laboratory, were transferred to naSa by 

1960, at which point army space efforts focused on antiballistic missile systems and 

satellite communications.While the navy’s Vanguard program and personnel were 

transferred to naSa, the navy managed to retain most of its space organizations, 

which concentrated on space navigation, communications, and with the national 

reconnaissance office, reconnaissance.the air force garnered the lion’s share of 

military space programs, with the primary roles for space system development and 

space launch.it was involved with space reconnaissance,communications,navigation, 

tracking, and a host of other functions. 

15. asif a. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo:The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (Washington, 

dc: naSa Sp-2000-4408, 2000), pp. 891–895. 
152 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

the U.S. civilian space program came into official existence in 1958 when 

naSa was created to manage the civilian space effort separately from military space 

activities. civilian space programs are intended for the “public good,” including 

programs for weather forecasting, technology development, national prestige, 

education, and science. Separation of civilian from military space efforts in the U.S. 

is not always obvious. for example, the U.S. navy ran the Vanguard program, which 

was intended for “civilian” scientific purposes.although generally categorized as a 

military space activity because the navy ran the program, its function was civilian 

in intent. many science and technology programs are similarly difficult to classify. 

So, for example, the clementine probe to the moon was a military program to test 

technologies but it performed civilian science functions. many geodetic satellites 

are run by civilian institutions but were mainly motivated by military purposes, 

such as ballistic missile targeting. it has been customary to consider all nonmilitary 

government space expenditures (that is,money spent by any government institution 

not part of the dod, with the exception of intelligence) as “civilian.” 

other civilian space programs came into being in a number of nations soon 

thereafter, sometimes as national civilian agencies, such as france’s centre national 

d’Études Spatiales (cneS), and sometimes divided among a variety of institutions, 

as occurred in the United Kingdom,West germany, and Japan. 

commercial space efforts began very early in the U.S., with the launch of 

american telephone & telegraph’s (at&t) privately funded the telstar satellite 

in 1962. the international telecommunications Satellite organization (intelsat) 

came into being in 1964 as a multinational consortium to run the international 

communications satellite network.although the U.S. created a private corporation, 

the communications Satellite corporation, to manage its shares in the new 

organization, other nations usually assigned government organizations to represent 

their interests in intelsat.this is because most nations ran their telephone networks 

as national public services. So, although intelsat has usually been classified as 

“commercial” by american analysts, other nations considered it a civilian activity. 

many private corporations depend mainly or even totally on government 

funding. for example, the private space company United Space alliance, a joint 

venture of Boeing and lockheed martin that services the Space Shuttle, is totally 

dependent on the government. is it “commercial”? a number of space companies 

that did not depend on government funding, such as panamSat and directV came 

into existence by the 1980s and 1990s. 

other commercial-civilian hybrids abound.arianespace and Spot image were 

established as commercial companies but were partly owned by the french government, 

whereas the launchers and satellites they operated were developed by governments 

(the european Space agency [eSa] for arianespace, and france for Spot image).16 

16. J. Krige, a. russo, and l. Sebesta, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987,Volume ii 

(noordwijk,the netherlands: eSa Sp-1235, 2000), pp. 472–481. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 153 

after the collapse of the Soviet Union,the russian government institution Khrunichev 

sold launch services to other nations and to private entities, and owns shares of private 

companies. in the space launch industry, it is customary to classify any launch that is up 

for bid by launch providers as commercial.this can be true even if the launch provider 

(supply) and the satellite owner (demand) are government-owned! commercial often 

means “competed,” not necessarily “private.” other confusing cases have existed in 

the past, such as when private companies martin marietta and general dynamics 

competed with the U.S. government (naSa) and with the european public-private 

hybrid company arianespace to launch intelsat satellites in the early 1980s. certainly 

there was competition, but in this competition private entities such as martin marietta 

and general dynamics stood little chance against the rival governments.of course,one 

can also question how “commercial” martin marietta and general dynamics really 

were, since the vast bulk of their funding (and many upgrades to their launch vehicles) 

were funded by the U.S. government.17 

one government’s military or civilian expenditure is often a commercial 

company’s profit or another government’s revenue, so it is often a matter of choice 

or convenience to decide whether an expenditure or revenue is military, civilian, or 

commercial.even with all of the complications just described,the tripartite division 

of military, civilian, and commercial does provide more visibility into the relative 

scale of activities, now divided by major function: national security, public good, or 

economic profit.this gives a somewhat more informative view of the relative scale 

of activities for these different national functions. 

figure 9.3 shows the relative size of military, civilian, and commercial activities 

in the U.S. in 2005, as defined by government expenditures for military and civilian 

purposes, and by revenues for commercial activities. Strictly speaking, these are not 

the same things and so the comparison is not as direct as one would like, but the 

statistics on commercial activities are usually based on revenues, not expenditures. if 

one could construct similar statistics for other nations, national comparisons could 

be made regarding the relative priorities of each nation.it is quite clear that after the 

collapse of the Soviet Union, U.S. military space expenditures far exceed those of 

any other nation, with russia probably remaining in second place and china third, 

with europe not too far behind china. figure 9.4 shows the relative proportions of 

european space activities,which shows the much smaller proportion of expenditures 

on military space as compared to civilian and commercial activities.expenditures by 

all other nations are significantly smaller than these four. israel’s space activities also 

have a large military slant, and recently Japan has funded military space activities for 

communications and reconnaissance. 

17. Joan lisa Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry (Baltimore, md: Johns hopkins University press, 

1999), pp. 124–132. 
154 Societal impact of Spaceflight

Figure 9.3—Relative size of U.S. space functions, 2005.18 

Figure 9.4—Relative size of European space functions, 2005.19 

18. these civilian and military figures come from the 2005 U.S. national budget, Budget of the United 

States government,Washington,dc:government printing office.it can be found online at http:// 

www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/ (accessed January 2007). the commercial figures is a rough estimate 

derived from several sources, including Space foundation, The Space Report 2006 (colorado 

Springs, co: Space foundation, 2006), the international Space Business council, and department 

of commerce publications. 

19. aSd-eurospace,Facts and Figures,the European Space Industry in 2005 (paris:aSd-eurospace,2006),p.12. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 155 

the major trend over the nearly 50 years of spaceflight has been the growth of 

commercial activities relative to civilian and military expenditures. from essentially 

zero in the 1950s, by the early twenty-first century the commercial aspects of space 

have grown to significance, with revenues in the tens of billions of dollars each 

year. military spending has remained relatively constant or growing over the years, 

whereas civilian space spending has remained essentially fixed after the initial bump 

of the 1960s space race. 

Institutional Structure 

a typical economic view of an industry subdivides that industry into the 

major suppliers and then lower-tier companies down the supply chain.the lowest 

tier provides small components to the next higher tier, which integrates them into 

larger units, and then ultimately to the top-tier provider, which provides the full 

system or service to the consumer.this type of analysis can be applied to the space 

industry or, more accurately, to the aerospace industry.20 

While some “pure” space companies exist, many space products are supplied 

by larger companies with diversified product lines. in most, though not all, cases, 

these are aerospace companies that provide a host of aviation, space, and defense 

products to governments and to other companies. Boeing is one of the best known, 

being most famous as a commercial airline manufacturer. however, in 2006 Boeing 

also manufactured the delta launcher, a variety of commercial, civilian, and military 

satellites, and many other defense-related products, along with a few other smaller 

lines of business.the eadS is the largest european aerospace manufacturer, with a 

similarly diversified portfolio. 

the largest companies, which supply entire launch vehicles, satellites, aircraft, 

and missiles, are known as prime contractors. after decades of consolidation, in 

the U.S. and europe these had been reduced to a very small number: lockheed 

martin, Boeing, northrop grumman, raytheon, eadS, and alcatel.these gigantic 

companies consisted of what had formerly been many smaller companies, though 

in their time these had been considered large prime contractors in their own right, 

such as douglas, martin, messerschmidt, hawker Siddeley, mcdonnell, grumman, 

Sud-aviation,dornier,north american,and so on.21the massive prime contractors 

20. definitions of prime, subcontractors, and component suppliers can be found in U.S. general 

accounting office,“Best practices: dod can help Suppliers contribute more to Weapon System 

programs,” (march 1998) gao/nSiad-98-87. See also Keith hayward, The World Aerospace 

Industry: Collaboration and Competition (london: duckworth & rUSi, 1994), p. 6. 

21. roger e. Bilstein, The American Aerospace Industry (new York: twayne publishers, 1996), pp. 117, 

176–177, 215–218; Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry, pp. 12–13; european aeronautic 

defence and Space company, On the Wings of Time: A Chronology of EADS (2003), found online 

at http://www.eads.com/1024/en/eads/history/wings_of_time/wings_of_time.html (accessed January 

2007);alcatel-lucent Web site, http://www.alcatel-lucent.com (accessed July 2007). 
156 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

engaged in horizontal consolidation (merging with their peer prime contractors) and 

vertical consolidation (acquiring lower-tier companies that supplied components, 

subsystems, and services to them). one can see marxist capitalist dynamics behind 

many of these mergers. during economic slowdowns, less profitable companies exit 

the market, go out of business, or are acquired by more successful firms. 

these mergers could not have occurred unless the governments of the 

relevant nations approved, or at least declined to intervene to prevent them.22 

antitrust regulations in the U.S. and europe meant that mergers were reviewed 

to ensure they did not unduly hamper competition. in europe, additional 

complications ensued because the mergers needed to create companies on the 

scale of the american behemoths had to cross national lines. no single european 

nation had a large enough aerospace industry to compare with the american 

domestic market. in both the U.S. and europe, many mergers occurred from 

the late 1940s through the 1960s, and then again in the 1990s and early 2000s. 

the truly massive companies that exist in 2006 came into being only after the 

dod—no doubt in consultation with other parts of the U.S. government—told 

the major aerospace companies in 1993 that now that the cold war had ended 

there was not enough business to support them all at the levels to which they 

were accustomed, that there would be fewer of them after a few years, and that 

the U.S. government would look favorably on consolidation.23 

observing events in the U.S., european aerospace officials in both private 

industry and government concluded that they could not compete with the U.S. 

unless they, too, allowed the formation of truly massive companies. By the early 

2000s, the european consortia and so-called national champion companies merged 

into the multinational aerospace companies eadS and alcatel, on scales nearly the 

size of Boeing and lockheed martin.24 one could argue that marxist dynamics 

apply—governments, responding to or in submission to the large companies, 

allow them to merge, though many of the conditions attached to various mergers 

somewhat weaken the argument. 

Below the giants are second-tier companies. these are often very large 

companies in their own right, often with significant or preponderant business 

interests outside of aerospace.in the U.S.,these include companies such as honeywell, 

well known for building thermostats for private homes but also a primary builder 

of avionic systems in aerospace; international Business machines (iBm), the 

world’s largest computer manufacturer; Bendix, supplier of a variety of electronic 

22. for a general discussion of these mergers prior to 1994, see Keith hayward, The World Aerospace 

Industry: Collaboration and Competition (london: duckworth & rUSi, 1994), chapter 3. 

23. Walter J. Boyne, Beyond the Horizons:The Lockheed Story (new York: St. martin’s press, 1998); John 

a. tirpak, “the distillation of the defense,” Air Force Magazine (July 1998), http://www.afa.org/ 

magazine/July1998/0798industry.asp (accessed 13 January 2007). 

24. european aeronautic defence and Space company, On the Wings of Time: A Chronology of EADS 

(2003).alcatel-lucent Web site, http://www.alcatel-lucent.com, (accessed July 2007). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 157 

components; litton, manufacturer of gyroscopes and other electronic systems; pratt 

& Whitney, builder of jet and rocket engines; rocket engine manufacturer aerojet; 

and a number of others. 

Some second-tier suppliers also build full systems as well as components.they 

are considered second-tier mainly because they are much smaller than the giants. 

orbital Sciences is a typical example, building small satellites and launchers. Ball 

aerospace, which is a part of the larger Ball corporation known to homemakers 

as the maker of fruit jars, has built many scientific satellites over the years and is a 

manufacturer of star trackers. 

Below the subsystem suppliers are component suppliers. these consist of 

hundreds of small companies, each of which typically specializes in a small set of 

products. examples include adcole, a well-known maker of sun sensors; eaglepicher, the manufacturer of most space-qualified batteries; and moog, which 

manufactures actuators.25 

one can analyze the relative success of these tiers, as shown in figure 9.5. from 

1997 to 2002, second-tier companies in europe declined dramatically in comparison 

to first- and third-tier corporations, based on the political-economic dynamics of the 

mergers during that period. 

political factors influenced the formation of collaborations between private 

companies and with governments. european companies formed complex alliances, 

becoming official consortia starting in the late 1960s and 1970s to ensure that each nation 

that contributed to a space project’s funding would benefit by contracts to companies 

in their nations in return. in 1995, lockheed martin and rockwell international (later 

Boeing) created a joint venture known as United Space alliance to operate the Space 

Shuttle, as the U.S. government pressed for privatization of Shuttle operations. the 

fall of the Soviet Union presented new opportunities for multinational joint ventures 

between launcher companies and organizations, such as international launch Services 

(lockheed martin and Khrunichev State research and production Space center),26 

Starsem (arianespace, eadS, russian federal Space agency, and Samara Space 

center),27 and Sea launch (Boeing, rocket and Space corporation energia [rKK 

energia], Sdo Yuzhnoe [Ukraine], and Kvaerner aSa).28 these organizations, which 

had both russian and Western ownership, made it easier for the U.S. and european 

governments to purchase russian launches. Because Western companies profited by 

the purchase of russian launch services, purchasing the significantly cheaper russian 

launches was made more politically palatable. 

25. many examples of various-sized suppliers can be found in, for example, 2004 North American Space 

Directory, 7th ed. (Bethesda, md: Space publications llc, 2004), http://www.SpaceBusiness.com 

(accessed January 2007). Similar directories exist for europe. 

26. international launch Services Web site, http://www.ilslaunch.com/aboutus/legacy/ (accessed 13 

January 2007). 

27. Starsem Web site, http://www.starsem.com/starsem/starsem.html (accessed 13 January 2007). 

28. Sea launch Web site, http://www.boeing.com/special/sea-launch/ (accessed January 2007). 
158 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Europe Industry Structure 

0.0 

500.0 

1,000.0 

1,500.0 

2,000.0 

2,500.0 

3,000.0 

3,500.0 

4,000.0 

1996199719981999200020012002 

M Euros

Large Int 

Subsys 

Equip 

Figure 9.5—Turnover of first-, second-, and third-tier suppliers in Europe from 1996–2002 (Source: Eurospace). 

Some joint ventures, such as international launch Services, included 

government organizations as partners in a commercial enterprise. in other cases, 

such as arianespace, Spot image, and rKK energia, governments owned some 

shares in the otherwise private companies. in many of these cases, the owning 

governments turned over designs,hardware,or facilities to the company they owned, 

with the agreement that the private company merely had to cover the operational 

costs but not the development costs of the systems given to them. governments 

also create commercial arms of their organizations, such as antrix corporation, the 

commercial arm of india’s department of Space.29 

governments also hired or created nonprofit organizations to perform various 

functions related to space activities. in the U.S., the aerospace corporation and 

mitre corporation were both created with the guidance and approval of the U.S. 

air force (USaf) to provide “systems engineering and technical direction” to 

private contractors building space systems.the aerospace corporation, created in 

1960, performed these functions initially for the USaf ballistic missile programs 

and later for USaf space satellite programs.30 mitre did the same for electronics and 

command and control systems such as the complex built at cheyenne mountain, 

colorado, for the north american aerospace defense command (norad).31 

29. antrix Web site, http://www.antrix.gov.in/ (accessed 13 January 2007). 

30. the aerospace corporation, The Aerospace Corporation: Its Work, 1960–1980 (el Segundo, ca:the 

aerospace corporation, 1980). 

31. davis dyer and michael aaron davis, Architects of Information Advantage:The MITRE Corporation 

since 1958 (newport, ri: community communications corporation, 1998). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 159 

other nonprofit institutions were hired to perform functions normally run 

by government organizations, such as the california institute of technology’s Jet 

propulsion laboratory (Jpl), which was initially hired by army ordnance to build 

ballistic missiles. it then became, in effect, a naSa field center, building and managing 

most of naSa’s deep space probes and its deep Space network. Jpl often hired and 

managed contractors just as other true government organizations did.32 the Johns 

hopkins Universityapplied physics laboratory (apl) became a prime contractor both 

for the dod and for naSa,competing against profit-making corporations to integrate 

and operate satellites.33 the charles Stark draper laboratories of the massachusetts 

institute of technology built components, such as the apollo inertial guidance system, 

and Stanford University built the gravity probe B satellite for naSa. 

government space organizations also vary significantly from country to 

country.although many nations, including the U.S. and france, quickly centralized 

their civilian space programs, others, including Japan, canada, the Soviet Union, 

germany, and the United Kingdom, operated space programs for decades before 

creating national space agencies.many smaller nations continue to operate their space 

programs without a centralized civilian space agency. naSa initially centralized 

civilian space programs but,since the 1960s,other civilian and commercial institutions 

have gained access to, and eventually some control of, various space programs, such 

as the national oceanic and atmospheric administration’s (noaa) operation of 

weather satellites and some remote sensing satellites. 

military programs also showed a variety of institutional forms. generally 

speaking, tension existed between the civilian and military institutions and also 

between the regular armed services (army, navy,air force) and other military and 

intelligence institutions over control of space activities. in the U.S., the USaf was 

the predominant space organization but the army and navy retained significant 

programs; the intelligence agencies maintained significant interests and their own 

programs, either individually or shared with the military services. the dod 

established its own space organizations at times, such as the missile defense agency, 

the descendant of the Strategic defense initiative organization.early on,the Soviet 

Union created separate organizations to control many space activities as part of its 

Strategic rocket forces. in 2001 these became the Space forces. 

By the nature of the communist state, the Soviet Union developed all of its 

initial space programs as government institutions. initially these were “special design 

bureaus” (oKBs) that performed the research and development activities to create 

32. clayton Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program:A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (new 

haven, ct:Yale University press, 1982). 

33. William K. Klingaman, APL—Fifty Years of Service to the Nation: A History of the Johns Hopkins 

University Applied Physics Laboratory (laurel, md:applied physics laboratory, 1993). 
160 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

the novel technologies of ballistic missiles and spacecraft.the design bureaus were 

either newly created or modified from former scientific research institutes (niis). 

once designed, manufacturing of these systems was assigned to manufacturing 

facilities, most typically old World War ii plants. over time, alliances between the 

design bureaus and manufacturing plants stabilized, and in the 1970s they were 

combined into scientific-production associations (npos).With the collapse of the 

Soviet Union, some of these npos were privatized, such as rKK energia, while 

others remained government institutions, such as Khrunichev.34 

Sector View 

perhaps the most useful way to view space activities is by sector, which for the 

purposes of this paper is defined as an economic division in which the suppliers 

compete to provide a specific product line that consumers wish to purchase. Space 

transportation provides examples of how this definition applies.all spacecraft must 

be launched into space, and those who have spacecraft to place there are consumers 

of the space transportation product. at this level of analysis, all launch providers 

are potential suppliers to the spacecraft operators because spacecraft operators 

will generally investigate all possible suppliers and may ask for bids to launch. 

in responding to requests for bids, the launch providers must be aware of their 

competition and set their prices and services based partly on the potential prices 

and services of their competitors. this self-grouping of suppliers and consumers 

defines economic sectors. 

this seems straightforward, but there are always complications. in the 

transportation sector, although it is true that all suppliers are potentially competitors 

for all launches, in practice this is not the case. Some launches, such as U.S. military 

and intelligence satellites,can by law only be provided only by U.S.suppliers.Similar 

restrictions exist for military satellites of other nations. Some european civilian 

launches are restricted to using the ariane launcher, and so on.after the Challenger 

accident of 1986, the Space Shuttle was prohibited from commercial launches and 

soon the military pulled its payloads from the Shuttle as well. other limitations 

are technical. although, in principle, small satellites could be placed in orbit on 

any launcher (in some cases by multiple small satellites on a single launcher), large 

satellites can be put in orbit only by large launchers. only the U.S. Space Shuttle, 

the russian Soyuz, and the chinese long march can place humans in orbit. for 

some purposes we can consider space transportation a single sector, but in practice 

one can argue it consists of several subsectors that are semi-independent of each 

other. Similar reasoning applies to other sectors and subsectors. 

34. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo,table 3. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 161 

Figure 9.6—Space sector sizes, 2006.35 

politics is another reason to group economic activities by sector. in general, 

national laws and policies affect only one or two sectors. for example, a variety of 

laws and policies relate to the development of private remote sensing satellites and 

the regulations that govern sale of imagery from them.these laws have little or no 

bearing on other sectors. Similar sector-specific policies relate to transportation, 

navigation, communications satellites, and so on, making the sector view one of the 

most important ways of understanding economic activity. 

a quick tour of the major sectors provides a view of the scope and scale of 

space endeavors. figure 9.6 provides an estimate as of 2006 of the relative scale of 

the major space sectors. the most obvious deduction from this chart is that the 

communications sector is by far the largest, at roughly $83 billion. it is interesting 

that historical research into space activities gives little indication that this is the 

case, with the overwhelming majority of both academic and nonacademic writing 

focused on the human flight and science programs, with secondary emphases on 

satellite reconnaissance programs and space politics.the other large sectors are of 

approximately equal size:science (including both microgravity and physical sciences); 

navigation; human flight; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (iSr); and 

early warning (eW). remote sensing and meteorology, and transportation, are of 

roughly equal size, in the range of $5–$11 billion annual expenditures.technology 

research and development is in the $2–$3 billion per year range, and the insurance 

sectors are smaller, from $1–$2 billion annually. 

35. author’s estimate, based on assessment of several sources that are described in this chapter. 
162 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Transportation 

no spacecraft arrives in space unless transported there by some launch vehicle. 

launchers originally derived from ballistic missile designs and were therefore initially 

controlled exclusively by the military. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, however, 

both the Soviet Union and the U.S.realized that the initial ballistic missile designs that 

used liquid cryogenic propellants were poor choices for weapons, compared to solid 

and liquid storable designs. cryogenic systems using liquid oxygen provided greater 

performance and thus continued to be used to put spacecraft in orbit,whereas ballistic 

missiles switched to storable technologies that could be launched within minutes or 

seconds instead of the hours or days required for cryogenic systems. 

the connection of ballistic missile with space launcher technologies has 

remained a primary facet of space transportation politics and largely explains the fact 

that throughout the twentieth century no privately funded space launch system has 

succeeded, despite some attempts. governments have generally sought to develop 

launch technologies for both military and civilian purposes and have generally 

prohibited the export or sale of these technologies (or at least current versions of 

these technologies) to others.the U.S., in particular, has taken a variety of measures 

to prevent export of its own launcher technologies (with some exceptions, such as 

the sharing of delta launcher technology with Japan), and has also attempted to 

prevent the export of ballistic missile technologies by other nations, such as russia’s 

sale of KVd-1 rocket engines to india in the 1990s.36 

national control of launcher technologies is the only way to guarantee national 

access to space. no nation or group of nations that has long-term space ambitions or 

militaryinterestsinspacecanaffordtorelysolelyonothernationstoputtheircommercial 

or military payloads in orbit. europe developed its integrated launcher programs, first 

europa in the 1960s and then ariane in the 1970s, to ensure that it could launch its 

own commercial communications satellites in the face of american resistance. china’s 

ballistic missile and launcher programs derived from its desire for military, economic, 

and cultural independence from both Soviet and american models. 

the rise of a commercial space launch industry to provide space transport for 

private or semiprivate payloads posed problems for the national control idea.initially, 

naSa negotiated with other nations to provide launch services for their payloads, 

though its system of reimbursement was extremely cumbersome—continuing to bill 

nations for services months and years after their payload was launched, as naSa’s 

government accounting system figured out all of the expenses involved. naSa 

essentially purchased launchers from corporate manufacturers and then integrated 

the payload and launched the vehicles itself. in the 1970s, naSa promoted the 

Space Shuttle as a means to dramatically lower the cost of access to space, which 

forced european nations (then developing the ariane launcher through the eSa) 

to reconsider its organizational and pricing mechanisms. naSa’s advertised Shuttle 

36. Brian harvey,Russia in Space:The Failed Frontier? (chichester,U.K.:Springer-praxis,2001),pp.257–260. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 163 

prices were based not on actual costs, but on a variety of mathematical models of 

future Shuttle operations as well as on the prices of expendable launchers such as 

delta and atlas, because the Shuttle had to charge less than these systems to make 

the Shuttle economically competitive.this, of course, would put american vendors 

of expendable launch vehicles (martin marietta, mcdonnell douglas, and general 

dynamics) out of business,while europe would have to meet the challenge of Shuttle 

pricing even if it meant selling ariane launches at a loss. Both sides preemptively set 

very low initial prices as a means to lure customers to their vehicles.37 

these policies clashed with the ronald reagan administration’s ideology 

of the superiority of free enterprise over government activities. although naSa 

aimed to lure all payloads to the Shuttle (hence, putting all other competitors out 

of business), the reagan administration and the europeans worked to develop and 

promote private industry.the europeans created arianespace, the first private space 

launch company, though it was partially owned by european governments and 

only manufactured and operated vehicles whose development was fully funded by 

the eSa. the reagan administration sanctioned the development of commercial 

launchers, to be licensed by the department of transportation (not naSa) only 

after the government-funded manufacturing infrastructure was sold back to industry. 

commercial launches would not be viable if the Shuttle delivered on its promise 

of cheap and reliable space access. Unfortunately for naSa, the Shuttle never did 

achieve these goals, and the reagan administration pressed naSa to set its prices 

closer to the actual Shuttle costs.the coup de grâce was the Challenger accident of 

January 1986, which ultimately led the reagan administration to prohibit naSa 

from commercial launches. this, along with other regulations that loosened the 

military’s grip on the contractors, paved the way for the emergence of american 

commercial launch companies to compete with arianespace.38 

Unfortunately for all Western nations, in the late 1980s and early 1990s the 

collapse of the Soviet Union and china’s first steps to earn cash from the West 

meant that russian and chinese organizations began to offer launch services as 

well. due to the very low wages in both nations, both could offer their launchers 

at very low prices that could still earn huge profits while remaining far below 

Western costs. left unhindered, they would destroy the american and european 

commercial launch industries (the noncommercial launch industry would still 

survive by guaranteed launches from domestic markets). american policy makers 

faced the dilemma of wanting to integrate the chinese, and especially the russians, 

into the capitalist system to stabilize the russian economy and bind russia to the 

West, while simultaneously trying to protect the Western space launch industry and 

enable cheaper launches for the american communications satellite industry. 

37. J. Krige,a. russo, and l. Sebesta, History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987, Vol. 2,The Story 

of ESA 1973-1987 (noordwijk,the netherlands: eSa Sp-1235, 2000), chapter 11. 

38. Joan lisa Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry (Baltimore, md: Johns hopkins University press, 

1999), chapter 6. 
164 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

two solutions prevailed.the first was to sign agreements with china (1989), 

russia (1992), and Ukraine (1995) to place a quota on the number of chinese, 

russian, and Ukrainian commercial launches and ensure that they charged prices 

comparable to Western companies. put bluntly, the U.S. forced chinese, russian, 

and Ukrainian companies to charge high prices and make very large profits so as not 

to tempt american and other satellite operators to choose exclusively non-Western 

launchers.39 for russia and Ukraine, this policy came to an end in the early 2000s. 

the second solution was the integration of russian, Ukrainian, and Western 

companies into corporate joint ventures so that russian companies could bid for 

Western launches; the russians could learn how to do business with the West; and 

to ensure that some of the money going for russian launches benefited Western 

companies. this resulted in a number of joint ventures, including international 

launch Services (lockheed martin and Khrunichev), Sea launch (Boeing, rSc 

energia, Kvaerner,Yuzhnoe), Starsem (eadS, arianespace, russian federal Space 

agency, and Samara Space center), and eurockot (eadS and Khrunichev).40 

Spurred by the prospect of hundreds of satellite launches for medium-earth orbit 

constellations of communications satellites, a number of purely private companies 

formed in the middle to late 1990s to build space launchers.companies such as Kistler, 

Beal aerospace, pioneer rocketplane, and rotary rocket spent tens and hundreds of 

millions of dollars before the bottom fell out of the prospective satellite boom in 1999 and 

2000. most of the companies went under, and those that remained sought government 

funding to survive. the november 2005 announcement by naSa administrator 

michael griffin that private companies could bid for government contracts to deliver 

water and other bulk materials to space provided some encouragement to these efforts, 

but as of 2007 the result of this program is yet to be seen.41 

in the United States, U.S. military funding on the procurement and operation 

of military launchers exceeded $1.4 billion in 2006.42 the eSa’s 2006 budget 

39. “memorandum of agreement Between the government of the United States of america and the 

government of the people’s republic of china regarding international trade in international 

launch Services,” 26 January 1989, document iii-24, in Exploring the Unknown,Volume IV:Accessing 

Space, John m. logsdon, ed., et al. (Washington, dc: naSa Sp-4407, 1999), pp. 497–502. 

40. roger handberg, International Space Commerce:Building from Scratch (gainesville,fl:University press 

of florida, 2006), pp. 106–109. 

41. andrew J. Butrica,“reusable launch Vehicles or expendable launch Vehicles? a perennial debate,” 

in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. dick and roger d. launius, ed. (Washington, 

dc: naSa Sp-2006-4702, 2006), pp. 319–320; Reusable Launch Vehicle Programs and Concepts 

(Washington, dc: associate administrator for commercial Space transportation, January 1998). 

See also various articles in Space News in the late 1990s and early 2000s on the various commercial 

vehicles. michael d. griffin,“naSa and the Business of Space,” speech to american astronautical 

Society 52nd.annual conference, 15 november 2005. 

42. U.S. government Budget, 2006. Budget of the United States government, Washington, dc: 

government printing office. it can be found online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/, accessed 

January 2007. evolved expendable launch Vehicle acquisition $864.4; medium launch Vehicles 

acquisition, $111.2 million; Space launch operations & maintenance, $443.4 million. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 165 

allocated roughly €531 million ($640 million) for launchers, primarily the ariane 

and Vega programs.43 naSa has invested hundreds of millions of dollars per year 

on launchers in some years, particularly in the 1990s and early 2000s, such as its 

$284 million spent in 1997 on reusable launch vehicles, and the later Space launch 

initiative; however, by 2006 its launcher funding was going into the crew launch 

Vehicle, or ares i program, in support of human flight. 

Technology Research and Development 

the research and development sector is characterized by a confusing 

competition among government, academic, corporate, and nonprofit organizations 

for research and development (r&d) funding. it is a specific sector because these 

funds are largely dispersed by government organizations with their own separate 

budgets allocated for the purpose of developing new technologies.the dod and 

naSa dominate these funds in the U.S., whereas their equivalents in other nations 

distribute these moneys according to equivalent procedures. Within the dod, 

research appears in the research, development, test, and evaluation (rdt&e) 

budgets. research is allocated in Basic research and applied research funds, 

whereas development funding appears in advanced technology development, 

advanced component development and prototypes,and System development and 

demonstration, with other related support showing up in rdt&e management 

Support line items.44Within naSa,these funds have historically been in the office 

of aerospace research and technology budgets and their predecessors, though as of 

2007 these are now folded into exploration, Science, and operations budgets. 

in the former Soviet Union, competition existed among the scientific research 

institutes such as mstislav Keldysh’s nii-1, which performed aerodynamic research, 

and the various development design bureaus. this competition was just as stiff 

and certainly more devious than in the U.S., due to institutional secrecy and the 

Byzantine nature of the Soviet state. 

competition for technology r&d funds is fierce, but typically government 

funding is restricted to domestic suppliers due to the criticality of technology 

development for national economic and strategic aspirations. Since the bulk of 

these funds are distributed by governments, government institutions have priority 

access to these funds when they believe they should run the program. in the U.S., 

government policy dictates that the majority of funding should go to industry, 

but because governments must also train their personnel, technology r&d is a 

prime location to gain experience. University researchers have obviously been 

strong competitors for technology r&d funding, since their jobs require them to 

43. peter B. de Selding, “eSa Budget emphasizes independence, Satcom technology, Space News (23 

January 2006). 

44. See U.S. government Budget, department of defense, for these categories. 
166 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

advance the state of the art. Similarly, nonprofit institutions such as the aerospace 

corporation and the mitre corporation need to keep their knowledge at the 

state of the art, and they perform a variety of technology r&d studies. finally, 

corporations compete for these same funds, winning a significant proportion of 

them while also committing their own. 

outside of the U.S., similar dynamics apply, though the separation between 

government and industry is often less clear. it is notable that in europe all member 

states contribute to technology r&d programs and all member states benefit.this 

is one major exception to the usual policy of restricting technology development 

funding to domestic suppliers only.45 

in 2006, dod Basic and applied research Budgets allocated more than $520 

million to space technologies, with $223.8 million of that budget coming from the 

defense advanced research projects agency.this does not account for U.S.army and 

U.S. navy basic and applied research into space technologies, which are not readily 

apparent from the top-level budget figures given by the U.S.government.naSa set aside 

$693 million for exploration Systems research andtechnology and $624.1 million for 

human Systems research andtechnology in its 2006 budget.46 the eSa’s 2006 budget 

allocated roughly €126 million ($152 million) for technology development.47 

Astronomy and Planetary Science 

astronomy has been a popular topic for centuries,as it has dealt with fascinating 

questions such as the nature of the universe, its history, and earth’s (and hence 

humanity’s) place in the cosmos. Satellites to observe the cosmos (with the hubble 

Space telescope being the most famous) and probes to visit other planets (such as 

Voyager’s flybys of Jupiter,Saturn,Uranus,and neptune) have been among the most 

captivating space programs. as such, they have garnered political support to entice 

young people into science, engineering, and mathematics, and hence to improve 

the technological competitiveness of the U.S. naSa’s educational programs feature 

large doses of space science. 

another major use of space science has been as a political diplomatic tool. 

during the international geophysical Year of 1957–1958, the early U.S. space 

program was used explicitly as a means to improve foreign relations with allies, 

45. roger m.Bonnet and Vittorio manno, International Cooperation in Space:The Example of the European 

Space Agency (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 1994), p. 25. 

46. president’s fY 2007 Budget request for naSa,naSaWeb site, http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/ 

(accessed february 2007). 

47. peter B. de Selding,“2006 eSa Budget emphasizes independence, Satcom technology,” Space News 

(23 January 2006). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 167 

while at the same time paving the way for overflights of reconnaissance satellites 

over the Soviet Union. during the late 1950s and 1960s, the space race between the 

U.S. and the Soviet Union included the so-called robotic races—first to the moon 

and then to Venus and mars.the winner of these races accrued benefits in national 

prestige and perceived technological prowess, a proxy for the long-term viability 

and strength of the capitalist and socialist visions. 

naSa’s charter explicitly included international cooperation, and under 

international programs chief arnold frutkin, in its early years created dozens of 

agreements and cooperative programs with nations around the world as an active 

element of american foreign policy.these initiatives included free launches of foreign 

scientific payloads;foreign instruments on american scientific satellites and vice versa; 

establishment of communications ground stations for scientific satellites; and a variety 

of other scientific information exchanges. not to be outdone, the Soviet Union ran 

similar programs for its socialist allies, and soon for capitalist or nonaligned nations 

to woo them away from american interests. europe, through the european Space 

research organisation (eSro), and later the eSa, made space science part of its 

mandatory program that all member states had to support.48 from the inception 

of the Space age, and even before, space science has been a popular, cooperative 

diplomatic tool, which helps to explain its significant and stable funding. 

corporations typically (though not always) build the satellites, whereas 

academic, government, and corporate researchers usually build the instruments 

placed on-board. With relatively few spacecraft put in orbit, the competition to 

build the satellites and the instruments has always been fierce. corporations like to 

build science-craft because it provides an opportunity to advertise their capabilities 

in ways not possible with often-secret military programs. for scientists, getting an 

instrument in space can make or break their careers and reputations. 

though the politics of determining the relative priorities and funding of space 

science programs has made or broken the hopes of many scientists, total space science 

funding has remained fairly stable over the years, and by 2006 reached roughly $6–$7 

billion worldwide.this stability owes much to the use of science as a diplomatic tool, 

since it is much more difficult to cancel a program that has foreign partners.49 

48. roger m.Bonnet and Vittorio manno, International Cooperation in Space:The Example of the European 

Space Agency (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 1994), chapter 2. 

49. John Krige,“the european Space System,” in John Krige and arturo russo, Reflections on Europe in 

Space (noordwijk,the netherlands: eSa hSr-11, January 1994), pp. 7–8. 
168 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Communications 

as early as 1945, when arthur c. clarke first published a paper proposing 

the use of the geosynchronous orbit as promising location for telecommunications 

satellites, the potential utility and profitability of space communications beckoned. 

military,civilian,and commercial organizations all began to develop communications 

satellites in the U.S. by the early 1960s. 

all of the military services had interests in communications satellites (comsats) 

for command and control, as part of a worldwide military communications system. 

in part responding to Kennedy administration concerns about the potential that 

at&t would extend its communications monopoly into space by developing a 

purely private system, naSa funded its own experimental satellites.at&t’s launch 

of telstar in 1962 fueled these government fears,leading to the passage of the Satellite 

telecommunications act of 1962 that created communications Satellite corporation 

to build and manage the international satellite communications system. military 

and naSa funding built several strong competitors to at&t, including hughes 

aircraft corporation, philco corporation, and radio corporation of america.the 

successful 1963 launch and operation of hughes’s naSa-funded Syncom satellite 

proved the viability of geosynchronous telecommunications satellites. the U.S. 

then opened negotiations with european nations, canada, and Japan regarding the 

management of the international telecommunications system.50 

although the U.S. wanted to negotiate on a bilateral basis with each nation, 

the europeans quickly banded together to negotiate with greater strength as a 

group, forming the european conference for Satellite telecommunications (french 

acronym cetS) in 1963. the resulting negotiations created the international 

telecommunications Satellite organization (intelsat) the next year, with 

communications Satellite corporation as the organization’s manager.though the 

americans dominated intelsat in the 1960s, the europeans acquired one major 

concession—to renegotiate intelsat’s terms in 1971. in the meantime, the United 

Kingdom, germany, france, and italy began development of their own national 

satellite programs, while working through cetS and eSro to create an integrated 

european satellite program.51 

during this period, the U.S. had monopoly power over spacecraft launches, 

and U.S. policy dictated that the U.S. would not launch any satellite that threatened 

intelsat’s international monopoly. “experimental” satellites were launchable, but 

50. david J.Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications 1945-1965 (Washington, dc: Smithsonian 

institution press, 2002). 

51. a. russo, “the Beginning of the telecommunications Satellite programme in eSro,” in J. Krige 

and a. russo, A History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987,Volume I,The Story of ESRO and 

ELDO 1958-1973 (noordwijk,the netherlands: eSa Sp-1235, 2000), chapter 9. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 169 

not regional or international systems. convinced that the U.S. was attempting to 

retain control of satellite telecommunications, the europeans, led by france, pushed 

to develop their own launcher to ensure that european comsats would get to orbit. 

Ultimately, this resulted in the development of the ariane and was a major factor in 

the negotiations that led to the creation of the eSa. intelsat’s permanent agreement 

of 1973 reallocated shares in intelsat based on actual usage of the system, and allowed 

for regional as well as domestic systems.american shares shrank from more than 50 

percent to the range of 25 percent to 30 percent, and hence control of intelsat passed 

out of american hands by the late 1970s. eSa began development of the orbitaltest 

Satellite, the first of several eSa-developed systems from that time forward.52 

from the 1970s through the 1990s, many nations built or purchased comsats 

for domestic purposes, while several private companies orbited systems that leased 

transponders to government and private customers. the growing demand led to 

many negotiations over the use of the frequency spectrum through the international 

telecommunication Union (itU). nations own the spectrum rights and 

geosynchronous orbital slots, and thus this provided a mechanism for governments 

to control both government and corporate uses of space communications. many 

countries ensured that their domestic systems were government-owned or ­

controlled. the most profitable use of comsats turned out to be direct broadcast 

television, with companies such as directV, echostar, and SeS selling dozens and 

eventually hundreds of broadcast channels directly to millions of consumers.directbroadcast radio, led by Xm, Sirius, and Worldspace, began in 1998 and was growing 

rapidly by the first decade of the twenty-first century.53 

mobile communications for ships, aircraft, and eventually telephones and 

computers began from military experiments in the U.S. Systems such as tactical 

Satellite (tacSat), launched in 1969, proved the concept of using relatively small 

ground antennas that could be ported on ships, trucks, and other vehicles.the U.S. 

and Soviet navies desperately needed such systems for fleet communications, and 

merchant ships would also be obvious beneficiaries.54 the international maritime 

52. ibid., and a. russo, “the early development of eSro’s telecom programme and the otS 

project,” in Krige and russo, A History of the European Space Agency,Volume 1, chapter 10; John l. 

mclucas, Space Commerce (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 1991), pp. 40–43. 

53. mclucas,pp.75–80.toseethegrowthofdirectbroadcasttelevision,seeofficeofSpacecommercialization, 

Trends in Space Commerce,prepared by futron corporation (Washington,dc:department of commerce, 

2001),chapter 3.on satellite radio market growth,see international Space Business council, 2004 State 

of the Space Industry (Bethesda,md:Space publications,2004),pp.23,42–43. 

54. norman friedman, Seapower and Space: From the Dawn of the Missile Age to Net-CentricWarfare (annapolis, 

md:naval institute press,2000),chapter 5;WilliamW.Ward and franklinW.floyd,“thirtyYears of Space 

communications research and development at lincoln laboratory,”in Beyond the Ionosphere:FiftyYears of 

Satellite Communication, andrew J.Butrica,ed.(Washington,dc:naSa Sp-4217,1997),pp.84–86. 
170 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

communications Satellite organisation (inmarsat) was established in 1976 to 

provide worldwide mobile commercial service for shipping. Unlike intelsat, in 

which the Soviet Union and other communist-bloc nations refused to participate, 

the Soviet Union and other socialist countries became members of inmarsat.55 

in the 1990s, iridium, globalstar, and ico developed large constellations of 

medium-earth orbit comsats to provide worldwide mobile telephone and data 

services. By the first years of the twenty-first century, all three systems had been 

deployed and all three companies had gone bankrupt after raising and spending 

billions of dollars; they had overestimated the demand for global service and 

underestimated the competition from ground-based cellular telephone systems.56 

Both ground-based and space-based private competition put pressure on the 

international and domestic government systems,making some of them economically 

obsolete. Both intelsat and inmarsat were privatized in response to U.S. demands; if 

these systems wanted to compete for domestic U.S. business, they could no longer 

be owned by governments.57 however, military demand continued to grow rapidly, 

leading to the leasing of many commercial transponders for military purposes and 

the development of more-capable military systems that were less susceptible to 

jamming or radiation effects (such as milstar), and with greater bandwidth to send 

imagery and intelligence data from reconnaissance and intelligence satellites and from 

various sensor systems to military users around the world.58 in 2006, the dod was 

budgeted more than $2.9 billion to develop and acquire communications satellites,59 

and more than $340 million to procure USaf and U.S.army satellite communications 

ground terminals.60 precise numbers to operate military communications satellites are 

difficult to estimate from the dod overview budgets,but are certainly in the hundreds 

55. mclucas, Space Commerce, pp. 46–50; edward J. martin, “the evolution of mobile Satellite 

communications,” in Butrica, ed., Beyond the Ionosphere, pp. 265–281. 

56. roger handberg,International Space Commerce:Building from Scratch (gainesville,fl:University press 

of florida, 2006), pp. 144–145. 

57. intelsat Web site, http://www.intelsat.com (accessed January 2007). inmarsat Web site http://www. 

inmarsat.com (accessed January 2007). 

58. david n. Spires and rick W. Sturdevant, “from advent to milstar: the U.S. air force and the 

challenges of military Satellite communications,” in Butrica, ed., Beyond the Ionosphere, pp. 65–78. 

59. from 	the U.S. government 2006 budget: $1,194.3 million for advanced extremely high 

frequency Satellite acquisition;$835.8 for transformational Satellite communications acquisition; 

$166.4 million for Wideband gapfiller acquisition; $28.7 million for USaf military Satellite 

communications procurement; $2.185 million for USaf polar military Satellite communications 

rdt&e;$541.98 million for U.S.navy Satellite communications rdt&e;$71.8 million for U.S. 

navy Satellite communications Systems procurement. 

60. from the U.S. government 2006 budget: U.S.army, dScS ground Systems program acquisition, 

$66.5 million; USaf, management Support for milSatcom terminals, $273.974 million. U.S. 

navy satellite terminal procurements are buried in other budget lines. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 171 

of millions of dollars per year.61 By 2005, the satellite communications sector was more 

than $80 billion annually—by any estimate, the largest space sector by a wide margin.62 

Reconnaissance and Remote Sensing 

the technologies of reconnaissance and scientific or commercial remote sensing 

are essentially the same,though the specific characteristics of the sensors vary depending 

on what the satellite is trying to sense. high-resolution, often black-and-white 

(panchromatic) imagery tends to be most useful for intelligence gathering, whereas 

lower-resolution color (multispectral) imagery is useful for environmental monitoring. 

monitoring of volcanoes, clouds, ice, ocean, and land features are each optimized with 

the use of different portions of the spectrum,with infrared bands looking for heat sources 

best for volcanic activities, and various shades of green for vegetation monitoring, for 

example. high-resolution imagery is not particularly useful to monitor large-scale 

weather fronts but it is crucial to differentiate one kind of airplane from another. 

military and intelligence organizations developed the first reconnaissance 

systems, starting in the mid-1950s with the USaf’s WS-117l, which led to the 

central intelligence agency (cia)-sponsored corona and the air force SamoS 

projects.the eisenhower administration secretly created the national reconnaissance 

office in 1960 to manage the spy satellite programs.63 also in the late 1950s, the 

U.S.army began to investigate weather satellites, but these study results and projects 

were soon transferred to naSa, becoming the tiros program, first launched in 

1960.the USaf, needing weather imagery over the Soviet Union to better utilize 

corona, created what was eventually called the defense meteorological Satellite 

program (dmSp).64 the Soviet Union created its equivalent systems, Zenit (based 

on the Vostok capsule) for reconnaissance, and meteor for weather.65 

61. these U.S. government 2006 budget figures are part of the operations and maintenance budgets, 

including the U.S. navy’s $156.8 million for Space Systems and Surveillance; the USaf’s c3i 

and early Warning’s $1.201 billion; and the U.S. army’s o&m budget, which does not have any 

specific “space” line items. original numbers, from which i make these estimates, are drawn from 

international Space Business council,2005 State of the Space Industry (Bethesda,md:Space Business. 

com, 2006). Sia/futron, and the U.S. military communications satellite and operational budgets. 

62. this includes approximately $42 billion for direct-broadcast, fixed, and mobile satellite revenues. i 

estimate some $5 billion for acquisition of government-paid communications satellites worldwide ($16 

billion for ground systems), assuming some two-thirds of all ground system are for communications 

antennas and related equipment, and another $3 billion of government-paid operational (launchers, 

launch operations, and mission) budgets to launch and operate communications satellites. 

63. dwayne a. day, John m. logsdon, and Brian latell, ed., Eye in the Sky:The Story of the Corona Spy 

Satellites (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 1998). 

64. r. cargill hall,“a history of the military polar orbiting meteorological Satellite program,” Quest: 

The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 9, no. 2 (2002): pp. 4–25. 

65. Bart hendrickx,“a history of Soviet/russian meteorological Satellites,”Space Chronicle,The Journal 

of the British Interplanetary Society 57, Supplement 1 (2004): pp. 56–102. 
172 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

classified reconnaissance programs evolved rapidly in both the U.S. and Soviet 

Union. early systems generally used film that had to be returned to earth, which 

meant that space reconnaissance required many launches every year. in 1977, the 

first american Keyhole (Kh)-11 satellite was launched.this program helped create 

charged-coupled device (ccd) technology that allowed for digital capture and 

radio transmission of imagery to earth.66 the Soviet Union soon followed this lead, 

as its Yantar series evolved to include Yantar terilen, the first Soviet satellite with 

electro-optical capabilities, first launched in 1982.67 china began development of 

its own reconnaissance systems by the late 1970s,68 and other nations such as france 

and israel developed their own reconnaissance systems by the 1990s. many nations 

now have access to american high-resolution commercial satellite imagery, which 

became available in 1999 with the launch of Space imaging eoSat company’s 

ikonos 1, which provided ~3-foot (1-meter) resolution. these companies have 

remained viable only through major government imagery purchases and direct 

subsidies for satellite development. the costs of classified reconnaissance systems 

remain classified,but some estimate that the funding of the national reconnaissance 

office, which manages U.S. imagery intelligence, exceeds $7 billion per year in the 

early twenty-first century.69 the costs of the U.S. reconnaissance program in the 

1960s may have ranged in the same order of magnitude as the apollo program, 

which totaled roughly $21 billion in then-year dollars. 

the development of commercial remote sensing began with naSa’s landsat 

program (first launch 1972, final launch of landsat 7 in 1999), a civilian project to 

provide satellite imagery of landforms and vegetation for scientific purposes. the 

program soon developed a clientele of users that included mining companies, land 

use planners, and others who were not scientists.70 these commercial applications 

lent weight to arguments to privatize landsat. congressional legislation led to 

the privatization of landsat operations in 1985 by the earth observation Satellite 

company (eoSat). certain conditions of the legislation hampered eoSat’s 

business activities, while the large increase in image prices alienated landsat’s 

scientific clientele. congress repealed the legislation in 1992, returning control of 

landsat to the government but also creating procedures for companies to develop 

66. William e.Burrows, Deep Black:Space Espionage and National Security (newYork:Berkley Books,1988). 

67. peter a. gorin,“Black ‘amber’: russian Yantar-class optical reconnaissance Satellites,” Journal of the 

British Interplanetary Society 51/8 (august 1998): pp. 309–320; harvey, Russia in Space:The Failed Frontier? 

68. phillip S. clark, “development of china’s recoverable Satellites,” Quest:The History of Spaceflight 

Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1998): pp. 36–43. 

69. federation of american Scientists Web site, http://www.fas.org (accessed January 2007). 

70. pamela e. mack, Viewing the Earth:The Social Construction of the Landsat System (cambridge, ma: 

mit press, 1990). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 173 

commercial high-resolution remote sensing, which eoSat and others quickly 

pursued. this was spurred by the success of international competitors, such as 

france’s Satellite pour l’observation de la terre (Spot), first launched in 1986; 

india’s indian remote Sensing (irS) satellites (1988); and others, all of whom sold 

imagery on the commercial market.71 

france and india sold Spot and irS imagery, respectively, through private 

companies Spot image and antrix, respectively, but these companies did not have 

to develop or launch the spacecraft. other nations sold the imagery directly from 

government organizations. commercial remote sensing has thus developed as an 

international competition among governments and government-supported private 

companies. none of the organizations makes enough revenues from imagery sales 

to fund the development of the satellites, but the imagery sales have defrayed some 

small fraction of government costs. commercial space imagery sales worldwide 

in 2004 were less than $600 million annually, while reconnaissance satellites cost 

several hundred million each.72 

despite the unpromising economics, when the U.S. in 1992 created provisions 

for private companies to build high-resolution remote sensing satellites, several 

companies jumped at the opportunity.the first high-resolution commercial remote 

sensing satellite, ikonos, was orbited in 1999, with two other companies following 

soon thereafter. however, the revenues from imagery sales never met expectations, 

and survival of the american commercial companies depended on large government 

contracts for imagery and also for direct government subsidies to fund their nextgeneration satellites.the national geospatial intelligence agency obligingly awarded 

imagery contracts, and then provided $500 million manufacturing subsidies, to 

digitalglobe in 2003 and to orbimage the next year, but not to eoSat, leading to 

orbimage’s purchase of eoSat to form geoeye.73 

most users are not able to use raw remote sensing images.instead,the so-called 

value-added services sector processes raw imagery and adds other information to make 

it useful.this sector is usually estimated as having revenues an order of magnitude 

larger than the raw imagery market. numerous small companies create and market 

to the many small niche markets providing processed imagery to government, 

scientific, and commercial users, often through geographic information Systems.74 

71. Joanne gabrynowicz, “the perils of landsat from grassroots to globalization: a comprehensive 

review of U.S. remote Sensing law with a few thoughts for the future,” Chicago Journal of 

International Law 6 (2005). 

72. 2004 State of the Space Industry, p. 23. 

73. John c. Baker, Kevin m. o’connell, and ray a.Williamson, ed., Commercial Observation Satellites: 

At the Leading Age of Global Transparency (Santa monica, ca: rand, 2001). See relevant articles by 

Space News and http://www.space.com on the nga contracts. 

74. office of Space commercialization, Trends in Space Commerce, prepared by futron corporation 

(Washington, dc: department of commerce, 2001). 
174 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

governments have borne the entire costs of weather satellites throughout 

their history, and thus have provided a steady demand for these systems and several 

hundred million dollars annually worldwide for their development and operation.in 

the United States,the U.S.army started such work but soon transferred it to naSa, 

where it became the tiros series, first launched in 1960.that same year, the corona 

program finally succeeded in taking images of the Soviet Union, finding out that 

much of its precious film recorded cloud tops.this led the national reconnaissance 

office and the USaf to develop what eventually became known as the defense 

meteorological Satellite program (dmSp), initially derived from the tiros design. 

organizational issues plagued the civilian program because naSa specialized 

in satellite development, but the users of satellites were in the national Weather 

Service (nWS).naSa preferred to push the technological envelope,whereas nWS 

forecasters wanted a reliable system that typically used tried-and-true techniques. 

thus, in the mid to late 1960s, while naSa developed nimbus satellites, the nWS 

purchased systems derived from the military’s dmSp due to their perceived greater 

operational utility and proven design.these same issues continued to characterize 

relationships between naSa and the user community, and continued through the 

development of the geostationary operational environmental satellites and polar 

operational environmental satellites. all the while, the possibility of combining 

military and civilian systems continued, leading in the 1990s to the decision to 

create the joint civilian-military national polar-orbiting environmental Satellite 

System (npoeSS), scheduled to launch in the early twenty-first century.75 

in 2006,noaa was funded to spend $782 million to acquire weather satellites, 

another $97 million to operate them, $53 million to distribute data, and $11 million 

to integrate landsat sensors onto npoeSS.76 that same year, the USaf spent an 

additional $323 million on npoeSS and $71 million on dmSp.77 

other nations recognized the practical utility of weather satellites and developed 

their own, starting with the Soviet Union’s meteor program, the first of which 

launched in 1964. europe, through the eSa, developed its meteosat series, first 

launched in 1977, and eventually operated through eumetsat, established in 1986. 

india combined weather observation with communications in its indian national 

Satellite series, while Japan developed its geostationary meteorological Satellites 

and china its feng Yun series.the coordination of geostationary meteorological 

Satellites (cgmS) organization formed in 1972 to coordinate worldwide satellite 

75. frederik nebeker. Calculating the Weather: Meteorology in the 20th Century (new York: academic 

press, 1995). 

76. r. cargill hall,“a history of the military polar orbiting meteorological Satellite program,” Quest 

9/2 (2002): pp. 4–25. Budget data from 2006 noaa budget, available on noaa Web site, http:// 

www.corporateservices.noaa.gov/~nbo/ (accessed January 2007). 

77. U.S. government Budget, 2006. dmSp figures are $67.2 for procurement and $3.908 million for 

rdt&e management Support. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 175 

weather monitoring from geostationary satellites.in 1992 the organization expanded 

its purview to include polar-orbiting satellites,and became the coordination group 

for meteorological Satellites.among other activities, the group coordinated the use 

of one nation’s satellite when another nation’s satellite had problems.78 

Electronic Intelligence and Early Warning 

closely related to imagery collection is electronic data collection,which gathers 

data from various nonvisible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.these data 

can be used for strategic assessments of national capabilities or for tactical military 

purposes. Strategic uses, such as intelligence gathering by the U.S. national Security 

agency and its russian equivalents, remain highly classified; they started in the 

early 1960s.tactical uses include monitoring of shipping and naval signals, as well 

as strategic early warning systems that monitor infrared signatures of ballistic missile 

launches or actively send radar signals to reflect off targets. another application 

is the tracking of objects in space, which is necessary to distinguish between a 

ballistic missile and a meteor hitting earth.in all cases,these are purely governmentcontrolled functions. the U.S. contracted to industry for the satellites while the 

government operated them, whereas the Soviet Union and later russia developed 

and operated its systems purely through government organizations.79 

electronic intelligence-gathering budgets, like the satellite programs themselves, 

remain classified, so their costs remain highly speculative. Some analysts estimate their 

costs in the range of $3 billion per year in the U.S.and presumably significantly lower in 

russia.80 naval reconnaissance systems, such as the americanWhite cloud system or 

the russian eorSat, also remain classified, along with their funding. early warning 

systems,by contrast,have official published budgets in the U.S.published figures from 

the 1960s through the mid-1980s show early warning budgets ranging from a low of 

$45.6 million in 1967 to $707.2 million in 1984.81 in 2006,the USaf budgeted $1.21 

billion on procurement of early warning and space tracking systems.82 

78. eumetsat, The History of Eumetsat—European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites 

(darmstadt: eumetsat, 2001); Bart hendrickx, “a history of Soviet/russian meteorological 

Satellites,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 57/1 (2004): pp. 56–102. 

79. friedman, Seapower and Space;William e. Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security 

(new York: Berkley Books, 1988); James Bamford, Body of Secrets:Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National 

Security Agency (new York:anchor Books, 2001). 

80. federation of american Scientists, http://www.fas.org, accessed January 2007. 

81. paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (ithaca, nY: cornell University 

press, 1985),table 2, pp. 256–257. 

82. from the U.S. government Budget, 2006. it includes $756.6 million to procure the Space-Based 

infrared Systems-high; $225.8 million for a Space-Based radar system; $151 million to support 

its Space tracking efforts; $32.8 million on nuclear detection; and $42.7 million for rdt&e 

management Support to its older defense Support program system. 
176 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Weapons 

Space weapons refer on one hand to ballistic missiles, and on the other 

to weapons to destroy ballistic missiles (antiballistic missile system) and satellites 

(antisatellite systems).as with intelligence-gathering satellites, space weapons have 

been the exclusive domain of governments, with the exception of contracting 

to industry in Western nations. the very first space expenditures were for the 

development of ballistic missiles, which received major funding first in nazi 

germany in the mid-1930s, and by the mid to late 1940s in the U.S. and Soviet 

Union, followed quickly by great Britain and france, and somewhat later by 

many other nations including china, india, pakistan, iran, north Korea, and 

others. even though some of the budget figures for ballistic missile, antiballistic 

missile, and antisatellite programs are unclassified, working through the maze 

of government budgets to determine actual spending on space-related research, 

development, facilities, and operations is not trivial. 

one significant exception is the budget of the missile defense agency, the 

descendant of the 1980s Strategic defense initiative organization. from a budget 

of $1.6 billion in 1985, the agency’s budget jumped to $7.8 billion in 2002 and 

remained in the $7 to $9 billion range through 2006 as the george W. Bush 

administration began to deploy a national missile defense system in alaska. 

Ballistic missiles consumed enormous amounts of funding in the U.S. and 

Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s in particular, leveling off somewhat in the 

1970s and 1980s, and declining significantly after the end of the cold war in the 

1990s and early twenty-first century. for example, in 1959, the atlas, titan, and 

minuteman programs consumed $1.321 billion, which, when converted to 2006 

dollars, is equivalent to more than $7 billion.83 and that is not all, as in that year 

there were several other ballistic missile programs ongoing, including the navy’s 

polaris, the army’s corporal, redstone, and Sergeant systems, and the USaf’s thor 

intermediate-range Ballistic missile. By contrast, in 2006, the USaf spent $791 

million on intercontinental ballistic missile acquisition84 and the U.S. navy spent 

$936.1 million on trident ii submarine-launched ballistic missile modifications and 

another $830 million to operate its fleet ballistic missile systems.85 

83. data from Jacob neufeld, Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force 1945–1960 (Washington, 

dc: office of air force history, 1990), pp. 198, 229. atlas: $641.5, titan $495.4, minuteman 

$184 (all in millions). 

84. U.S.government Budget,2006.USaf minuteman iii modifications,$672.6;missile replacement, 

$41.6; icBm rdt&e, $44.67; icBm components, $32.42 (all in millions). 

85. U.S. government Budget, 2006. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 177 

Navigation 

Satellites assist navigation on earth by providing targets with known positions 

in space, from which objects on earth can triangulate their position. this was 

particularly useful for naval operations, where navigation on featureless oceans has 

historically been particularly difficult. however, given sufficient reliability, accuracy, 

and timeliness, it is also useful for movement of vehicles and people on land and 

in the air.the first application of satellite navigation was for american and Soviet 

submarines to determine their positions with sufficient accuracy such that their 

nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles could hit cities in the opposing countries. for this 

purpose, the U.S. navy funded the transit program, the first satellite of which 

launched in 1960. the Soviet Union countered with its tsiklon satellites, first 

launched in 1967. Both systems provided two-dimensional (not vertical) accuracy 

of several hundred feet, with update rates on the order of tens of minutes in the 

worst case. this was sufficient for slow-moving naval vessels but not fast-moving 

aircraft at various altitudes.86 

naval success spurred further studies and research,leading both nations to create 

more capable navigational systems. in the U.S., the tri-service global positioning 

System (gpS) program began in 1973, with its first experimental satellite launch in 

1978.the full 24-satellite constellation was not operational until 1995.the Soviet 

Union’s equivalent,the global navigation Satellite System (glonaSS),put its first 

satellite into orbit in 1982, with its full 24-satellite constellation in place in 1996. 

While the U.S. maintained its gpS constellation, russia was unable to maintain 

its glonaSS constellation, with only 14 satellites operating by late 2005.87 the 

transit system was relatively cheap,with acquisition costs at roughly $20–$30 million 

per year in the 1960s.88 gpS is much more capable and also much more expensive. 

in 2006, the USaf budgeted $719.6 million for acquisition of gpS satellites, which 

primarily paid Boeing for the latest generation of Block 2f satellites.89 

the military uses of the satellite navigation systems were obvious and crucial,and 

soon expanded to include aircraft and land force positioning,and precision-guided 

weapons.the use of gpS has been a key element in the dramatic enhancement 

of U.S. military capabilities so apparent from the two iraq wars in 1991 and 

2003. certain civilian and commercial uses were also clear from the beginning, 

86. friedman, Seapower and Space, chapter 4. 

87. harvey, Russia in Space:The Failed Frontier?, pp. 130–136. 

88. paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space: U.S. Policy, 1945–1984 (ithaca, nY: cornell University 

press, 1985), table 2, pp. 256–257. 

89. U.S. government Budget, 2006. 
178 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

such as for merchant shipping, air transport, and air traffic control. however, the 

military did not expect the tremendous surge in commercial applications that 

blossomed in the 1990s and 2000s. once in place, the satellite navigation signals 

were essentially a free resource that individuals and commercial firms could tap 

into for their own uses simply by purchasing the appropriate receivers. receiver 

sales were roughly $800 million in 1994; by 2005, estimates of gpS equipment 

sales ranged from $5 billion to $22 billion, with american and foreign firms 

splitting the market roughly 50-50.90 

Such a wide discrepancy in estimates says much about the difficulty of 

estimating the size of this market. however, it should be noted that, historically, 

many if not most estimates of current and future commercial space market sizes 

have been overestimated. for gpS in particular, the market estimate depends a 

great deal on what is counted. for example, for a precision weapon, does the 

entire weapon count or merely the gpS receiver in the weapon? for a handheld 

cellular phone or a gpS fish finder with a gpS chip, does the entire phone or fish 

finder count or merely the gpS chip? there are many ways to estimate the entire 

market size, each of which starts with different assumptions and yields radically 

different answers.91 

By 2006, with gpS receivers available for under $100 and packaged in many 

products, commercial uses included car and boat navigation, surveying, animal and 

child tracking,cellular telephone positioning,and various recreational purposes such 

as locating precise positions and distances on a golf course or fish finders on lakes. 

civilian purposes grew to include various emergency services such as fire, police, 

and search and rescue, and scientific research in geodesy and geology. civilian and 

commercial applications dwarfed military ones in terms of receiver sales by the early 

twenty-first century. 

europe and china were the first to develop space-based navigation capabilities 

independent of the old superpowers. china launched three Beidou satellites in 2000– 

2003, most likely to support its small intercontinental ballistic missile force. in 2002, 

the europeans began development of the galileo system, but as a civilian commercial 

90. office of Space commercialization, Trends in Space Commerce, prepared by futron corporation 

(Washington, dc: department of commerce, 2001).the high estimate, $13 billion, comes from the 

rncoS Web site,“gpS market Update (2006),”april, 2006, http://www.rncos.com/Report/COM33. 

htm (accessed 28 december 2006).the low estimate, $4.8 billion, comes from international Space 

Business council,2004 State of the Space Industry (Bethesda,md:international Space Business council, 

february 2004), p. 23.the $22 billion figure comes from aBi research, in Space foundation, The 

Space Report 2006 (colorado Springs, co: Space foundation, 2006), footnote 262. 

91. discussion with Scott Sacknoff,head of the international Space Business council (iSBc),28 december 

2006.the iSBc methodology is a“conservative”one that will tend to yield lower estimates by parsing 

out the gpS components from the overall products. it also adds up revenues of major market players, 

such as garman and trimble, to compare with other estimates that add up the total number of cars 

produced, for example, and estimating the percentage of those cars that have gpS receivers. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 179 

venture.the gpS signal is free but potentially interruptible should the U.S. deem it 

necessary, whereas the galileo system would provide coarse signals for free but could 

provide higher-precision signals (for a price) to users.china,israel,india,Saudiarabia, 

Ukraine, and morocco have decided to participate in the program as well, making it 

a global venture to ensure independence from the U.S.the project, as of 2006, was 

projected to cost some €3.8 billion, with european costs split 50-50 between the 

european commission transport directorate and the eSa. germany is the largest 

single national contributor, with some €500 million committed to the project.the 

funding goes primarily to a european industrial consortium,galileo industries,which 

consists of eadS, alcatel Space, and alenia Spazio. the first galileo experimental 

satellite went into orbit in december 2005.92 

Several nations,including the U.S.,europe,Japan,and india,developed systems 

to augment the capabilities of the gpS.the U.S.Wide area augmentation System 

was developed to aid precision flight approaches. europe deployed the european 

geostationary navigation overlay System. Japan placed navigational capability in 

its multi-functional transport Satellite, which is primarily a meteorological satellite, 

first launched in february, 2005. in parallel, it developed the Quasi-Zenith Satellite 

System to enhance regional navigation in asia and the pacific region.93 By 2006,the 

indian Space research organisation was developing its geo-augmented navigation 

(gagan) Satellite System, which was to augment gpS signals primarily for aircraft 

navigation in south asia.94 

Since the deployment of gpS, the military, civilian, and commercial success 

of navigational systems has generated global interest in navigational capabilities, 

generating political and economic opportunities and conundrums. for the U.S., 

the key issue has become the debate between military and civilian control of gpS 

signals. the military maintains the authority to shut down certain capabilities in 

wartime, yet civilian and commercial uses have become so important that it is clear 

that gpS signals cannot merely be shut down. russia’s major problem is finding 

the cash to maintain its glonaSS constellation. other nations debate whether to 

create very expensive, independent capabilities so as not to depend on the U.S., as 

92. peter B. de Selding, “initial galileo Satellite navigation Bid exceeds eSa’s Budget,” Space News 

Business Report, http://www.space.com, 22 march 2004 (accessed January 2007); “eU launches first 

Satellite in galileo navigation program,” 28 december 2005, http://www.galileo-navigationsystem. 

com/Archiv/galileo-archive1.htm (accessed January 2007);“contract Signed for Second phase of galileo 

navigation Satellites,” 19 January 2006, http://www.galileo-navigationsystem.com/Archiv/galileo-archive1. 

htm (accessed January 2007). 

93. Japan meteorological agency, mtSat Web site, http://www.jma.go.jp/jma/jma-eng/satellite/about_ 

mt_index.html (accessed 28 december 2006). 

94. “iSro, raytheon complete tests for gagan Satellite navigation System, indiadefence Web site, 

http://www.india-defence.com/reports/2239 (accessed 28 december 2006). 
180 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

europe and china have done, or to enhance existing and forthcoming systems, as 

israel,Japan,and india have chosen.european motivations include the desire to make 

significant profits from european sales of galileo receivers, but as of 2006 it is not 

obvious whether this wish will be fulfilled, since american, european, and Japanese 

commercial vendors already compete to use signals from gpS and glonaSS and 

will simply expand their repertoires to include galileo. commercial vendors will 

combine signals from several navigational systems to enhance local performance, 

regardless of who funds and maintains the space-based systems.95 

Human Spaceflight 

By far the most well-known space activity is human spaceflight, which has 

been the primary political arm of space programs around the world.the primary 

initial motivation for human spaceflight in the late 1950s and 1960s was competition 

for prestige, as the U.S. and Soviet Union sought to project their technological 

capabilities in an ideological battle for the hearts and minds of people around the 

world.the Soviet Union gained an early lead in the space race by putting the first 

man,Yuri gagarin, into space in 1961, and other firsts such as the first woman in 

space, the first multi-man mission, and the first spacewalk. however, Soviet efforts 

to move beyond the r7 launcher and Vostok capsule designs fizzled in bureaucratic 

infighting, while the american response surged forward. the gemini program 

proved U.S. rendezvous and docking capabilities, and apollo placed the first man 

on the moon in 1969. Secret Soviet efforts to put a man on the moon fizzled as 

the huge n-1 launcher failed in four test flights, while the political imperative 

disappeared with the american success.96 

With the failure of their piloted lunar program, the Soviet Union moved 

to long-duration space station efforts, with the U.S. shifting its efforts to the 

Space Shuttle in the 1970s and the beginnings of its own space station program 

in the mid-1980s.With their Salyut space stations and Soyuz ferry vehicles, the 

Soviet Union set record after record in long-duration human spaceflight and 

proved that military uses of piloted space stations were not effective. the Mir 

station was the culmination of Soviet and russian efforts. the Soviet Buran 

program, which mirrored the american Shuttle, was fielded in the late 1980s 

but was too expensive to survive the Soviet Union’s collapse. the american 

Space Shuttle also proved to be very expensive, though the U.S. was willing to 

pay that price to keep the american astronaut program alive. it also proved too 

unreliable, with flight delays the norm and the loss of Challenger in 1986 and 

Columbia in 2003 causing the loss of 14 astronauts’ lives. the american Space 

95. handberg, International Space Commerce, chapter 6. 

96. there are many books on these subjects. a good place to start is William e. Burrows, This New 

Ocean:The Story of the First Space Age (new York:the modern library, 1998). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 181 

Station Freedom program also proved problematic, with many design changes as 

naSa struggled to determine its purpose.97 

although its initial motivation was superpower competition,the shuttle and space 

station programs of the two superpowers provided opportunities for international 

cooperation, though initially that cooperation remained fixed within ideological 

boundaries.the Soviet Union took advantage of its regular Soyuz crew replacement 

flights to its Salyut and Mir stations to offer its communist-bloc allies the opportunity 

to put their citizens into space through the interkosmos program. Similarly, the U.S., 

which had seven seats on each Shuttle flight, offered rides to its allies. the Space 

Shuttle program also included some opportunities for allies to build flight hardware,with 

canada’s robot arm and the europeans’Spacelab module the most significant.although 

partly motivated by the prestige factor, scientific and economic factors provide more 

significant motivations for these nations, particularly in their interest in developing and 

using microgravity facilities and developing niche capabilities in space.98 

theseinternationalprecedentswerethebasisformuchmoreintimateandexpansive 

cooperation in the international Space Station (iSS) program.initially including the U.S., 

europe, Japan, and canada, the iSS came to include russia as well. on the brink of 

cancellation in the early 1990s, the american space station program was saved by the 

opportunity for the U.S.to use it as a means to keep russian technical talent working 

on peaceful programs as opposed to being forced by economic necessity to sell their 

services to nations such as iran and north Korea. the russians built iSS modules 

under contract to naSa and also as part of their own independent contribution. 

in addition, russia supplies progress ferry vehicles for supplies and its reliable Soyuz 

transfer vehicles for crews.With the american Shuttle fleet grounded from early 2003 

to mid-2005 due to the Columbia accident, russia provided the only access to the iSS. 

this situation has shown the wisdom of international partnerships and their alternative 

means to keep programs alive when one partner has difficulties.99 

Separate from the U.S. and the iSS program, china started its own Shenzhou 

program to put chinese yuhangyuan (astronauts) into space.after a number of test 

flights, it finally succeeded in this ambition in 2003, with the launch of Yang liwei 

in Shenzhou 5. china’s motives appear quite similar to that of the U.S. and russia: 

to garner world prestige and to inspire its own people, particularly young people, to 

study technical subjects.100 

97. robert Zimmerman, Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary 

Travel (Washington, dc: Joseph henry press, 2003); dennis r. Jenkins, Space Shuttle:The History of 

the National Space Transportation System, the First 100 Missions, 3rd ed. (cape canaveral, fl: dennis 

r. Jenkins, 2001). 

98. Zimmerman, Leaving Earth; michael cassutt, Who’sWho in Space,3rd ed.(newYork: macmillan,1998). 

99. d.m.harland and J.e.catchpole,Creating the International Space Station (chichester,U.K.:Springerpraxis, 2002). 

100.Brian harvey, China’s Space Program: From Conception to Manned Spaceflight (chichester, U.K.: 

Springer-praxis, 2004), chapters 1, 10. 
182 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

in early 2004, the george W. Bush administration announced its Vision for 

Space exploration, which directed naSa to replace the Space Shuttle, return 

humans to the moon, and eventually go to mars. By 2006 these plans had been 

translated into the constellation program, whose first major systems are the orion 

crew exploration Vehicle and ares 1 crew launch Vehicle. naSa also began 

consultations with other nations regarding their future participation.101 

naSa’s overall human flight program costs are published, though sometimes 

the specific details are difficult to interpret, such as estimating the true cost of the 

Shuttle program. from the beginning of human flight, the U.S. has had by far the 

largest budget compared with other nations.naSa’s historical human flight budget, 

shown in figure 9.7,shows a huge spike in the 1960s due to the apollo program,but 

since that time has remained relatively stable, with a small spike to build the Shuttle 

Endeavour after the Challenger accident. the USaf spent significant funds on the 

manned orbiting laboratory (mol) program in the 1960s as well. 

Figure 9.7—NASA human flight budget, 2006 dollars.102 

Unfortunately, other budget figures are more difficult to acquire. the true 

costs of the Soviet human flight program may never be known,though all agree that 

Soviet and russian costs have been significantly lower than U.S. costs.as compared 

to apollo’s cost, which has been estimated variously between roughly $21.8 and 

$25 billion in then-year dollars, the Soviet piloted lunar landing program has been 

estimated at roughly 4 to 4.5 billion rubles, or approximately $12–$13.5 billion.103 

101. naSa Web site, http://www.nasa.gov (accessed January 2007). 

102. author’s compilation. Based on data from naSa annual budget submissions, generally using 

previous year actuals, and the standard U.S. government deflator schedule. 

103. asif a. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo:The Soviet Union and the Space Race 1945–1974 (Washington, dc: 

naSa Sp-2000-4008,2000),p.838.Brian harvey estimates $4.5 billion in his Russia in Space:The Failed 

Frontier?, p. 13.this figure appears to come from mishin’s writings, though it is not footnoted. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 183 

the energia-Buran program, which was significantly larger than the Salyut and 

Mir space station programs, cost some 14 billion rubles over 17 years from 1976 

to 1993.104 china’s human flight program, Shenzhou, is reported to have cost ¥18 

billion from inception to its first docking flight, or about ¥1.6 billion per year, 

starting in 1992, which equates roughly to $240 million per year in 2002.105 

the Soviet and russian interkosmos program, which allowed guest flights to 

Salyut and Mir, also created the procedures that, with slight modification, allowed 

for paying customers to travel to Mir. in what is apparently the first private booking 

of a flight to space, the tokyo Broadcasting System paid $12 million for reporter 

toyohiro akiyama to travel to Mir in december 1990.106 British scientist helen 

Sharman flew to Mir the next year, paid for by a pool of private companies in 

the United Kingdom. Starting in the late 1980s, the eSa and european nations 

paid between $12 and $40 million for european astronauts to visit Mir, the price 

depending on the length and complexity of the mission.107 in the 1995, the first 

naSa astronaut arrived at Mir, as part of a larger agreement between the U.S. 

and russia for the international Space Station. While the U.S. pressed russia to 

end the Mir program, american entrepreneur Walt anderson created mircorp, 

registered in the netherlands, to investigate saving Mir for commercial purposes. 

mircorp delivered a $7 million down payment in January 2000, and russia flew a 

mircorp-paid mission to recommission the station. mircorp then received funds 

from american technology investor denis tito for two flights, with himself riding 

on the second. these missions did not take place. Mir was deorbited in march 

2001; for a reputed $20 million, tito rode instead as the first “space tourist” on 

Soyuz to the international Space Station, over strenuous american and european 

objections.108 anousheh ansari became the fourth tourist (and the first woman 

tourist) in 2006.109 after losing the battle to keep tito off the iSS, the U.S. and 

europe reluctantly acquiesced in russia’s right to sell tourist seats. 

another route to space tourism opened in June 2004 when Burt rutan’s 

Scaled composites company spacecraft, SpaceShipOne, won the $10 million, 

privately funded X-prize by reaching suborbital space twice within two weeks, at a 

cost of roughly $25–$27 million paid by microsoft cofounder paul allen. richard 

104. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo, p. 841. Brian harvey puts the cost of the energia-Buran program at 

20 billion rubles. he also translates this to approximately €4.4 billion, which at that time would be 

roughly equivalent to $4.4 billion. 

105. harvey, China’s Space Program, p. 293. 

106. Wikipedia claims this price was $28 million. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism (accessed 3 

January 2007). 

107. harvey, Russia, the Failed Frontier?, p. 31. 

108. david m. harland, The Story of Space Station Mir (chichester, U.K.: Springer-praxis, 2005). 

109. “female Spacetourist Blasts off,”18 September 2006, http://www.CNN.com (accessed 3 January 2007). 
184 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Branson’s Virgin galactic company started a joint venture with Scaled composites 

to build SpaceShipTwo, which would start carrying tourists for suborbital flights in 

roughly 2008 for a price of $200,000 each. founded by motel magnate robert 

Bigelow, Bigelow aerospace began testing inflatable habitats for a space hotel, with 

its first successful test of genesis 1 in July 2006.110 Bigelow created “america’s Space 

prize,” a $50-million award for the first successful reusable spacecraft that could 

reach his orbiting hotel.111 the U.S. began to take commercial spaceflight seriously, 

creating a licensing process through the federal aviation administration’s office of 

Space commercialization in 2005. 

Microgravity Research 

microgravity research differs from space physical sciences in several ways. first, 

it has historically been closely tied to human spaceflight because one of the major 

motivations has been to understand how the human body functions in zero gravity. 

human spaceflight and the long-term movement of humans into space depend on 

deep understanding of microgravity effects both on humans and on other biological 

organisms. materials research has generally required human-tended experiments 

in space and usually must return its samples back to earth; thus, it also has had 

strong ties to the human spaceflight program because of the requirement to return 

astronauts and cosmonauts to earth. also, both material and biological research 

have often been portrayed as having commercial potential, such as purer crystals 

or proteins grown in space as opposed to on earth. these promises have yet to 

be fulfilled, as the cost of doing business in space—despite its potential improved 

materials quality—is far higher than on earth.112 

the need for microgravity science to support human spaceflight, and the 

potential commercial possibilities of materials research, have led to large and 

direct government funding of this research and certainly to justifications to build 

various experiment modules in which to perform it, such as the Spacelab module 

for the Shuttle, the Japanese experiment module and columbus module for the 

international Space Station, and various experimental stations on Skylab, Mir, and in 

the Space Shuttle payload bay.the various space programs provided funds to create 

microgravity research disciplines which, unlike the physical sciences, essentially did 

110. Jeff foust,“Bigelow aerospace’s Big day at the rodeo,” The Space Review (24 July 2006), http:// 

www.thespacereview.com/article/667/1, accessed January 2007. 

111. “Space tourism,”Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism (accessed 3 January 2007). 

112. Bromberg, NASA and the Space Industry, pp. 107–109, 167–174; lou dobbs with h. p. newquist, 

Space:The Next Business Frontier (new York: ibooks, 2001). 

113. a. russo,“the european Use of Spacelab,” in Krige et al., A History of the European Space Agency, 

Volume II, chapter 14. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 185 

not exist until human spaceflight programs required their existence. for example, 

the eSa had difficulties in the late 1970s when it realized that it was building the 

Spacelab module but had few researchers capable of using it.113 

microgravity research has also been a favorite educational tool, with naSa 

and other organizations providing major funding and subsidies to allow students from 

elementary school to graduate school to propose and create experiments such as how 

spiders build webs in space,how peas grow in space,etc.microgravity science budgets 

have grown from essentially zero in the 1950s to tens of millions of dollars by the 

early twenty-first century so as to fill the experimental facilities of the international 

Space Station. in 2003, naSa allocated $304 million for biological science, $351 

million for physical science research, and another $254 million for various research 

partnerships.114 eSa allocated $120 million for microgravity science in 2006.115 

Support Services 

the U.S.government places restrictions on the number of civil service positions 

available in its various agencies, but encourages private enterprise.this combination 

has led to the fact of far more work being assigned to civil service personnel than they 

can accomplish. to deal with this situation, support service contractors supply the 

arms and legs for the government personnel, working under government supervision 

to perform many of the tasks that the civil servants do not have the time to perform. 

these companies sprang up around all of the naSa facilities, frequently owned 

or operated by women, minorities, and small businesses so as to meet government 

guidelines and quotas in these categories.although the businesses are often owned by 

people in these categories,the work itself is usually directly supervised by naSa civil 

servants, with relatively little direction or guidance from the companies. 

these unusual political and technical circumstances lead to unusual dynamics. 

a common experience among these contractors is that one company that held an 

engineering service contract in one year would lose it to another company in the 

next. many of the personnel from the losing company are immediately hired by the 

winner,such that the personnel doing the actual work often remain the same while the 

managerial and financial structures are shifted to the new organization. Some support 

service contractors develop core competences in certain technologies or capabilities, 

which allow them to compete for other hardware, software, or service contracts, or 

even to sell products in the nongovernment commercial marketplace. others, such 

as Saic and teledyne Brown engineering, become quite large, with parts of the 

business continuing with support service contracting and other parts with specialized 

114. president’s fY 2007 Budget request for naSa, naSa Web site, http://www.nasa.gov/about/ 

budget/ (accessed January 2007). 

115. peter B. de Selding, “2006 eSa Budget emphasizes independence, Satcom technology,” Space 

News (23 January 2006). 
186 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

expertise that allowed them to bid on manufacturing contracts.through several legal 

rulings, naSa’s marshall Space flight center was involved with determining the 

legality and guidelines for the use of such contractors in the 1960s and 1970s. a 

lawsuit that challenged the legality of support service contracts was filed in 1968 and 

dragged on for years, but in 1978 was settled in naSa’s favor.116 

Insurance 

governments funded all early spaceflight launches, and if one of the launchers 

or satellites failed, the government funded a replacement, occasionally in advance. 

for example,throughout the 1960s and 1970s,naSa typically funded two identical 

spacecraft on exploration missions to another planet, such as mariner 1 and 2 in 

1962. targeted to fly by Venus, the first failed while the second completed the 

mission. the Voyager program of the 1970s built two matching pairs of spacecraft, 

whileViking had two identical orbiters and landers to ensure that at least one of them 

succeeded.liability was another potential concern.governments could not be sued if 

a rocket fell on its citizens’ property, and could pay for damages through taxes. 

commercial companies were in a different situation. they could not afford to 

build two copies of each spacecraft to ensure that one worked. in addition, they could 

be quickly bankrupted should a commercial launch cause damage to private property.in 

1965, communications Satellite corporation insured its early Bird satellite for liability 

and for prelaunch damage to the satellite.three years later, insurers covered the launch 

of intelsat ii, and by the 1970s created launch property damage and on-orbit coverage. 

the 1967 outer Space treaty and the 1972 convention on international liability for 

damage required that nations pay for damage caused to other nations.this spurred the 

U.S.,and later other nations,to set minimum liability insurance requirements on private 

companies.in the american case,the government requires private companies to obtain 

insurance to cover damages up to $500 million, and the government will cover any 

additional damages between $500 million and $2 billion. 

insurers in the U.S. and europe typically set rates ranging from 15 percent to 

20 percent for satellite loss, with several companies generally pooling their efforts for 

each launch. liability and on-orbit rates were much lower, reflecting the much lower 

probability of damage to private property and of on-orbit failures compared to the loss 

of a satellite during ascent. from revenues of $5 to $10 million in the 1970s, insurance 

revenues by the 2000s typically ranged from $800 million to $1 billion per year, with 

loss payouts usually, but not always, smaller.117 

116. andrew J. dunar and Stephen p.Waring, Power to Explore:A History of Marshall Space Flight Center 

1960-1990 (Washington, dc: naSa Sp-4313, 1999), pp. 142–143. 

117. alden richards, “the early history of the Satellite insurance market,” Quest 9/3 (2002): pp. 

54–59. 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 187 

insurance companies hate failures that cause them to pay for losses, so when 

failures do occur they press the launcher and satellite organizations to understand and 

fix the problems before they would insure another launcher or satellite.the desire 

to enforce reliability on launcher and satellite organizations led to political problems. 

in the late 1980s, china entered the commercial launch market, creating great Wall 

industries corporation to market its long march rockets.When long march rockets 

failed in 1992 and 1995, insurers launched investigations, which forced china (if it 

wanted to compete commercially) to open up its secretive processes and technologies. 

in addition,the insurers desired independent investigation committees,which included 

personnel from hughesaircraft,the leading satellite manufacturer,and Space Systems/ 

loral (SS/l), another major satellite vendor. in the ensuing interactions between the 

investigators and the chinese, the U.S. government concluded that hughes and SS/ 

l had broken american laws regarding international traffic in arms regulations 

(itar), leading to fines of $20 million and $32 million, respectively, on the satellite 

companies. insurers in the U.S. and europe complain that itar laws decrease their 

ability to get the information they need to underwrite policies.118 

Capital 

Space activities require lots of money. in the past, most of it was provided by 

the government, but private activities have grown dramatically since the 1980s. 

aerospace and space enterprises must occasionally acquire venture capital;the means 

by which they have done so has gone largely unnoticed by space historians. it is also 

worth mentioning the 2005 creation of the Spade defense index and the Space 

foundation’s Space index, the first indices directly tied to financial performance to 

defense, space, and homeland security companies. 

Burial Services 

celestis provides the service of sending a person’s cremated ashes, for a fee, 

into space. to do this, celestis group first received a license from the office of 

commercial Space transportation in 1984 to fly cremated remains aboard the Space 

Services international conestoga rocket. conestoga never flew and in 1994 a new 

company,celestis incorporated,negotiated with orbital Sciences for a launch on its 

pegasus launcher, which eventually did take place in 1997. Since then other flights 

have occurred, with prices ranging from about $495 to $12,500, depending on the 

amount of ashes and their ultimate destination.120 

118. The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/ 

Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China (cox report) (Washington,dc:government 

printing office, 3 January 1999), chapter 8,“commercial Space insurance.” 

119. Space foundation, The Space Report 2006 (colorado Springs, co: Space foundation, 2006), pp. 

149–150, http://www.spaceindex.com/ (accessed 14 January 2007). 

120. celestis Web site, http://www.memorialspaceflights.com (accessed 14 January 2007). 
188 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Management, Economics, and Policy 

the assessment of management, economics, and policy issues has spurred a 

small market of government and industry organizations. management companies 

such as Booz allen hamilton, inc. and mcKinsey & company have consulted for 

businesses and the government for years, occasionally including space organizations, 

such as mcKinsey’s support to Jpl’s reorganization efforts in 1959.121 economic 

issues have been a staple of industry associations, such as the aerospace industries 

association in the U.S., or eurospace in europe.they gather and collate aerospace 

industry-wide data to assist member company marketing and lobbying.122 

the department of commerce’s office of Space commerce, founded in 1988, 

has performed political-economic analyses since that time.in 1998,congress passed the 

technologyadministrationact,which founded the office of Space commercialization; 

it was transferred to the national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa) 

in 2004. it funded private companies like futron corporation andthetauri group to 

assess various political-economic issues.123 the commercial Space launch act of 1984 

gave the department of transportation’s office of commercial Space transportation 

regulatory authority over commercial space launches. it was transferred in 1995 to the 

federal aviation administration (faa) as the associate administrator for commercial 

Spacetransportation (aSt). aSt publishes quarterly and annual reports of worldwide 

commercial space launch activities.124 

Education 

as space activities developed, so too did educational programs to train space 

industry personnel. these started at institutions involved with early rocketry or 

satellite projects, such as california institution of technology’s Jet propulsion 

laboratory (Jpl), massachusetts institute of technology’s (mit’s) lincoln 

laboratory, and Johns hopkins University’s applied physics laboratory (apl). 

these institutions created engineering and scientific programs to train their own 

employees and other government and industry personnel. Some programs and 

institutions were created based on government or commercial lobbying, such as 

Wernher von Braun’s successful effort to create a research institute at the huntsville 

121. Stephen B.Johnson,The Secret of Apollo:Systems Management in American and European Space Programs 

(Baltimore, md: Johns hopkins University press, 2002), p. 252, footnote 45. 

122. See the aerospace industry association, Aerospace Facts and Figures (arlington, Va: aerospace 

industries association), or eurospace’s Eurospace Facts and Figures, both published annually. 

123. See the office of Space commercialization Web site, http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/space/ (accessed 

January 2007). 

124. Aeronautics and Space Report of the President,Fiscal Year 2004 Activities (Washington,d.c.:government 

printing office, 2005). 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 189 

extension center of the University of alabama, which was a major factor in the 

1966 creation of the independent campus, the University of alabama in huntsville. 

Similar relationships occurred elsewhere, such as Stanford’s relationship with the 

USaf and naSa’s ames research center, naSa Johnson’s relationship with the 

University of houston clear lake, or naSa Kennedy Space center’s relationship 

with the University of central florida. Some space organizations spun off from 

educational institutions, such as the charles Stark draper laboratory spun off 

from mit, mitre corporation created from lincoln laboratory, aerojet from 

Jpl, and so on. diversified (not merely technical) programs such as the University 

of north dakota’s department of Space Studies and the international Space 

University (Strasbourg, france) were created in 1987. other specialized programs 

now exist in space systems management, politics, and other space-related topics. 

private companies also provided technical courses and consulting.the political and 

economic dimensions of space education have gotten little attention to date, except 

for the creation of economic clusters such as those in colorado Springs, the greater 

los angeles and Boston areas, and florida’s Space coast.125 

With strong congressional support to ensure educational funding in every state, 

naSa created its own educational programs. the naSa Space grant programs 

provide space educational materials to elementary and high school teachers, provide 

student scholarships, promote space education to minorities and disadvantaged 

groups, and support various university programs. naSa also creates educational 

programming on its own television channel, much of which is targeted to these 

same audiences.the economic and political effects of these programs has, to date, 

not been investigated, though tens of millions of dollars are spent annually. 

Space camps to educate young people were created specifically to spur science 

and mathematics education, and hence technical development in their societies. 

Soviet space camps originated from Young cosmonauts groups, which came into 

being soon after gagarin’s 1961 flight.these spread across the Soviet Union and 

then into its allied european nations such as east germany, poland, and hungary. 

the first U.S. space camp took place in 1982 in huntsville, alabama, at United 

States Space and rocket center, which had been founded earlier under the 

direction of Wernher von Braun. By the early twenty-first century, space camps 

existed worldwide.126 

125. ann markusen, Scott campbell, peter hall, and Sabina deitrick, The Rise of the Gunbelt: The 

Military Remapping of Industrial America (oxford, U.K.: oxford University press, 1991). William 

Barnaby faherty, Florida’s Space Coast:The Impact of NASA on the Sunshine State (gainsville, fl: 

University press of florida, 2002). 

126. anne Baird and robert Koropp, The Official U.S. Space Camp Book (1992); pablo de leon,“Space 

camps,” in Space exploration and humanity, 2 vols. (Santa Barbara, ca:aBc-clio, in press). 
190 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Professional and Advocacy Groups 

as rocketry moved from amateurs to military organizations and corporations 

in the 1940s, the amateur rocketry groups matured into advocacy and professional 

groups. professional groups such as the american astronautical Society (aaS) and 

the american institute for aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa), primarily acted as 

professional networking organizations, sponsoring conferences and publications for 

engineers and managers working in corporations and government organizations. 

others, such as the British interplanetary Society and the national Space Society 

(nSS), continued the tradition of space advocacy. despite their small size, these 

organizations have significant political and economic impact, as they provide 

forums for technical and political interchanges between government, industry, and 

academic organizations. 

Media 

Space,with its inherent aura of mystery,risk,and danger,has always been a popular 

media topic, which a variety of media cater to and profit from. Some general media 

outlets cater to space activities,such as the“new Series in naSa history”by the Johns 

hopkins University press; the public Broadcasting System’s creation and airing of carl 

Sagan’s Cosmos series in the 1980s;home Box office’s series From Earth to the Moon in the 

early twenty-first century, and The Space Show, a San francisco radio show. professional 

space organizations such as the aiaa, the aaS, and the British interplanetary Society 

have their own in-house publication capabilities for trade journals, books, and 

newsletters; so do naSa, eSa, and other government space organizations. Some 

publishers publish mainly or only space topics, such as apogee press, orbit press, 

and Space publications. Some publications are space-only or aerospace-only, such as 

Space News or AviationWeek & SpaceTechnology.though this sector is small in terms of 

money, its influence is much larger than its economic size indicates. 

Conclusion 

Space historians select a variety of topics to study based on their own individual 

interests, but they should also take note of those subjects that humanity as a whole 

values, and of the wide variety of institutions that support activities in space.the 

money spent on particular areas is a proxy for the value that humans place on 

those activities. By this standard, space telecommunications has become, by the 

early twenty-first century, the most important space topic. perhaps because its rise 

to prominence became significant in the 1980s and 1990s, it has yet to rate highly 

among historians—a fact this paper hopes to elevate.also, the variety of economic 

activities that take place to support space endeavors is significantly broader than 

is typically portrayed. topics such as space education, insurance, weaponry, and 

support services are subjects as worthy of analysis as are human flight and space 
The Political Economy of Spaceflight 191 

science. analysis of the interaction of civilian, military, and commercial activities 

must take place within the context of these many sectors, as these interactions vary 

greatly from sector to sector. 

in one respect, all of these interactions have a common characteristic— 

economic and political issues are tightly intertwined. a number of studies and 

analyses try to separate the economic and political realms. advocates of private 

enterprise such as those in the so-called alt-space movement try very hard to divide 

true “commercial” endeavors from government-funded activities.127 Unfortunately 

for them, separating government from space activities has been extremely difficult 

and is likely to remain so for a variety of economic, legal, and political reasons. 

indeed, businesses in general seek any profitable markets, and governments are too 

large a market for space-related businesses to ignore.dollars,after all,are just as green 

coming from the government as from other corporations or from individuals. 

Space historians have the opposite bias because they have depended largely 

on government sources, which in turn have led to histories that take a government 

viewpoint—often with similar priorities to the governments themselves. instead, 

we space historians need to provide a much better balance between government 

and private activities in our studies and analyses.Whether investigating governmental 

activities (where politics are the priority but economics the grease) or investigating 

privateactivities(whereeconomicsisoftenprimaryandpoliticsunavoidable),apoliticaleconomic approach is a useful tool to ensure a proper balance of perspectives. 

127. See, for example, edward l. hudgins, ed., Space:The Free-Market Frontier (Washington, dc:the 

cato institute,2002);paula Berinstein, Making Space Happen:Private Space Ventures and the Visionaries 

Behind Them (medford, nJ: medford press, 2002), and dobbs, Space:The Next Business Frontier. 
192 Societal impact of Spaceflight
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 193

chapter 10 

The Role of Space Development 

in Globalization 

James a.Vedda 

hundreds of books and countless articles have been written since the mid1990s about the phenomenon of globalization. a google search on the term 

“globalization”yielded 18.8 million hits in September 2005—a number that multiplied 

almost six times (to 109 million) by march 2006.amazon.com displayed at least 120 

new books on the subject that were scheduled to be released between September 

2005 and mid-2006. despite this impressive volume of literature, the author has had 

little success in finding discussions that directly address the effect of space development 

on globalization (and vice versa) other than cursory acknowledgments of the role of 

satellite communications as a key supporting technology. 

globalization has been identified as the dominant trend that has replaced the 

cold war, although its development overlaps the cold war by at least three decades. 

for much of that time, U.S. government space activities had fairly well defined roles 

that were closely associated with the nation’s cold war-era interests. if globalization 

is the successor to the cold war paradigm, then U.S. space efforts, particularly those 

involving exploration and development,must be redefined appropriately. this is not a 

simple task, since debates rage as to what globalization means, where it is headed, and 

whether the net effect will be good or bad.although globalization debates primarily 

address economic, social, and environmental issues, the continuing influence of space 

development cannot be ignored or viewed in isolation from these issues. 

this chapter highlights the role of space development in the emergence of the 

current era of globalization, and briefly discusses how space activities are likely to 

continue to influence this evolving process. globalization, in turn, has influenced 

the course of space development. the implications for the future may be both 

positive and negative, including the risk of a backlash against space development 

stemming from anti-globalization movements. 
194 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Defining Globalization 

the economic and societal developments that today are labeled globalization have 

been around for centuries,waxing and waning at least since the sixteenth century.popular 

use of the term“globalization”goes back to the late 1980s.the term’s popularity is partly 

due to its ambiguity and ability to assume different connotations depending on who 

is using it and in which context.1 for some, it connotes international connectedness; 

liberation from geographic and nationalistic limits to innovation and growth;leveling of 

inequalities; improvement of living standards and the human condition; and an avenue 

for avoiding major conflicts such as the wars of the twentieth century. for others, 

globalization is just the opposite.they see it as “a project for polarizing and dividing 

people—along axis of class and economic inequality, axis of religion and culture, axis of 

gender, axis of geographies and regions . . . a new caste system.”2 

the deep and often heated disagreement over the nature and ramifications 

of globalization makes it difficult to find a generally accepted definition for the 

phenomenon that The New York Times writer thomas friedman calls “the overarching 

international system shaping the domestic politics and foreign relations of virtually 

every country.”3 for purposes of this chapter, a good definition that recognizes 

the contributions of technological development comes from Joseph Stiglitz, nobel 

laureate in economics, who describes globalization as “the closer integration of the 

countries and peoples of the world which has been brought about by the enormous 

reduction of costs of transportation and communication, and the breaking down of 

artificial barriers to the flows of goods, services, capital, knowledge, and (to a lesser 

extent) people across borders.”4 

theliteratureonglobalizationtendstomentionspacetechnology(ifitismentioned 

at all) in no more than a sentence or two acknowledging satellite communications as a 

component of the revolution in telecommunications that enabled the current era of 

globalization.the following statement is representative: 

the revolution in microelectronics, in information technology 

and in computers has established virtually instantaneous 

worldwide links which, when combined with the technologies 

of the telephone, television, cable and satellite, have dramatically 

altered the nature of political communication.5 

1. mathias Koenig-archibugi, “globalization and the challenge to governance,” in Taming Globalization: 

Frontiers of Governance,david held and mathias Koenig-archibugi,ed.(cambridge,U.K.:polity press,2003). 

2. Vandana Shiva,“the polarised World of globalisation,” international forum on globalization, 27 

may 2005, http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-05/27shiva.cfm (accessed June 2006). 

3. thomas l. friedman, The Lexus and the OliveTree (newYork: farrar, Straus & giroux, 1999), p. 7. 

4. Joseph e. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (newYork:W.W. norton & company,2003),p.9. 

5. david held, “from executive to cosmopolitan multilateralism” in Taming Globalization: Frontiers of 

Governance, david held and mathias Koenig-archibugi, ed. (cambridge, U.K.: polity press, 2003). 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 195 

this cursory treatment is understandable, since most of the literature focuses 

on international economics, implications for developing countries and the world’s 

poor,and potential impacts to the environment.But there is much more to the story 

of how space development has made the current globalization experience different 

from previous ones, and will continue to affect its evolution. as former Secretary 

of labor robert reich noted, technology and globalization are often discussed as 

separate trends, but they are becoming one and the same.6 

Globalization Past and Present 

the concept of globalization has been popularized in newspaper articles and bestselling books bythomas friedman,who divides its history into three distinct eras: 

•  globalization 1.0 (1492–1800). countries and governments drove globa

integration.trade began between the eastern and Western hemispheres. 

•  globalization 2.0 (1800–2000, interrupted by the great depression and th

two World Wars).the industrial revolution and multinational companies were 

the key agents of change. 

•  globalization 3.0 (2000 onward).individuals have newfound power to collaborat

and compete globally.7 

friedman’s view of globalization history hinges on the increasing empowerment 

of ever-smaller components of societies.this view, though compelling, is not shared 

by historians, who perceive three eras of globalization as follows: 

•  the age of exploration and colonization from the fifteenth century to the earl

nineteenth century. 

•  industrialization and expansion of world trade from the mid-nineteent

century to 1914, at which time globalization was halted by the outbreak of the 

first World War. 

•  the current era from the post–World War ii recovery of the global econom

to the present.8 

When one looks at the differences between the pre-war and post-war eras, it 

is clear that this latter view is more accurate—the wars and the great depression 

separated two distinct eras rather than simply being a pause within a single 

continuous period.this view is also better suited to the analysis of the role of space 

development in the current era. 

6. robert B. reich, The Future of Success (new York:Vintage Books, 2000), p. 23. 

7. thomas l. friedman, The World Is Flat:A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (new York: farrar, 

Straus & giroux, 2005), pp. 9–10. 

8. Jeffrey a. frieden, Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (new York: W. W. 

norton & company, 2006). 
196 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Before looking at the differences between the current and previous experiences 

with globalization, it is instructive to note characteristics that are similar. for 

example, nineteenth-century globalization featured the following: unprecedented 

international movement of capital, raw materials, and people; revolutionary 

technological innovation, including the telephone, radio, and internal combustion 

engine; and an ongoing struggle for balance between protectionism and free trade. 

allowing for a century of technological advances, these characteristics sound very 

familiar today.there were also tensions in that era’s international order that resemble 

today’s headlines: imperial overstretch, great power rivalry, an unstable alliance 

system, rogue regimes sponsoring terror, and the rise of a revolutionary terrorist 

organization (the Bolsheviks) hostile to capitalism.9 

the end ofWorldWar ii launched the current era by heralding a revitalization of 

the economies of the industrialized nations,particularly the U.S.an important legacy of 

the war that would stimulate the re-emergence of globalization was the new relationship 

between the U.S. government and the research community. always a key supporter 

of infrastructure projects, the U.S. government became the nation’s primary patron of 

science and engineering. an effort to sustain this relationship beyond the war years 

was spearheaded by president franklin roosevelt’s director of scientific research and 

development,Vannevar Bush.10 the result was what some have called a “social contract 

with science” that portrays the pursuit of scientific knowledge as intrinsically good 

and useful: as long as the nation maintains its input into the reservoir of knowledge, 

the system is working as it should, and application of that knowledge will take care of 

itself. institutions created in this image, such as the national Science foundation and 

naSa,persist to this day,as does the dominance of government funding in certain fields, 

such as medical research. however, it remains to be seen whether this social contract is 

sustainable in an evolving post-cold war political environment.11 large science budgets 

will be increasingly difficult to justify if the scientific enterprise, or at least some part of 

it, is perceived to be isolated from societal needs. 

the output of this government partnership with science was the eventual 

widespread availability of technologies that could only be dreamed of—or in 

some cases, were unimaginable—in the prior era of globalization. for example, 

technologies that allowed more rapid movement of people, goods, and information 

in the latter half of the twentieth century included the following: 

•  Jet air transport for passengers and cargo multiplied the speed of long-distanc

travel, effectively shrinking travel times from days to hours. equally important, 

it eventually became affordable to a broad swath of society. 

9. niall ferguson,“Sinking globalization,” Foreign Affairs (march/april 2005). 

10. Vannevar Bush, Science—The Endless Frontier: A Report to the President (Washington, dc: U.S. 

government printing office, July 1945). 

11. radford Byerly and roger pielke,“the changing ecology of United States Science,” Science 269 

(1995): pp. 1531–1532. 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 197 

•  Supertankers and container ships have dramatically reduced the cost o

transporting cargo across the oceans,and refrigeration allows perishable products 

to make their way around the world. 

•  near-instantaneous, high-bandwidth communications have evolved so far beyon

the telegraph and radio of our great-grandfathers’ day that the benefits are beyond 

our ability to quantify.By the 1960s,telephones became ubiquitous and continents 

were connected by undersea cables.the fax machine became popular in the mid1980s,at the same time that so-called microcomputers were maturing.By the 1990s, 

the expectation was that every desktop would have its own computer, probably 

linked to a corporate network and the internet. 

•  Space technology in its various forms started making its contribution t

globalization in the 1960s. 

clearly, the contribution of space technology was not limited to the addition 

of satellites to an already expanding network of global communications, as the 

globalization literature seems to imply.the full array of emerging space capabilities 

had significant influence. for example, numerous business and government 

activities at the local, regional, national, and international level are dependent on 

the weather.the improved weather forecasts enabled by satellites beginning in the 

1960s enhanced productivity and safety of operations in areas such as agriculture, 

air transport, shipping, construction, mining, and utilities, to name a few. over time, 

these improvements had cumulative effects that altered business cycles and planning 

to reflect an evolving information age economy. 

as weather monitoring matured, another form of earth monitoring known as 

satellite remote sensing became available to civilian users starting in the 1970s.able 

to produce images much more detailed than weather satellites, and in some cases 

using multiple spectral bands that reveal even more information, remote sensing 

opened new avenues for industries such as those listed above and others, including 

urban planners,environmentalists,fossil fuel geologists,and even archeologists.early 

in naSa’s landsat series, interest in this new capability spread around the world. 

assisted by the U.S. policy of nondiscriminatory access to landsat data, remote 

sensing became a new tool for resource exploration, environmental stewardship, and 

disaster assistance, among other applications. commercial descendants of landsat 

are cultivating global markets in ventures that are very much in keeping with 

the proliferation of know-how and exchange of data that are characteristic of a 

globalized world. 

the use of satellites for navigation began in the 1960s, primarily to serve 

the needs of military ships and submarines. today, gpS has become a household 

word (or more appropriately, a household acronym) even to those who don’t know 

that it stands for global positioning System. By the end of the 1980s, the gpS 

constellation was taking shape and its services—accurate positioning, navigation, 

and timing—were being shared at no cost with the world. essentially, those services 

provide value to anything that moves, and even some things that don’t move but 
198 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

depend on precise timing signals.though it is often overlooked, this capability is 

in a class with satellite communications as an enabler of globalization. its ability to 

assist the movement of people, goods, capital, and information around the world is 

widely recognized, as evidenced by several global and regional navigation satellite 

systems operated or planned by russia, china, europe, Japan, and india. 

one of the most important but least acknowledged contributions of satellites 

to globalization is their role in keeping the cold war from turning into a hot war.as 

noted earlier, the previous era of globalization ended abruptly with the outbreak of 

major military conflict in 1914. despite the best efforts of many, it took more than 

three decades to resurrect globalization. the same thing could have happened in 

the years following World War ii, dramatically worsened by the addition of nuclear 

weapons into the mix. the “balance of terror” in offensive weapons is generally 

given credit for the fact that this never happened, but the nuclear arsenal could not 

have allowed us to achieve this without the support of satellites for surveillance, 

reconnaissance, and targeting.12 

not all observers during the cold war saw the government relationship with 

science and technology, or space in particular, in a positive light.13 a noteworthy 

example that specifically addresses space comes from historian Walter a.mcdougall, 

who received a pulitzer prize for his 1985 book on the political history of the 

early space age.14 his views on the social consequences of the space program were 

perhaps more starkly displayed in a 1982 journal article in which he identified 

the U.S. response to Sputnik as the catalyst that turned the United States into a 

“full-fledged technocracy” in the 1960s.15 mcdougall proposed his own definition 

of technocracy (usually taken to mean the management of society by technical 

experts). he defined it as “the institutionalization of technological change for state 

purposes.” institutionalized stimulation of science and technology, in his view, is 

artificial, and in the U.S. it “extended not only to military spending, science, and 

space, but also to foreign aid, education, welfare, medical care, urban renewal, and 

more.”the “symbol and vanguard” of this movement, he said, was naSa. 

12. for a striking example of how satellites helped keep the cold war cold, see the discussion of the 

cuban missile crisis in William e. Burrows, Deep Black (new York: random house, 1986).a more 

recent expression of this view can be found in david Kahn, “the rise of intelligence,” Foreign 

Affairs (September/october 2006). 

13. for example, see amitai etzioni, The Moon-Doggle (garden city, nY: doubleday and co., 1964). 

14. Walter a. mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth:A Political History of the Space Age (new York: 

Basic Books, 1985). 

15. Walter a. mcdougall, “technocracy and Statecraft in the Space age: toward the history of a 

Saltation,” The American Historical Review 87 (1982): pp. 1010–1040. for a later reiteration of these 

views, see hal Bowser, “how the Space race changed america: an interview with Walter a. 

mcdougall,” Invention & Technology (fall 1987): pp. 25–30. 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 199 

mcdougall saw the Space age as “defined by the discontinuous leap in public 

stimulation and direction of research and development” and worried that “progress 

may, at times, undermine the values that make a society worth defending in the 

first place.” he suggested that “[t]he net gains from space technology should be 

measured not only against the total cost, or the economic cost, of the program itself 

but also against the continuing loss incurred from misdirected military and social 

spending encouraged by the same technocratic mentality that inspired apollo.” 

mcdougall gave naSa and the space program far too much credit for shaping 

the management of late-twentieth-century society. many phenomena of equal or 

greater influence existed,some of which preceded the Sputnik era by many years.the 

U.S.government turned to centralization of large-scale projects during the new deal 

of the 1930s.the war effort continued this trend and increased government influence 

over technological and industrial development. in the post-war era, as the population 

and economy grew, the government pursued many macro-projects unrelated to space 

while exercising its cold war responsibility as the leader of the “free world.” these 

examples put the space program’s role into proper perspective: high-profile space 

research was a product, not the cause, of its socio-political environment. 

mcdougall’s primary focus was on the research and development enterprise, 

which he saw as a “command economy” approach to “choosing new technology for 

social (and political) goals ...abandoning the concept of a free society”and reinforcing 

“the national state as the most efficient agent of technological change.” his skeptical 

assessment of the nation’s research and development enterprise (including the space 

program)—highlighting centralization, nationalism, and direction of technological 

development by public institutions—is the polar opposite of the globalization concept 

we know today.however,the key aspects of the nation’s space efforts that have helped 

to enable globalization are not the direct public funding of research but, rather, the 

dissemination, adoption, and routine use of the resulting space applications. 

present-day globalization is reaping the benefits of space applications created 

and disseminated in the cold war in an environment that kept major threats at 

bay and allowed global markets to flourish. government space efforts aimed at 

national security, national prestige, and technology development have led us to a 

point where civil and commercial space applications are fundamental—though 

often transparent—in a globalizing world. 

Space Development Under a Globalization Paradigm 

friedman believes that the current system of globalization “has come upon us 

far faster than our ability to retrain ourselves to see and comprehend it.”16 certainly 

16. friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, p. 22. 
200 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

this has been the case with space development.as in other societal activities, spacerelated institutions seek to continue their existence and their traditional priorities 

despite the fast pace of change in key segments of their environment. Since the end 

of the apollo era, for example, U.S. civil space efforts have struggled with questions 

on the role of government vs. the private sector, made all the more difficult by the 

fact that the answers are moving targets.Who should finance,build,and operate space 

infrastructure elements such as launch systems and space stations? to what extent 

should the government support research projects that have the potential to produce 

private-sector revenues? in an era of tight federal budgets, should the government 

shift as much responsibility and expertise as possible to the private sector, or is 

this a short-sighted strategy that will undermine the nation’s continuing need for 

large-scale, evolving space capabilities? can the private sector, at the current stage 

of technical development, always be counted on to choose better space investments 

and technical approaches than the government? 

a significant percentage of the space industry is designed to serve governments, 

since these constitute much of the customer base in key areas such as space hardware 

manufacturing and launch services.the relatively small number of competitors and 

customers in these areas,and the dominance of government customers,yield a space 

industry that is slower to adapt and innovate than most other high-tech industries. 

the tendency to protect space technologies as sensitive national assets slows their 

adoption in the world market and may hinder the competitiveness of nations 

employing export restrictions and protectionist measures. these circumstances 

do not bode well for the U.S. space community’s ability to rapidly adapt to the 

globalized environment. 

in addition to keeping up with the frenetic pace of the world’s economic 

evolution,the U.S.space community also must adapt to changes in its character.in the 

globalization era,this must take into account the diffusion (or “democratization”) of 

technology, information, economic power, and international influence.the leveling 

effect that results will change relationships with international partners, increase 

competition in space products and services on the world market, and challenge 

U.S. space leadership across the board. this is already forcing the U.S. civil space 

program to rethink its post-cold war identity, as demonstrated by the shift away 

from naSa’s flagship programs of the 1970s and 1980s and toward ambitious 

human space exploration. 

as before, geopolitics and economics will drive the search for a new national 

identity in space. the issues are somewhat different today than they were during 

the cold war, but the challenges and risks remain. the international forum on 

globalization warns of this when it states: “the world’s corporate and political 

leadership is undertaking a restructuring of global politics and economics that may 

prove as historically significant as any event since the industrial revolution. this 

restructuring is happening at tremendous speed, with little public disclosure of 

the profound consequences affecting democracy, human welfare, local economies, 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 201 

and the natural world.”17 Warnings of this type are echoed by many observers of 

globalization,some of whom see the movement as unsustainable,sparking nonlinear 

trends that will be impossible to manage.18 in a recent assessment, the central 

intelligence agency recognized that sustained financial crises or other prolonged 

disruptions could occur, but was generally optimistic about the prospects for the 

global economy by 2015.the implications for geopolitics were also viewed with 

optimism but were tempered by caution: 

this globalized economy will be a net contributor to increased 

political stability in the world in 2015, although its reach and 

benefits will not be universal. in contrast to the industrial 

revolution, the process of globalization is more compressed. its 

evolution will be rocky, marked by chronic financial volatility 

and a widening economic divide . . . regions, countries, and 

groups feeling left behind will face deepening economic 

stagnation, political instability, and cultural alienation.they will 

foster political, ethnic, ideological, and religious extremism, 

along with the violence that often accompanies it. they will 

force the United States and other developed countries to remain 

focused on “old-world” challenges while concentrating on the 

implications of “new-world” technologies at the same time.19 

as noted earlier, supporters of globalization believe it will allow more and 

more individuals, as consumers and producers, to enjoy the benefits of economic 

liberalization,competition,and innovation.it is natural to want to see oneself as part 

of the solution rather than part of the problem,so the space community undoubtedly 

would like to view itself as an essential tool of globalization for redressing deficiencies 

and providing solutions for global problems. But general acceptance of this view is 

not automatic. in fact, there is a risk that the opposite may occur. 

globalization has a dark side, and there is no shortage of critics around the 

world who are eager to point this out.among the negative aspects of globalization 

that have been cited are: 

•  exposure of workers and firms to unwelcome competition from abroad, an

increased risk that companies will relocate their production elsewhere. 

•  competition between locations for mobile capital that may lead to a “race t

the bottom” in environmental standards. 

17. the international forum on globalization claims to represent more than 60 organizations in 25 

countries and identifies itself as “an alliance of sixty leading activists,scholars,economists,researchers, 

and writers formed to stimulate new thinking, joint activity, and public education in response to 

economic globalization.” See http://www.ifg.org/ (accessed June 2006). 

18. ervin laszlo, Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World (San francisco: BerrettKoehler publishers inc., 2001), p. 8. 

19. central intelligence agency, GlobalTrends 2015:A Dialogue About the FutureWith Nongovernment Experts, 

(newYork: cosimo inc.,2005;originally released as a U.S.government report in december 2000). 
202 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

•  diffidence to the outside world or fear that a cherished way of life will disappea

as a result of cultural standardization. 

•  potential worsening of inequality and injustice and erosion of democrati

governance.20 

the challenge for space development is to continue its role as a key element 

of globalization without becoming associated with its negative consequences.the 

same entities that dominate space development—government institutions and 

transnational corporations—are seen by critics as orchestrating globalization to serve 

the wealthy at the expense of the poor.in this view,observations of earth from space 

might be interpreted as security threats or as a way to spy on economic activities in 

other parts of the world, rather than being seen as an instrument of environmental 

protection and disaster relief. Satellite communications might be depicted as a tool 

for extracting information and capital from unsuspecting regions of the world, 

rather than as a means of bringing information and capital to them. even incoming 

information can be pejoratively portrayed as “cultural contamination” or Western 

propaganda designed to influence national or regional policies and attitudes. 

Space technology could be seen by globalization critics as a tool of transnational 

corporations that exploit workers, of foreign investors who undermine local 

businesses,or of wealthy (i.e.,spacefaring) countries that economically take advantage 

of developing nations.the result could be neo-luddite controls on technology and 

onerous trade protection schemes that suppress economic dynamism.21 therefore, 

it is critical that government-supported space development be directed at—and 

perceived as—seeking solutions for the planet in areas such as disaster relief, 

environmental monitoring, climate research, medical research, and in the long term, 

the use of extraterrestrial resources and capabilities for the benefit of earth. 

So far, the government institutions criticized most often by globalization 

opponents are the World Bank, the international monetary fund, and the World 

trade organization.22 multinational corporations typically are disparaged generically 

rather than by individual sectors,23 and mention of aerospace companies is notably 

absent so far. But there is still the possibility for an anti-technology backlash akin to 

the Vietnam-era experience.24 

20. held,“from executive to cosmopolitan multilateralism,” pp. 2–3. 

21. reich, The Future of Success, p. 247. 

22. for example, see Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents; peter isard, Globalization and the International 

Financial System:What’sWrong andWhat Can Be Done (newYork: cambridge University press, 2005). 

23. for example, see robert o. Keohane,“global governance and democratic accountability” Taming 

Globalization: Frontiers of Governance, david held and mathias Koenig-archibugi, ed. (cambridge, 

U.K.: polity press, 2003). 

24. W. henry lambright,“managing america to the moon:a coalition analysis” in From Engineering 

Science to Big Science:The NACA and NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners, pamela e. mack, 

ed. (Washington, dc: naSa Sp-4219, 1998), p. 209. 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 203 

for at least part of the cold war era,large public expenditures on space projects 

were widely perceived in the U.S.as good investments to counter powerful,unfriendly 

forces in the world that could wreak nuclear destruction at any moment. today, 

the public’s perception of U.S. civil space efforts as a counterweight to unfriendly 

forces appears much weaker (although this factor is not measured directly by public 

opinion polls). certainly the national prestige argument for the space program has 

lost much of its impact, since terrorist networks and rogue nations are not winning 

hearts and minds around the world by demonstrating their prowess in spaceflight. 

even china’s human spaceflight program fails to stir fears in the West as it follows a 

path that was tread by the U.S. four decades earlier. 

in the current era,the value of government space efforts needs to be measured by 

a different yardstick that takes into account the multipolar geopolitical environment 

and the globalized nature of economics and technology.the space community must 

recognize the effect of this environment on trade, technology, and leadership in 

space, and resist the urge to preserve the outdated aspects of institutions, processes, 

and relationships that insulate it from the evolving “big picture.” 

Possible Futures 

a recent multiphased study by the organization for economic cooperation 

and development (oecd)25 addressed the future of space applications through 

the 2030s and perhaps provided some guidance on avoiding an anti-globalization 

backlash. the study did not express itself in globalization terms but, rather, 

sought “to understand how oecd countries may reap the benefits of civil and 

commercial space applications for society at large.”it used a scenario approach based 

on “the interaction of three main drivers of social change: geopolitical, economic, 

and environmental.”Viewed from a globalization perspective, the three scenarios 

presented in the study ranged from successful globalization to its failure to sustain 

itself in the face of a combination of unfavorable factors. 

although the oecd effort does not speak in terms of globalization,it nonetheless 

covers similar ground. Significantly, despite its generally optimistic outlook for civil 

and commercial space, it identifies obstacles to future growth, including: 

•  market access restrictions due to incomplete trade liberalization in som

countries. 

•  procurement policy problems resulting from the unreliability and unpredictabilit

of government customers. 

25. organization for economic cooperation and development, “Space 2030: exploring the future 

of Space applications,” 3 may 2004, and “Space 2030: tackling Society’s challenges,” 31 may 

2005. Both titles are available from http://www.oecdbookshop.org (accessed June 2006).the oecd 

is a multinational forum for addressing economic, social, and environmental challenges. it has 30 

member countries in north america, europe, and the pacific rim. 
204 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

•  export controls and investment restrictions

•  Spectrum allocation problems

•  insufficient government support for the development of new technologies

•  legal and regulatory constraints that cause uncertainty and delay in th

deployment of new applications.26 

the oecd frames its recommendations in three “blocks” aimed at what 

governments can do to strengthen the contributions space can make to solving 

important socioeconomic challenges: 

Block i: implement sustainable space infrastructure that is fully integrated 

with ground infrastructure and takes into account user needs, especially in the areas 

of earth observation, navigation, communications, and access to space. 

Block ii: take advantage of productivity gains that space solutions may offer 

for delivery of public services and development of new ones, particularly through 

international cooperation, data sharing, disaster and treaty monitoring, emergency 

management, and economic development. 

Block iii: encourage the private sector to contribute fully to the development 

of new,innovative applications and to the development and operation of space-based 

infrastructures by making national and international space laws business-friendly, 

and by encouraging entrepreneurship, open markets, and international standards.27 

these recommendations align well with a belief that space development should 

continue to play a significant role—far beyond just communications—in shaping 

globalization’s evolution and keeping it focused on societal needs. in its detailed 

recommendations, the oecd study suggests ideas on how we can get there from 

here.at least for the next three decades, the study sees great hope and promise for 

applied space research and development, relegates basic research to government 

space agencies, and seems to marginalize human spaceflight. 

today’s space community must consider timeframes even beyond 30 years. 

given the scope and difficulty of exploring and developing space, it is not too early 

to ask:Where do we want the United States to be when it reaches its tricentennial 

in 2076? Will the United States still be one of the leaders in space at that time? 

26. oecd, 2004, p. 16. 

27. oecd, 2005, pp. 211–215. 
The Role of Space Development in Globalization 205 

Conclusion 

analyses of the circumstances and outcomes of the previous era of globalization, 

and the similarities to and differences from the current era,are instructive in defining 

the role space has played and will play in the years ahead.Will globalization continue 

to flourish in the decades to come, or will it end relatively soon, perhaps suddenly, 

as it did nearly a century ago at the outbreak of World War i? at that time, Britain 

was still the world’s financial center but the United States had become the world’s 

largest national market and had surpassed Britain in industrial output. 

Between 1870 and 1913 the size of the British economy well 

more than doubled; even if one takes into account population 

growth, British output rose by more than 50 percent per 

person in those years.Yet the gap between Britain and the rest 

of the world narrowed continually. British manufacturers were 

being beaten out of export markets, even out of the British 

market. the United States and germany were the world’s 

manufacturing dynamos; the United Kingdom maintained 

its leadership only in such services as banking, insurance, and 

shipping. it was no longer a given that the next power plant or 

railroad built in africa or eastern europe would be British; it 

was just as likely to be german, french, or american. even in 

international investment, continental financial centers—as well 

as new York—were challenging london’s supremacy. it could 

hardly have been imagined that Britain’s enormous industrial 

lead would last forever, but the speed of its erosion led many 

Britons to ask how this had happened . . . .28 

after 1914, the hardship of the war and the faltering economic recovery of the 

following decade shifted financial leadership to the U.S., where it has remained ever 

since.But go back and read the above quote again,this time substituting the U.S.for 

all the references to Britain, and emerging economic powers like china and india 

for the references to germany, france, and america.the description becomes eerily 

familiar, mirroring news media reports of the past quarter-century. 

could either continuation or disruption of globalization shift leadership roles 

the way it did in the early twentieth century? it happened once, so it can happen 

again.the story of space development in the globalization era,and of U.S.ambitions 

in this arena, is still being written. 

28. frieden, Global Capitalism, p. 107. 
206 Societal impact of Spaceflight
chapter 11 

Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 

John Krige 

has space exploration,and naSa’s role in it in particular,had an effect on society, 

and, if so, on what aspects of it? and how do we measure any such impact? 

these are challenging questions indeed. the stakeholders in the huge american 

space program are multiple and include scientists; engineers; research, development, 

and launch facilities; industry; administrators; and many government agencies, not to 

speak of congress and the U.S. taxpayer.the impacts of spaceflight vary widely, from 

adding to the stockpile of knowledge and stimulating innovation and industry, to 

training, education, and creating jobs and—if we move beyond the civilian sphere— 

to enhancing national security and intelligence gathering. and then there are the 

intangible, difficult to quantify cultural effects that range from inspiring a young girl 

to become an astronaut to building national pride and prestige in what are, after all, 

spectacular scientific and technological, managerial, and industrial achievements. 

this paper briefly considers one small, but i think important and often 

overlooked, corner of this vast panorama: the place of spaceflight in american 

foreign policy. i do not simply want to insist that naSa’s international programs 

have had an important impact as instruments of foreign policy.i also want to suggest 

that today they have a particularly significant political and cultural role to play in 

projecting a positive image of american power and american democracy abroad. 

in a world increasingly torn apart by conflicts over values—conflicts which history 

teaches us can seldom be resolved by force—i believe we overlook the potential of 

naSa as an instrument for american foreign policy at our peril. 

international cooperation for peaceful purposes was one of naSa’s important 

missions from its inception, and those who drafted the Space act that created the 

organization in 1958 gave it considerable prominence.the range of international 

activities covered by naSa is truly vast.1 these are partly a response to the nature 

1. arnold W. frutkin, International Cooperation in Space (englewood cliffs, nJ: prentice hall, 1965); 

arnold W. frutkin, Space and the International CooperationYear:A National Challenge (Washington, dc: 

U.S.government printing office,1965 ol-779-251).arnoldW.frutkin “international cooperation 

in Space,”Science 169 (24 July 1970):pp.333–339 surveys naSa’s general philosophy on international 

cooperation and some of the earlier programs of interest to us here. 
208 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

of space exploration itself, which transcends national boundaries; whether they are 

launching sounding rockets or astronauts, communicating with satellites or space 

shuttles, or measuring the properties of the ionosphere or the trajectory of storms, 

naSa and its sister agencies have to think globally. 

however,those who implemented naSa’s mandate had a far broader vision of 

international cooperation than one that was simply subservient to america’s national 

space needs. from its inception, naSa saw its role as fostering the development of 

space science and technology in other countries. its officers, in consultation with 

other parts of the administration (notably the State department and the department 

of defense), sought to use american scientific and technological preeminence to 

kick-start and even mould space activities in other countries, notably those of the 

Western alliance. naSa’s international programs were intended to build a world 

community dedicated to the peaceful exploration of space with american help,under 

american leadership, and in line with the general objectives of american foreign 

policy.in brief,as a naSatask force put it in 1987,“[i]nternational cooperation in 

space from the outset has been motivated primarily by foreign policy objectives.”2 

in what follows i shall substantiate these claims by focusing on three space 

science programs in which U.S. foreign policy has been interwoven, more or less 

explicitly, with naSa’s international initiatives.What makes these cases interesting 

is that, a priori, many people tend to believe that science is above politics and that 

international science is conducted independently of foreign policy concerns.this 

paper will not simply challenge such views but, by picking what is arguably the 

most difficult case, scientific collaboration, will alert us to the range of areas—some 

obvious, some less evident—in which naSa has served as a vector of U.S. foreign 

policy. my aim is to illustrate naSa’s impact on strengthening the Western alliance 

not simply by promoting international scientific collaboration,but also by using it as 

a platform to consolidate the political and cultural solidarity of the free world.and 

although my examples are drawn from the cold war and its immediate aftermath,the 

lessons of history apply just as much today, when new and even more fundamental 

divisions threaten to tear apart the fragile fabric of Western democracy. 

Space Science When the Cold War Was Hot 

in march 1959, just a few months after naSa officially came into being, the 

american delegate to a meeting of the committee on Space research (coSpar) 

announced that the U.S.would be willing to launch scientific experiments proposed 

by scientists from other countries on american-built satellites.3 naSa would help 

2. task force on international relations in Space, national aeronautics and Space administration, 

International Space Policy for the 1990’s and Beyond, (Washington, dc: naSa, 1987), p.18. 

3. the text is reproduced in h. massey and m. o. robins, History of British Space Science (cambridge, 

U.K.: cambridge University press, 1986),annex 4; see also pp. 67–69. 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 209 

integrate the experiment into the payload and would even consider launches 

entirely dedicated to foreign experiments. the organization also offered to host 

foreign scientists in U.S. laboratories where they would help them design, build, and 

test their experiments. informally, naSa also let it be known that, initially at least, 

the payload would be launched free of charge using an american rocket. 

the British enthusiastically took up this initiative, and in april 1962 naSa 

launched ariel i containing instruments that had been designed, prepared, and 

funded by the British national committee for Space research. ariel ii followed 

in 1964. a year later the British were engineering and building the payload for 

their own satellite with naSa’s help. in September 1962, naSa also launched a 

canadian satellite, alouette i, that had been designed, funded, and engineered by 

the defense research telecommunications establishment, inaugurating a fruitful 

joint venture with the U.S. in studies of the ionosphere. french and italian space 

researchers also benefited quickly from the offer made at coSpar.indeed,by 1965 

arnold W. frutkin, who had been put in charge of naSa’s international programs 

in September 1959, could boast that the organization had already entered into 

collaborative arrangements with no fewer than 69 countries.apart from providing 

for naSa’s own needs,as explained above,these programs,frutkin pointed out,were 

affording opportunities to the best brains abroad to contribute and participate in 

space research, were stimulating technical development abroad so perhaps reducing 

some of the gaps that were causing political and economic strains between the U.S. 

and its partrners,and were providing a framework for other countries to join naSa 

in complementary and cost-sharing programs—like that with canada.4 

frutkin was never sentimental about the benefits of international collaboration; 

his experience in the international geophysical Year had taught him just how 

easily the high ideals of internationalism could be thwarted by the centrifugal 

pull of national interest. his roadmap for international collaboration was one that 

demanded there be no exchange of funds between the partners; that there be clean 

technological interfaces at the level of hardware; that the project be of genuine 

scientific interest and, if possible, complement the american space science program; 

and that the results be published and open to all. it was implicit in this roadmap that 

political considerations did not determine the choice of projects and that naSa’s 

civilian mandate was respected.5 

on the face of it, these collaborations were of purely scientific interest and 

have no relevance to my topic.Yet the more we probe, the more we realize how 

deeply embedded they were in the cold war struggle and the pursuit of america’s 

foreign policy objectives. i shall identify just two very different dimensions of this 

that are pertinent to these cases. 

4. arnoldW.frutkin, International Cooperation (englewood cliffs, nJ, prentice hall, 1966), esp. chapter 2. 

5. See frutkin, International Cooperation. 
210 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

first, the determination to help Britain and then canada orbit their own 

satellites quickly was provoked, in part, by fears that a communist country, and not 

a member of the Western alliance, would be the first to launch a satellite after the 

USSr and the U.S.6 there was a space race in space science.as early as September 

1958, officials hoped to place British instruments on an american satellite launched 

from the U.K.’s test range in Woomera, South australia.7 it soon became clear that 

even if america’s most important ally was putting a national space program in place, 

it did not yet have the independent capacity to provide an instrument payload. 

naSa’s proposal made to coSpar in march 1959 was partly a response to the 

inherent weakness of this and other european space programs. if the British were 

quick to capitalize on it, it was not only because they valued american help but 

also because they realized the urgency of the situation, both in terms of national 

pride and the opportunities provided by cold war rivalry.ariel i, launched in april 

1962, won the race, though it was something of a pyrrhic victory. although the 

instrumentation was British, the satellite was american. it was canada’s alouette 

i satellite, launched on 29 September 1962, that had the honor of being “the first 

satellite to be designed and built by a nation other than the United States or the 

Soviet Union.”8 apart from providing valuable information on the ionosphere, it 

ensured that a country from the Western alliance and not from the communist bloc 

was third into space with its own satellite.9 

cultural as well as political spinoffs accrued from the early space race in 

science. as i mentioned earlier, france also took advantage of america’s offer 

to help build a national space science program. indeed, in the words of roger 

Bonnet, an internationally recognized figure in french and european space science, 

“[W]ithout the [sic] american cooperation, the french space science programme 

would not have had any chance to start on a competitive basis.” Bonnet’s own ph.d. 

research on the ultraviolet spectrum of the Sun was made possible thanks to the 

close contact established between his mentor, Jacques Blamont, and the american 

6. John Krige,“‘Building athird Space power.’Western european reactions to Sputnik at the dawn of the 

Space age,” in Reconsidering Sputnik: FortyYears Since the First Soviet Satellite, roger d. launius, John m. 

logsdon and robertW.Smith,ed.(amsterdam:harwood academic publishers,2000),pp.289–307. 

7. neil Whyte and philip gummett,“far Beyond the Bounds of Science:the making of the United 

Kingdom’s first Space policy,” Minerva (1997): pp. 139–169. 

8. c. a. franklin, “alouette/iSiS: how it all Began,” ieee international engineering ceremony, 

Shirley Bay, ottawa, 13 may 1993, available online at http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/millennium/ 

alouette/alouette_home.html (accessed 15 September 2006). 

9. Alouette’s mission had three components:1) develop a canadian space capability;2) acquire new data for 

the engineering of high-frequency radio communication links; and 3) acquire a better understanding 

of the properties of the ionosphere for scattering and deflection of radar beams. See Web site quoted 

in previous note, and also http://www.sciencetech.technomuses.ca/francais/collection/space2.cfm (accessed 15 

September 2006). frutkin glosses over the military origins of alouette. 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 211 

space science community, notably at the goddard Space flight center. in fact, 

Bonnet’s first launch in the Sahara desert in 1963 used a french Véronique sounding 

rocket enhanced with two pointing systems developed for the U.S. military by the 

University of colorado.Why is this pertinent? Because roger Bonnet was raised 

in a french communist family and as a young man it had been Soviet firsts that 

inspired him to enter space research.Working with the U.S. forced him to revise his 

political perspective.as he put it in an interview with me recently: 

. . . We were all impressed by the frantic competition which 

developed between the russians and the americans in the race 

to space.it was fascinating as far as i was concerned.i was listening 

to the radio each time the Soviets were launching something 

new and witnessed vividly all their first steps into space: the first 

intercontinental ballistic missile, the first Sputnik, and all that 

followed after. it was fantastic! But very soon we realized that 

the americans adopted an open policy of information which 

we could not always get from the russians. So, ultimately there 

was a greater appeal to cooperate with the americans.10 

collaboration with france did not simply kick-start the national space science 

community.it could also pull french space scientists out of a pro-Soviet or neutralist 

orbit, thereby strengthening the ideological cohesion of the Western alliance. 

all of us remember president Kennedy’s commitment in may 1961 “. . . to 

achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and 

returning him safely to earth.”We can still be inspired by another speech at rice 

University a year later, in which he proclaimed “We choose to go to the moon 

in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy but because they 

are hard, and because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of 

our energies and skills.” for Kennedy, success in space was a barometer of the 

capacity of america to mobilize its resources and its dynamism to achieve any goal 

it wanted.the apollo program was a direct response to the increasing credibility of 

communism as a viable alternative to capitalism, of which successes on the ground 

in indochina and in space with flights such as that of Yuri gagarin were simply the 

most manifest examples.taking on the challenge of putting a person on the moon 

was a deliberate effort to regain the initiative by identifying national prestige and 

good government with a major scientific and technological achievement which 

tested the mettle of astronauts, engineers, administrators, and industry alike.11 

10. roger Bonnet interview, geneva, Switzerland, by John Krige, 10 february 2005, historical archives of 

the european economic community, european University institute,Villa il pioggiolo, florence, italy. 

11. this paragraph owes much to John m. logsdon, The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and 

the National Interest (cambridge, ma: mit press, 1970), and howard e. mccurdy, Space and the 

American Imagination (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 1997), chapter 4. 
212 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

one of Kennedy’s main concerns in taking that initiative was the many countries 

that had recently been decolonized; accordingly, he introduced the section of 

his speech to congress in may 1961 that gave birth to the apollo program by 

identifying the conquest of space with “. . . the battle that is going on around the 

world between freedom and tyranny, . . . the battle for men’s minds, . . . the minds 

of men everywhere who are attempting to make a determination of which road 

they should take.”12 many inWestern europe were also grappling with that choice. 

according to space historian Walter mcdougall, an april 1960 poll revealed that a 

majority of europeans in every country expected the USSr to be stronger than 

the U.S. after 20 years of “competition without war.” more to the point, according 

to a report from the U.S. information agency, only one frenchman in 14, or about 7 

percent of those polled,thought the U.S.would prevail over its communist rival in the 

long run.13 collaborating with Blamont,Bonnet,and their colleagues in space science 

promoted U.S. foreign policy objectives at a cultural level by tangibly demonstrating 

the values of an open, democratic system over a closed, communist society. 

Helios: A Place in the Sun for Germany 

in december 1974 and in January 1976, two german spacecraft, helios 1 

and helios 2, weighing about 452 lbs (205 kg) each, were launched by american 

rockets into elliptical orbits about the Sun.they were designed to fly closer to the Sun 

than any previous spacecraft (approaching to within 25 million miles) and to provide 

invaluable scientific information about solar processes and solar–terrestrial relationships. 

this was the most ambitious bilateral scientific project that naSa had undertaken to 

date. its estimated cost in 1970 was $100 million, paid by the (West) german ministry 

for Science and education. germany designed, manufactured, and integrated the two 

spacecraft,provided the majority of the payload (which also included some experiments 

from the U.S., australia, and italy), and operated and controlled the spacecraft from 

a national facility. naSa provided the deep space tracking network to support the 

mission and participated in the JointWorking group which was responsible for technical 

implementation. the helios spacecraft imposed advanced technical requirements on 

german industry, particularly for the development of the on-board power system, onboard data processing system, and thermal controls which had to survive high levels of 

solar radiation. it also introduced german engineers and project managers in the Joint 

Working group to the way space projects were implemented in the U.S.14 

12. logsdon,p.128.See also Jeremi Suri,Power and Protest:Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (cambridge, 

ma: harvard University press, 2003), pp. 15–25. 

13. Walter a. mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (new York: 

Basic Books, 1985), p. 241. 

14. frutkin, International Cooperation. for an overview, see niklas reinke, A History of German Space 

Policy: Ideas, Influences and Interdependence, 1923–2002, translated from the german (noordwijk,the 

netherlands: eSa, forthcoming). 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 213 

helios was the crowning achievement of U.S.-german space science 

collaboration that began in the mid-1960s with sounding rocket experiments 

and graduated through various smaller satellite projects.15 it was heavily charged 

with political content and foreign policy concerns. Just before christmas 1965, 

chancellor ludwig erhard made an official visit to Washington. in a brief exchange 

of toasts with his guest in the state dining room, president Johnson took time to 

mention their ongoing “mutual adventure in space” and said he looked forward to 

discussing “more ambitious plans to permit us to do together what we cannot do 

so well alone,” including a probe to the Sun, the eventual helios.16 erhard visited 

Johnson again in october 1966. despite the fact that he only came for two days, he 

was taken down to cape Kennedy to see the progress there. in an official address 

in the as-yet incomplete Vehicle assembly Building, Johnson assured erhard that 

the apollo program was progressing as expected and reaffirmed his commitment 

to mutual space projects.17 on the way back to Washington, naSa administrator 

James Webb took the opportunity to spend an hour with the german chancellor. 

the “large on-going effort [at the cape] made a deep impression” on erhard,Webb 

wrote Secretary of State dean rusk. he went on: “[i]t seems to me that erhard 

had a different attitude when we left the cape than when we arrived. in fact, he 

did say that it was impossible to learn from pictures, television, and documents the 

true scope and magnitude of what was being done and that he had a much better 

appreciation of its importance.”18 

there are many reasons why the american president and his top advisors went 

to such pains to publicly and personally promote space collaboration with germany, 

and chancellor erhard, at this particular moment. i shall mention just a few here.19 

first, it was an attempt to meet european objections that a “technological 

gap” had opened up between the two sides of the atlantic that made it impossible 

15. “german-naSa cooperation, 9/28/66,” record no. 14620, international cooperation and foreign 

countries, foreign countries,West germany, folder germany-U.S., 1963–1984, naSa historical 

reference collection,Washington, dc. 

16. “the White house. exchange of toasts” between Johnson and erhard, 20 december 1965, nSf, 

country file europe & USSr, germany/erhard Visit [12-65], folder 12/19-21/65, Johnson 

presidential archives, University of austin,austin,texas. 

17. “theWhite house. remarks by the president atVehicle assembly Building, cape Kennedy, florida,” 

20 September 1966, nSf, country file europe & USSr, germany 9/66, erhardVisit, folder papers, 

cables, memos [9/66], Johnson presidential archives, University of austin,austin,texas. 

18. James e.Webb to dean rusk, 14 october 1966, record no. 14465, international cooperation and 

foreign countries, foreign countries,West germany, folder germany (West), 1956–1990, naSa 

historical reference collection,Washington, dc. 

19. thomas alan Schwartz, Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In the Shadow of Vietnam (cambridge, ma: 

harvard University press, 2003) is a fine analysis of the Johnson’s foreign policy in the region. See 

also John Krige, “technology, foreign policy and international cooperation in Space,” in Critical 

Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. dick and roger d. launius, ed. (Washington dc: naSa 

Sp-2006-4702, 2006), pp. 239–260. 
214 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

for european high-tech firms to compete effectively in the world market against 

their american rivals.this had deep political ramifications since it bred resentment 

against what was perceived as american domination, and undermined Washington’s 

demand that europe assume more of the burden for its own defense. Both parties 

quickly realized that the fault lay within europe itself, and that its institutions 

and managerial practices needed drastic reform. the indigenous development of 

space technology with american help was seen as one useful way to overcome this 

situation.thus Webb assured erhard on the way back from cape Kennedy that 

[t]he president was, in fact, offering him more than friendship 

and more than dollars. in fact he was offering a partnership in 

the development of technology that could permit germany to 

increase its own capability, gain a better understanding of its own 

needs and opportunities for multilateral and bilateral cooperation, 

establish a basis for leadership in the direction it felt its leadership 

could be effective in Western europe, and could set a pattern of 

university/industry/government cooperation suited to the needs 

of germany, benefiting throughout from our own experience. 20 

a second factor of more symbolic than financial significance was the idea that 

germany could purchase space technology and space launches from the U.S. as part of 

its “offset” obligations.West germany was required to offset with military purchases the 

approximate costs to the american government of retaining U.S. forces in its territory. 

these offset payments had become a major political and financial liability for the german 

government in 1966.for one thing,they were associated in the public’s mind with a series 

of crashes of the f-104g Starfighter jets—10 in the first half of 1966 alone, giving the 

impression that the U.S. was selling unreliable and unnecessary military equipment to its 

ally.21 for another,the next round of payments was due shortly;erhard had undertaken to 

place $1.35 billion in weapons orders by 31 december 1966 and to make an additional 

$1.4 billion in offset payments by June 1967.22 Writing to Johnson in July 1966, the 

chancellor said he was willing to accept his offset obligations but that he hoped to do 

so by “payments and services other than the mere purchase of weapons and military 

equipment.”23 purchasing space technology and services was one such way, even though 

such alternatives would probably not amount to more than about $25 to $50 million.24 

20. Webb to rusk, 14 october 1966. 

21. Schwartz, p. 116. 

22. francis m. Bator,“memorandum for the president. Subject: erhard Visit, September 26–27, 1966,” 

25 September 1966,nSf,country file europe & USSr,germany 9/66,erhard Visit,folder papers, 

cables, memos [9/66], Johnson presidential archives, University of austin,austin,texas. 

23. Schwartz, p.117. 

24. “text of cable from ambassador mcghee (Bonn 3361),Subject:the offset and americantroop level 

in germany,” 20 September 1965, nSf, country file europe & USSr, germany 9/66, erhard Visit, 

folder papers,cables,memos [9/66],Johnson presidential archives,University of austin,austin,texas. 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 215 

then there was the hope that germany would take the lead in strengthening 

european multilateral cooperation that was being threatened by president de 

gaulle’s increasing resentment of the limitations placed on french sovereignty by 

nato and the european economic community (eec).“the United States has a 

direct interest in the continuation of european integration,” wrote george Ball in 

the State department.“it is the most realistic means of achieving european political 

unity with all that that implies for our relations with eastern europe and the Soviet 

Union.” de gaulle’s actions were undermining that unity.“the United States hopes 

therefore,” Ball went on,“that the federal republic will continue to exert leadership 

to preserve the unique character of the european institutions . . . .” 25 in particular, 

if germany could become a leading space power in europe it could play a major 

role not only in developing european high-tech industry but also in reinforcing 

european multilateral institutions in the face of the threat posed to them by de 

gaulle’s affirmation of national sovereignty.26 

finally, it must be mentioned that erhard was a staunch supporter of the war in 

Vietnam.in fact,Johnson went out of his way in his toast to the chancellor in december 

1965 to thank him for “the support which your government has given to the common 

cause inViet nam,and which you may give in the days ahead ....the credible commitment 

of the United States is the foundation stone of freedom all around the world,” Johnson 

added.“if it is not good inViet nam who can trust it in the heart of europe? Butamerica’s 

word,i assure you,”Johnson concluded,“is good inViet nam,just as it is good in Berlin.”27 

the high-profile offer to collaborate with germany in space was also a public act of 

gratitude to a faithful ally and a signal to the Soviets that they had best not challenge the 

now-established divisions between east andWest in europe. 

in replying to Johnson’s toast that christmas eve in 1965, erhard, while 

enthusiastically agreeing that such an ambitious project would “fascinate the 

imagination of the people,” also joked that “of course, we, the germans, would 

not like to get too close to the sun because we wouldn’t like to burn our wings 

. . . .”28 actually, it was helios that survived the journey to the Sun and erhard 

who burnt his wings. he resigned after returning from his visit to Washington and 

cape Kennedy in october 1966. his failure to achieve a major reduction in offset 

commitments and his unwavering support for Johnson’s policies in Viet nam were 

two of the main factors leading to the collapse of his government. 

25. cable signed Ball from the department of State to the american embassy, Bonn, 18 november 

1965, nSf, country file europe & USSr, germany, erhard Visit [12-65], folder 12/19-21/65 

Johnson presidential archives, University of austin,austin,texas. 

26. Krige in dick and launius, Critical Issues. 

27. Johnson,“the White house. exchange of toasts.” 

28. Space Daily, 22 december 1965, 295, record no. 14548, international cooperation and foreign 

countries, international cooperation, folder US-europe 1965-1972, naSa historical reference 

collection,Washington, dc. 
216 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

And Then the Wall Came Down: Cassini-huygens 

as Western european countries gradually put their national and multinational 

space programs onto sounder footing, they expected to be treated as equals by 

their american partners.the mantra of reimar lüst, the director-general of eSa 

(european Space agency) from 1984 to 1990, was that europe had to be able to 

compete with the U.S. in order to collaborate with it from a position of strength. 

this philosophy was exemplified in the magnificent cassini-huygens mission to 

Saturn and titan in 2004–2005. in this joint venture, the Jet propulsion laboratory 

built and managed the cassini orbiter that surveyed Saturn;the italian Space agency 

built cassini’s high-gain communications antennae; and eSa built the huygens 

probe that plunged through titan’s atmosphere to its surface.the truly spectacular 

images of Saturn’s rings and of its largest moon will have thrilled many a space 

scientist, be they at high school or an old hand at the game. 

this extraordinary scientific achievement not only called for scientific, 

engineering and managerial expertise, it also called for diplomacy. early in 1992, dan 

goldin was appointed naSaadministrator.he resolved to shake up the organization 

and inaugurated his famous policy of “faster, better, cheaper.” cassini-huygens was 

anything but that, and it soon caught his eye; late in 1993 he threatened to cancel the 

program.the american space scientists and engineers and their european colleagues 

were outraged. “i remember carl Sagan calling me on the phone from california 

asking for help because naSa was trying to stop the mission,” roger Bonnet told 

me recently.“three times eSa intervened and asked its ambassadors to interact with 

the State department in order to make the americans understand that they could 

not stop cassini, with such a big involvement of europe . . . .”29 in June, 1994, eSa 

director general Jean-marie luton wrote a strong letter to Vice president al gore, 

copied to the Secretary of State and to various senior administrators,including goldin. 

in it luton stressed that europe regarded 

...[a]ny prospect of a unilateral withdrawal from the cooperation 

on the part of the United States as totally unacceptable. Such an 

action would call into question the reliability of the U.S.as a partner 

in any future major scientific and technological cooperation.30 

goldin had to back down.the clinton administration wanted an unambiguous 

european commitment to what was soon to be the international Space Station and 

could not afford to alienate eSa.this combination of financial and foreign policy 

concerns saved cassini-huygens from being axed by the naSa administrator, and 

avoided a major diplomatic incident. 

29. Bonnet, interview with the author, 10 february 2005. 

30. Quoted in charley Kohlhase,“return to Saturn’s realm,”The Planetary Report (march/april 2004),available 

online at http://www.planetary.org/saturn/tpr_vol24no2_kohlhase.html (accessed 16 September 2006). 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 217 

luton’s unambiguous position was a symptom of the strength of the european 

space program. it was also fuelled by his determination that joint U.S.–european 

projects would never again be sacrificed on the altar of naSa’s changing national 

priorities.this had happened some years before, with the international Solar polar 

mission (iSpm). in the late 1970s, naSa and eSa had agreed to launch a pair 

of satellites out of the ecliptic plane (the plane that contains most of the objects 

that orbit the Sun) to perform a variety of challenging scientific experiments in 

domains that included solar physics, cosmic ray studies, and the exploration of the 

interplanetary environment.31 naSa canceled its contribution unilaterally in 1982 

due to budget constraints caused by the development of the Shuttle and a new, 

stricter financial regime inaugurated under president reagan. a political climate 

dominated by fears that increased economic competition from Japan and Western 

europe was undermining american leadership did the rest. europeans understood 

the budget difficulties their american colleagues faced, which derived in part 

from the very different procedures for funding spaceflight on the two sides of the 

atlantic.32 What they bitterly resented was that they were not consulted before the 

american decision and that naSa was deaf to pleas to reinstate the iSpm program. 

the huge disparity in space capability between the U.S. and europe for the first two 

decades of the Space age had reduced europeans to the status of junior partners 

who could be manipulated almost at will by their dominant ally.the experience 

with iSpm taught europeans, in the words of Bonnet and manno, never again to 

“accept being considered a subordinate participant” in a joint project.33 

naSa’s and the reagan’s administration’s approach were coherent with, and 

justified locally by, a persistent tendency of the U.S. during the cold war to fail to 

consult its Western european allies in important foreign policy decisions which 

affected both parties, the most blatant example being Kennedy’s handling of the 

cuban missile crisis.34 indeed, veteran U.S. diplomat david Bruce described this as 

“the vicious circle of american predominance, european dependence and mutual 

resentment [that] operated for half a century,”35 up to the collapse of the Berlin 

Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union.thereafter, in a global environment no 

longer dominated by superpower rivalry,and with a new administration in the White 

31. What follows is based on russo’s analysis in John Krige, arturo russo and lorenza Sebesta, A 

History of the European Space Agency 1958–1987.Vol. II.The Story of ESA, 1973 to 1987 (noordwijk, 

the netherlands: eSa Sp-1235,april 2000), chapter 3. 

32. in eSa, once a program is agreed to the participating states agree to fund to completion; in the U.S. 

projects are subject to the vicissitudes of the annual budget voted by congress for naSa. 

33. roger m.Bonnet and Vittorio manno, International Cooperation in Space:The Example of the European 

Space Agency (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 1994). 

34. frank costigliola, “Kennedy, the european allies and the failure to consult,” Political Science 

Quarterly 110 (1995): pp. 105–123. 

35. costigliola, p. 122. 
218 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

house, Washington was more willing to take seriously the needs of its european 

allies—and cassini-huygens survived as a joint venture. today, as the pendulum 

swings back toward U.S. unilateralism, so the prospects for durable international 

agreements become bleaker. 

Conclusion: International Space 


Collaboration, NASA, and “Soft Power”


in 1998 a commission of the national academies pointed out that 

...[d]uring the cold War there was significant political goodwill 

to be gained by the United States through cooperation with 

europe vis-à-vis the former Soviet Union . . . . competition 

in space (including the space sciences) was part and parcel of 

concerted efforts made by the superpowers to convince other 

countries of their technical capabilities, and hence leadership.36 

this paper has fleshed out these claims.it has illustrated how international scientific 

and technological collaboration in space were used to promote american interests 

abroad,and how it has adapted to the changing balance of power between theamerican 

and european space programs. Borrowing the language of Joseph nye, professor of 

international relations at the Kennedy School of government, harvard University, we 

can say that naSa’s international initiatives have served as agents of “soft,”or co-optive 

power, as opposed to “hard,” coercive or command power. nye puts it thus: 

Soft co-optive power is just as important as hard command power. 

if a state can make its power seem legitimate in the eyes of others, 

it will encounter less resistance to its wishes. if its culture and 

ideology are attractive, others will more willingly follow . . . . if it 

can support institutions that make other states wish to channel or 

limit their activities in ways that the dominant state prefers,it may 

be spared the costly exercise of coercive or hard power.37 

echoing nye, we can say that international collaboration in space is one of a 

repertoire of instruments the U.S.has at its disposal to legitimate its power in the eyes of 

others,to promote its culture and its democratic ideals,and to channel the scientific and 

technological efforts of other nations down paths that cohere with american interests.38 

naSa has played an important role in that process in the past and can continue to do so 

in the future.the cold war may be over but the struggle for hearts and minds is not.39 

36. committee on international Space programs, U.S.–European Collaboration in Space Science (Washington, dc: 

nationalacademies press,1998),p.15,available online at http://books.nap.edu (accessed 16 September 2006). 

37. Joseph S. nye, Jr.,“Soft power,” Foreign Policy 80 (autumn 1990): pp. 153–171. 

38. for more detail, see Krige in dick and launius, Critical Issues. 

39. Joseph S. nye, Jr.,“the decline of america’s Soft power:Why Washington Should Worry,” Foreign 

Affairs 83 (2004): pp. 16–20. 
Nasa as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy 219

chapter 12 

“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food 

Standards Impacted the Food Industry 

and Changed Food Safety Standards 

Jennifer ross-nazzal 

most americans give little thought to the safety of their food until they hear of an E. coli outbreak or a recall of their favorite item.they may be surprised 

to learn that Space age technology designed to protect the astronauts from food 

poisoning has slowly become the safety standard for the food industry in the U.S. 

and abroad. dubbed the hazard analysis and critical control point (haccp) 

system, this naSa spinoff has been called “the most revolutionary institutional 

innovation to ensure food safety of the twentieth century.”1 

for more than 30 years, canners who process low-acid foods have relied upon 

the risk prevention system developed by naSa to safeguard their products. more 

recently, haccp regulations have been implemented by the U.S. food and drug 

administration (fda) to maintain the integrity of seafood and juice in the United 

States.the U.S. department of agriculture (USda) also relies on haccp systems 

in the nation’s meat and poultry plants and slaughterhouses. there is, however, 

some disagreement over whether some of the more recent haccp systems put in 

place by these regulatory agencies truly reflect the principles of an haccp plan as 

outlined by food safety experts. 

in nearly all cases, a series of food crises forced the regulatory agencies and 

industries to implement haccp. in the 1970s, two well-publicized incidents and 

a growing consumer movement compelled industry and its trade representatives to 

adopt and lobby for the implementation of a preventive and comprehensive safety 

plan.the first occurrence happened in the spring of 1971. 

1. John Spriggs and grant isaac, Food Safety and International Competitiveness:The Case of Beef (new 

York: caBi publishing, 2001), p. 11. 
220 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Dr. Howard E. Bauman 

a woman from connecticut found glass in 

her baby’s cereal. Soon after, americans awoke 

to the news, hearing: “good morning america, 

there’s glass in your baby food.” pillsbury 

company’s farina, a creamy wheat cereal for 

infants, had been contaminated when shards of 

glass fell into a storage bin at one of pillsbury’s 

plants, forcing the company to recall the cereal. 

Upon hearing the news, robert J. Keith, chief 

executive officer of pillsbury, called dr. howard 

e. Bauman, a microbiologist and one of the 

company’s research directors, into his office.2 

Keith had worked for pillsbury for more 

than 30 years and made his way up the corporate 

ladder, becoming ceo and chairman of the 

Board in 1967. during the five years he served in this position, he championed 

many popular causes, one of which included the growing consumer movement. 

led by advocate ralph nader, consumers increasingly demanded safe food. Keith, 

sympathetic to such demands, told Bauman this incident would not happen again. 

customers needed to know that the company’s products were safe.3 

publicly, pillsbury comforted customers by announcing a “considerable change” 

in the company’s manufacturing processes, but this was not a pr campaign designed 

to halt fading consumer confidence.4 Significant changes were underway at pillsbury. 

in response to the recall, Keith pushed pillsbury to implement a secure product safety 

system to minimize the likelihood of another recall of the company’s food products.5 

for his part, Bauman saw to it that no food would be recalled under his watch. 

he planned to implement procedures he had helped develop years earlier while 

working with naSa, an idea he later pursued with haccp. 

Bauman began working at pillsbury in 1953, when he completed his doctoral 

degree at the University of Wisconsin. he started out as head of research in the 

bacteriology section at pillsbury and later assisted naSa, the U.S.air force Space 

2. dr.William h. Sperber worked with dr. Bauman at pillsbury, and he and his colleagues recall hearing 

this anecdote from Bauman.dr.William h.Sperber,telephone conversation with author,21 June 2006. 

3. William J.powell,Pillsbury’s Best:A Company History from 1869 (minneapolis:the pillsbury company, 

1985), pp. 190–191; pillsbury company, Annual Report for the Year Ended 1973 (minneapolis:the 

pillsbury company, 1973), p. 1; Sperber, telephone conversation, 21 June 2006. 

4. “pillsbury recalls cereal; Boxes may contain glass,” The New York Times, 24 march 1971; carole 

Shifrin,“Warning on farina cereal,” The Washington Post-Times Herald, 25 march 1971. 

5. powell, Pillsbury’s Best, p. 190. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 221 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

laboratory project group, and the U.S. army natick laboratories with the food 

systems for the human spaceflight programs.6 

Some of the other key individuals involved with the development and testing 

of the early space food systems included herbert a. hollender, mary V. Klicka, and 

hamed el-Bisi of the U.S.army natick laboratories. paul a. lachance of naSa’s 

manned Spacecraft center in houston,texas, rounded out the group. 

pillsbury became involved in the space program in 1959 when the Quartermaster 

food and container institute of the United States armed forces (later called the U.S. 

army natick laboratories) phoned Bauman and asked for pillsbury’s assistance.Would 

the pillsbury company be interested in producing space food? after some discussion, 

the company accepted and began working on cube-sized foods for the flight crews.7 

concerned about safety, naSa engineers specified that the food could not 

crumble, thereby floating into instrument panels or contaminating the capsule’s 

atmosphere. to meet the outlined specifications, food technologists at pillsbury 

developed a compressed food bar with an edible coating to prevent the food from 

breaking apart. in addition to processing food that would not damage the capsule’s 

electronics, the food also had to be safe for the astronauts to consume. 

almost immediately food scientists and microbiologists determined that the 

assurance of food safety was a problem.Bauman recalled that it was nearly impossible 

for companies to guarantee that the food manufactured for the astronauts was 

uncontaminated.“We quickly found by using standard methods of quality control 

there was absolutely no way we could be assured there wouldn’t be a problem,” he 

said.8 to determine food safety for the flight crews, manufacturers had to test a large 

percentage of their finished products, which involved a great deal of expense and 

left little for the flights.9 

a survey conducted among experts in the field indicated there was no single 

standard quality control program for the food industry. control programs were 

numerous and varied widely, according to Bauman:“our surveys indicated that there 

were about as many variations of control progammes as there were quality control 

managers or government inspectors.”10 thus, there was no program already in place 

that could readily be used to provide a 100 percent guarantee of food safety. 

6. Wolfgang Saxon,“howard Bauman, 76, expert Who Kept food Safe in Space,” The New York Times, 

12 august 2001. 

7. howard e. Bauman,“the origin of the haccp System and Subsequent evolution,” Food Science 

and Technology Today 8, no. 2 (June 1994): p. 67. 

8. “a dividend in food Safety,” [naSa] Spinoff, (1991): p. 52. 

9. Bauman, “the origin of the haccp System,” p. 67; howard Bauman, “haccp: concept, 

development, and application,” Food Technology 44, no. 5 (may 1990): p. 156. 

10. Bauman,“the origin of the haccp System,” p. 68. 
222 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Paul Lachance 

While pillsbury was dealing with issues of 

food contamination, paul lachance completed a 

tour of duty with the U.S.air force aeromedical 

research laboratories at Wright-patterson air 

force Base in dayton, ohio. he was well aware 

of the issues concerning astronaut food as the 

air force laboratory provided support for the 

preflight feeding of the mercury astronauts.given 

his experience with project mercury, naSa 

recruited him and offered him the position of 

flight food and nutrition coordinator at the 

manned Spacecraft center in houston.11 

When lachance arrived in September 

1963, he began evaluating the gemini and 

apollo food systems, which were not very far 

along in development. food safety for astronauts became an overriding concern for 

lachance, who did not want a late night telephone call from charles a. Berry “who 

was the chief medical officer of naSa, telling me that his astronaut or astronauts 

were sick and had stomach problems and were having a hard time holding things 

down.” lachance also wanted to avoid putting the crews in jeopardy, and he began 

thinking about the potential microbiological, physical, and chemical dangers space 

foods might pose. microbiological hazards became an overriding concern after 

naSa found that many of the ingredients they purchased were contaminated with 

viral or bacterial pathogens.there had to be some way to minimize or eliminate 

these hazards, lachance explained.12 

But no one was sure how to conduct a thorough hazard analysis, Bauman 

recalled. eventually a suitable model, called the “modes of failure,” was located, 

adopted, and utilized. microbiologists began examining each food item and 

analyzed the potential areas of concern during the manufacturing process. armed 

with this information, scientists then scoured publications to determine ingredients 

that were potentially dangerous—possibly containing viral or bacterial pathogens, 

heavy metals, other hazardous chemicals, or physical hazards. a list of hazards was 

then compiled.13 

11. paul a. lachance interview, houston, tX, 4 may 2006, JSc oral history project, JSc history 

collection, University of houston-clear lake. 

12. ibid. 

13. natick used “modes of failure” to analyze medical supplies. Bauman,“the origin of the haccp 

System,” p. 68; Bauman,“haccp,” p. 156. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 223 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

for their part,the natick labs established the microbiological standards for food 

that would be flown on piloted missions.14 requirements were stringent because 

scientific research had indicated that stress might weaken an astronaut’s ability to 

fight infection. even the smallest amount of a relatively harmless microorganism on 

earth could potentially cause an astronaut in orbit to become ill.thus,microbiologist 

hamed el-Bisi of the natick labs concluded,“all possible measures must thus be 

taken to eliminate all pathogens and to minimize the microbial load in all food 

intake.”he placed the total aerobic plate count at less than 10,000 per gram,meaning 

that the food was more likely to be safe for consumption by flight crews.15 

this was a substantial change for the food manufacturers contracted to 

develop the gemini food system. previously, food processors had not measured 

pathogens unless they encountered bouts of food poisoning. By contrast, a hazard 

analysis required contractors to conduct pre- and in-process microbiology tests of 

food ingredients to ensure the health of the astronauts. manufacturers had to assure 

naSa that their foods conformed to the microbiological standards outlined by 

natick laboratories. food manufacturing conditions were strict; there were rigid 

temperature and humidity controls. Some foods were even processed in clean 

rooms, similar to the environment in which mcdonnell aircraft corporation built 

the gemini spacecraft.16 if the food producers did not meet the microbiological 

standards, food technologists discarded the food.17 

Bauman, who was assigned to the gemini and apollo programs, was well 

suited for the position of ensuring the microbiological safety of astronaut food. 

dr. lachance recalled, Bauman was a microbiologist, “ . . . and so he really knew 

his microbiology. So he was an ideal person, in some ways, to develop a laboratory 

where microbiology had to be paid attention to.”18 

as work on the gemini program proceeded, lachance turned his attention 

to the apollo food system.the apollo Spacecraft program office (aSpo) required 

14. robert a. nanz, edward l. michel, and paul a. lachance,“evolution of Space feeding concepts 

during the mercury and gemini Space programs,” Food Technology 21 (december 1967): p. 53; 

Space food Systems contract naS 9-9032 final report, december 1970, Space food Systems: 

mercury through apollo (december 1970),rita rapp files,center Series,JSc history collection, 

University of houston-clear lake. 

15. the	 microbiological standards were established in 1964. hamed m. el-Bisi, “microbiological 

requirements of Space food prototypes,” Research and Development Associates for Military Food and 

Packaging Systems, Inc. 17 (1965):pp.55,57;charlest.Bourland interview,houston,tX,7 april 2006, 

JSc oral history project, JSc history collection, University of houston-clear lake; edmund m. 

powers, et al.,“Bacteriology of dehydrated Space foods,” Applied Microbiology 22, no. 3 (September 

1971): p. 441. 

16. lachance interview, 4 may 2006. 

17. Space food Systems contract naS 9-9032 final report; powers, “Bacteriology of dehydrated 

Space foods,” p. 444. 

18. lachance interview, 4 may 2006. 
224 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

its contractors to comply with certain reliability standards. lachance had previously 

implemented reliability requirements for the gemini food system but the aSpo 

required all contractors to develop prediction models for their systems to determine 

“critical failure areas” and then eliminate those hazards from the system.19 food 

contractors were not exempt from this requirement and had to sketch out their 

critical control points—places in the manufacturing process where the system could 

break down and put the hardware at risk. 

Writing these blueprints forced pillsbury to think logically about the steps in 

their process and identify critical control points. as the apollo program matured, 

pillsbury continued to revise the list of critical control points as they went along. 

Bauman explained what they learned along the way:“[a]s we worked along in this 

system, we found certain critical control points like telephones in the room.they 

are a good source of bacteria, unless you sterilize the receiver.that’s something that 

you really don’t always think of.”20 

even though naSa required its food contractors to identify critical control 

points,naSa also determined them.in the specifications for mostapollo foods,naSa 

located 17 quality control stations in the production process;stations had acceptance and 

rejection standards for the inspectors, or in naSa-ese,“go” or “no go.”21 

aside from monitoring the critical control points, contractors also had to keep 

records that documented the history of a food product. records were kept from the 

moment the raw foods reached the plant. logs indicated where the raw materials 

came from or, if the product had been processed, the name of the plant that produced 

the item and the names of people who worked in the manufacturing of that item. 

Strict recordkeeping allowed product tracking.“We knew the latitude and longitude 

where the salmon used in the salmon loaf were caught,” Bauman joked.22 

as a result of his naSa experience, Bauman became one of the biggest 

proponents of the haccp concept, which was introduced to the food industry 

at the first national conference on food protection in april 1971, just a few days 

after pillsbury recalled packages of its farina cereal.the conference, sponsored by 

the american public health association, opened on april 4 in denver, colorado. 

the main purpose of the conference was “to develop a comprehensive, integrated 

attack on the problem of microbial contamination of foods.”23 

19. naSa,“reliability program provisions for Space System contractors,” npc 250-1 (Washington, 

dc: U.S. government printing office, 1963), pp. 3-1, 3-2; lachance interview, 4 may 2006. 

20. the pillsbury company, research and development department, Development of a Food Quality 

Assurance Program and the Training of FDA Personnel in Hazard Analysis Techniques (minneapolis:the 

pillsbury company, 1973), p. 507. 

21. malcolm c.Smith,et al.,“apollo experience report—food Systems”naSatn d-7720 (Washington, 

dc:naSa,1974),p.9. 

22. Bauman,“the origin of haccp,” p. 68. 

23. national conference on food protection, Proceedings (Washington, dc: fda, 1972), p. iii. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 225 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

Bauman served as vice chairman of panel number two, which focused on 

the prevention of contamination of commercially processed foods. other panel 

members included l.atkin of arthur d. little, inc., James J. Jezeski from montana 

State University, and John h. Silliker of Silliker laboratories, inc., a food testing 

laboratory.24 convinced of the benefits of haccp, Bauman encouraged his 

colleagues to consider the system as a plausible option for the food industry as a 

whole. the idea, however, was not immediately embraced, and a second incident 

occurred in the summer of 1971. 

on a sweltering June night,grace cochran cracked open a can of Bon Vivant’s 

vichyssoise (cold potato soup) for dinner. Samuel, her husband, ate a bite or two but 

then stopped, noting that the soup tasted spoiled. grace had a spoonful and agreed. 

the next morning while driving to work in manhattan, Samuel’s vision began to 

blur. the condition continued to worsen, and a few hours after arriving at work 

he scheduled an appointment with doctors at the eye institute of the columbia 

presbyterian medical center.When he walked into the center, Samuel’s condition 

had deteriorated and doctors directed him to his personal physician. By the time he 

arrived at the hospital and met with his doctor, he had difficulty talking, could not 

turn his eyes left and right, could not swallow, and when he held his arms straight 

in front of his body, they shook. By 11 p.m., less than 8 hours after being admitted 

to the hospital, Samuel died. 

a few hours later, grace became ill. dr. henry p. colmore, the internist who 

had treated her husband, visited grace at her home. She told the doctor,“i’m doing 

just like Sam did.You don’t suppose it was that soup we had last night? it tasted so 

bad we couldn’t finish it.” on the advice of dr. colmore, grace’s sons located the 

soup can while colmore arranged for grace to go to the hospital. colmore was 

certain that grace was suffering from botulism poisoning and that her husband had 

died from botulism. as a result of his findings, he notified the Westchester county 

health department.25 

his phone call began a series of events leading to a national recall of Bon Vivant 

soups.fearing a public health epidemic,Jack goldman,county health commissioner, 

concluded that the department had to document the case.they needed the soup’s 

lot number from the recovered can, but they needed additional evidence and found 

it. cans of soup on the shelves at the local grocery store, bearing the same lot 

number, V-141/USa-71, were bulging. armed with this information, goldman 

contacted the state health department and the fda, relaying the knowledge he had 

gathered. eventually recalls for all Bon Vivant soups and other products made by the 

same manufacturer were issued and the factory shut down.26 

24. ibid., pp. 56–83. 

25. Boyce rensberger,“grim detective case: Search forVichyssoise,” The NewYorkTimes, 18 July 1971. 

26. ibid; nancy l. ross,“tracking down the Soup can Killer,” The Washington Post-Times Herald, 18 

July 1971. 
226 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

this outbreak of botulism cast doubt over food safety in the U.S. and whether 

the fda could protect citizens from contaminated food. doubt had surfaced many 

times before this incident. in 1968 and 1969, for example, a ralph nader summer 

study group issued critical reports about the agency. in 1970, James S. turner, the 

project director, revised the reports and published The Chemical Feast: The Ralph 

Nader Study Group Report on Food Protection and the Food and Drug Administration. in a 

chapter about the food industry,the bestseller detailed the fda’s friendship with food 

conglomerates and called upon the fda to “enforce the law” rather than apologize 

on behalf of food processors who placed profits over consumer safety.“it is time the 

fda set about its assigned task of insuring [sic] that profits made by the food industry 

are not the result of fraud, deception, adulteration, or misbranding.”27 

employees of the fda recognized the agency had problems. in July 1969, 

the fda released the “Kinslow report,” commissioned by fda commissioner 

dr. herbert l. ley, Jr. the study concluded, “the american public’s principal 

consumer protection is provided by the food and drug administration, and we are 

currently not equipped to cope with the challenge.”in total,the panel submitted 45 

recommendations to the commissioner. ley did not have time to implement any 

suggestions. in an attempt to overhaul the agency, robert h. finch, the Secretary 

of health, education, and Welfare, named dr. charles c. edwards to the position of 

fda commissioner in december.28 

after being removed from his post, ley warned the public about the fda’s 

inability to safeguard consumers. people were being misled, he believed.“the thing 

that bugs me is that the people think the fda is protecting them—it isn’t.What 

the fda is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and 

day,” he said. the agency, in his opinion, did not have the motivation to protect 

consumers, faced budget shortfalls, and lacked support from the department of 

health, education, and Welfare.29 

a year and a half later, when Samuel cochran died from botulism and his 

wife suffered the ill effects of the disease, the fda, its leaders, and food inspection 

processes continued to be under the microscope. newspapers reported that the 

fda had not inspected the Bon Vivant plant for four years.the last inspection took 

place in may 1967. reporters asked about the lack of inspections and were told that 

workforce shortages often resulted in infrequent plant inspections. in some cases, 

the fda had not inspected certain food plants for periods of up to 10 years.30 

27. James S.turner, The Chemical Feast (new York: grossman publishers, 1970), pp. 85–86, 106. 

28. richard d. lyons,“f.d.a. Shake-Up Will Start with naming of new chief,” The New York Times, 

10 december 1969; “trouble over drugs on the market,” The New York Times, 4 January 1970; 

andrew hamilton, “fda: new pressures, old habits Bring a change at the top,” Science (16 

January 1970): pp. 268–270. 

29. richard d. lyons, “ousted f.d.a. chief charges ‘pressure’ from drug industry,” The New York 

Times, 31 december 1969. 

30. grace lichtenstein,“BonVivant’s Soup plant not inspected for 4Years,”The NewYorkTimes,21 July 1971. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 227 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

later that summer, as the recall of Bon Vivant soups was underway, another 

soup manufacturer—campbell’s—was recalling a batch of contaminated chicken 

vegetable soup. fearing a public outcry, the company tried to quietly recall the 

canned soup.testing later indicated that a few cans contained botulinum toxin.31 

later that summer, a congressional investigation of the failure of federal food 

inspections began.When asked how the fda was able to protect consumers from 

food poisoning, fda commissioner edwards admitted that the agency’s 250 food 

inspectors were overextended and the agency was short of funds. “We are daily 

falling farther and farther behind in our routine inspection activities,” he said. 

generally the fda inspected plants once every six years. to inspect plants more 

frequently and bring them back to normal levels, the fda needed to hire 1,500 

inspectors and have its inspection budget raised from $18 million to $85 million 

a year.the Bon Vivant investigation had swamped the already overburdened fda, 

and the fda canceled more than 2,000 plant inspections in 1971.32 

the Bon Vivant case continued to make headlines that fall. a government 

inspection of the Bon Vivant plant in newark, new Jersey, indicated that the plant 

neglected food safety.two problems in particular stood out: the company regularly 

undercooked its canned products and kept incomplete records.a government inspector 

summed up the review by saying, “[n]one [of the firm’s products] are considered . 

. . to be safe for consumption by man or animal.” for example, non-soup products 

suffered from poor quality control, as investigators found that more than half of all 

spaghetti sauce cans were defective—swollen, leaking, or had imperfect seams.33 

records indicate that Bon Vivant knew they had canning problems before this 

incident.as early as 1959, the corporation was aware of sealing problems, which led 

to leaking cans and defective seams. in 1962, the american can company warned 

Bon Vivant that the length of time that the company cooked batches of soups and 

sauces was insufficient.34 

newspapers continued to run stories about botulism as other cases became 

known. for the third time in 1971, the fda issued a warning about botulism in 

canned foods when they learned that a batch of Stokley-Van camp canned green 

beans might have contained the deadly toxin.the consequences were less deadly 

than the Bon Vivant case. an 8-year-old boy and his father, who ate beans from a 

swollen can,developed no symptoms but when the centers for disease control and 

prevention (cdc) injected mice with liquid from the can, they died.35 

31. richard d. lyons, “campbell Was Quietly recalling contaminated Soup Before it learned of 

Botulin,” The New York Times, 24 august 1971. 

32. house Subcommittee on public health and environment of the committee on interstate and foreign 

commerce, FDA Oversight—Food Inspection—1971, 92nd. cong., 1st. sess., 1971, pp. 4, 11, 13. 

33. Boyce 	rensberger, “federal inquiry charges Bon Vivant Soup factory had Wide Sanitary 

Violations and faulty records,” The New York Times, 16 September 1971. 

34. ibid. 

35. “Warning is issued on Stokley Beans,” The New York Times, 30 october 1971. 
228 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

the national canners association (nca), fearful of a public backlash against 

canned foods as well as lack of consumer confidence in their products, petitioned the 

fda for more government regulation to prevent the spread of botulism and other 

food-borne illnesses.although only four botulism-related deaths had been linked to 

commercially canned food since 1925, the nca hoped that by taking such action 

they could circumvent any negative press. dr. ira i. Somers, the research director for 

the nca, explained,“We just don’t think the canning industry can tolerate any more 

bad publicity. from a statistical standpoint our record is good but we want to tighten 

every screw we can.”36 By pushing for additional regulations, the nca hoped to 

prove to consumers that they were committed to food safety practices. 

the fda published the nca proposal,which reflected many of the principles 

of haccp, in the Federal Register in november 1971. in the proposal, all canners 

manufacturing low-acid canned foods had to register with the fda, listing the 

type of low-acid canned food processed at the plant. in addition, food processors 

would have to explain their processes as well as the equipment they employed in the 

manufacturing of such food. other requirements included coding for containers, 

recordkeeping requirements, and training for retort operators and can seam 

inspectors. if companies failed to follow the outlined requirements, the fda could 

invoke emergency permit controls whereby the cannery could not distribute its 

products until the owner had met specific conditions listed in the permit. industry 

had 60 days to respond.37 

not all food processors agreed with the steps taken by the nca and some 

challenged the association’s actions.the american Shrimp canners association, for 

example, asked the nca to withdraw its proposal. in response to their request, 

the nca’s executive Vice president J. e. countryman explained that their idea, 

while not a panacea, was “a significant constructive step toward providing increased 

safeguards in the processing of canned foods,” and he added, “there can be no 

question that the whole canning industry benefits if this proposal begins the renewal 

of the public’s faith in the safety and integrity of canned foods. for this reason alone, 

nca has no choice but to allow the proposal to go forward.”38 

a dark cloud continued to follow the food industry and the fda in the spring of 

1972. in april, the U.S. government accountability office (gao) issued a damning 

36. “canners petition f.d.a. for Stiffer regulation,” The New York Times, 26 october 1971. 

37. edward dunkelberger,“the Statutory Basis for the fda’s food Safety assurance programs: from 

gmp, to emergency permit control, to haccp,” Food and Drug Law Journal 50, no. 3 (1995): 

p. 365; Federal Register, 12 november 1971, general Subject files (1938-1974), fda records, 

record group 88,national archives ii,college park,md [henceforth:rg 88,archives ii];house 

committee, fda Oversight, pp. 453–456. 

38. J. e. countryman to h. r. robinson, 23 december 1971, general Subject files (1938-1974), fda 

records, rg 88,archives ii. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 229 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

report about unsanitary conditions in food manufacturing plants.the gao’s study 

of 97 plants found that standards of cleanliness in food plants had deteriorated from 

1969 to 1972. even worse, the “fda did not know how extensive these insanitary 

conditions were and therefore could not provide the assurance of consumer protection 

required by the law.”39 to alleviate such conditions, the fda had to take action. 

the agency, which had provided some funds for the first national conference 

on food protection, had learned of haccp at the meeting. Searching for a “better, 

more comprehensive food protection [program] for the consuming public,” the 

fda asked the pillsbury company to provide haccp training for its supervisors 

and investigators.in September of 1972,16 inspectors attended the first class offered 

in gull lake,minnesota.40 pillsbury’s three-week course included 11 days of lectures 

and 10 days of field work in minnesota canning plants.41 Upon completing the 

training, the inspectors returned to their posts, and later the following year the fda 

established permanent low-acid canned food regulations.this represented the first 

regulatory use of haccp in the food industry. 

the implementation of haccp regulations had a tremendous impact on 

canners of low-acid foods and their quality control programs. Joseph p. hile, 

executive director of regional operations for the fda, explained, “Some firms 

had no real quality control program until after fda made its haccp inspection 

and identified the crucial needs.” other food plants, hile stated,“ceased operations 

as a result of these inspections until major equipment improvements are made and 

meaningful plant quality control procedures instituted.”42 

this was the case forWestern natural growers, inc., of Ulysses, Kansas. in the fall 

of 1973, an inspector reported that “processing procedures, equipment and the firm’s 

general knowledge of retort operations are so grossly inadequate that the production 

of low acid canned foods from this firm could represent a threat to consumer safety.” 

the plant’s retort operators had not attended any fda- or nca-approved schools and 

the plant failed to maintain any processing and production records with the exception 

of temperature recording charts. following the inspection, the fda Bureau of foods 

requested that the plant cease operation until the agency believed that they understood 

and could comply with low-acid canned food regulations. on november 1, the plant 

was voluntarily shut down.notes from a december inspection indicate that conditions 

39. U.S.government accountability office, Dimensions of Insanitary Conditions in the Food Manufacturing 

Industry; Report to the Congress [on the] Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health, Education, 

and Welfare (Washington, dc: gao, 1972), p. 2. 

40. pillsbury company, Development of a Food Quality Assurance Program, iii, 733; f. leo Kauffman,“how 

fda Uses haccp,” Food Technology 28, no. 9 (September 1974): p. 51. 

41. Sperber, telephone conversation, 21 June 2006. 

42. Joseph p. hile,“haccp—a new approach to fda inspections,” Food Product Development 8, no. 

1 (february 1974): p. 52. 
230 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

at Western natural growers, inc., had substantially improved; retort operators, for 

instance, were scheduled to attend an fda/nca school at the University of arkansas 

and were maintaining processing and production records.43 naturally, these equipment 

and operation changes resulted in some increased costs for the company. 

other smaller canners were not as fortunate as theWestern natural growers.Some 

went out of business as a result of the adoption of these regulations.the rules also had 

significant impact upon the canned seafood industry,where many smaller plants closed.44 

aside from the impact on quality assurance in canneries, plant inspections also 

changed as a result of the fda’s use of the haccp concept.hile,who had at one time 

worked as an inspector for the agency,recalled that the inspections previously conducted 

by the fda varied; some were brief while others were in-depth, and the length of 

inspections was determined at the local level. haccp guidelines, by contrast, laid out 

the details by which all plants across the country would be inspected by the agency and, 

in general, haccp inspections followed a nationwide, uniform model.45 

another key difference between traditional factory inspections and the 

haccp inspections was the approach taken by the investigator. customarily, 

canning plant inspections were limited in scope by the time the inspector spent 

at factory. haccp inspections, by contrast, entailed the examination of records, 

thereby giving inspectors a broader picture of how the plant operated over the 

course of the year, not just the hours the investigator spent at the plant.46 

fda records indicate that canning safety programs improved over a period of 

four years from 1973 to 1977. during this time, fda inspectors found fewer factories 

processing food that had either major or critical deviations from low-acid canned food 

regulations. most companies complied with fda requirements and approximately 

10,000 people attended about 100 fda-approved canning courses.47 

in 1980 the fda commissioned a study to determine the total costs of the 

low-acid canned food regulations on plants. arthur d. little, inc., of cambridge, 

massachusetts, conducted the study, and more than 800 plants participated in the 

review. arthur d. little calculated that the industry spent $85 million to comply 

with the regulations, with an average cost of $102,000 per factory. compared to 

43. establishment inspection endorsement,18–19 September 1973,general Subject files (1938–1974), 

fda records, rg 88, archives ii; establishment inspection endorsement, 9 november 1973, 

general Subject files (1938–1974), fda records, rg 88, archives ii; haccp-eir evaluation 

critical factors-potential hazard to public health, 19 december 1973, general Subject files 

(1938–1974), fda records, rg 88,archives ii. 

44. U.S. food and drug administration, Total Industry Cost of Compliance with Low-Acid Canned Food 

Regulation Report to the Food and Drug Administration, prepared by arthur d. little, inc., 21 november 

1980 (rockville, md: U.S. food and drug administration, office of planning and evaluation) p. iV-6. 

45. hile,“haccp,” p. 50. 

46. ibid. 

47. “canning Safety practices improve,” FDA Consumer 13, no. 1 (february 1979): p. 23. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 231 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

smaller facilities, larger plants tended to spend less on compliance. overall, however, 

the burdens of compliance were insignificant, amounting to less than 1 percent of 

the low-acid canned food’s shipment value.48 

By 1974 pillsbury had achieved its objective of implementing a new product safety 

standard at its facilities.the company’s annual report boasted that the haccp system 

was in use in the pillsbury food plants and in its Burger King restaurants.the concept 

employed three principles: 1) conduct a hazard analysis, 2) determine critical control 

points,and 3) establish monitoring procedures.49 Soon the concept would be employed 

in its more recent acquisitions,the Souverain wineries andWilton plants.50 

the attainment of Keith’s goal represented a significant accomplishment for 

the company and a distinct turning point in the history of food safety. instead 

of relying solely on end-product testing to ensure the safety of their products, 

pillsbury had implemented a total safety system which affected not only their 

quality assurance programs but all phases of production. Bauman contrasted the 

old and new safety systems in an fda training seminar. Under the old system, 

product development, testing, and marketing were quick and relatively easy; all of 

the pillsbury offices conducted their work in relative isolation. By contrast, the 

total safety system integrated the research and development work to involve all 

employees.Where the company once viewed quality control as a final, isolated step, 

pillsbury now viewed all stages of development as interrelated. conducting a hazard 

analysis and identifying critical control points involved not only the quality control 

employees but individuals from all parts of the company—engineers, scientists, 

marketers, and attorneys. in addition, the company organized a number of offices 

to ensure product safety, such as the product Systems Safety office which verified 

that all new products had undergone an haccp assessment.aside from processing 

modifications, the culture of the company’s middle management also changed.51 

for his part, Bauman kept his word to the ceo of pillsbury. Under his 

watch, the company did not have a major recall.52 pillsbury was pleased with their 

implementation of haccp, saying,“there have been more than 130 food safetyrelated recalls of product from the marketplace from 1983 to 1991. none were 

pillsbury products. haccp works!”53 

48. fda, Total Industry Cost of Compliance, pp. i-4, i-5, i-6. 

49. William h. Sperber,“haccp and transparency,” Food Control 16 (2005): p. 506. 

50. the pillsbury company,Annual Report for the Year Ended 1974 (minneapolis:the pillsbury company, 

1974), p. 14. 

51. pillsbury company, Development of a Food Quality Assurance Program, pp. 315–328, 514. 

52. Bauman,“the origin of the haccp System,” p. 69. 

53. “a dividend in food Safety,” p. 53. 
232 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

even with pillsbury’s successful implementation of an haccp program in the 

early 1970s, interest in the system dwindled until the 1980s, when haccp began 

to be revisited. in 1980, at the request of the national marine fisheries Service, 

the USda, the fda, the U.S. army natick research and development center, 

and the national research council’s food and nutrition Board Subcommittee on 

microbiological criteria formulated microbiological standards for food and drafted 

a plan of action for regulatory agencies to implement an haccp system. two 

members of the committee,James J.Jezeski and John h.Silliker,had previously served 

as panel members at the first national conference on food protection where the 

idea had been unveiled.the committee’s final report made mention of the historic 

event, noting that haccp inspections provided a better approach than traditional 

inspections.as an example, the committee noted that the haccp system helped the 

low-acid canned food industry control microbiological hazards.the group concluded 

that the haccp concept was a valuable approach to securing the food system, and 

members urged regulatory agencies and the food industry to adopt the system.54 

the food and Safety inspection Service (fSiS, a USda agency) made a similar 

request of the food and nutrition Board of the national research council in 1983.they 

asked the board,which coincidentally included norman d.heidelbaugh,a veterinarian 

who had worked on the food systems at naSa, to evaluate the agency’s meat and 

poultry inspection system. Upon completing its study, the board recommended that 

fSiS adopt haccp principles in slaughterhouses and processing plants;in addition,the 

board encouraged the agency to train inspectors in the haccp concept.55 together, 

these two reports rekindled widespread interest in haccp in the U.S. 

in response to the recommendations, the fSiS established the national 

advisory committee on microbiological criteria for foods (nacmcf) in 

1988. cosponsored by the fda, the cdc, the national marine fisheries Service 

(nmfS),and the department of defense Veterinary Service activity,the committee 

provided an interagency look at microbiological standards for food. Bauman, who 

still worked at pillsbury as vice president for science and regulatory affairs, served 

on the first nacmcf and remained on the committee until 1992. his colleague, 

William Sperber, joined in 1990.56 in 1992, the committee recommended haccp 

as an effective food protection system. a number of experts came out in favor of 

haccp and another key report, “cattle inspection,” encouraged the U.S. federal 

regulatory agencies to adopt haccp-based systems. 

54. national research council (U.S.) food protection committee Subcommittee on microbiological 

criteria, An Evaluation of the Role of Microbiological Criteria for Foods and Food Ingredients (Washington, 

dc: national academies press, 1985), pp. 50–51, 308. 

55. national research council committee on the Scientific Basis of the nation’s meat and poultry 

inspection program,Meat and Poultry Inspection:The Scientific Basis of the Nation’s Program (Washington, 

dc: national academies press, 1985), pp. 8, 134–136. 

56. Sperber, telephone conversation, 21 June 2006. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 233 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

pressure to adopt haccp systems also came from international governing 

bodies. in the summer of 1993, the codex alimentarius commission (cac), a 

joint program of the United nation’s World health organization and food and 

agriculture organization,adopted Guidelines for the Application of the Hazard Analysis 

Critical Control Point System. But, in spite of the urging of experts, no change came 

about in the meat and poultry industry. 57 

the impetus came when hundreds of people fell sick and four children died after 

eating E. coli-contaminated hamburgers from a Jack in the Box fast food restaurant in 

the winter of 1993. the incident might have been avoided if the beef industry, food 

service establishments, or the USda had implemented haccp inspections. eight years 

earlier, the national research council’s Subcommittee on microbiological criteria had 

encouraged restaurants to adopt haccp systems in their operations because research had 

overwhelmingly linked such establishments to most outbreaks of food-borne illness.58 

the deaths of several small children from this incident led many to question the safety 

of the nation’s meat.in a televised pBS Frontline interview,caroltucker foreman,director 

of the food policy institute at the consumer federation of america, explained how the 

deaths altered america’s view of safety and the role of the USda in preventing food 

crises.the E. coli outbreak indicated that the USda inspections had not kept pace with 

america’s increasing dependence on prepared and processed foods.“[i]t exposed the fact 

that the meat inspection system has not changed a bit since 1906.We were using methods 

that were essentially a century old in an industry that had changed radically,”she said.59 for 

instance, USda inspectors continued to use the “sniff and poke” method to determine 

whether carcasses were safe for consumption,rather than rely on microbiological testing. 

as Jack in the Box saw its sales slip, the fast food giant hired food scientist 

david m.theno to prevent another disaster.theno was a proponent of the haccp 

system and he had previously used such methods to eliminate nearly all traces of 

Salmonella in the poultry at foster farms,the largest poultry producer in the western 

U.S. after reviewing Jack in the Box records, he laid out a plan to implement an 

haccp program in the chain’s restaurants. Jack in the Box was the first fast food 

chain to implement the system and require its suppliers to implement such plans. 

the standards were strict. for instance, meatpackers selling to Jack in the Box had 

to conduct microbiological tests on their beef every 15 minutes during processing, 

and managers were required to attend food safety courses.the implementation of 

the haccp system increased beef costs by a mere penny per pound.60 

57. instead, fSiS conducted an haccp study to determine how to implement haccp procedures in 

the meat and poultry industry.“a dividend in food Safety,” p. 54. 

58. national research council, An Evaluation of the Role of Microbiological Criteria,pp.314–315,326. 

59. pBS, Frontline: Modern Meat, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/meat/interviews/foreman.html 

(accessed 3 august 2006). 

60. eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation:The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (new York: perennial, 2002), 

pp. 208–210. 
234 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

the Jack in the Box incident proved that USda inspection methods were 

antiquated, as inspectors could not necessarily see microbiological hazards. in 

response, fSiS issued a proposed a pathogen reduction/haccp (pr/haccp) 

rule in the Federal Register in february 1995.the proposal had three parts: the first 

section required the meat and poultry industry to develop and implement sanitation 

standard operating procedures (steps taken to prevent food contamination); second, 

the agency aimed to reduce Salmonella in meat and poultry plants and proposed 

daily microbiological testing at slaughterhouses and at facilities grinding meat; 

and third, the proposal would require all meat packing plants, slaughterhouses, and 

food processors handling meat and poultry to adopt haccp plans.61 industry had 

120 days to comment. the proposal pleased those who hoped to modernize the 

inspection process.“it may not be Star Trek the Next Generation,but it gets the USda 

out of the horse and buggy era,” said foreman.62 

When the rule was finalized in 1996, the press touted the achievement as a 

landmark in food safety. in a Saturday morning radio address, president Bill clinton 

proclaimed that the new rules strengthened regulations, protecting families and 

those most vulnerable to pathogens—children. recalling the Jack in the Box 

incident, he said,“parents should know that when they serve a chicken dinner, they 

are not putting their children at risk.”63 

experts, however, disagreed with clinton’s assessment. William Sperber, 

a food safety expert now with cargill, believed that this rule, known more 

commonly as the “megareg,” and the additional haccp regulations passed by 

the fda in 1997 and 2001 did not follow the principles of haccp as outlined 

by the nacmcf and later by the cac. as an example, Sperber explained that 

sometimes meatpacking plants failed to meet the Salmonella performance standards 

as outlined by the USda regulation. the rule gave the USda the authority to 

close the plant if a packer failed the Salmonella monitoring plan three times in 

a row. fSiS rarely employed such drastic measures, however. instead, the USda 

waited to conduct another round of samples that consumed several months, and 

the meatpacking plants continued shipping meat until the results came back.this 

process sometimes took two years to complete.Very rarely did fSiS proceed to 

close a plant.the hesitancy with which the agency took action is not reflected in 

the haccp principles outlined by the nacmcf. “Several hallmarks of a valid 

haccp plan are that monitoring procedures and corrective actions, insofar as 

possible, should be taken in real time, and should be as continuous as possible,” 

Sperber noted.64 in other words, the USda failed to implement a true haccp 

61. Federal Register, 25 July 1996. 

62. marian Burros,“Sweeping changes proposed on meat Safety,” The NewYorkTimes, 1 february 1995. 

63. todd S.purdum,“meat inspections facing overhaul,first in 90Years,”The NewYorkTimes,7 July 1996. 

64. Sperber,“haccp and transparency,” p. 507. 
“From Farm to Fork”: How Space Food Standards Impacted 235 

the Food Industry and Changed Food Safety Standards 

system because the agency allowed certain meatpackers to ship inferior and 

potentially unsafe meat, and because it relied on product testing for Salmonella 

rather than more practical process controls. 

likewise, food inspectors voiced concern about the rule, which, they argued, 

put the public at greater risk for food-borne illness.the regulation had taken away 

their authority to check contaminated meat. instead of visually examining carcasses, 

inspectors had to ensure that companies followed the haccp system they had 

drawn up.the acronym, which had once outlined the steps to ensure food safety— 

hazard analysis and critical control points—was now dubbed “have a cup of 

coffee and pray” by those inspectors opposed to the megareg.65 

in spite of the criticism leveled against the pr/haccp regulation, the 

economic research Service (erS) of the USda linked the implementation of 

the rule to a 20 percent reduction in food-borne illness and lower medical costs.66 

Similar trends were noted by another federal agency: the cdc cited haccp as 

one factor contributing to the decrease in the number of Salmonella infections over 

a five-year period.67 

after further review, the costs of developing and implementing an haccp 

plan were higher than previously assumed. fSiS had estimated that the costs of 

pr/haccp would be relatively insignificant, about 0.12 cents per pound. the 

erS found that the actual overhead was higher than anticipated, 0.4 cents a pound 

for poultry and 1.2 cents for beef.this amounted to a 1.1 percent increase for plant 

operators. for cattle slaughterhouses the rates were higher, about 5.5 percent of all 

costs.68 although costs have been higher than expected, this has not hindered the 

adoption of haccp systems in the U.S. and abroad. 

the emergence of new pathogens in foods,as well as consumer demands for safe 

food,has driven the use of haccp in other nations.inaustralia,for instance,an E.coli 

outbreak sickened more than 100 people and killed one child,forcing changes in food 

safety requirements.the passage of the australian Standard for hygienic production 

of meat for human consumption required plants to implement haccp systems 

in their meatpacking plants.69 Scotland required its butchers to employ haccp 

65. Schlosser, Fast Food Nation, p. 215. 

66. michael ollinger and Valerie mueller, Managing for Safer Food:The Economics of Sanitation and Process 

Controls in Meat and Poultry Plants,agricultural economic report no.aer817 (april 2003): pp. vi, 

59, http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer817/ (accessed 3 august 2006). 

67. centers for disease control and prevention, “preliminary foodnet data on the incidence of 

foodborne illness—Selected Sites,United States,2001,”Morbidity and MortalityWeekly Report,19april 

2002, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5115a3.htm (accessed 3 august 2006). 

68. ollinger and mueller, Managing for Safer Food, p. 58. 

69. Spriggs and isaac, Food Safety and International Competitiveness, pp. 111, 115. 
236 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

procedures after 21 people died from eating tainted meat at a butcher shop.70 

throughout the past three decades, the widespread use of haccp in the 

U.S. and abroad indicates the impact naSa has had on the food industry and food 

safety regulations. originally implemented on a small scale for naSa’s gemini and 

apollo astronauts, the haccp system is essentially utilized worldwide by many 

multinational food conglomerates to ensure food safety for billions of consumers. 

in addition to the tremendous growth of the haccp approach, many regulatory 

agencies require certain sectors of the industry to design and utilize systems in their 

processing plants that can be linked to the techniques first developed to comply 

with naSa food safety regulations. 

perhaps more important, haccp has changed the manner in which food 

manufacturers and regulators look at the issue of food safety. Just 20 years ago many 

food manufacturers believed that the issues of food safety belong solely in the hands of 

quality control and quality assurance engineers in food processing plants.today this is 

not the case.William Sperber explains this shift:“We now realize that some food safety 

practices can be applied at each step of the global food chain; from the growing of 

crops and the raising of animals, to the processing of these commodities, and through 

the production, distribution, and consumption of consumer food products.”71 

70. food and agriculture organization of the United nations (fao), “escherichia coli 0157: h7 

outbreak in Scotland in 1996/97,”fao/Who global forum of food Safety regulators,marrakesh, 

morocco, 28–30 January 2002, http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/MEETING/004/X6925E.HTM 

(accessed 3 august 2006). 

71. William h. Sperber,“opening remarks,” Food Control 14 (2003): p. 73. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 237

chapter 13 

The Social and Economic Impact of 


Earth Observing Satellites


henry r. hertzfeld and ray a.Williamson 

esearch, development, and operational investments of the U.S. government and rnaSa for earth observations have had a large impact on the economy of the 

U.S. and on the world.With the participation of other federal agencies such as the 

national oceanic and atmospheric administration (noaa),the U.S.department of 

agriculture (USda),and the department of interior,United States geological Survey 

(USgS), new industries have been created. new technologies have been advanced 

from the laboratory to the marketplace more quickly than if there had been no space 

program. not only have jobs and income been created, but new ways of viewing 

the world now exist and other innovations that can be traced to U.S. government 

requirements and investments have improved the quality of life. describing these 

technological advances is relatively easy;measuring their economic and social benefits 

is difficult.this paper reviews economic and other measures that have been applied to 

the benefits that earth observation satellites have brought.the process of measuring 

benefits faces two major difficulties: 1) economists do not agree on the best approach 

to measurement because each issue and problem as well as each application focuses 

on a menu of different approaches and 2) no single measure exists that provides a 

comprehensive indicator of earth observations impacts and benefits. 

this essay will review developments in two areas: 1) a summary and evaluation 

of selected studies that have attempted to quantify and describe the various 

observable and measurable impacts of using earth observation satellites and 2) a 

focus on the value of information used in the economy that can be attributed to 

satellite observations.this is different from just trying to measure historical impacts 

because it looks to the marginal value of additional information that can be derived 

from improved forecasts of many variables,which include weather and climate,river 

flow, soil moisture, snow cover, and land use. in general, information about these 

variables is derived from ground, aerial, and satellite sources and is combined in 

models that predict near- and long-term conditions. Since much is already known 

and published about these variables and the predictions are currently in use by 

many economic sectors, with each sector making large contributions to the gross 
238 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

domestic product (gdp), improved forecasts—though constituting only smallpercentage gains—can add up to equal a large impact. 

over the past 30 years since the launching of the first civilian earth observation satellite, 

ertS-1 (later renamed landsat-1), much has been written about the potential impacts of 

the data on various economic sectors.this paper will only briefly summarize these studies 

as a background for a more comprehensive analysis of the impacts of the value of improved 

forecasts in three areas of growing importance: natural hazards (mainly from weather and 

climate),electric energy production,and the management of freshwater resources. 

following the discussion of results,this paper also summarizes the assumptions, 

methodology,and analytical problems in developing consistent,accurate,and reliable 

results with the tools currently available. 

The Socioeconomic Benefits of Earth 


Observation Satellite Systems


Beginning with the polar-orbitingtelevision infrared observing Satellite (tiroS)­

1 in 1960,naSa’s first earth observation satellites focused on providing a view from space 

of earth’s cloud patterns.these were extremely useful in both civilian weather forecasting 

and in planning military maneuvers. later versions of these satellites added microwave 

instruments that could probe layers of the atmosphere to provide estimates of temperature, 

pressure, and humidity—measurements that are required as inputs to weather forecast 

models.Because many terrestrial weather measurements were available in northamerica, 

earlytiroS satellite data made only modest contributions to forecasting accuracy within 

this continent.however,they made a sharp improvement in weather forecasting in other 

parts of the world,where weather data were only sparsely available.Steady improvements 

in the tiroS series (now called poeS, the polar-orbiting operational environmental 

Satellites,and operated by noaa) have made these polar orbiting satellite measurements 

indispensable around the world.the U.S. allows all nations, indeed any entity with the 

appropriate receiver,to download data from these satellites without cost. 

in the late 1960s naSa’s geostationary applications technology Satellites 

(atSs) demonstrated the utility of making frequent observations of weather 

conditions over north america for tracking severe storms, such as hurricanes and 

tornadoes. in the 1970s, naSa and noaa agreed to build an upgraded version 

of atS called goeS—geostationary operational environmental Satellite. Built 

and launched by naSa and operated by noaa, the poeS and goeS systems 

now provide some 95 percent of the data that noaa’s national Weather Service 

(nWS) uses in its weather forecast models. information provided by the data from 

these satellites is credited with saving many lives and reducing property damage 

from severe storms.1 every day, weather forecasts provide information used by 

1. the national climatic data center, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climateresearch.html (accessed 30 

november 2006). 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 239 

industry, government, and the average citizen to lower the risks they face from 

adverse weather conditions. many of these uses can be quantified; others can only 

be described qualitatively. later sections discuss some of these results. 

in the early 1970s naSa created the landsat program to gather multispectral 

data about earth’s surface features.2the first of this series of satellites was launched in 

July 1972.the satellite proved a technical success, returning images of large areas of 

earth’s surface in four different color bands that could be probed for information about 

geology, biology, snow and ice cover, and human settlement patterns. even before the 

launch, naSa had started an effort to involve other agencies in experimenting with 

the data for assisting in their applications. it also encouraged countries around the 

world to establish data receiving stations to collect data over their territories.although 

the data showed immediate potential utility for use in resource management, mineral 

prospecting,and agriculture,naSa found it difficult move the system into operational 

status.the software and computer hardware were cumbersome to use and, at first, 

analysis was largely carried out using paper imagery. 

even today, with the benefit of extremely powerful geographic information 

System (giS) and sophisticated imaging processing software, as well as the global 

positioning System (gpS) to place landscape details into a geographic reference 

system, incorporating earth observations into routine agency resource management 

operations continues to be difficult for several reasons. first, potential users do not 

feel confident that research sensors will be made operational and data from them 

will be available in the future. Second, government budgets often do not include 

enough funds for processing and operations once the hardware has been built, 

flown, and tested. third, there are cultural and communications barriers between 

space researchers and data users that are often difficult to overcome. 

nevertheless, landsat data have been used widely for such scientific studies as 

the examination of the state of the world’s forests and estimates of the amount of 

carbon sequestered by them.they have also contributed to a better understanding 

of the rates of deforestation and reforestation around the world. for agencies that 

have incorporated landsat data into their routine operations, the data provide a 

broad,synoptic view of the landscape and an enhanced ability to manage the natural 

and cultural resources of the lands they manage. 

naSa’s landsat effort was sufficiently successful for it to obtain the financial 

backing from congress to build three satellites that carried similar, 80-meterresolution multiSpectral Scanners (mSSs) and to extend the landsat mission to 

landsats 4 and 5, which carried an enhanced 30-meter sensor called the thematic 

mapper (tm).these were launched in 1982 and 1984, respectively; the 25-yearold landsat 5 still returns imagery from orbit, though at a reduced capability.the 

2. pamela e. mack, Viewing the Earth:The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System (cambridge, 

ma: mit press, 1990). 
240 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

tm sensor carries seven spectral bands, six of which operate between the blue and 

near-infrared parts of the spectrum.as detailed below, landsat 6 failed and landsat 

7 is now in orbit and supplying data. 

lacie and naSa’s applications program 

the 1974 to 1978 large area crop inventory experiment (lacie) and its 

1978 to 1983 successor program, agriculture and resources inventory Surveys 

through remote Sensing (agriStarS) were designed to develop uses for 

the landsat data to measure crop production, first in the U.S. and then in other 

parts of the world.they were a joint program of naSa, noaa, and the USda. 

(agriStarS was primarily a USda program to make operational the results of 

lacie, but budget pressures and changing priorities of the reagan administration 

greatly reduced the spending for agriStarS.)3 

in one interesting experiment in the lacie program, landsat and other 

data were used to estimate the Soviet Union’s wheat crop. crops yields are heavily 

dependent on weather conditions.the lack of knowledge and good forecasts of the 

Soviet crop led to significant increases in the price of wheat in 1972.as described by 

dr. forrest hall, senior research scientist at naSa’s goddard Space flight center, 

in 1972, the Soviet Union experienced a major wheat crop 

failure.the U.S. had sold large quantities of wheat to the Soviet 

Union at low prices before the crop failure was announced.the 

failure drove up wheat prices, and the U.S. ended up buying 

wheat back from the Soviets at a loss . . . . When we started 

selling it, we were selling it for $1.92 a bushel, and we ended 

up buying some of it back at $4 or so a bushel . . . .that really 

made us realize that our conventional (crop-estimation) systems 

at that point were not very accurate. 

in order to add an element of stability to the world’s agricultural markets,naSa 

and the USda began a program to see if landsat data could be used to estimate 

global crop production.4 the resulting improvements in wheat crop forecasting 

from lacie were documented to be within 6 percent of the final Soviet figures, 

which were released more than six months later than the lacie estimates.5 

3. “United States civilian Space programs,Volume ii,applications Satellites,” report prepared for the 

Subcommittee on Space Science and applications of the committee on Science and technology, 

U.S. house of representatives, 98th congress, may 1983, pp. 231–237. 

4. http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast04dec_1.htm (accessed 24 august 2007). 

5. r. B. macdonald and f. g. hall, “global crop forecasting, Science (new Series) 208, no. 4445 (16 

may 1980): p. 670. in spite of the overall accuracy, it is noted by others that the value of the accuracy 

was somewhat diminished by offsetting errors in area and yield estimates (U.S. general accounting 

office,“crop forecasting by Satellite: progress and problems:” pSad-78-52, 7 april 1978, as quoted 

in “United States civilian Space programs,Volume ii,applications Satellites,” p. 233.
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 241 

an economic methodology was constructed to measure the value of these 

information improvements in forecasting, which was based on the premise that 

more accurate observations affect the commodity-price distribution. By reducing 

the variation in prices of highly volatile commodities, consumers receive direct 

economic benefits (a marshallian surplus) in the form of more stable prices.6 over 

time and with improved satellite resolution and additional data, the same type of 

analyses have more than adequately demonstrated the value of better information 

in forecasting in many other areas, as described in other sections of this paper. 

although the landsat satellites proved technically successful, naSa did not want 

to operate landsat indefinitely and the office of management and Budget was not 

keen to approve continued funding for the system. 

in the late 1970s, influential members of the carter administration also felt 

that the private sector should assume operation of the landsat system and provide 

the data commercially. in order to move the landsat system to a private operator, 

the administration crafted a plan that would first transfer operational control over 

landsats 4 and 5 to noaa and then later to the private sector.Several years later,the 

reagan administration pushed hard to move the system into private hands as soon 

as possible. congress supported this decision by passing the land-remote Sensing 

commercialization act of 1984 (p.l. 98-365), which also included important 

provisions allowing the commercial development and operations of land remote 

sensing satellites. 

as soon as noaa took over landsat operation, it raised the price of data 

from near zero to several thousand dollars per scene, which caused the volume of 

data sales to plummet. rca, inc. and lockheed martin corp. formed eoSat, 

inc. to operate the landsat system and to increase the small market for the data. 

however, eoSat was unable to build a commercial market to a size that would 

support fully private development of the landsat satellites.for one thing,the federal 

government remained by far the largest user of landsat data. in addition, the price 

of data continued to be prohibitive for many users. further, landsat 6 incurred a 

complete launch failure and did not achieve orbit. 

congress in 1992 decided that landsat did indeed provide sufficient benefit 

to the country to be continued, and drafted legislation to ease the restrictions on 

private operation of land remote sensing that were in the 1984 law and to bring 

future landsat satellites back under government operation.7 naSa was instructed 

to build and launch landsat 7, which is still orbiting8 and supplying data to users 

6. david f. Bradford and harry h. Kelejian, “the Value of information for crop forecasting with 

Bayesian Speculators:theory and empirical results,” The Bell Journal of Economics 9 (Spring 1978): 

pp. 123–144. 

7. the land remote-Sensing policy act of 1992 (p.l. 102-555). 

8. landsat 7, however, suffers from a failure in its land-scan corrector that makes part of the data in 

each scene unusable. 
242 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

around the world.USgS now operates landsats 5 and 7.naSa will build a successor 

to this satellite, which will be operated by the USgS. long-term continuity of this 

capability is still in doubt, however.9 

this abbreviated summary of the trials and tribulations of the landsat system 

illustrates that even though a satellite system may prove technically successful for 

the economy, finding the will to move it into operational use can be fraught with 

difficulties.this state of affairs has come about because earth observation data have 

both public and private uses. governments have invested in expensive space systems 

because the information obtained fulfills various mission purposes, ranging from 

national security to planning and monitoring natural resources. at the same time, 

commercial and private for-profit uses of the very same data provide opportunities 

for economic growth and benefits. 

these dual capabilities have fueled many policy debates over the years that 

have led to some very odd compromises. in the U.S., for example, congress has 

declared that satellite (and other) weather information is a public good,10 while at 

the same time leaving all other remote sensing data products undefined and therefore 

sometimes treated as public goods and sometimes as private goods.11to further confuse 

the policy debate, civil space activities fall under two other legislative mandates: 1) 

they are “for the benefit of mankind”12 and 2) the information obtained from space 

should be openly and widely disseminated.13 in addition, government policy also 

calls for government-collected information to be disseminated with user charges set 

no higher than the costs of dissemination.14 also, unlike many other nations, the U.S. 

government also prohibits the copyright of government publications. 

therefore, all remote sensing data are mixed public-private goods, making 

market pricing and measuring benefits on an economic basis extremely difficult. 

clearly, private sector value-added firms (those taking and/or purchasing 

government information from satellites and processing the images for commercial 

9. a forthcoming report by the office of Science and technology policy will reportedly recommend 

the development by the government of long-term operation of a landsat-type system to ensure 

moderate resolution data continuity for the long term. 

10. a public good is one that is non-excludable (nobody can be denied the use of the good) and non-rival 

(one person’s consumption of it does not affect another’s). public goods often reflect the intervention 

of governments into the marketplace where market systems have failed to provide either competition 

and/or service to everyone for necessary services at an equitable price.public goods are also collective 

goods where a profit-motivated firm would not provide the service (e.g., national defense). 

11. We need a citation for the mid-1980’s legislation. 

12. “national aeronautics and Space act of 1958,” public law 85-568, 72 Stat., 426. Signed by the 

president on 29 July 1958, §102(a). 

13. ibid. 

14. executive office of the president,office of management and Budget,circular no.a-130,revised, 

management of federal information resources,Washington, dc: 28 november 2000, §8(a)7(c). 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 243 

purposes) can provide useful,measurable benefits.however,the prices do not reflect 

the total costs to society of producing the information since the space component 

is often heavily subsidized by government programs. as policy has evolved over 

time, the private sector is now developing its own satellites, with data products sold 

both to governments and to the private sector. however, the legislative mandates 

still allow for a significant amount of competition between government-subsidized 

information and for-profit systems, which makes a true economic and benefit 

analysis of earth observation data very complex. 

although some of the technology in the U.S.commercial satellites derives from 

systems developed for classified satellites, much of the hardware and the associated 

supporting image processing software sprang from naSa’s efforts to make landsat 

data useful for operational applications. further, government investments in gpS 

and giS software have made landsat data truly useful for a wide variety of scientific 

and applied purposes.these ancillary government inputs can also be considered as 

benefits, though extremely difficulty to quantify. 

Scientific research on climate has also proved highly beneficial. By the early 

1980s, naSa began to focus on developing a view of earth as an integrated, 

interdependent system. naSa scientists reasoned that global satellite observations 

would be essential in developing global climate models. in 1987, at a time when 

naSa was reappraising its role in space research and development following the loss 

of Space Shuttle Challenger, naSa published a report entitled Leadership and America’s 

Future in Space.

15 among other things, this report included a proposal for a “mission 

to planet earth” that would study and characterize earth on a global scale.this report 

was rescoped, rebaselined, and reshaped (naSa’s terminology) in steps over several 

years to fit a much smaller $7-billion budget profile in which the original large,polarorbiting platforms were replaced by several smaller, less capable versions, but which 

have been highly successful in producing excellent scientific data. 

Some of the instruments from the earth observing System (eoS) satellites 

could provide the basis for operational instruments operated by another federal 

agency. nevertheless, naSa and these agencies will still face the difficulty of making 

the transition from research to operations unless the relevant agencies (noaa and 

USgS) are able to take over the development and operation of their own satellites or 

find ways to involve the private sector in supplying such information commercially. 

the issue becomes clear in an examination of the longevity of the tropical 

rainfall measuring mission (trmm),launched in 1997.trmm is a joint JapaneseU.S. mission to study the effects of tropical rainfall, which orbits in an inclined orbit 

between +/- 35 degrees latitude. data from the trmm microwave imager (tmi) 

15. ride,Sally K.,“naSa leaderShip andamerica’s future in Space,”a report to theadministrator, 

august 1987. 
244 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

and the precipitation radar (pr) instruments on this satellite have not only led to 

enhanced understanding of the role of tropical rainfall in earth’s system but have 

also proven extremely capable of providing improved estimates of rainfall amounts 

in tropical cyclones. data from the pr have also led to much-improved estimates of 

tropical cyclone path and intensity.16 

however, by 2004, although the satellite was still in excellent operating 

condition (well beyond its planned scientific mission), for budget reasons naSa 

decided to stop collecting data from the satellite and to deorbit it.that move would 

have saved the agency about $4 million per year (though much of that savings would 

be consumed by deorbit maneuvers over several years).the outcries of dismay from 

scientists and from weather forecasters in Japan and in the U.S., and a national 

research council report on trmm, caused naSa to rethink its approach. Some 

weather forecasters, especially in Japan and europe, were already using the data for 

operational purposes in measuring rainfall and in tropical cyclone warnings. 

therefore, in may 2005 naSa reversed its earlier decision and extended the 

operation of trmm either until it fails or its fuel runs out sometime in 2010 or 

2011.trmm is still operating and in 2005 contributed to improved observations of 

hurricanes Katrina and rita as well as other tropical cyclones.although its benefits to 

society have not been quantified, the national research council report enumerated 

many of its contributions to weather and climate prediction models.17 these successes 

make it clear that a satellite system,if extended to the globe,would provide continuing 

and improved data which would result in benefits to all nations. 

the following sections summarize results of several studies carried out by the 

Space policy institute on the benefits of eoS systems. 

Natural Hazards, Mitigation, and Response 

Some of the most familiar and recognizable earth observation images in the 

U.S. popular mind are the dramatic pictures of major hurricanes headed for the 

U.S. coast. the pictures, captured by the noaa goeS satellites, serve to illustrate 

the danger these enormous storms pose for the affected coastline and assist in urging 

citizens reluctant to evacuate the area that they should leave.to the extent that the 

satellite systems that produce images of these and other weather-related natural disasters 

save lives and allow affected communities to prepare their homes and businesses to 

withstand the storms’ onslaughts, they bring a clear benefit to the U.S. 

in general, more accurate prediction of severe weather can help to reduce 

substantially the economic and social costs of weather-related disasters. Better 

16. national research council,The Future of theTropical Rainfall Measuring Mission:Interim Report (Washington, 

dc: national academies press, 2005). 

17. 4.3.1.2 operationalassimilation oftmi and pr data forWeather and climate 21 prediction models,p.61. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 245 

information induces governments, businesses, and individuals to invest in lossreduction activities; it can also reduce economic costs from unnecessary lossreduction activities that derive from uncertainty about adverse weather (e.g., 

evacuations during hurricanes).this section summarizes what is known about these 

types of benefits as applied to weather-related natural hazards such as hurricanes. 

a few economists have attempted to quantify the economic impacts of severe 

storms in specific industries. for example, research by timothy considine et al. on 

the costs of evacuating energy production platforms in the gulf of mexico estimated 

that achieving a 50 percent reduction in hurricane and tropical storm forecast error 

would save producers about $18 million annually.according to his analysis, a perfect 

forecast could lead to savings between $225 million and $275 million, illustrating 

the nonlinear nature of forecast value in this case. however, for energy producers in 

the gulf, averting the risk of losing lives is generally far more important than saving 

short-run operations costs.the costs of evacuation from a platform are much lower 

than the perceived costs of loss of life. if “losses are perceived to be very substantial, 

producers will always take preventive action regardless of evacuation costs.”18 

preparing for and responding to hurricanes 

Satellite data from several instruments can contribute to the delivery of more 

accurate, timely hurricane forecasts (table 13.1). Satellite data also have a role in 

mitigating the damaging effects of hurricanes and in responding to and recovering 

from hurricane damage (table 13.2). for example, digital elevation models, coupled 

with land cover information and estimates of storm force,allow modelers to estimate 

the force and extent of storm surge along the coast.19 

Table 13.1–SaTelliTe ConTribuTionS To More aCCuraTe, 

TiMely HurriCane ForeCaSTS 

Satellite Instrument Measurement Utility 

TMI-TRMM Microwave 

Instrument 

Precipitation Radar 

Precipitation rate and 

distribution 

Storm track, rain rate in storm 

Rain estimates, flood warnings 

Increased accuracy of evacuation 

warnings 

QuikSCAT Surface winds speed and 

direction 

Storm force, track predictions 

GOES, POES Imagery, atmospheric 

soundings 

Storm track, rain estimates, force 

18. t.J.considine,c.Jablonowski,B.posner,and c.h.Bishop,“theValue of hurricane forecasts to oil and 

gas producers in the gulf of mexico,” Journal of Applied Meteorology 43 (2003):pp.1270–1281. 

19. lidar-derived digital elevation models (from aircraft instruments) of Broward county, fl, have 

allowed the county to avoid significant evacuation costs during severe hurricanes by reducing the 

required evacuation area. ray a. Williamson, henry r. hertzfeld, Joseph cordes, and John m. 

logsdon,“the Socioeconomic Benefits of earth Science and applications research: reducing the 

risks and costs of natural disasters in the USa,” Space Policy 18 (2002): pp. 57–65. 
246 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Table 13.2–SaTelliTe ConTribuTionS To MiTigaTion, reSponSe, and 

reCovery oF HurriCane daMage 

Satellite Instrument Measurement Utility 

Landsat Thematic Mapper, 

SPOT

Land cover, flooding extent Flood modeling, recovery planning 

QuickBird 

Ikonos 

Orbview 

Damage type, extent; detailed 

digital elevation model 

Insurance estimates, detailed 

cleanup planning 

Shuttle Radar Topographic 

Mapper 

Digital elevation model Storm, flood modeling 

Radarsat Flooding Flood extent, disaster designation 

the most destructive tropical cyclone in recent years to strike the U.S. was 

hurricane Katrina, which made landfall southeast of new orleans in late august 

2005 and quickly moved northeast, spreading death and destruction across southern 

louisiana and western mississippi. much of the storm damage was directly related 

to the massive amount of rain.the heavy rainfall and storm surge destroyed parts of 

new orleans levees, flooding the city and displacing much of the city’s population. 

less than a month later, this storm was followed by hurricane rita, which made 

landfall near the texas-louisiana border.the storm surge it caused led to extensive 

damage along the louisiana and southeastern texas coasts.Both storms were among 

the most well-forecast storms in U.S.history because of the early concern they raised 

among forecasters and the public. despite highly accurate forecasts for both storms, 

they caused at least 2,000 deaths directly or indirectly, massive short- and long-term 

population displacement, and thousands of destroyed homes and businesses. 

earth observation satellites had a major role in tracking the storms and in 

response,recovery,and rebuilding efforts immediately afterwards.information derived 

from noaa’s goeS and poeS satellites was used to estimate storm intensity with 

considerable accuracy. naSa contributed data from the trmm satellite, which 

had led to improved hurricane path and rainfall predictions. however, even though 

the information was highly accurate, response at all levels of government was slow 

and halting, which led to a much higher death rate—demonstrating that better 

information does not always lead to better decision making in times of crisis. 

during response and recovery after the storm, noaa, naSa, and private 

companies contributed time and considerable effort to acquiring both aerial and 

satellite imagery of the damaged areas. this helped citizens, some of whom were 

several hundreds of miles from their homes,view the damage to their neighborhoods 

and houses and decide how to respond appropriately. in addition, the international 

disaster charter was activated to assist.20the charter is an international consortium 

20. the formal name is charter on cooperation to achieve the coordinated Use of Space facilities 

in the event of natural or technological disasters; see http://www.disasterscharter.org/main_e.html 

(accessed 1 november 2006). 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 247 

of space-capable nations, including the U.S., that have pledged to provide imagery 

to countries afflicted by major disasters. 

potential international Benefits of improved Weather and climate 

information 

the international benefits of improved weather and climate information 

involve virtually the same list that we would put together for the U.S., with the 

important difference that for developing countries, especially, these improvements 

could have even greater primary economic and social benefits. as one example, 

table 13.3 summarizes the immediate economic damage and recorded deaths for 

the 1998 hurricane mitch,which swept across central america in november 1998. 

however, these figures do not reveal the costs associated with damaged agricultural 

production or the long-term displacement of residents. 

Table 13.3–eSTiMaTed deaTHS and daMage CoSTS FroM HurriCane MiTCH 

Country Deaths Damage Costs 

Honduras 6,500 $4 billion 

Nicaragua 3,800 $1 billion

El Salvador 239 Not available 

Guatemala 256 Not available 

Mexico 9 Not available 

Other 14 Not available 

Source: http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/extremes.html (accessed 24 August 2007). 

el niño and the Southern oscillation (enSo) 

recent development of forecast models of the short-term climate variation 

of the el niño and la niña cycle has proved a significant success.these models 

could not have been developed without the data from global satellite observations. 

the temperature and precipitation changes caused by the enSo phenomenon 

have led both to significant losses and benefits, depending on which region of the 

world is studied.among other things, this interannual climate swing is responsible 

for a significant level of uncertainty in the prediction of long-term weather patterns. 

hence, U.S. and global climate research has focused considerable attention on not 

only a deeper understanding of the biophysical mechanisms behind enSo, but also 

on the ability to predict enSo effects. Scientists have also focused on the economic 

and social effects of enSo in order to reduce the level of uncertainty and risk faced 

by agriculture, fisheries, and the general public throughout the world. 

the climate research community has made significant progress in the past 

decade in understanding the physical relationships between the warming or cooling 

of the ocean along the western coast of South america and changes in weather 
248 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

patterns elsewhere in the world.this understanding, coupled with data from several 

satellites, has led to an improved ability to predict the return of el niño, which can 

then be used to alert weather-sensitive industries around the world that they may face 

increased risk of experiencing abnormal weather phenomena in their regions. 21 

learning to predict the onset of el niño and its sister phenomenon la niña 

with sufficient accuracy, can have a major impact on the U.S. economy.table 13.4 

summarizes one analyst’s estimates22 of the socioeconomic gains and losses from 

the el niño of 1997–1998. note that, contrary to popular belief, in this case the 

gains vastly outweigh the losses for north america. Similar charts for other regions 

for the same incident would probably show a different picture, with greater losses 

than gains.Whether gains or losses are at stake, however, better knowledge of the 

timing and strength of the enSo cycle would assist governmental policy makers 

and private sector investors to capitalize on the benefits of this climate cycle and 

reduce the risk of loss. 

Table 13.4–1997–1998 enSo loSSeS and beneFiTS 

in THe uniTed STaTeS 

Source Losses 

Property losses $2.8 billion (insured losses were $1.7 billion) 

Federal government relief costs $410 million 

State costs $125 million 

Agricultural losses $650–$700 million 

Lost sales in housing and snow-related 

equipment $60–$80 million 

Losses in the tourist industry $180–$200 million 

Source Savings/Benefits 

Reduced heating costs $6.7 billion 

Increased sales of merchandise, homes, 

and other goods $5.6 billion 

Reduction in costs for snow/ice removal 

from roads $350–$400 million 

Reduction in normal losses because of the lack 

of snowmelt flood and Atlantic hurricanes $6.9 billion 

Income from increased construction and 

related employment $450–$500 million 

Reduced costs to airline and trucking industry $160–$175 million 

Cost/benefit Summary 

Costs Benefits 

Human lives lost: 189 Human lives not lost: 850 

Economic loss: $4.2 to $4.5 billion Economic benefit: $19.6 to $19.9 billion 

21. richard a. Kerr,“Signs of Success in forecasting el niño,” Science, 297 (26 July 2002): pp. 497–498. 

22. Stanley a. changnon, El Nino 1997–1998:The Climate Event of the Century (new York: oxford 

University press, 2000), pp. 144, 149, 152 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 249 

The Benefits of Weather and Climate Information for 

the Electric Energy Industry 

Weather is an important component in the analysis and operational components 

of both the demand and supply of electricity. it strongly affects electricity demand via 

heating and cooling needs in businesses and residences. accurate weather forecasts 

are extremely valuable for accurate electricity demand forecasts, which are used to 

determine the load carried by the electric infrastructure, conduct transactions on the 

electricity market, and manage electricity flows across the power grid. on the supply 

side of the electric power industry, weather data have applications in both electricity 

transport and generation. high temperatures and severe weather events (such as 

hurricanes, lightning, and ice storms) can damage transmission and distribution 

systems and interrupt electricity supply.Weather also affects the capacity to generate 

electricity from fossil fuels and renewable sources; the latter, which represents an 

ever-growing portion of the electricity supply, is particularly sensitive to weather 

conditions. noaa’s operational environmental satellites, augmented by land- and 

sea-based systems, gather meteorological data that lead to valuable information inputs 

on both the demand and supply sides of electricity production. innovation in space 

meteorological technology, as well as more extensive understanding and utilization of 

current capabilities, will provide the electric power industry with more sophisticated 

weather information of even greater economic value than that available today. 

accurate weather forecasts are crucial in maintaining the reliability of the 

supply of electricity to users through management of the power grid (especially, 

close monitoring of overload conditions) and the prediction of severe weather. 

partly as the result of the increasing deregulation of the electricity industry, 

electric utilities have installed more efficient transmission technologies to compete 

effectively.Yet these measures have often also introduced new vulnerabilities to the 

grid from weather by making it more sensitive.in the U.S.the aging of the hardware 

and equipment in the electric power grid has also led to reduced reliability.these 

changes have increased the need for the industry to make more efficient use of 

weather and climate data than ever before. 

temperature is the most important weather factor influencing electricity demand. 

people use more energy on hot days to cool indoor environments and on cold days 

to warm them. heating degree days (hdds) and cooling degree days (cdds) are 

commonly used measures of energy demand. they indicate the variation of daily 

temperatures from a temperature that would require no external energy inputs for 

heating or cooling.23 differences in temperature above or below 65°f determine the 

need for heating and cooling, the largest component of electricity use. 

23. daily temperature is calculated as the average between the daily minimum and maximum, and the 

hdd/cdd is the absolute value of the difference between this and 65°f. energy information 

administration, “Short-term energy outlook,” July 2007, http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/ 

a2tab.html (accessed 24 august 2007). 
250 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

decreasing forecast errors can reduce the costs of unnecessarily buying and 

selling electricity on the open market. error grows more costly as the time between 

purchase and consumption diminishes, which becomes apparent in high spot-market 

prices. commercial weather information vendors such as itron, inc.,Weather Bank, 

inc., and Weather Services international specialize in providing load forecasts and 

forecasting software to energy utilities and independent system operators (iSos).they 

obtain raw data from the nationalWeather Service and other data providers and then 

turn this information into forecasts tailored to the specific needs of each customer in 

the electric power industry.the most common electric power applications are for the 

very-short-term (minutes to hours ahead) to the short-term (1 to 10 days ahead).24 

the costs to utilities of an inaccurate forecast can be very high, especially for 

day-ahead or hour-ahead forecasts. hourly changes in weather can result in over- and 

underestimating demand and costly decisions regarding the operation of electricity 

generation units. improved forecasts from the use of satellite weather information 

have resulted in direct economic payoffs to the electric utility industry. electric load 

forecasts are valuable to utilities and iSos for allocating power over different parts of 

the electric grid and for optimizing purchases on the spot and day-ahead markets. 

electric utilities derive the greatest economic benefit from weather forecasts 

that are accurate over the 2- to 4-day time frame. improved 7- to 10-day weather 

forecasts would also provide some economic benefit for utilities.the companies use 

monthly and seasonal weather forecasts for scheduling maintenance and for meeting 

U.S. environmental protection agency (epa)-set yearly emission allotments. longterm forecasts assist in planning for new power generation facilities. 

the many studies of the value of better terrestrial weather forecasts all indicate 

that benefits to the electric utility industry are significant, often reaching millions 

of dollars. however, the studies have been made in an uncoordinated way—each 

one measuring the benefits at one point in time for one region and often for one 

particular application.as enumerated below, economic benefits from better weather 

information are measured in many ways with a variety of methodologies. each 

methodology may be particularly relevant to specific case studies and situations.Yet 

measures derived from different methodologies cannot easily be added together, 

making it impossible at present to calculate a single, aggregate measure of the 

economic value of improving weather forecasts and other information. however, 

more accurate forecasts coupled with intelligent and timely use of those forecasts by 

the industry is already yielding benefits in the tens of millions of dollars annually.as 

weather forecasts improve with new satellite-based information, and improved data 

assimilation into forecast models, these benefits will increase. 

24. frank a. monforte, vice president of forecasting, itron, inc., personal communication. See henry 

c. hertzfeld and ray a.Williamson,“Weather, climate Satellite data and Socioeconomic Value in 

the electric Utility industry,”a report to noaa (Washington,dc:Space policy institute,george 

Washington University, december 2004), p.13. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 251 

the social benefits of supplying better weather forecasts to the public and 

government agencies are equally robust but even more difficult to measure accurately. 

nevertheless, because the entire modern infrastructure depends in some way on the 

availability of electrical power, it is clear that when the U.S. electrical power grid 

operates reliably, the general public and public services benefit substantially from 

reduced uncertainty in the supply of electricity. 

Satellite information can also provide significant benefits in planning, locating, 

and operating electric production dependent on renewable sources of energy such 

as wind, sunlight, and water. as of 2007, at least 17 states have mandated the use 

of renewable energy sources in generating electrical power; other states are rapidly 

adding similar regulatory requirements. Some have followed the federal example 

and instituted tax incentives to assist the development of this component of the 

industry.Satellite-based remote sensing can aid in realizing the potential of exploiting 

renewable energy resources by aiding in the optimal siting of generating facilities 

as well as in the operational decisions of generating facilities and electric power 

grid management. State and federal governments may wish to consider increased 

investment in the research and development of environmental satellites to support 

sound and sustainable economic and environmental policies, both in the energy 

and space industries.the increasing global demand for energy resources makes this 

particular use of satellites very significant and immediately practical.there are clear 

economic and social benefits to the use of satellite data for locating sites and for 

routine operations of renewable-source generating stations, yet the magnitude of 

the economic benefits that satellite data can provide have not yet been quantified. 

Satellite Information in Quantifying and 


Managing Water Resources 


clean, fresh water, so crucial in supporting life and national economies, is 

becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, especially in arid and semi-arid climates. 

freshwater, with less than 0.5 parts per thousand dissolved salts, may be found 

in lakes, rivers, and bodies of groundwater. only 3 percent of water on earth is 

freshwater, and more than two-thirds of this is frozen in glaciers and ice caps. 

in the near future, ensuring adequate supplies of freshwater to support all 

the competitive water needs of the world will likely become one of the most 

contentious issues facing global society. improving water resource management 

(supply and distribution) has clearly become one of the most important challenges 

of modern life.as noted in a recent report,“earth’s water resources can no longer 

be taken for granted.Water is an issue that cannot be ignored, if we want the world 

to sail safely through the century ahead.”25 

25. itt industries, ITT Guidebook to Global Water Issues, http://www.itt.com/waterbook (accessed 

September 2006). 
Table 13.5–eleCTriCiTy and WaTer CoMpared 

Electricity Water Resources 

Sensitivity to price changes Yes No 

Distribution system National/regional Regional/local 

Sources Coal, hydroelectric, nuclear, oil, 

alternatives Water cycle 

Originates (distribution) Power plants Rivers; ground 

Reusability/recovery None In some applications 

Social/cultural approaches Commodity, becoming a 

necessity 

Basic need, but some uses are 

“commodities” 

Markets Sophisticated trading: spot, dayahead, long-term markets 

No large-scale, organized 

economic markets 

Legal impediments Regulatory, but relatively 

consistent across the nation 

Many different local systems; 

different treatment of ground 

and river water 

Measures of value Sales, usage, cost savings, 

hedging on prices 

Gross usage (not $), cost 

savings, scarcity 

Direct benefits Industry (profit incentive) 

Consumers (price effects) 

Agriculture, hydroelectric, 

nuclear plant cooling 

Indirect benefits Quality of life Recreation 

Age of industry Approximately 100 years Ancient 

252 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

information derived from earth observation satellites could improve knowledge 

of the supply of freshwater and assist in managing its distribution to water users. 

however, so far, few researchers have attempted to assess the value of space systems 

in addressing the challenges of improved water management. 

as noted in the preceding section,electricity generation and transmission derives 

significant benefits from satellite data. Socioeconomic analysis of this industry is aided 

by the fact that electricity is a commodity and the prices and markets that exist are 

very important in the allocation of electric power among users,despite the distortions 

created by the significant amount of government regulation that is also involved. 

electricity and water are both treated as public utilities in the U.S., but that 

is where the direct comparisons end. electricity is a uniform commodity, being 

transmitted to users by wires from power plants.Water stems from many sources, is 

transferred to users by different means, and cannot efficiently be transported over 

long distances.table 13.5 summarizes some of these differences. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 253 

additional theoretical problems create even more uncertainties and issues in 

trying to grasp the aggregate value of satellite information for uses of water resources. 

overall, valuing information is quite difficult because information only has value if it 

is used or expected to be used.thus, measuring the benefits of access to information 

depends on the ability to be able to measure the expected use of the information 

rather than the information itself.When the uses are diffused among different users and 

markets, the measurement problem is greater. further, when no true price-responsive 

markets exist for the commodity,the problem is many times harder to evaluate.finally, 

when the supply of water and the raw information are not precise or even affect the 

user in a direct buyer/seller market, yet another difficult variable is introduced 

therefore,wefaceamultipartproblem:valuingweatherandmoistureinformation 

from proxy measures created by satellites; valuing a commodity that is not a market 

commodity;and valuing a commodity that,for many high-value uses,is not consumed 

but is replaced after its use. figure 13.1 illustrates these issues and problems. 

Figure 13.1—Data sources for water resource management and the use of economic models to 

measure the impact of weather resource data. 
254 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

despite the difficulties of actually measuring the socioeconomic benefits of 

satellite data for water resource management, satellite data can contribute numerous 

benefits for specific economic sectors of the economy. for example, table 13.6 

illustrates the potential use of satellite data for irrigated agriculture. 

Table 13.6–reMoTe SenSing in irrigaTed agriCulTure 

Agricultural use of water for irrigation is commonly one of the highest-volume usage categories for 

freshwater; in the United States nearly 40 percent of freshwater withdrawals in 2002 were used for 

irrigation purposes.26 Worldwide, on average 70 percent of water use is in the agriculture sector.27 

However, agriculture is not typically the highest-value use of water; municipal and industrial usages 

generally have greater social and economic value. As development occurs and populations grow, 

more pressure is felt to provide greater amounts of water to the higher-valued usages. Therefore, 

increasing efficiency and productivity in agricultural usage of water may provide benefit in allowing 

increased availability of water for higher-valued usages. Remote sensing applications are able to 

measure several indicators of performance related to irrigated agriculture. Applying remote sensing 

techniques in measuring these indicators may provide avenues to increased productivity and 

efficiency. A selection of these indicators is presented in the following chart. 

Indicator Remote Sensing Principle Potential Satellites/Instruments 

Crop water stress index Surface energy balance Landsat (Thematic Mapper) 

Evaporative fraction Surface energy balance Landsat (Thematic Mapper) 

Water deficit index Surface energy balance Landsat (Thematic Mapper) 

Evapo-transpiration Surface energy balance ASTER, AVHRR 

Spatial geometry of 

crop yield 

Vegetation index Landsat, IRS-LISS (Indian Space 

Research Organization–Linear 

Imaging Self-Scanner) 

Irrigation intensity Multispectral classification Landsat, IRS-LISS 

Crop intensity Multispectral classification Landsat, IRS-LISS 

Irrigated area Multispectral classification Landsat, IRS-LISS 

Soil salinity Microwave SMOS (planned) 

Soil moisture Microwave SMOS (planned) 

Some of these measurements are relatively robust, and some require additional 

research and/or the development of new sensors and new, sophisticated algorithms 

and modeling to make operational use of the data they provide. 

theprecedingsectionshaveillustratedsomeofthemeasurableandnonmeasurable 

benefits from the use of earth observations satellite data.they also pointed out some 

of the practical problems in measuring these benefits.the following sections elaborate 

these issues from a methodological standpoint. 

26. S. S. hutson, n. l. Barber, J. f. Kenny, K. S. linsey, d. S. lumia, and m.a. maupin, Estimated Use of 

Water in the United States in 2000 (reston,Va: U.S. geological Survey circular 1268, 2004). 

27. chris perry,“irrigation reliability and the productivity of Water:a proposed methodology Using 

evapotranspiration mapping,” Irrigation and Drainage Systems 19 (2005): pp. 211–221. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 255 

Measuring Socioeconomic Benefits 

economic measures 

there are several approaches to measuring economic benefits: 

•  a macroeconomic approach that attempts to gauge the impact on the entir

economy through measuring changes in gdp, employment, income, or other 

economy-wide parameters. 

•  a microeconomic approach that focuses on the impact of consumer welfar

through the price mechanism; that is, with new technology and new products, 

the relative price of a particular good or service will decrease, which, in turn, 

makes consumers better off. 

•  an approach that focuses on reducing uncertainty in decision making, whic

can be evaluated in a number of ways, including assessing consumer preferences 

through surveys, hedonic measures (parameters associated with the attributes 

or use of a good or service), avoidance of a particular externality (e.g., costs 

of cleanup from pollution), or the value-added by using one method over 

alternatives (e.g., irrigated vs. non-irrigated land for agriculture). 

other indirect or proxy measures such as counting the number of patentable 

inventions, number of users of a good or service, or other measures where the 

actual value or affect on the market is indeterminate. 

the following two tables illustrate some of the many economic sectors and 

applications in which the impact of earth observation data is very important.table 

13.7 summarizes some of the uses of weather and climate data in the public sector 

and table 13.8 in the private sector and by individuals. often, the economic and 

social values of these uses are very difficult to estimate because they are spread 

throughout the economy and through a wide variety of entities, including local 

communities, families, and diverse businesses. 

Table 13.7–repreSenTaTive induSTrieS For WHiCH WeaTHer 

prediCTionS Have an iMporTanT FinanCial iMpaCT 

Major Industry Examples of Specific Applications 

Agriculture Crop management 

Irrigation decisions 

Prevention of weather-related diseases 

Energy Planning purchases of gas and electric power 

Managing responses in emergency situations 

Managing capacity and resources 

Aviation/Transportation Optimizing flight patterns 

Reducing wait times on runways 

Avoidance of sudden volcanic plumes 

Tourism/Recreation Improving ski slope demand/production of artificial snow 

Marine forecasts/warnings
256 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

Table 13.8–uSeS oF WeaTHer and CliMaTe daTa in THe publiC 

SeCTor and by individualS 

Entity Examples 

Federal, state, local government Managing public resources 

Managing assistance programs 

Managing disasters, emergencies 

More efficient emergency evacuation 

Reducing operational costs 

Improving operational capacity and safety 

of U.S. military forces 

Citizens Improving safety 

Managing daily choice of activities 

Improving quality of life 

Reducing lives lost 

Macroeconomic Measures of Socioeconomic Impacts/ 

Benefits of Space Programs 

a macroeconomic production function model can be used to estimate impacts 

of technological change attributed to r&d spending on the gdp and derivative 

measures such as employment and earnings.the results of using this type of model 

are expressed as a rate of return to a given investment or as a total value. 

this economic formulation is best used to develop estimates of a very large 

program or agency because it focuses on the totality of the economic impact on the 

entire national economy. even for an agency such as naSa, the $16 billion annual 

budget (not all of which is either space- or r&d-related) is comparatively small in 

relation to the more than $10 trillion gdp for the United States.trying to ferret out the 

technology improvements attributable to a specific program such as earth observations, 

attribute these improvements to a particular budget line, and then estimate their impact 

on the economy is extremely speculative on a macroeconomic level. 

another approach to a consolidated measure of benefits is to add up the 

measured benefits in particular industrial sectors from microeconomic studies to 

a U.S. or national total.this also yields inappropriate and unreliable estimates.the 

reason for this is not the logic of the addition,but simply that different point estimates 

for different products and sectors, coupled with somewhat different econometric 

methodologies and different time periods, amount to adding up apples and oranges 

and fails virtually all tests of validity and reliability. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 257 

microeconomic measures of Space applications 

as appealing as a single number to aggregate all of the benefits from space r&d 

(or even just from the r&d spent on earth observations) may be, economists have 

turned to using more focused examples to measure impacts and benefits through 

the tools of microeconomics.analyses at the industry, firm, and product or service 

levels have been able to provide a useful window on the benefits derived from earth 

observations. Several different tools are used for these analyses. 

the first is based on the benefits consumers realize from lower prices and greater 

capability from innovations. if the results of r&d can be translated into goods and 

services that are less expensive, then the benefits can be measured by the amount 

“saved” from not having to pay as much as without the new products or services. 

conversely, producers can also benefit from being able to offer more products and 

services at lower prices.the distribution of benefits between consumers and producers 

depends on the market structure of the industry and products.for earth observations, 

these types of benefits can be analyzed by comparing the costs of obtaining weather 

and land use data from nonspace sources (airplanes, ground measures, etc.) with the 

costs of buying satellite imagery.clearly,the greater the area that needs to be observed 

in detail,the larger the benefits from using space imagery.in many cases,space imagery 

provides new services that were not available through more traditional methods. 

although cost/benefit analyses are derived from this general framework, the 

results of those analyses are inherently inaccurate. the costs involved are largely 

from government expenditures for mission-oriented, dual-use, public goods and 

are very difficult to isolate program-by-program and mission-to-mission. one 

should note that cost/benefit analysis was developed to analyze the impacts of 

regulatory measures (a true before-after situation) rather than on the impacts of 

new technologies, many of which have no comparable “before” market uses. 

another microeconomic method is the examination of data that provide 

evidence of the direct transfer of technology from federal space r&d programs to the 

private sector.the results of these analyses are reported as actual numbers measured 

(number of patents or inventions,value of royalties,value of sales,etc.).they are rarely 

compared to associated government expenditures, again because of the difficulty of 

linking general government funding to specific products or patents. 

Qualitative analyses of the benefits of earth observations, which range from 

monitoring vegetation and tracking hurricanes, to national security operations, 

focus on descriptive case studies.although these activities may have a clear positive 

effect on human life, valuing the information in a market/price format does not 

fully describe their impacts. 

in summary, there are numerous methods for valuing the impacts of new and 

better goods and services from earth observations. each is useful for particular 

purposes and in particular situations. no measure can capture the entire impact.the 

best that can be done is to take particular uses of earth observation data that have 

been studied in detail and report on the benefits from those uses. 
258 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

reducing Uncertainty 

the creation and distribution of accurate weather forecasts involves several 

elements, beginning with scientific research and continuing through to the delivery 

of information to government agencies, businesses, and consumers.the process can 

be viewed both over time (i.e.,research results may precede actual use of information 

by end-users) and at a given point in time (the institutional system structure of 

information delivery). measuring the value of information therefore requires 

evaluating a complex process and has typically only been attempted through studies 

of specific, isolated examples. 

Benefits to society derive from public investment in increasing the amount 

and the quality of information about natural processes such as weather and climate. 

increased scientific knowledge per se generates real benefits. for example, better 

observations of the geophysical processes that influence weather and climate help 

advance scientific knowledge directly, or indirectly, by providing better data for 

calibrating scientific models and/or testing scientific hypotheses. however, despite 

considerable research on the topic, no accurate metrics exist that enable economists 

to determine both the quality and the future monetary value of economic benefits 

that may arise from acquiring new knowledge. indeed, even the use of peer review 

and other methods of selecting future scientific missions cannot predict with 

accuracy the success of such scientific pursuits in operations. 

nevertheless, better information about weather and climate provides tangible 

socioeconomic payoffs that, at least in principle, lend themselves to quantification. 

these benefits derive from the fact that weather and climate information can help 

reduce uncertainty in several ways, as illustrated in the following sections. 

Improved Civil Government and Military Planning 

Weather conditions have a major role in government planning for such tasks as 

administering forests,grasslands,and other lands under federal management.the 2000 

fire in los alamos, new mexico, provides an instructive example. in that case, a fire 

that was deliberately set by federal officials to reduce the load of dry underbrush raged 

out of control when the winds turned unfavorable. Better local weather forecasts of 

wind conditions28 might have prevented the devastating effects of that fire—reducing 

or eliminating the severe social and economic effects of that experience.also,weather 

forecasts at airports can reduce operational costs.a 1995australian study found savings 

of $6–$7 million per year from improved fueling decisions.29 

28. Keith easthouse, “park Service Unfairly Scapegoated for los alamos fire,” Forest Magazine, april 

2001, http://www.forestmag.com/losalamosfire-update.cfm (accessed 24 august 2007). 

29. roy J.leigh,“economic Benefits ofterminalaerodrome forecasts (tafs) for Sydneyairport,australia,” 

meteorological applications,Volume 2,(royal meteorological Society,1995),pp.239–247. 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 259 

military operations, whether in war or peacetime, are affected by weather 

conditions. the military services need accurate weather information in order to 

increase personnel safety and to gain an information edge over adversaries.accurate 

weather forecasts can reduce operational costs by allowing commanders to make better 

decisions regarding movements and deployments of troops. for example, accurate 

information regarding winds, sea state, and ocean currents can enable ships to follow 

more cost-effective courses than would be possible without such information. 

responding to natural hazards 

the unexpected and severe flooding of the many major rivers in europe and 

china in the summer of 2002 and the 1998 devastation in central america from 

hurricane mitch serve as reminders of the potentially huge economic costs of natural 

hazards. Better prediction of weather and climate cannot reduce the likelihood that 

severe weather events will occur but can help substantially lower the costs to society of 

such events.these cost savings come in two forms:1) people are more likely to invest in 

loss-reduction activities when better information is available and 2) better information 

can also reduce economic costs that arise when uncertainty about adverse weather 

causes government authorities, people, and business to “err on the side of caution” and 

undertake what later turn out to be unnecessary loss-reduction activities. 

improved industrial planning 

reducing uncertainty about weather and climate facilitates the process of 

planning in a variety of industrial sectors. more accurate predictions about future 

weather and climate enable farmers and agribusinesses to estimate future crop 

yields, leading to reduced uncertainty about yields and prices. in economic terms, 

such reduced uncertainty translates directly into better use of scarce productive 

resources, as well as dampening the fluctuations in prices of agricultural products. 

Similarly in the energy generation industry, improving the predictive ability of 

forecasts by an average of only one degree can result in more efficient use of power 

generating resources and can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars saved each year 

for electric utilities.30 many utilities employ their own forecasters at a high annual 

cost because of these potential large savings.Weather forecasts are also critical for 

airline operations since better forecasts will reduce operational costs (mainly by 

saving fuel and improving safety) at airports and in-flight. 

30. national oceanic andatmosphericadministration (noaa),geostationary operational environmental 

Satellite System (goeS),“goeS-r Sounder and imager cost/Benefit analysis (cBa),” prepared for 

the goeS Users conference,1–3 october 2002,Boulder,co,http://www.osd.noaa.gov/goes_R/goesrconf. 

htm (accessed october 2002);del Jones,“forecast:1 degree isWorth $1B in power Savings,”USAToday, 

19 June 2001. note that other factors, including political and regulatory actions, can overshadow any 

savings from forecasts. for example, the wild fluctuations in price and energy availability in california 

over the past several years resulting from a policy of deregulation would make an economic analysis of 

separating out the price and efficiency effects of better forecasts very difficult.
260 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

insurance and hedging against Uncertainty 

finally, providing better information concerning the probabilities of weatherrelated events also enables the emergence of markets that help mitigate the 

economic and financial consequences of uncertainty. these markets, which allow 

the consequences of uncertainties to be “priced” in the form of insurance and 

hedge contracts,are able to function because information about weather and climate 

makes it possible to attach probabilities to uncertain events. 

in each of these instances, however, new information has value only to 

the extent that more scientific information reduces uncertainty in ways that are 

economically valuable.in the case of planning for and responding to natural hazards, 

information about weather and climate will be valuable to the extent that 1) having 

more information provides a measurable or significant reduction in uncertainty and 

2) reducing uncertainty “matters”in the sense that having more reliable information 

has the potential to affect choices made by individuals, businesses, and government. 

Similarly, increased scientific knowledge about weather and climate, by itself, does 

not facilitate pricing in insurance and/or hedge markets if this information cannot 

be translated into the probability distribution of future weather events and then 

efficiently distributed to users. 

the value of information has particularly interesting qualities. Before 

information is released to potential buyers (ex ante), the value to a potential user 

of the information is not known. information has economic value only when it is 

actually used.the transmission of information gained from analysis of data from the 

environmental satellites to end-users is complex and much information is ignored, 

lost, or not used. even if information is disseminated in a timely fashion, sometimes 

the interpretation may not be clear and potential benefits will disappear.Who will 

ultimately pay for the information, how much they will pay for it, and what is the 

actual value of the information are all difficult to evaluate until after the information 

is obtained and actually used. 

derivatives 

Virtually all companies face financial risks from unexpected variations in 

temperature, precipitation, and other weather-related events. in order to reduce the 

financial risk that unexpected weather variations might cause, companies whose 

income depends significantly on the weather are likely to make use of use financial 

instruments such as weather derivatives to hedge against major losses from unpredicted 

weather.Whether it is a ski resort protecting itself from a warm winter or an electric 

utility hedging against price increases in fuels from a cold winter, actual market 

transactions can provide a window on the value of these natural events to businesses. 

Weather derivatives are financial instruments that act very much like puts and 

calls in the stock and futures markets, and are specific to each company, location, 

and type of weather condition (temperature, precipitation, wind speed, snowfall, 

etc.).they tend to cover short periods of time (typically, two weeks to one season in 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 261 

length) and the contracts are usually written to limit the seller’s financial exposure. 

Since they are traded on markets developed for this purpose, the makers of the 

markets charge a fee (premium) for this service. Since derivatives are especially 

relevant to business market transactions and are not well understood outside of the 

industry, they are useful in providing a view of an often-overlooked indicator of the 

value of weather forecasts. 

purchasing derivatives reveals one facet of the economic value of information 

on weather and business activity.in march 2003 an analysis of the weather derivative 

market reported a total of 7,239 contracts (from both a survey of the industry and the 

contracts reported from the chicago mercantile exchange) with a notional value of 

nearly $4.2 billion. more than 98 percent of these weather derivative contracts have 

been based on temperature (the rest were based on precipitation).31 

although satellites play a long-term role in improving the accuracy of forecasts 

and of historical data, the information from satellites tends not to affect the shortterm assessment of risks for weather derivatives since these risk assessments are 

based on history,not on predictions.nevertheless,future improvements in predictive 

capabilities (particularly from improvements in satellite instrumentation and data 

distribution) may well influence the derivative market. 

clearly, as weather prediction capabilities improve, the potential for directly using 

satellite data for derivatives (along with other weather information) will become 

economically and financially more feasible.as real-time data become more accurate, 

the historical time series in future years will improve.Satellite weather data will have a 

great influence on the market and price volatility of weather derivatives. 

Summary and Conclusions 

the preceding short descriptions of socioeconomic benefits from satellite 

earth observations data illustrate some of the existing and potential contributions 

that these systems make to the economy and to societal well-being. it is clear in 

examining such cases in more detail that numerous impediments in U.S. institutions 

and in organizational culture prevent government agencies and private companies 

from taking full advantage of the benefits these data supply. impediments include 

the mixed record of naSa and noaa in moving research findings to operational 

use; lack of knowledge within companies and local communities about the benefits 

satellite data can bring to them; institutional inertia and reluctance to make 

investments in new ways of conducting operations; and the necessary costs of 

training and equipment to upgrade operations. 

31. pricewaterhousecoopers,“the Weather risk management industry:Survey findings for november 

1997 to march 2001,” prepared for the Weather risk management association,Washington, dc, 

June 2001 (updated in 2003). 
262 Societal impact of Spaceflight 

further, it is apparent that we cannot develop a reliable overall estimate of 

what we know intuitively must be true—that the benefits from earth observations 

from space have had a huge and significant impact on the economy.the quality of 

life, the ability to protect our nation, and the ability to manage environmental and 

natural resources are very much improved by the use of space-based instruments. 

the considerations in this paper suggest that increases in scientific information about 

weather and climate do not automatically or immediately create information that is of 

economic value.a direct implication is that the mix of government-funded projects could 

change over time depending on how policy makers take into consideration the balance 

between the economic and commercial value of earth observations and the research, 

scientific, and qualitative (social) value of earth-sensing activities.32 

the value of weather and climate information itself has been shown to be 

relatively small as a percentage of the economy.33 however, when dealing with 

weather and climate where each year billions of dollars of property is damaged and 

many lives are lost as a result of severe weather events, even a small improvement in 

predictive capability can add up to major savings.34 

despite these concerns and the methodological measurement difficulties we 

have enumerated, government agencies and private companies derive sufficient 

benefit from many of the systems to justify continued and expanded government 

investment in them, especially when their utility for nonquantifiable international 

and national security operations is taken into account. nevertheless, especially in 

an era of substantial pressure on the discretionary portion of the federal budget, 

decision makers will continue to press for hard evidence that the investments are 

worth the cost.part of this presents a dilemma.increases in technological capabilities 

will advance the potential of benefits; however, without a corresponding increase 

in providing incentives to users and in moving the research results to operational 

capabilities,it will be very difficult to achieve greater economic benefits,particularly 

those that can be measured quantitatively. 

32. it should be clearly recognized that these two goals and not mutually exclusive, due to the dualuse nature of most earth observation data. in other words, providing data that has social value also 

contributes to economic and commercial uses. 

33. a good review of some of the economic issues in measuring the value of weather information can 

be found in molly K. macauley, “Some dimensions of the Value of Weather information: general 

principles and ataxonomy of empirical approaches,” http://sciencepolicy.Colorado.edu/socasp/weather1/ 

macauley.html (accessed march 2002). 

34. for a review of the magnitude of losses from extreme weather, see tom ross and neal lott, 

the national climatic data center, http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climateresearch.html (accessed 30 

november 2006);“extreme Weather Sourcebook 2001,” http://sciencepolicy.Colorado.edu/sourcebook/ 

data.html (accessed 28 July 2007). other compilations can be found in “natural disasters 2000, 

annual review,” (munich, germany: munich re; also available as a cd-rom); a. arguez and 

J. elsner, “trends in U.S. tropical cyclone mortality during the past century,” (florida State 

University:tallahassee, fl, 11 april 2001). 
The Social and Economic Impact of Earth Observing Satellites 263 

hence, additional research on socioeconomic benefits will be essential, 

quantifying where possible the economic benefits satellite systems provide to the 

U.S. economy. our research so far demonstrates, among other things, that too little 

effort has been put into this important task.the recent national research council 

study, Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade 

and Beyond, underscores this need in its chapter 5: earth Science applications and 

Societal Benefits.35 

35. national research council, committee on earth Science and applications from Space, Earth 

Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond (Washington, 

dc: national academies press, 2007). 
264 Societal impact of Spaceflight
Section IV 

ApplicAtionS SAtelliteS, 

the environment, And 

nAtionAl Security 

~


Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 267

chApter 14 

Satellites and Security:


Space in Service to Humanity


erik m. conway 

i

n his classic political history of the early Space Age,Walter mcdougall explained 

the cold war competition between the Soviet union and the united States 

as a competition between two increasingly technocratic states.1 in the American 

case, his narrative represents a cry for restraint. the technocratic imperative is 

not a democratic one. he saw in the coming of technocracy the rise of a narrow, 

technologically focused elite to power. he apparently did not like the technocratic 

vision of the future this gave him; not surprising, i think, given his experiences in 

one of American technocracy’s great Apollo-era disasters, the vietnam War. 

But one of the key traits of technocracy is the state’s effort to use “technology,” 

often defined very amorphously, to improve lives.this is, i think, what Steve dick 

meant when he asked me to discuss the societal impact of military, applications, and 

science satellites.the united States government has financed these in the general 

belief that they would result in progress of some sort. in many cases, the hoped-for 

outcomes were obvious.everyone thought weather satellites would result in longerrange weather forecasts,an economic,as well as a social,good.military satellites,too, 

had obvious uses.the earliest military satellites were oriented toward surveillance 

and intelligence gathering, developed to supplement intelligence aircraft. 

the same can be said about the literature on applications satellites.to date, only 

communications satellites have a significant literature, as david Whalen will discuss 

in his paper. only military satellites, my first topic, have received extensive study, 

although to date imaging satellites have drawn most attention, leaving several areas 

untouched. it is also the case that many “big picture” questions about the impact of 

these vehicles on the military, and on our political culture, have yet to be asked. 

even scientific satellites were often utilitarian in nature.Asif Siddiqi wrote in 

his essay for the 2005 critical issues conference that “[t]he literature on the history 

1. Walter A. mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (new york: 

Basic Books, 1985). 
268 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

of space-based science has, however, not been significant.”2 indeed it has not! very 

few efforts in space science have drawn scholarly attention. But scientific satellites 

and solar system probes have had profound impacts on the scientific community 

and, as is the case with military satellites, on our national politics. 

Satellites and the Military 

one of the fundamental historical realities exposed in all of the papers in this 

session is that satellites have been seen, since Sputnik, as militarily useful.the first 

weather satellite, tiroS, started its road to existence as an Army reconnaissance 

satellite project at Fort monmouth, new Jersey, a couple of years prior to Sputnik’s 

launch. Army leaders thought, quite rightly, that just as airborne reconnaissance 

had transformed knowledge of the battlefield in World War ii, spaceborne 

reconnaissance would cement that tactical advantage and make it a global, and 

strategic, asset. it would also place that asset under Army control, relieving the 

institution’s dependence on its chief rival, the u.S.Air Force, for intelligence.they 

were thwarted by president eisenhower, who gave imaging reconnaissance to the 

central intelligence Agency and the Air Force, weather satellites to nASA and the 

Weather Bureau in an unsuccessful partnership arrangement, and to his own former 

service, the Army, communications. 

there is already some good literature on reconnaissance satellites and their 

impact on the cold war. Jeffrey richelson has examined two important systems 

in a pair of books, the defense Support Satellite Series, which served to provide 

early warning of Soviet ballistic missile launches, and the Keyhole series of imagery 

satellites (also known as corona and discoverer.) the corona satellites have also 

drawn attention from dwayne day,from a policy and technology perspective.there 

is also at least one popular treatment of space surveillance.3 

2. Asif A. Siddiqi, “American Space history: legacies, Questions, and opportunities for Future 

research,” Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. dick and roger d. launius, ed. 

(Washington, dc: nASA Sp-2006-4702, 2006), p. 440. 

3. Jeffrey richelson, America’s Secret Eyes in Space:The U.S. Keyhole Spy Satellite Program (new york: 

harper & row, 1990); richelson, America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security, 

modern War Studies (lawrence, KS: university press of Kansas, 1999); dwayne A. day,“A Strategy 

for reconnaissance: dwight d. eisenhower and Freedom of Space,” in Eye in the Sky:The Story of 

the Corona Spy Satellites, dwayne A. day, John m. logsdon, and Brian latell, ed. (Washington, dc: 

Smithsonian institution press, 1998), pp. 119–142; William Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage 

and National Security (new york: random house, 1986).Also see r. cargill hall,“missile defense 

Alarm:the Genesis of Space-Based infrared early Warning,”Quest:The History of Spaceflight Quarterly 

7, no. 1 (Spring 1999): pp. 5–17. 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 269 

A thorough overview of what’s often called“milSpAce”can be found in Stephen 

Johnson’s article in the Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight volume, so instead of 

repeating his work i want to highlight a few areas that seem particularly interesting.4 

From a technological standpoint, several types of intelligence satellites have 

existed since the late 1960s that haven’t been examined. Since the early 1980s, the 

united States has flown a series of synthetic aperture radar satellites known as lacrosse 

(and sometimes onyx).these satellites are intended to detect vehicles of all types and 

can also detect motion and change.the first civilian synthetic aperture radar (SAr) 

flew in 1977 and, as far as i can determine, the first intelligence SAr was initiated in 

1976.the Jet propulsion laboratory (Jpl) built the first civilian SAr but does not 

seem to have been the source for the military version.5 Are these truly independent 

developments? or is there a relationship between the two? our current understanding 

of space history would pretty strongly suggest that there must have been a relationship 

between the two. John cloud has described the relationship between classified 

imaging satellites built for intelligence purposes and their unclassified counterparts 

(i.e., landsat) as a shuttered lamp—a relationship controlled by the intelligence 

community.6 the radar case might show us that the relationship between civilian and 

military technology is more complex than this model. 

there are also other kinds of intelligence satellites. As was revealed at least 

as far back as the early 1980s, the united States operates “signals intelligence” 

(sigint) satellites. these satellites capture millions of electronic signals every day 

that are analyzed by an ever-changing array of supercomputers. there are many 

possible stories to tell buried in this topic. As Stephen Johnson also pointed out, 

the technologies underlying sigint are in need of historical exegesis.7 the political, 

military, and intelligence utility of these kinds of systems is in need of study, too. in 

the early 1990s,the u.S.national Security Agency apparently considered using it for 

industrial espionage against our european allies.this briefly produced diplomatic 

problems for the united States (whose governmental allies were, apparently, quite 

content with the system’s existence until their publics found out about it).8 

4. Stephen Johnson, “the history and historiography of national Security Space,” in Critical Issues 

in the History of Spaceflight, Steven J. dick and roger d. launius, ed. (Washington, dc: nASA Sp2006-4702, 2006), pp. 481–548. 

5. the Jet propulsion lab’s SAr flew on Seasat-A; see peter Westwick, Into the Black: A History of 

the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (new haven, ct:yale university press, forthcoming); for lacrosse, see 

http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/lacrosse.htm (accessed 5 September 2006). 

6. John cloud,“imaging the World in a Barrel: coronA and the clandestine convergence of the 

earth Sciences,” Social Studies of Science 31:2 (April 2001): pp. 231–251. 

7. Johnson,“history and historiography,” note 4. 

8. ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Inside America’s Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11 (new york: 

Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 85. 
270 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the history of this technical capability is also directly relevant to the current 

administration’s attempts to discredit revelations that it is using signals intelligence 

to spy on terrorists (and everyone else, too.)9 the historical fact of the matter is 

that this is old news.10 the technical capacity to do this has been a matter of public 

record since the public unmasking of the national Security Agency in the Ford 

administration and its role in illegal domestic surveillance; wise leaders should 

assume enemies have a basic awareness of our capabilities—particularly old, well 

established ones.the subject of signals intelligence and its use and abuse deserves 

further historical exegesis. 

Better covered historically than signals intelligence has been the development 

of military communications satellites. So far, the literature suggests that although 

the military saw the utility of surveillance satellites well before the ability to build 

them existed, the armed services rather missed the boat with communications 

satellites.the first communications satellites that we’re aware of were commercial. 

At&t immediately sought a monopoly in this new business and was denied by 

government policy;the department of defense (dod) seems to have bought access 

to the technology in the early years. it became an innovator later in the Space Age. 

one author places responsibility for this in the decision to place communications 

satellite development in the Army and in the Advanced research projects Agency, 

delaying development until after private companies had already flown their satellites. 

nASA also played a significant role in communications satellite development in the 

1960s and early 1970s, although apparently not after that.11 to make this picture of 

innovation still more complicated, i was recently told by a retired nASA manager 

that the Air Force paid for a significant fraction of the last of nASA’s Advanced 

technology Satellite comsat series,AtS-6, launched in 1974. 

9. liberal columnist paul Krugman discusses the treason charge in paul Krugman,“the treason card,” 

The New York Times, 7 July 2006; also see Frank rich,“Will the real traitors please Stand up,” The 

New York Times, 14 may 2006. 

10. the technical capability to carry out large-scale eavesdropping on electronic communication was 

revealed in the 1970s, when the national Security Agency’s illegal activities in spying on Americans 

was investigated by congress. See James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America’s Most 

Secret Agency (Boston: houghton mifflin, 1982), esp. pp. 280–308.the role of satellites in this system 

is not clear; much of what was revealed during the 1970s involved wiretapping and interception of 

radio communications from ground-based “listening stations.”As dwayne day has shown recently, 

signals intelligence satellites first flew in 1960, although these seem to have been radar intercept 

satellites for characterizing air defenses,not communications intercept satellites.See dwayne A.day, 

“early American Ferret and radar Satellites,” Spaceflight (July 2001): pp. 288–293. 

11. See david n. Spires and rick W. Sturdevant,“From Advent to milstar:the u.S.Air Force and the 

challenges of military Satellite communications,” in Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite 

Communication, ed. Andrew Butrica, (Washington, dc: nASA Sp-4217, 1997), pp. 65–70; david 

Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965 (Washington, dc: Smithsonian 

institution press, 2002). 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 271 

communications satellites have had a profound impact on the armed services. 

my own former service,the u.S.navy,evolved command traditions over 200 years that 

were based on the unreliability and often non-existence of communications with the 

national commandAuthority back inWashington.even radio did not fundamentally 

change this reality,because the high-frequency radios that were the basis ofWorldWar 

ii communications were “environmentally unreliable.” As radio engineers all knew, 

sometimes one could get global range from a radio set—and sometimes you couldn’t 

reach a ship 50 miles away.the navy continued to operate under the expectation that 

senior commanders were unlikely to be immediately available. 

Satellitecommunicationschangedthat.essentiallyinstantaneouscommunications 

were possible from virtually any spot on earth or in the air above it after the mid1960s. in addition to the culture shock this imposed on the navy (and which it is still 

dealing with), i rather suspect it accounts for some of the severe cultural differences 

between the relatively new Air Force—which has only existed in the era of electronic 

communications—and the navy. But in any case, buried in the history of military 

communications satellites are stories of cultural change as well as technological 

change, deserving of documentation and analysis.there are also, of course, changes in 

operations and in operational capacity due to this capability in need of examination. 

Although there is at least some literature on communications satellites, largely 

missing from the historical record is an examination of the first military navigation 

satellite series,transit. operational in 1962,transit was a navy project implemented 

by the Applied physics laboratory of the Johns hopkins university.transit operated 

until 1996.the technical literature contains articles on its genesis, but i can identify 

no examination of its impact on navy operations, capabilities, etc.12 yet transit was 

simple and inexpensive, and it was part of the justification for belief in “faster, better, 

cheaper” in the 1990s within nASA. it also paved the way for the nAvStAr 

Global positioning System, which one paper in this book addresses. So it had 

important ramifications but it hasn’t found its historian yet. 

the last kind of military space technology that i want to discuss is weather 

satellites.the united States has maintained a civilian weather satellite series since 

1960 and a military weather satellite series since 1961.13 president eisenhower had 

intended that there be a single system operated by the Weather Bureau, but the 

resulting agreement collapsed very quickly.the prime justification for splitting into 

two satellite systems was that the dod and the Weather Bureau wanted different 

overpass times, with dod officials wanting an early morning orbit that would 

12. See, for example, robert J. danchik, “An overview of transit development,” Johns Hopkins APL 

Technical Digest, vol. 19, no. 1 (1998): pp. 18–26. 

13. See the essay by purdom and menzel in James r. Fleming, Historical Essays on Meteorology, 1919– 

1955 (Boston: American meteorological Society, 1996), for basic information on the civilian 

weather satellite program. 
272 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

permit planning of reconnaissance and aerial refueling missions. one source also 

states that the civilian system would not overfly moscow, increasing the pentagon’s 

desire for a different orbit choice.14 i rather suspect that the pentagon’s desire for 

control also had a lot to do with this decision. 

initially, the two organizations used two variants of the tiroS satellite, with 

very similar instrumentation. this changed over time and, although the current 

civilian and military satellites use the same “bus,”they have different instrumentation. 

it is the military weather satellites that have provided strong evidence that the Arctic 

ice cap is shrinking rapidly, for example—a capacity the civilian satellites do not 

have.other than r.cargill hall’s recent short,and very technically oriented,history 

of the defense meteorological Satellite program, however, there are no studies of 

dod’s weather satellite system or its evolution.15 my own forthcoming work deals 

only with the civilian system. 

A Larger View of Military Impacts 

paul edwards expounded a thesis a few years ago that in constructing its 

network of surveillance and communications assets, the dod sought nothing 

less than a “closed world”—an earth in which nothing could happen without the 

pentagon’s knowledge. his argument is more sociocultural than historical, and i am 

not convinced.the sheer arrogance of such a goal (not to mention its technological 

unlikelihood!) gives me pause.yet he might be right.the very name of the dod’s 

communications architecture, the World Wide military command and control 

System, certainly suggests that he is right.16 rigorous investigation of his claim 

would tell us a great deal about the dod and its leaders’ faith in technology if 

someone were willing to dig into it. 

All in all, the extant historical literature on military use of space pretty strongly 

suggests that surveillance and communications have been stabilizing influences in 

terms of the strategic deterrence and the cold war contest with the Soviet union. 

that’s the point made by Glenn hastedt in his paper in this book. it’s far less 

clear that this is true in terms of the myriad “small wars,”“regional conflicts,” and 

“operations short of war”that the united States has engaged in since 1945.it’s likely 

true that these space assets have expanded the united States’ ability to engage in socalled conventional war, the sort fought by large formations of men and machinery. 

14. dwayne day comments on an earlier draft of this paper, September 2006. 

15. r. cargill hall, “A history of the military polar orbiting meteorological Satellite program,” 

(Washington, dc: national reconnaissance office, 2001). 

16. paul n.edwards,The ClosedWorld:Computers and the Politics of Discourse in ColdWarAmerica (cambridge, 

mA:mit press,1996),pp.1–42.onWmmcS,see david e.person,TheWorldWide Military Command 

and Control System: Evolution and Effectiveness (maxwell AFB,Al:Air university press, 2000). 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 273 

one recent analysis describes the very conventional first Gulf War as the first “space 

war.”17 yet satellites have not similarly improved the nation’s capability to wage 

“guerilla war”—we remain poor at it, as the current wars in iraq and Afghanistan 

show, and as was also true in vietnam. the impact of space technology has been 

profound, in other words, but not limitless. 

Further,one should wonder whether the global view offered by our space assets 

have encouraged the belief prevalent among neoconservatives that we can construct 

and maintain a perpetual pax Americana. Based on a presumed “revolution in 

military Affairs” that derives from the integration of space-based communications, 

intelligence, and space- and airborne weapons, they contend that America can 

maintain and expand its dominion over earth forever. in their 1998 program 

for America, for example, the movement’s leaders called for the development of 

“global missile defenses to defend the American homeland and American allies, 

and to provide a secure basis for u. S. power projection around the world,” and 

for establishment of control over “the new ‘international commons’ of space and 

cyberspace.”18 their faith in technology and the utility of the space weaponry seems 

to me founded directly on a heavily distorted view of space capabilities.19 

in fact, they seem to believe in exactly what edwards claims the pentagon did 

in the 1960s—that a closed world is possible and desirable.there is a great subject 

here for someone to dig into. Satellites may very well have encouraged the rapid 

rise of militarism in the united States as well as encouraging our political classes to 

undertake global wars of choice.20 

Civilian Applications Satellites 

So, i claim, military satellites of many descriptions and functions have had 

significant impacts on the American military, and may have had far larger impacts 

on American political culture.What about their civilian twins? 

nASA launched the first civilian weather satellite in April 1960. this was 

tiroS 1, the direct descendant of the u.S. Army’s work toward an imaging 

17. peter Anson and dennis cummings, “the First Space War:the contribution of Satellites to the 

Gulf War,” RUSI Journal 136 (1991): pp. 45–53. 

18. thomas donnelly, et al., “rebuilding America’s defenses: A report of the project for the new 

American century,” pp. iv, 54–64, published online at http://www.newamericancentury.org (accessed 5 

February 2007). 

19. Frances Fitzgerald, Way OutThere in the Blue: Reagan, StarWars, and the End of the ColdWar (newyork: 

Simon and Schuster, 2000) is the best work on Star Wars to date, although it is nontechnological. 

A good summary of this “revolution in military Affairs” thinking is Andrew Bacevich, The New 

American Militarism (newyork: oxford university press, 2005), pp. 165–170. 

20. on American militarism,see Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism.the project for a new 

American century calls such small, voluntary wars “constabulary duties.” donnelly, rebuilding 

America’s defenses, p. 10. 
274 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

surveillance satellite. it was hugely popular, drawing a large, front-page New York 

Times article, complete with “cloud pictures” from space. nASA officials used it to 

sell the agency to congress and the public. Better weather forecasting was the first 

obvious and direct benefit to non-astronaut, ground-dwelling humans (i.e., 100 

percent of the American population). 

yet there is no published history of the weather satellite program. the last 

attempt at a history was chapman’s study of the conflict between nASA and the 

Weather Bureau over control of the technology completed back in 1967.21 it was 

rather heavily redacted due to dod concerns. Since then, no one has found the 

subject worthy of historical study. not even the Weather Bureau’s descendant, 

noAA, has bothered.the agency doesn’t even publish data on economic benefits 

from weather satellites.there is a single essay touching on weather satellites in the 

Exploring the Unknown series.22 What gives here? 

my speculation on the subject goes like this: Weather satellites did not live 

up to the grand promises upon which they were sold. using them, meteorologists 

of the 1960s thought they could produce monthly forecasts of great accuracy. As i 

show in my forthcoming work, however, by the late 1960s simulation studies done at 

the Goddard institute for Space Studies showed that forecasts of more than a dozen 

days were completely impossible and forecasts of more than five days were impossible 

with current technologies.this was confirmed by the Global Atmospheric research 

program in 1978,a hugely demoralizing outcome to noAA and to the meteorological 

profession. Satellite data emerged from this in such low regard that noAA didn’t use 

it in routine operational numerical forecasting until 1998.23 So i rather suspect noAA 

leaders have not wanted to undermine themselves with a historical study. 

i do not want to leave the impression, however, that the weather satellites 

have been without impact.the geosynchronous satellites provide the hurricane and 

typhoon warnings and imagery and track forecasts that we’ve been accustomed to 

since the early 1980s. i suspect that they’ve also improved severe storm forecasting 

in the midwest. meteorologist friends of mine say this is true, anyway. Both of 

these are significant economic and human goods, although the lack of research on 

these topics available makes it impossible to make the case with any rigor. these 

satellites have also transformed the meteorological profession.Although operational 

forecasts in the united States have not used the satellite data, researchers and 

research-oriented forecast models have been using it routinely since the early 1980s. 

21. richard leroy chapman,“A case Study of the u.S.Weather Satellite program:the interaction of 

Science and politics,” ph.d. dissertation, Syracuse university, 1967. 

22. pamela e. mack and ray A. Williamson, “observing the earth from Space,” in Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program Volume III: Using Space, John 

m. logsdon et al., ed. (Washington, dc: nASA Sp-4407, 1998), pp. 155–176. 

23. national research council,From Research to Operations inWeather Satellites and NumericalWeather Prediction: 

Crossing theValley of Death (Washington,dc:national Academies press,2000). 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 275 

it has led to much greater understanding of the structure of the atmosphere and its 

organization, particularly over the otherwise data-sparse oceans. Satellites permitted 

identification of the region of the Atlantic where hurricanes typically form, for 

example, something that hadn’t been known prior to the Space Age. 

there is also a policy issue to be discussed.the united States has not flown 

a new instrument on its civilian, polar-orbiting weather satellites since 1978.this 

is not a failure of innovation; nASA is flying relevant research instruments and 

noAA has developed airplane-based demonstration instruments as well. But 

noAA hasn’t been able to get any of these instruments into space.this problem has 

been exacerbated by the 1994 decision to merge the civilian and military weather 

satellite programs into the national polar orbiting environmental Satellite System, 

whose 1998 launch date has been “slipped” to somewhere around 2013–2014.24 

there’s a gross policy failure here, and possibly several policy failures all working 

together to produce an exceptionally bad outcome. 

Finally, in his recent movie, An Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al 

Gore, Jr., shows an image of earth from space, taken by Apollo 17 astronauts from 

lunar orbit in 1973.25 By showing the “Big Blue marble”in all its beauty and fragility 

and free of arbitrary, human-drawn political borders, it provided a potent symbol for 

environmentalists to rally around. 

Although i certainly agree that images have great power, i have always wondered 

a bit about the specifics of this story.the first earthrise image was sent back by a robot, 

lunar orbiter 1, in 1966.the first full-disk color image of earth was actually sent back 

byvern Suomi’s experimental spin-scan camera on the communications satellite AtS-3 

in 1967.yet only meteorologists talk about this image.in 1968,Apollo 8 astronauts took 

the first color earthrise image.All of these images appeared in public media before the 

first earth day in 1970; the Apollo 17 images did not.the space program as a whole 

produced a series of stunning images that placed earth in a context far different than 

Americans’ daily experience. i think the steady stream of dramatic imagery mattered 

more to the spread of environmental consciousness than any single picture. 

i have touched on some of these issues in my own forthcoming history of 

atmospheric science, but since my focus is on nASA science, a lot of the above 

ground is essentially untilled.in terms of “societal impact,”i suspect that the weather 

satellites have been enormously important—but neither i nor any other scholar has 

made the case with any rigor. 

24. A bare hint of npoeSS’s long, messy history is contained in eli Kintisch,“Stormy Skies for polar 

Satellite program,” Science 312 (2 June 2006): pp. 1296–1297. 

25. Sheila Jasanoff,“image and imagination:the Formation of Global environmental consciousness,” 

in Changing the Atmosphere, ed. clark miller and paul n. edwards (cambridge, mA: mit press, 

2001).the book companion to Gore’s movie is Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth (new york: rodale 

Books, 2006). 
276 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

commercial communications satellites do not have quite the historical lacuna 

that the weather satellites do. Because david Whalen addresses them in his paper, i 

am not going to say much about this subject other than to reiterate what i said in 

the above military impacts section: although we have some good treatments of the 

evolution of comsat technology and of the policy issues surrounding them, no one 

has made the leap yet to societal impact.the economic value of the industry seems 

clear from Whalen’s work but there’s more to society than the pure social construct 

we call “money.” We often believe that our technologies make our lives “better” 

in some meaningful way, although one should always consult ruth Schwartz 

cowen’s book More Work for Mother before making this claim too strongly! have 

communications satellites done so? i am reminded of Bruce Springsteen’s lyric 

“57 channels and nothing on.”26 Satellites have brought me hundreds of channels; i 

watch two regularly. 

But let me dig a bit further into this question of “impact.” in one of his 

exploration essays,Steve dick threw out the idea that communications satellites have 

brought the world “closer together.”27 the airplane was similarly touted as having 

the potential to “bring the world closer together” and other happy things—bring 

peace on earth through greater understanding among peoples, etc. Joe corn wrote 

a wonderful book on this.28 But the airplane’s legacy is far more mixed. it is true 

that i can take a relatively short flight to tokyo to visit the land of sushi. it’s also true 

that the airplane allowed us to nearly wipe tokyo off the map two generations ago, 

without even bothering with nuclear weapons.the airplane’s legacy is so mixed and 

contested that the nation’s shrine to aviation, the national Air and Space museum, 

is not allowed to construct interpretive exhibits about it. interpreting the airplane 

accurately would offend powerful political and economic interests. 

my personal sense is that the same will turn out to be true for communications 

satellites: the legacy will be heavily mixed. it is certainly true that satellites facilitate 

emergency communications and they provide the opportunity for vastly more 

programming. At the same time, we have seen the growth of targeted media— 

channels that exist to promote specific interests or specific politics. the same 

capability that enables dedicated sports networks (e.g., eSpn, neSn) also permits 

Al Jazeera,the first independent Arab media organization (despised by the American 

26. ruth Schwartz cowan, More Work for Mother: The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open 

Hearth to the Microwave Oven (new york: Basic Books, 1985); Bruce Springsteen,“57 channels (and 

nothin’ on),” Human Touch, Sony BmG records, 1992. 

27. Steven J. dick,“Societal impact of the Space Age,” 4 April 2005, http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/ 

exploration/whyweexplore/Why_We_09.html (accessed 11 September 2006). 

28. Joseph J. corn, The Winged Gospel:America’s Romance with Aviation, 1900–1950 (new york: oxford 

university press, 1983), esp. pp. 29–50. 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 277 

political right), and news corp’s Fox news channel, derided by American liberals 

as “Faux news” for its blatant political bias.29 

George orwell feared that the end of the twentieth century would bring 

a perfect surveillance state into existence. Big Brother would be watching all of 

us, all of the time. We are not quite there yet, but we have achieved a world full 

of specialized propaganda bubbles—hidden behind the euphemisms of “targeted 

media” or “narrowcasting.” one can go through one’s daily life and never be 

subjected to uncomfortable or challenging ideas—or even facts. in short, we have a 

postmodern version of orwell’s ministry of truth. 

this is not the fault of the technology exclusively, of course. the reagan 

administration’s elimination of the old Fairness doctrine that required the airing of 

multiple viewpoints is another key enabler of this unfortunate outcome. it is also 

not new. most major european cities have had partisan newspapers for centuries 

and the united States has its share of political magazines, the famous ones being 

National Review on the right and The Nation on the left, although there are others. 

But there are differences.television is more immediate and immersive than print 

and has much greater emotional power.Whether these differences are sufficient to 

make a difference in how the newly partisan electronic media affects the nation 

is a subject worthy of study. to wrap up this brief discussion of communications 

satellites, i am not at all sure dick’s optimistic appraisal is warranted. 

Finally, the last applications satellite type i’ll discuss in this extended editorial 

essay is land use.As pam mack has shown in her book on landsat, there were many 

possible and interested users of satellite-based land imaging during its developmental 

period,and their competing goals and interests made development of the system very 

difficult.30 And partly because of this, and also partly due to pentagon restrictions on 

allowable spatial resolution (because of ill-conceived congressional efforts to force 

“privatization” of landsat), landsat has never achieved a large enough user base to 

pay for itself. instead, its imagery has been used by researchers, not by the economic 

interests that might be able to afford it on a commercial basis.31 indeed, the primary 

29. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fox_News(accessed22october2006);StevenKull,“misperceptions, 

the media and the iraqWar,” 2 october 2003, http://65.109.167.118/pipa/pdf/oct03/IraqMedia_Oct03_rpt. 

pdf (accessed 22 october 2006). renegade conservative david Brock has written a detailed account 

of the creation of the right-wing media establishment in America. david Brock, The Republican 

Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy (new york: Basic Books, 2004); 

also see neil hickey,“is Fox news Fair?” Columbia Journalism Review 36:6 (march-April 1998): pp. 

30–36. Also see daphne eviatar, “murdoch’s Fox news,” The Nation (22 February 2001), online 

edition, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010312/eviatar (accessed 5 February 2007). 

30. pamela e.mack,Viewing the Earth:The Social Construction of the Landsat Satellite System (cambridge, 

mA:mit press,1990). 

31. there is a single historical study of landsat use for scientific purposes to date: peter leimgruber, 

catherine A. christen, and Alison laborderie, “the impact of landsat Satellite monitoring on 

conservation Biology,” Environmental Monitoring and Assessment 106 (2005): pp. 81–101. 
278 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

buyer of the data has been the intelligence community, which apparently finds that 

landsat data serves as an effective supplement to its own classified imagery sources. 

the satellite series itself has lurched from one crisis to the next, with each 

administration since reagan willing to commit to only one more mission prior to 

commercialization;with commercialization never succeeding,each new administration 

has had to cope with the question of how to continue the series.the fundamental 

policy issues of what agency should maintain the capability and who should pay for it 

have not been resolved.So landsat has been a technical success,but programmatically 

its history has been tortured.At the very least, there’s a good policy study here for 

someone interested in the subject. 

Earth Science From Space 

this is the subject of my own recently completed history of atmospheric 

science at nASA, so what follows is an essay on my own findings in the context of 

what very little else has been done on this subject.nASA’s scientific satellites,and—a 

very important point—its planetary probes, have revolutionized our understanding 

of earth,its processes,and our place on it.they have also radically altered our beliefs 

about the solar system and the universe around us. Finally, they have fundamentally 

changed our national politics. 

there is, to date, not a single history of any nASA earth science program.the 

only work that even comes close is henry lambright’s monograph.32 yet as several 

(non-nASA) studies show, the Agency’s stratospheric ozone research program 

initiated in the early 1970s led directly to the worldwide banning of a class of 

highly profitable chemicals. nASA research provided the first conclusive evidence 

that human activity was capable of causing global-scale damage.yet these studies 

are not aimed at nASA’s science program. they discuss the politics and policies 

surrounding the 1987 montreal protocol.33 the political angle is important to 

these studies because ozone science was politically controversial, with leaders of the 

American political right claiming for many years that the idea of ozone depletion 

was an environmentalist hoax. congressional hearings in 1995 underscored this 

view. But these earlier studies leave the reader wondering how nASA wound up 

leading this research field. 

this is particularly germane as nASA’s role in the ozone wars led to repeated 

and long-running attacks on the agency on the editorial page of the Wall Street 

Journal, by rush limbaugh on his radio show and in his best-selling books, and by a 

32. henry lambright, NASA and the Environment: The Case of Ozone Depletion (Washington, dc: 

nASA Sp-2005-4538, 2005). 

33. the best of these works is edward A. parson, Protecting the Ozone Layer: Science and Strategy (new 

york: oxford university press, 2003); see also maureen christie, The Ozone Layer:A Philosophy of 

Science Perspective (new york: cambridge university press, 2000). 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 279 

small constellation of other lesser actors in the right-wing political journals: Reason, 

Commentary, and National Review.the current administration made a brief attempt 

to quash nASA’s James hansen, the agency’s most prominent climate modeler. But 

he was not the first nASA scientist to be attacked by what journalist Bill moyers 

accurately terms the “radical right.”34 that honor actually belongs to robert t. 

Watson, head of nASA’s ozone research program in the 1980s.35 

in High Speed Dreams, my history of supersonic transport research, i suggested in 

my conclusion that nASA’s entry into political controversy came with its decision to 

embrace stratospheric ozone as a research program in hopes of absolving the Space 

Shuttle of claims that its solid rocket boosters would damage the ozone layer.36 But 

in fact, the Agency’s conflict with the new right political movement that came to 

power with ronald reagan has its origins much earlier, in the Agency’s planetary 

missions of the 1960s.37 the Jpl’s marinervenus and mars missions showed nASA’s 

scientists—those employed by theAgency as well as university-based scientists involved 

in them—that relatively small initial differences between the three “terrestrial” planets 

(venus,earth,and mars) had led to huge differences among these planets as they exist 

today. this fact, obvious by 1965, forced nASA’s scientific constituency to start to 

come to grips with the relationship between chemistry and climate. 

probably the best known expression of this is in James lovelock’s Gaia 

hypothesis. lovelock, who consulted briefly at Jpl in the early 1960s, argued that 

biological activity regulated earth’s climate via its impact on atmospheric chemistry. 

But he was not the only person making chemical claims about climate by the end 

of the 1960s. carl Sagan, never a nASA employee but always associated with the 

34. Amanda Griscom, “now hear this: Bill moyers Speaks his mind on Bush-Brand environmental 

destruction and more,” Grist magazine (26 August 2003), online edition, http://www.grist.org/ 

news/maindish/2003/08/26/griscom-moyers/ (accessed 22 February 2007). 

35. Andrew revkin, “climate expert says nASA tried to Silence him,” The New York Times (29 

January 2006): p. 1; donald Kennedy, “the new Gag rules,” Science (17 February 2006): p. 917; 

rush limbaugh, The Way Things Ought to Be (new york: pocket Books, 1993), pp. 154–157.A few 

citations from the ozone depletion denial effort will suffice: robert W. pease, “ozone chicken 

littles Are at it Again,” Wall Street Journal (23 march 1989): p. 24; S. F. Singer, “my Adventures in 

the ozone layer,” National Review 41 (1989): pp. 34–38; r. Bailey,“the hole Story:the Science 

Behind the Scare,” Reason 24 (1992): pp. 24–31; r. S. Bennett, and robert W. clack,“ozone, cFcs 

and Science Fiction,” Wall Street Journal (24 march 1993): p. 15; Kent Jeffreys,“too many holes,” 

Wall Street Journal (11 February 1993): p. 15. 

36. erik m. conway, High Speed Dreams:The Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation (Baltimore, md: 

Johns hopkins university press, 2005), p. 303. 

37. there is already a substantial body of literature on the new right political movement. For 

examples, see Sara diamond, Roads to Dominion: Right Wing Movements and Political Power in the 

United States (new york: Guildford press, 1995), esp. pp. 108–128 and 205–227; for surveys placing 

the new right in the context of the new left of the 1960s, see maurice isserman and michael 

Kazin, America Divided:The Civil War of the 1960s (new york: oxford university press, 2000), esp. 

pp.205–220,and rebecca e.Klatch, A Generation Divided:the New Left,the New Right,and the 1960s 

(Berkeley, cA: university of california press, 1999). 
280 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Agency anyway, did a relatively speculative study for Jpl on venus’s climate in 1960 

and did a series of comparative studies between earth, mars, and venus over the 

course of his career.his first graduate student,James pollack,built nASA’s planetary 

climate modeling program at the nASA Ames research center. 38 

it was also pollack’s group at Ames that produced the “nuclear winter” 

hypothesis in 1984, bringing down right-wing opprobrium on nASA while also 

stimulating tropospheric aerosol research.39 the nuclear winter hypothesis helped 

trigger the foundation of the George c. marshall institute by robert Jastrow. 

Jastrow, horrified by what he saw as a deliberate political attack on the reagan 

administration disguised as science by Sagan, pollack, and other scientists (including 

donald Kennedy,the current editor of Science),appealed to conservative foundations 

for funds to finance a pro-nuclear “scientific” organization. he envisioned it as the 

conservative response to the union of concerned Scientists.40 

planetary climate studies also landed on the east coast, nASA’s Goddard 

institute for Space Studies (GiSS).this organization, founded (somewhat ironically) 

by Jastrow in 1960, was intended to be the Agency’s center for theoretical study 

of planetary atmospheres.that’s still what it does. unlike Goddard,Ames, and Jpl 

(all of which also retain experimental and hardware programs), GiSS is primarily 

theoretical. in modern space science, theory and data are both examined through 

the use of models. GiSS actually performed the simulation studies that suggested 

weather satellites of the 1970s would not produce a great improvement in daily 

weather forecasts, for example. 

GiSS, of course, is also the home of nASA climate modeler James e. hansen. 

hired there in the early 1970s, hansen initially worked on a scattering model for 

venus’planetary cloud layers.Jule charney,founder of numerical weather forecasting, 

performed some regional (earth) climate studies using a GiSS weather model in the 

middle of the decade; these, and pollack’s comparative planetary studies, triggered 

hansen’s interest in earth’s climate.hansen and his colleague at GiSS,Andrew lacis, 

38. carl Sagan,“the radiation Balance of venus,” JPL Technical Report no. 32-34 (15 September 1960); 

d. r. hitchcock and J. e. lovelock,“life detection by Atmospheric Analysis,” Icarus 7:2 (1967): pp. 

149+; lynn margulis and J. e. lovelock,“Biological regulation of the earth’s Atmosphere,” Icarus 

21 (1974): pp. 471–489; James lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (new york: oxford 

university press,1974);carl Sagan and George mullen,“earth and mars:evolution of Atmospheres 

and Surface temperatures,” Science 177 (7 July 1972): pp. 52–56. 

39. paul ehrlich et al., The Cold and the Dark:The World after Nuclear War (new york: W. W. norton, 

1984); lawrence Badash, “nuclear Winter: Scientists in the political Arena,” Physics in Perspective 

(2001): pp. 76–105. 

40. on the marshall institute’s founding, see robert Jastrow to robert Walker, 1 december 1986, box 

21 file “George c.marshall institute,accession 20001-01,William Aaron nierenberg papers,Scripps 

institution of oceanography Archives, university of california–San diego; draft proposal for the 

George c. marshall institute, sent to Bill nierenberg, 12 december 1984, mc 13,William Aaron 

nierenberg papers box 75, folder 6, Scripps institution of oceanography Archives, university of 

california–San diego. 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 281 

came from the university of iowa. hansen considers his intellectual forebears to 

be the late James van Allen of iowa and Jule charney.41 he began building GiSS’s 

climate modeling capabilities in mid-decade. 

hansen’s climate model was one of two that formed the basis of the first 

declarative study by the national Academy of Science on the subject of global 

warming, the 1979 “charney report.” in its preface, the university of Wisconsin’s 

verner Suomi stated that there was “no reason to doubt that climate changes will 

result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.”42 every study 

by the national Academy of Science since has ratified its conclusions, as has the 

intergovernmental panel on climate change in each of its three assessments of 

climate science since its foundation in 1988.43 

Global warming is caused by human emissions of carbon dioxide,which exceed 

volcanic output by more than 150 times. carbon dioxide is a chemical, of course, 

although one that is currently difficult to measure accurately from space.Sagan was the 

first to blamevenus’s extremely hot climate on a surplus of this gas;venus,American 

and Soviet robotic spacecraft found in the 1960s and 1970s, has about 300 times as 

much atmospheric carbon dioxide as earth. And these facts bring us back to my 

claims about chemistry, climate, and nASA’s role in fostering political controversy. 

to be blunt about it: nASA has shown conclusively that humans cannot 

continue to change the chemistry of earth’s atmosphere without enormous, and 

negative, consequences. one of these consequences is ozone depletion, a cancer 

risk.the larger consequence is global warming. A 1983 national Academy study 

laid out some of the problems for the united States: much of the irrigated area of 

the southwest would have to be abandoned unless sufficient additional water could 

be imported. the highest forecasts of sea level rise would leave most of coastal 

America underwater unless defended by dikes of 15 to 20 feet (5 to 6 meters)— 

quite an expensive undertaking along several thousand miles of coast.44 Further, 

this committee pointed out, “[i]ncreasing carbon dioxide is expected to produce 

changes in global mean temperature that, in both magnitude and rate of change, 

have few or no precedents in the earth’s recent history.”45 this had led much of the 

41. Author interview with hansen,January 2006;J.hansen et al.,“climate modeling in the GlobalWarming 

debate,” General Circulation Model Development (newyork:Academic press,2000),pp.127–164. 

42. national research council, Carbon Dioxide and Climate (Washington, dc: national Academies 

press, 1979), p. vii. 

43. naomi oreskes,“the Scientific consensus on climate change,” Science (3 december 2004): 1686, 

doi 10.1126/science.1103618; also see oreskes, “the Scientific consensus on climate change: 

how do We Know We’re not Wrong?” in Climate Change:What It Means for You,Your Children, 

and Your Grandchildren, Joseph dimento and pamela doughman, ed. (cambridge, mA: mit press, 

2007), forthcoming. 

44. nrc, carbon dioxide and climate, 1983, p. 46. 

45. nrc, carbon dioxide and climate, 1983, p. 51. 
282 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

committee to a state of “unease,” as they put it, because they could not assume that 

the effects would appear in a gradual, linear fashion. 

yet these facts are a direct affront to the belief system that dominates the 

American political right. Beginning with the popular work of famed economist 

milton Friedman,theAmerican right has adopted a worldview that equates economic 

freedom with political freedom.46 Although this is historical fantasy—we have never 

been a free-market nation—this belief system forces its adherents to deny the reality 

of the scientific community’s fact claims. true believers seek to protect their faith 

by denying inconvenient facts, and they believe that no scientific agency of our 

government has done more to undermine what George Soros has called “free market 

fundamentalism” than nASA has.47 the accepted facts are that unregulated carbon 

dioxide emissions are the cause of global warming; solving the problem will require 

regulation of some kind.Such regulations would violate fundamental precepts of freemarket theology, so the rightists have decided to reject the facts. instead, they have 

formulated a convenient set of conspiracies.And,perhaps further reinforcing my point 

about “targeted media” above, a recent pew research center for the people and the 

press poll indicates that 43 percent of college-educated republicans reject the fact of 

global warming, whereas only 25 percent of democrats do.48 

hence,if one reads what’s published in the rightist political literature mentioned 

above, one will find environmentalism equated with communism throughout the 

1980s and 1990s,and with terrorism after 2001.one will also see scientists,including 

nASA scientists, derided as dupes and frauds for promoting “environmentalist 

nonsense.” the “hidden agenda” of these scientists, in the words of one writer, is 

“against business, the free market, and the capitalistic system.”49 in the words of 

46. milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (chicago: university of chicago press, 1962). in his 

obituary of Friedman, economist paul Krugman delineates carefully between Friedman’s careful 

and meticulous academic work and his role as a public intellectual, promoting free markets with 

not entirely honest zeal. See Krugman,“Who Was milton Friedman? The New York Review of Books 

54/2 (15 February 2007). 

47. George Soros,“the capitalist threat,” The Atlantic Monthly 279 (February 1997): pp. 45–58; myanna 

lahsen has done signal work in digging up some of this material;see“climate rhetoric:constructions 

of climate Science in the Age of environmentalism,” ph.d. dissertation, rice university, 1998).the 

clearest expression of the belief that environmentalism is merely a plot to destroy capitalism i have 

found to date is in S. Fred Singer,“GlobalWarming: doWe Know enough to Act?” in Environmental 

Protection: Regulating for Results, ed. Kenneth chilton and melinda Warren (Boulder, co:Westview 

press, 1991), pp. 29–50. my favorite exegesis of the behavior of fanatics is eric hoffer, The True 

Believer:Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (new york: harper and row, 1951; perennial 

classic reprint, 2002), esp. pp. 79–80. 

48. pew research center for people and the press,“Global Warming:A divide on causes and Solutions,” 

24 January 2007, http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=303 (accessed 9 April 2007). 

49. S. Fred Singer, “Global Warming: do We Know enough to Act?,” p. 45. For a larger discussion 

of the political affiliations of the global warming denial effort see lahsen, “climate rhetoric: 

constructions of climate Science in the Age of environmentalism.” 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 283 

another, global warming is merely “a means of achieving an egalitarian society.”50 it 

is this literature that Senator James inhofe (r-oklahoma) and his colleagues draw 

on when they denounce global warming as “the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on 

the American people.”51 A new book from the competitive enterprise institute puts 

it still more bluntly, calling them anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-human; to 

make clear their linkage to communism, they are “green on the outside, red to the 

core.”52 “commies,” as it were, in green makeup.to be clear, these political actors 

are not merely attacking leftist politicians.they attack practicing scientists for the 

results of their research—the very content of science. one journalist has labeled this 

assault “the republican War on Science.”53 

one can argue, as physicist William nierenberg did in the national Academy 

of Science’s 1983 study of global warming, that the phenomenon is real and is likely 

to have severe consequences, but we don’t need to do anything about it. human 

civilizations have come and gone as climate changed around them; survivors simply 

migrate and rebuild elsewhere.54 this is scientifically,and historically,entirely correct. 

one can argue about the ethics of such an approach—i would not subscribe to 

it—but it is correct and honest. one does not have to deny the legitimacy of a 

science to defend capitalists’ right to pollute; in a pluralist, democratic society, one 

can simply accept nierenberg’s argument that we adapt to the new, warmer world. 

yet this not the argument being made by the global warming deniers. instead, they 

have chosen to demonize working scientists by applying the mccarthyite tactic of 

linking them to communism and accusing them of a global conspiracy. 

this extreme reaction against climate science by the American right is not 

merely a quibble over interpretations of data.And it is not happening simply because 

exxonmobil has spent millions of dollars a year supporting the denial industry.55 

50. Aaron Wildavsky,“Global Warming as a means of Achieving an egalitarian Society:An introduction,” 

in robert c. Balling, The Heated Debate: Greenhouse Predictions versus Climate Reality (San Francisco: 

pacific research institute for public policy, 1992), p. xv. 

51. inhofe’s speech is available at http://inhofe.senate.gov/pressreleases/climateupdate.htm (accessed 10 July 2005); 

also see chris c.mooney, The RepublicanWar on Science (newyork:Basic Books,2005),p.78. 

52. christopher c. horner, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming (and environmentalism) 

(new york: regnery publishing, 2007). 

53. chris mooney, The Republican War on Science (new york: Basic Books, 2005), esp. pp. 78–101. 

mooney attributes this “war” to the business interests of the afflicted corporations and their ability 

to buy political protection, ignoring the ideological issues at the root of the conflict. 

54. See carbon dioxide Assessment committee, Changing Climate (Washington, dc: national Academies 

press,1983),pp.48–55,61–63;and physicistAlvinWeinberg’s review,“comments on nrc draft report 

of the carbon dioxideAssessment committee,”folder 7,box 86,WilliamAaron nierenberg collection, 

mc 13,Scripps institution of oceanography Archives, university of california–San diego. 

55. union of concerned Scientists, Smoke, Mirrors and Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics 

to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science (Washington, dc: union of concerned Scientists, 

2007), pp. 3–6. 
284 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

it is a defense of a political ideology. nothing else adequately explains the rightists’ 

reaction to a half-century of scientific research. 

i do not wish to make too much of nASA’s role in the science of global 

warming. As Spencer Weart’s recent history of global warming shows, there are 

many other threads to that story.But since the late 1970s,nASA funding for climate 

science has overwhelmed all other sources. it is by far the dominant funder of 

the current climate change research program, a fact in need of explication. of 

the $1.86 billion dollars spent on climate science in fiscal year 2005, nASA spent 

$1.24 billion. the next largest funder, the national Science Foundation, spent 

$198 million that year.56 nASA’s interest in planetary climates stemming from the 

mariner missions of the 1960s, and the seeming need for a global view of global 

warming, made its entry into this research field an obvious choice. 

it’s also true that these controversial fields were not originally as politically 

charged as they are now. during the 1970s, both American political parties accepted 

the reality of environmental damage and argued over policy details:the most efficient 

form of regulation, standards of evidence, how to determine when a sufficiency 

of evidence existed to base regulation upon. the modern anti-environmental 

movement—often it is called “pro-business” to disguise its true nature—started 

in the Western states at the same time and achieved its first national expression 

with reagan’s election.57 When nASA officials decided to enter these fields, the 

technocratic impulse still ruled: once one understood the science, science-based 

regulation would follow.it made sense to them to try to lead in fields relevant to the 

agency’s technological capacities.As technocratic managers, they also didn’t expect 

that anti-environmentalism would wind up dominant 20 years later.the magnitude 

of the controversy they entered came as a surprise. 

inside the scientific community, the intersection of space science and earth 

science also engendered controversy. lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis was widely criticized 

for its depiction of earth as a self-regulating organism.in one paper he used a metaphor 

of a planetary engineer to describe how the integrated earth system worked.this had 

obvious metaphysical implications that he later regretted. in short, he was attacked 

for Gaia’s religious implications. But his view of planetary climate as a system of 

56. SpencerWeart,The Discovery of GlobalWarming (cambridge,mA:harvard university press,2003);also 

see the expanded online edition at http://www.aip.org/history/climate (accessed 3 July 2006). current 

funding for the climate change Science program is given in ccSp-4Budget14Jan2006.pdf,available 

at http://www.climatescience.gov/infosheets/factsheet4/default.htm (accessed 12 September 2006). 

57. on the anti-environmental policies of the reagan administration, see Samuel p. hays, Beauty, 

Health and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States 1945–1985 (new york: cambridge 

university press, 1985), pp. 490–526; on the origin of anti-environmentalism in the West, see hal 

K. rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism since 1945 (San diego: harcourt Brace 

publishers, 1998), pp. 169–181. 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 285 

nested feedback-control systems involving what came in the 1980s to be called 

“biogeochemistry” was ultimately highly influential. in 1986, a group of scientists 

working under a nASA charter created a new, less offensive label for this integrated 

view of earth, “earth Systems Science.” one can find textbooks bearing this name 

in university bookstores now and some universities have integrated their separate 

geology/geophysics/atmospheric/ocean science programs into a single department. 

the california institute oftechnology’s integrated department is earth and planetary 

Sciences, while the university of california, irvine called its program earth System 

Science (it was organized and named by a former nASA scientist, michael prather). 

earth sciences are in the midst of a sea change in organization and, i think, their 

intellectual structure, inspired by the availability of planetary-scale data. 

Satellites seem to have disappeared from my narrative,so let me bring some back 

in.i have ignored solar physics and the tightly linked field of space weather.our friendly 

local star’s radiation and particulate output affects earth’s upper atmosphere, and solar 

radiation trapped by earth’s magnetic field does as well.these also affect satellites in 

earth orbit and deep space probes. Because satellites have significant economic and 

military value, nASA, the dod, and noAA have all spent quite a bit of money 

over the last several decades on satellites and model studies aimed at understanding 

and predicting these effects. Scientists are also interested for the intrinsic scientific 

questions involved, of course—the motivation isn’t solely utilitarian! 

three recent works discuss the evolution of solar science and space weather— 

the border between these two issues being, like space itself, rather tenuous. Karl 

hufbauer’s book Exploring the Sun focuses exclusively on the history of solar physics 

and the solar wind. he does not discuss their influence on earth.two other works 

make attempts at this. in Storms from the Sun, michael carlowicz and ramon lopez 

focus on the impact of solar eruptions on telecommunications and electrical power 

distribution networks. But their work is weak on the science and on the historical 

evolution of the field.58 

A more useful treatment of the subject is Barbara poppe’s and Kristen p. 

Jorden’s Sentinels of the Sun. Written largely from noAA’s perspective, this work 

focuses on the evolution of space weather forecasting with that agency. it gives 

the reader a good sense of the bureaucratic politics of the issue. unfortunately, it is 

completely undocumented and, while it leaves the reader with the understanding 

that nASA and the Air Force have always been parallel actors in the field of space 

weather, it tells us little about their respective roles.59 there is plenty of room left 

for new research in this area. 

58. Karl hufbauer,Exploring the Sun:Solar Science since Galileo (Baltimore,md:Johns hopkins university 

press, 1991); michael J. carlowicz and ramon e. lopez, Storms from the Sun:The Emerging Science of 

Space Weather (Washington, dc: Joseph henry press, 2002). 

59. Barbara poppe and Kristen p. Jorden, Sentinels of the Sun: Forecasting Space Weather (Boulder, co: 

Johnson Books, 2006). 
286 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the second type of satellite to discuss is oceanographic. nASA has flown 

satellite sensors aimed at both physical and biological oceanography. neither type 

has been addressed in an historical study.the most significant of these has probably 

been topeX/poseidon, a joint uS-France mission that performed sea surface 

altimetry. Altimetry directly measures the height of the ocean surface; indirectly, it 

can tell us a great many other things about the oceans. its most public outcomes 

have probably been in el niño forecasting and in measuring sea level rise. 

Scientifically, however, it may turn out to be revolutionary for its impact on 

ocean modeling. Jpl and several other institutions are involved in a joint modeling 

effort aimed at transforming data from topeX/poseidon and noAA’s Argo buoy 

network into a new, four-dimensional view of the world ocean.they are not done 

yet but, from what this group has published so far, they’re building a radically new 

interpretation of how the ocean absorbs and distributes heat.60 in turn, this will 

affect scientific understanding of how the geographic distribution of heat and 

precipitation will change under global warming. 

the final type of satellite i will discuss is geodetic.these measure the shape 

of earth and its gravity field.they were among the first kinds of scientific satellites 

flown, as they are very simple by their nature and militarily useful. earth’s gravity 

field is not perfectly spherical—it has “bumps”due to local concentrations of higherdensity material within earth—and the dod wished to know where these were 

for more accurate targeting of nuclear missiles. dwayne day has published a set of 

articles on military geodetic satellites, the first historical studies on this subject.61 

At nASA, the Goddard Space Flight center has led the development of this 

technology until very recently. in collaboration with the dod, nASA has flown 

a series of these satellites. these haven’t been part of the Agency’s “controversy 

portfolio,” however, perhaps because most of the public has no idea what they do. 

But that’s likely to change because the latest geodetic satellite, the Jpl’s GrAce 

mission, is accurate enough to produce mass estimates for ice sheets and aquifers. 

recently, the mission scientists have pronounced that their data shows mass loss 

from both Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, thus sticking themselves directly into 

60. carl Wunsch and detelef Stammer,“Satellite Altimetry,the marine Geoid,and the oceanic General 

circulation,” Annual Review of the Earth and Planetary Sciences 26 (1998):219–253; d. Stammer et al., 

“the Global ocean State during 1992–1997, estimated from ocean observations and a General 

circulation model. part iii:volume, heat and Freshwater transports,” ecco report no. 6, 24 

August 2001, http://www.ecco-group.org (accessed 1 July 2006). 

61. dwayne day,“mapping the dark Side of theWorld, part 1:the Kh-5 ArGon Geodetic Satellite,” 

Spaceflight 40/7 (July 1998): pp. 264–269; dwayne A. day,“mapping the dark Side of theWorld, part 

2: Secret Geodetic programmes after ArGon,” Spaceflight 40/8 (August 1998): pp. 303–310. 
Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 287 

the climate wars.62 there is a lot more historical work on the subject of geodetic 

satellites and their impacts on science, however.to date, very little examination or 

interpretation of this field has been done. 

Space science, then—not merely earth science but aspects of planetary science 

as well—has radically altered our beliefs about earth and its processes. it has forced 

scientists, often against their own political preferences, to come to grips with the 

very uncomfortable notion that humans have become geological agents.We humans 

have the ability to change the basic conditions of life on earth.the dominant belief 

from the nineteenth century—that humans were too puny to have any significant 

impact on earth—can no longer be sustained in the face of nASA’s research.this 

is the root of the political problems faced by earth scientists in the 2000s. 

Conclusion 

much of the historical literature on the Space Age to date has focused on 

human spaceflight. to borrow the analytical terminology of feminist history of 

science, this privileges the narrative of a handful of transient males—the professional 

space tourists we call astronauts—over that of most of the species. But the largest 

impacts of space technologies to nonastronaut humans have come from robotic 

spaceflight. these impacts have been positive and negative, economic, political, 

scientific, military, and ideological. 

unlike humans (to date, at any rate), robot spacecraft can be engineered to 

live in space, providing routine data for sometimes decades.they can also be sent to 

places inhospitable or deadly to humans.this has been the source of their success 

as scientific explorers, routine storm monitors, communications facilitators, and 

intelligence gatherers. it is also probably why they have virtually no place in the 

narrative of space history to date. As nonhumans, they’re ignored. it’s far easier to 

write a compelling heroic narrative about human actors than robotic ones, and 

space history has often been little more than advocacy written in heroic prose.63 

62. i.velicogna and J.Wahr,“Greenland mass Balance from GrAce,” Geophysical Research Letters 32/18 

(30 September 2005); i.velicogna and J.Wahr,“measurements of time-variable Gravity Show mass 

loss in Antarctica” Science 311 (24 march 2006): pp. 1754–1756; J. l. chen et al.,“Antarctic mass 

rates from GrAce,” Geophysical Research Letters 33 (9 June 2006). on geodesy more generally, see 

paul d. lowman, Exploring space, Exploring Earth: New Understanding of the Earth from Space Research 

(new york:cambridge university press,2002).the title of this book is deceptive.it deals only with 

geodesy from space, ignoring all other fields of earth remote sensing. 

63. roger d. launius,“the historical dimension of Space exploration: reflections and possibilities,” 

Space Policy 16 (2000): pp. 23–38, esp. pp. 24–26. 
288 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

But engineering is a human endeavor as well. As the above discussion 

should suggest, spacecraft engineering is wrapped up in the politics of science and 

government—both human enterprises.the new Space history, as roger launius 

has called it, has plenty of room in it for this narrative as well.64 precisely because 

there is so little already written, it’s also a rich area for research. 

64. launius,“historical dimension of Space exploration.” 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 289

chApter 15 

For All Mankind: Societal Impact 

of Application Satellites 

david J.Whalen 

First,I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, 

before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning 

him safely to the earth . . . . 

Secondly, an additional 23 million dollars, together with 7 million 

dollars already available, will accelerate development of the Rover 

nuclear rocket . . . . 

Third, an additional 50 million dollars will make the most of our 

present leadership, by accelerating the use of space satellites for worldwide communications. 

Fourth,an additional 75 million dollars—of which 53 million dollars is for 

theWeather Bureau—will help give us at the earliest possible time a satellite 

system for world-wide weather observation. 

John F. Kennedy 

Special message to the congress on urgent national needs 

25 may 1961 

the Apollo 11 plaque states that the u.S. astronauts “came in peace for all 

mankind.” But long before the Apollo landing president Kennedy wanted the 

united States to be seen as running a high-technology program whose practical 

benefits would be for all mankind. Kennedy’s principal audience was meant to be the 

third world—as well as the u.S. public—but his message also provided “cover” for 

the congressmen who would have to authorize billions of dollars for the Apollo 

program.the u.S. program would also provide practical, nonmilitary applications 

that would benefit all Americans as well as all mankind. 

the military had already begun their program of applications satellites. By 

the time of Kennedy’s speech, the department of defense (dod) had launched a 

whole generation of reconnaissance,navigation,and weather satellites.these systems 
290 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

were operational and new generations were in the works.Strangely,this dod litany 

of successful applications did not include communications satellites. 

much of the military thinking about space originated with rAnd, a douglas 

Aircraft company research and development (r&d) unit at the time. on 2 may 

1946,rAnd published their famous“preliminary design of an experimentalWorldcircling Spaceship.”1 chapter 2 of this document, drafted by louis ridenour, was 

titled “the Significance of a Satellite vehicle.” Greatest significance is given to the 

use of rockets (satellite vehicles) as bombardment vehicles, but next in importance 

was the observation capability of a satellite over enemy territory.this observational 

capability would allow weather observation before the raids and accurate bomb 

damage assessment after raids. the document also discusses the advantages of 

satellites as communications relay stations.the simplicity of operations if satellites 

are in geostationary orbits is addressed in passing. the value of then-current 

communications through the ionosphere is given as $10 billion. 

in 1947 rAnd published the first of many follow-ups to the 1946 report. 

these reports, prepared under the direction of James e. lipp, covered a variety 

of topics. one report, “communication and observation problems of a Satellite,” 

continued the discussion of satellite communications and brought up the issue of 

a “spy satellite” for the first time.2 rAnd continued its studies of reconnaissance 

and weather satellites, in 1951 publishing a report titled “inquiry into the Feasibility 

of Weather reconnaissance from a Satellite vehicle” by William Kellogg and 

Stanley Greenfield, and another report on the “utility of a Satellite vehicle for 

reconnaissance”by James e.lipp,Stanley m.Greenfield,and r.S.Wehner.3perhaps 

more important for the space race was an earlier rAnd report entitled “the 

Satellite rocket vehicle: political and psychological problems.”4 this document 

was considered by space historian Walter mcdougall as “the birth certificate of 

American space policy.”5 

communications satellites had their origins in science fiction and their first 

serious exposition by an At&t engineering manager. Arthur c. clarke (1917– ), 

then a royal Air Force radar officer, published an article in the october 1945 issue 

1. rAnd corp., “preliminary design of an experimental World-circling Spaceship,” Sm-11827, 2 

may 1946. 

2. rAnd corp.,“communication and observation problems of a Satellite,” rA-15028, 1 February 

1947. 

3. William Kellogg and Stanley Greenfield,“inquiry into the Feasibility of Weather reconnaissance 

from a Satellite vehicle,” rAnd r-218, 1947; James e. lipp, Stanley m. Greenfield and r. S. 

Wehner,“utility of a Satellite vehicle for reconnaissance,” rAnd r-217, 1947. 

4. paul Kecskemeti, “the Satellite rocket vehicle: political and psychological problems,” rAnd 

rm-567, 4 october 1950. 

5. Walter A. mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth:A Political History of the Space Age (new york: 

Basic Books, 1985), p. 108. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 291 

of Wireless World entitled “extra-terrestrial relays.”6 in this article he discussed the 

advantages of 24-hour geostationary orbits that would allow a satellite to maintain 

position over the same portion of the equator indefinitely. clarke foresaw use of 

space stations at this altitude for radio and television broadcasting. John r. pierce 

(1910–2002) was, like clarke, a science fiction writer, but he was also an engineering 

manager at Bell telephone laboratories. in an article “don’t Write, telegraph,” 

published in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952, pierce discussed some possibilities 

regarding communications satellites.7 in 1954 he was asked to give a space talk to 

the princeton section of the ire (the institute of radio engineers, now the ieee).8 

According to pierce,“the idea of communication satellites came to me.i didn’t think 

of this as my idea,it was just in the air.Somehow,i had missedArthur clarke’s paper on 

the use of manned synchronous satellites for communication.” in 1958 pierce and his 

colleague rudolf Kompfner prepared a presentation on satellite communications for 

a conference.this was later published in the Proceedings of the IRE in march 1959.9 

thus, all four applications areas—reconnaissance, navigation, weather, and 

communications—had been discussed at some length in the immediate post-World 

War ii period. interest had accelerated in response to the u.S.Air Force spy satellite 

request for proposal in 1954, but the real push for applications satellites came as a 

response to Sputnik. 

Reconnaissance Satellites 

All of the early rAnd recommendations had been for a “direct readout” 

satellite—one that transmitted pictures to the ground electronically. many of the 

studies assumed a standard television camera.the Air Force (aided by its rAnd 

think tank) had begun development of a reconnaissance satellite,Weapon System 

117l (WS-117l), on 16 march 1955. the program, initially called Advanced 

reconnaissance Satellite (ArS), then Sentry, and finally Satellite and missile 

observation System (SAmoS), was slow to mature. By 1957, members of the 

presidential Science Advisory committee (pSAc) were dissatisfied with the Air 

Force program; they wanted a “film return” satellite and they wanted the program 

managed by the central intelligence Agency (ciA).the success of the u-2 seemed 

to indicate that the ciA was better at bringing new technology into operation in 

a short period of time. on 7 February 1958, president eisenhower authorized the 

ciA to proceed with coronA. 

6. Arthur c. clarke,“extra-terrestrial relays,” Wireless World 51 (october 1945): pp. 303–308. 

7. John r. pierce,“don’t Write:telegraph,” Astounding (march 1952). pierce wrote at least 20 articles 

for Astounding under his pen name, J. J. coupling, and at least one under his real name. 

8. later published:John r.pierce,“orbital radio relays,” Jet Propulsion 25 (April 1955): pp. 153–157. 

9. John 	robinson pierce and rudolf Kompfner, “transoceanic communication by means of 

Satellites,” Proceedings of the IRE 47 (march 1959): pp. 372–380. 
292 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

coronA/GAmBit 

Within a few months, the WS-117l program had been reoriented to include 

coronA (film return), midAS (early warning), and SAmoS (direct readout— 

later to include film return).the first discoverer (coronA) launch was on 28 

February 1959; it was a failure, as were most launches over the next two years.the 

first successes were in August 1960 when reentry vehicles (Srvs) were recovered 

from the ocean and in mid-air. From 1959 to 1972, almost 150 coronA (Kh-1 

through Kh-4B GAmBit) satellites were launched on thor-Agena vehicles.After 

August 1960, most were successful.10 

From 1959 to 1971, coronA was the principal u.S. reconnaissance satellite 

(along with a few ArGon and lAnyArd special-purpose satellites). SAmoS 

was eventually cancelled. in 1960 a joint program office was formed and designated 

the national reconnaissance office (nro). nro was staffed by the ciA and Air 

Force. the existence of nro was “revealed” on 18 September 1992. the entire 

coronA program was declassified on 24 February 1995. later programs are still 

classified, making accurate descriptions difficult. 

the Kh-7 and Kh-8 GAmBit satellites provided increased resolution (~0.5 

m) over the coronA satellites (~3 m).the coronA satellites had grown in 

size from 800 kg to about 2,000 kg (two Srvs), but were all launched by thorAgena launch vehicles. the Kh-7 satellites were launched on Atlas-Agenas. the 

heavier (3,000 kg) Kh-8 satellites were launched on titans.About 100 GAmBits 

were launched between 1963 and 1984 with about a 95 percent success rate. early 

GAmBits had lifetimes of days but, over time, lifetimes grew to weeks. 

the rest of the “Spysats” 

the Air Force had always wanted to put men in space; the manned orbiting 

laboratory (mol) was their great opportunity to do so.Although mol had many 

goals, its primary purpose was the Kh-10 (doriAn) reconnaissance system.the 

vehicle would have weighed about 15,000 kg. First authorized in 1962–1963, mol 

would eventually be cancelled in 1969 after an expenditure of billions of dollars. 

Starting in the late 1960s, the united States and the uSSr began discussing 

arms limitation. the Soviet union had established—or was establishing—rough 

parity in nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles (icBms).Both sides 

were developing anti-ballistic missile (ABm) systems. in the process of negotiating 

the Strategic Arms limitation treaty i (SAlt i, the ABm treaty), it was agreed 

10. much of the information on coronA comes from merton e. davies and William r. harris, 

“rAnd’s role in the evolution of Balloon and Satellite observation Systems and related 

u.S. Space technology,” rAnd, r-3692-rc, September, 1988; and dwayne A. day, John m. 

logsdon, and Brian latell, Eye in the Sky:The Story of the CORONA Spy Satellites (Washington, dc: 

Smithsonian institution press, 1998). Also of interest is robert A. mcdonald ed., CORONA— 

Between the Earth and the Sun:The First NRO Reconnaissance Eye in Space (Bethesda, md:American 

Society for photogrammetry and remote Sensing, 1997). 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 293 

that “national technical means” would be used to verify compliance and that no 

interference with these means would be allowed. Spy satellites were legal! 

it has been argued that the Kh-9 was developed as a backup to mol.the vehicle 

weighed more than 11,000 kg—almost four times the weight of a Kh-8 GAmBit and 

not much less than the mol. Known as “Big Bird,” the Kh-9 heXAGon carried 

a television camera as well as film cameras and four Srvs. it was launched by titan 

3d rockets. Big Birds increased satellite lifetimes to months. of 20 Kh-9 launches, 

only one failed, the last launch in 1986. declassification was progressing until the fall 

of 1997.there were even plans to place a Kh-9 in the new Smithsonian hangar at 

dulles Airport.According to dwayne day, a military space historian who has written 

about coronA and other spy satellites,Big Bird probably “gathers dust in a classified 

warehouse . . . only a few yards down from the lost Ark of the covenant.”11 

perhaps the biggest improvement in spy satellites was the all-electronic, directreadout Kh-11 Kennan/crystal and its successor, the Kh-12/Kh-11B improved 

crystal. these satellites finally provide the capability that Sentry/SAmoS 

hoped for: real-time direct readout—facilitated by communications relay satellites 

including SdS,tdrSS, and milStAr. About two dozen of these satellites have 

been launched. the improved crystal weighs almost 20,000 kg and can only be 

launched by the Space Shuttle or titan 4. lifetimes are now measured in years. 

the Kh-12 carries about 7,000 kg of fuel and its lifetime is more than 10 years. in 

addition to the visible and infrared capabilities of the Kh satellites, at least a halfdozen lacrosse radar satellites have been launched. 

image intelligence (imint) and human (spy) intelligence (humint) have been 

supported by various forms of signal intelligence (sigint)—including satellite 

sigint. these include navy systems from the 1960s (GrAB, dyno, poppy), 

ferrets launched with Kh-9 satellites, Air Force systems (cAnyon, vorteX, 

mercury), and the ciA’s AQuAcAde. many of these satellites are now in 

geosynchronous or molniya orbits—and are all but invisible. 

Societal impact of reconnaissance Satellites 

Both the united States and the Soviet union had been brought into World 

War ii as the result of surprise attacks.each of these two countries suspected its rival 

of planning a surprise attack. perhaps the greatest impact of reconnaissance satellites 

was reducing that threat. in the words of president lyndon B. Johnson, 

i wouldn’t want to be quoted on this,but we’ve spent thirty-five or 

forty billion dollars on the space program.And if nothing else had 

come out of it except the knowledge we’ve obtained from space 

photography, it would be worth ten times what the program has 

11. dwayne A.day,“the invisible Big Bird:Whythere is no Kh-9 Spy Satellite in the Smithsonian,” The 

Space Review (8 november 2004), http://www.thespacereview.com (accessed 24 August 2007). 
294 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has 

and, it turned out, our guesses were way off.We were doing things 

we didn’t need to do.We were building things we didn’t need to 

build.We were harboring fears we didn’t need to harbor.12 

Navigation Satellites 

in the days immediately following the launch of Sputnik in october 1957, 

scientists and engineers worked to analyze the spacecraft’s signal and its orbit. Bill 

Guier and George Weiffenbach of the Johns hopkins university Applied physics 

laboratory (Apl) listened to the satellite’s signal and monitored the change in its 

frequency due to the doppler effect.they used this doppler shift to compute an 

orbit for the russian satellite. 

Another Apl engineer, Frank mclure (1916–1973), realized that if the orbit 

were known, the doppler information could be used to determine the position of 

the radio receiver on the ground. in early 1958, mclure described the potential for 

developing a space-based navigation system.Within a few weeks, Apl proposed a 

navigation system to the navy. 

transit Satellites 

the earliest transits were launched on the thor-Able and thor Able-Star 

rockets from cape canaveral.the very first of these occurred on 17 September 1959. 

the last two experimental transit satellites demonstrated that precise navigation 

was possible using two frequency beacons broadcasting the satellite ephemerides 

(orbits).this system was so robust that it was capable of determining the harmonics 

of earth’s gravitational field and the effects of propagation through the ionosphere. 

the last satellites were also able to demonstrate the availability of the satellites when 

in a near-circular orbit at about 1,000 km and inclined about 66 degrees. 

After the poor reliability of the naval Avionics Facility indianapolis (nAFi)­

builttransit satellites,rcA built the rest.it was always clear thattransit had significant 

limitations. the accuracy was good enough for nuclear weapons (<1 km) but not 

good enough for conventional weapons.the transit position fixes took some time 

to obtain, making transit almost useless for moving objects. the navy continued 

research—especially at naval research laboratory (nrl)—on improvements. in 

1964, the Air Force started a new navigation satellite program, project 621B. 

nAvStAr/GpS 

By 1972, dod wanted just one program: a system that could be used to 

navigate fast-moving aircraft and even to deliver conventional weapons. in 1973, 

the nAvStAr Global positioning System (GpS) program was approved. over 

the next few years, arguments and tradeoffs between the navy and Air Force were 

12. lyndon B. Johnson, nashville,tennessee, march 1967. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 295 

adjudicated—mostly on their merits—and GpS Block i launches began in 1978. 

transit was kept in operation until 1996.13 

GpS satellites are in 12-hour circular orbits inclined 55° to the equator—much 

higher thantransit.there are six orbital planes,each containing four satellites.two l-band 

frequencies are broadcast (l1: 1575.42 mhz and l2: 1227.60 mhz) containing the time 

(universal time coordinated and a pseudo random noise code) and satellite position. 

differences between the satellite time and the vehicle time provide range measurements— 

three range measurements allow a position to be determined within 10 to 100 m.the 

civilian Standard positioning Service (SpS) signal has a conditional access code (cA) that 

degrades accuracy.this selective access means that civilian signal is not good enough to use 

for weapons delivery.military users can get position to within a few meters. 

A contract for eight Block i GpS satellites was awarded to north American 

(rockwell) in 1974. A contract modification for four additional Block i satellites 

was awarded in 1981. nAvStAr 12 was produced as the Block ii qualification 

model. there was only 1 failure out of 11 launches. Block ii/iiA added nuclear 

detonation detectors and many improvements.the satellite was still manufactured 

by rockwell, but the launch vehicle was now a delta 6925 for Block ii and a delta 

7925 for Block iiA.there was only 1 failure in 33 launches. 

After building 44 GpS satellites, rockwell lost the “replacement” contract to 

General electric Astro Space (formerly rcA Astro electronics, currently lockheed 

martin commercial Space Systems). the Block iir satellites were based on the 

Astro Space series 4000 geosynchronous communications satellite. the 1989 

contract was for 21 satellites. many improvements in cost, lifetime, autonomy, and 

improved precision were made on the iir series. 

in 1997 the Air Force awarded a contract for six GpS satellites and 27 options 

to rockwell (now Boeing). in 2000 the decision was made to rebid the contract.A 

series of studies for a “generation after next” system, Block iii, was begun in 2000. 

this was revised in 2003 and again in 2005.the competitors are lockheed martin 

(Block iir) and rockwell (Block i, ii, iiA). 

civilian use 

the decision to allowtransit use by commercial ships seems to have been made 

at an early date.this was given extra urgency when the supertanker Torrey Canyon ran 

aground on the cornish coast in march 1967, spilling 120,000 tons of oil.14 

13. much of the material in this section was obtained from national research council, The Global 

Positioning System (Washington, dc: national Academies press, 1995), pp. 145–276 and http://www. 

astronautix.com (accessed 24 August 2007). 

14. Abrahamhyatt,memotodeputyAdministratorandAssociateAdministrator,“informaldiscussionsregarding 

navigation Satellites,”7 September 1961;Alton B.moody,“navigation Satellite progress,“national electronics 

congress,9 october 1962;“nAv/trAF SAt program,”Space Daily (21April 1964):p.118;Walter Sullivan, 

“how to navigate with Satellites,”The NewYorkTimes,2April 1967:p.e7. 
296 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

By 1995, civilian use of GpS exceeded military use. ten years later, GpS 

was the established navigation system—an “international utility.” most other 

navigation systems were in the process of shutting down. But GpS remained a 

military system: use could be denied during a military emergency.the u.S. Federal 

Aviation Administration (FAA) started a program in 1995 called the Wide Area 

Augmentation System (WAAS) that would facilitate use of GpS for instrument 

landings. this would obviate the need to build the microwave landing System 

(mlS) scheduled to replace the old instrument landing System (ilS). most mlS 

systems in the united States have been turned off and replaced by GpS. 15 

As GpS replaced all previous navigation (and instrument landing) systems, 

many foreign countries became quite concerned that transportation safety was 

dependent on an American military system. in part to assuage these fears and to 

increase the precision of GpS, selective availability (SA)—a system that ensured 

lower civilian accuracy—was turned off on 1 may 2000. Somewhat earlier in 1982, 

the Soviet union had launched its own navigation system, GlonASS (Global 

orbiting navigation Satellite System). the system was fully operational in 1995. 

unfortunately, the collapse of the Soviet economy left russia unable to maintain 

the system for several years.A planned replenishment will be complete by 2010.16 

Both GpS and GlonASS are military systems that allow civilian use. the 

european Galileo system will be completely civilian-run by a private consortium. 

the four Giove (Galileo in-orbit validation experiment) satellites will be 

launched by 2008. the 30-satellite operational system will be complete by 2010. 

Galileo will provide greater accuracy (~1 m) and will work in buildings and under 

trees. Galileo and GpS will be compatible.17 

Societal impact of navigation Satellites 

the original purpose of navigation satellites was to maintain the so-called 

balance of terror.even if the Soviet union had launched a first strike,the submarinelaunched icBms (SlBms) would have enough navigational accuracy to level most 

of the cities of the Soviet union—whose positions were now well-known thanks 

to reconnaissance satellites. nAvStAr/GpS gave aircraft the same navigational 

assurance—and accuracy to within meters, not kilometers.this improved accuracy 

led to GpS-guided munitions used in the Gulf wars. 

most surprising is the ubiquity of GpS receivers in the civilian world.these 

are now the primary means of navigating ships and aircraft.they are also widely used 

15. david Field,“u.S. to let Airliners navigate by its Satellites,” Washington Times, 28 march 1995: p. B7; 

Warren e. leary,“civilian uses Are proposed for Satellites,” The NewYorkTimes,1 June 1995:p.A23. 

16. http://www.spacetoday.com (accessed 24 August 2007). 

17. ibid. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 297 

in cars and trucks,and by hikers.of the three applications pioneered by the military, 

this is by far the greatest success story. commercial sales of GpS receivers are now 

a $9 billion industry.18 

Weather 

By the 1950s, the idea of weather satellites was beginning to surface. in 

1951, rAnd published “inquiry into the Feasibility of Weather reconnaissance 

from a Satellite vehicle” and Arthur c. clarke depicted polar and geosynchronous 

“metsats” in the endpapers of The Exploration of Space.

19 in 1954, a tropical storm 

was discovered accidentally when pictures taken from an Aerobee sounding rocket 

were analyzed.Also in 1954, dr. harry Wexler, the Weather Bureau’s chief scientist, 

presented a paper on “observing the Weather from a Satellite vehicle” at the third 

Symposium on Space travel.20 in 1955, when the decision was made to launch 

a satellite during the upcoming international Geophysical year (iGy), weather 

observation and radiation balance payloads were considered and eventually were 

flown on vanguard and explorer satellites. 

polar Satellites/tiroS 

in spite of the influence of scientists such as Wexler and verner Suomi, the 

first weather satellite was a product of the military. tiroS (television infra-red 

observation Satellite) was rcA’s losing entry in the Air ForceWS-117l competition 

won by lockheed in 1956. the Army was persuaded to support development of 

tiroS as a polar-orbiting weather satellite. the project was transferred to ArpA 

and eventually to nASA in 1958.the first launch was on a delta on 1 April 1960. 

the satellite had two television cameras: one wide-angle and one narrow-angle 

(high-resolution) on tiroS-1 and -2, and both wide-angle on succeeding tiroS 

satellites. tiroS-8 pioneered the Automatic picture transmission (Apt) camera 

system.tiroS satellites had the cameras mounted on the base of the satellite, aligned 

with the spin axis.this meant that the cameras were earth-pointing for only a small 

fraction of their orbits.tiroS-9 pioneered the “cartwheel” configuration wherein 

the cameras were mounted on the sides of the spacecraft; the spacecraft spin axis was 

aligned with orbit normal and pictures were taken continuously. All launches were 

from cape canaveral into high-inclination (481)° orbits untiltiroS-9 and -10 were 

launched into Sun-synchronous (SS) polar orbits. Sun-synchronous orbits allowed 

pictures to be taken at the same local time every day (usually early morning). 

18. Satellite industry Association (SiA)/Futron corp., State of the Satellite Industry Report, (San diego, 

cA: SiA/Futron, June, 2006). 

19. Arthur c. clarke, The Exploration of Space (new york: harper, 1951). 

20. harry Wexler,“observing the Weather from a Satellite vehicle,”third Symposium on Space travel, 

4 may 1954. 
298 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the pentagon recognized the disadvantages of the tiroS baseplate-mounted 

cameras and the advantages of Sun-synchronous orbits.Joseph v.charyk,director of 

the national reconnaissance office (nro), concluded that nASA development 

of a better weather satellite (nimbus) would be delayed and expensive. he also 

was uncomfortable with the international commitments nASA had made to share 

tiroS weather pictures.Weather information was critical to nro—too many spy 

satellite pictures showed nothing but clouds. in 1961, charyk sponsored what was 

to become the defense meteorological Satellite program (dmSp). the program 

envisioned an improved rcA tiroS launched on a Scout launch vehicle from 

vandenberg Air Force Base.the satellite was much lighter than tiroS and carried 

a single television camera that would “snap” pictures of earth when the horizon 

sensors indicated that the camera was pointed in the appropriate direction. 

At about this time, it was decided that the next-generation civilian weather 

satellite,toS (tiroS operational System, also known as eSSA) would be a copy 

of dod’s dmSp Block 4A rather than the nASA nimbus, which became a 

research vehicle and later the model for ertS/landsat.the Block 5 satellites were 

three-axis-stabilized rather than spin-stabilized. A variant of Block 5 became the 

civilian itoS (improved toS, also known as national oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration [noAA]).the dmSp program remained classified until late 1972, 

when dmSp data were routinely delivered to the Weather Bureau.21 

the military and the intelligence community were the initial sponsors of weather 

satellites.nASA took over part of this remit,and by the mid-1960s theWeather Bureau 

(eSSA, then noAA) took responsibility for polar weather satellites. Geostationary 

weather satellites seem to have been championed by nASA and transferred to the 

Weather Bureau almost immediately after their launch in the 1970s.the military and 

the intelligence community retained a separate polar weather satellite program into 

the twenty-first century, but a single national polar orbit environmental Satellite 

System (npoeSS) is in the works—amid much disarray. 

Geosynchronous Weather observation 

in spite of Arthur c. clarke’s work, nASA (and hughes) first looked at 

geosynchronous orbit (Geo) as a place for weather satellites, not communications 

satellites. A consequence of the stationary orbit over the equator was that a Geo 

weather satellite could take continuous pictures of about one-third of earth’s surface. 

the polar weather satellites only took one picture (two if we include night-time ir 

pictures) of a given location each day. 

21. most of the material on dmSp is taken from r. cargill hall (nro historian), “chapter three: 

Weather reconnaissance,” n.d. (1988?), original classified topSecret/tAlent Keyhole. 

other sources include http://earth.nasa.gov/history and http://www.astronautix.comWeb sites (accessed 

24 August 2007). 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 299 

in 1965, verner Suomi and robert parent started the Space Science and 

engineering center (SSec) at the university of Wisconsin-madison with funding 

from nASA and the national Science Foundation.While at SSec,Suomi developed 

the spin-scan camera. SSec’s spin-scan camera was launched on AtS-1 in 1966. 

the camera scanned an east-west strip of earth with each rotation of the spinning 

satellite. By tilting a mirror in the camera slightly at each rotation, a multi-strip 

image of earth could be created in less than 30 minutes. 

the nASA Applications technology Satellites (AtSs) had originally been 

conceived as Advanced Syncom satellites. the creation of the communications 

Satellite corporation (comsat) following the communications Satellite Act of 1962 

led to suggestions that communications satellite r&d by nASA was inappropriate 

as comsat was a private entity.nASA was more than willing to add a meteorological 

payload,and dod asked that gravity gradient stabilization and medium earth orbits 

(meos) experiments also be conducted. 

the first five AtS satellites were all built by hughes. none of the gravity 

gradient experiments worked. All of the cameras worked, as did all of the c-band 

transponders.AtS-1 (7 december 1966) and AtS-3 (6 April 1967) were complete 

successes, taking the first black-and-white (AtS-1) and first color (AtS-3) pictures 

of earth from geosynchronous orbit.the first three AtS launches were on AtlasAgenas (A-As), the second two on Atlas-centaurs (A-cs), and the sixth on a titan. 

AtS-1 and -3 were deactivated in 1978. AtS-5—a nominal failure—provided 

communications services for many years. 

the experimental/operational Synchronous meteorological Satellites (SmSs) 

were built by Ford Aerospace.their lighter weight allowed use of the cheaper, more 

reliable delta launch vehicle. All carried a visible infrared Spin Scan radiometer 

(viSSr) built by hughes Santa Barbara research center. SmS-1 was placed over 

the Atlantic (17 may 1974) and SmS-2 was placed over the eastern pacific (6 

February 1975). 

the Geostationary operational environmental Satellites (GoeS)-1 through 

-3 were identical to the SmS-1 and -2 satellites. GoeS-4 through GoeS-7 were 

built by hughes.the more advanced GoeS-8 through GoeS-12, (again built by 

Ford, now Space Systems loral) have an imager much like the Advanced tiroSn polar-orbiting satellites. Attitude control is three-axis and detailed position and 

pointing are obtained using the vhrr imager.As with the polar satellites, GoeS 

now combines operational capabilities and research capabilities. one satellite is 

usually positioned over the Atlantic at 75°W (GoeS-east) and another at 135°W 

(GoeS-West). early in the program satellites were placed over the indian ocean to 

provide “global” coverage for the Global Atmospheric research program (GArp). 

european, indian, and russian satellites now provide indian ocean coverage while 

Japan provides coverage of the western pacific. Any “extra” GoeS satellites are 

stored at 105°W—ready to replace GoeS-east or GoeS-West. 
300 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

international cooperation 

meteorological data have always been shared with other countries. in 1977 

both europe and Japan launched geosynchronous orbit weather satellites. When 

the GoeS-neXt program was delayed, the europeans loaned noAA a meteosat. 

When the Japanese mtSAt was delayed,noAA loaned the Japanese meteorological 

Agency (JmA) a GoeS. Starting from the prime meridian, eumetsat covers the 

eastern Atlantic from 0°e and the indian ocean from 62°e. JmA covers the western 

pacific from 140°e (and 155°e). noAA covers the eastern pacific from 135°W 

and the western Atlantic from 75°W. the five satellites of these three agencies 

continuously monitor earth’s weather, except for polar latitudes. these countries 

also cooperate by sharing polar weather data; russia also supports this activity. 

Societal impact of Weather Satellites 

the major u.S. hurricanes of 1900 and 1938 came from nowhere and killed 

people on the shoreline who had no idea a major storm was coming. on 8 September 

1900, Galveston,texas, had a population of about 36,000; by nightfall, one in six would 

be dead.the 1938 new england hurricane completely wiped out several vacation areas 

and flooded sea-level providence, rhode island, and interior hartford, connecticut. 

the Galveston hurricane of 1900 may have been the deadliest natural disaster in the 

united States but it does not even appear on any list of storms sorted by damage cost. 

in contrast, Galveston was evacuated over the single bridge linking it to the mainland 

before hurricane rita hit in September 2005.evacuation was probably easier to enforce 

after the hurricane Katrina disaster a month earlier.Katrina was among the most costly 

hurricanes to hit the united States but the death toll—in spite of poor evacuation 

plans—was much lower than it might have been.the inflation-adjusted cost of Katrina 

damage was 100 times the cost of the 1900 Galveston hurricane damage but the death 

toll was one-third. noAA predicted landfall at new orleans more than two days in 

advance, and the day before landfall the local noAA office recommended immediate 

evacuation.Weather satellites don’t just provide cloud pictures and warnings of hurricanes. 

they also detect forest fires,volcanic activity,and severe storms,and provide measures of 

rainfall and winds. Somewhat surprisingly, the value of weather satellites for forecasting 

is much less clear than the value for severe weather detection and monitoring.22 

the commercial value of weather satellites was demonstrated in the mid-1980s 

when the reagan administration was trying to privatize landsat. comsat offered to 

take over landsat only if it was also given the weather satellites.noAA has provided a 

compendium of economic statistics in which the costs of weather and climate events 

are summarized along with some estimates of the benefits of weather forecasting. 

Severe weather causes damages well in excess of $10 billion every year.total benefits 

22. Wikipedia, http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/38hurricane, http://www.1990storm.com, http://www. 

dailycomet.com (accessed 24 August 2007); discussions with erik conway. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 301 

to the householders are estimated at over $10 billion per year. Benefits to agriculture, 

construction, and transportation would presumably increase this total.23 

Communications 

Although several pre–World War ii mentions of satellite communications have 

been found, the first well-known discussion was Arthur c. clarke’s 1945 article in 

Wireless World.

24 perhaps of greater importance were later articles by John r. pierce 

in Jet Propulsion (1955) and Proceedings of the IRE (1959).25 clarke was a member 

of the British interplanetary Society and a budding science-fiction author. pierce 

was also a science-fiction author but, more importantly, he was the director of 

communications research at At&t’s Bell telephone laboratories (Btl). 

in early march 1958,26 John r. pierce and rudolf Kompfner of At&t 

(independent inventors of the traveling-wave tube) saw a picture of the shiny, 100­

foot sphere that William J. o’Sullivan of nAcA langley research center was 

proposing to launch into space for atmospheric research. it reminded pierce of the 

100-foot communications reflector he had envisioned in 1954. pierce persuaded 

William h. pickering of Jpl to provide a West coast antenna for the experiment. 

to support this plan, Kompfner and pierce wrote a paper27 that they presented at an 

ire conference on “extended range communications” at the lisner Auditorium 

of George Washington university in Washington, dc, on 6–7 october 1958.28 

echo i was launched into a 1,000-mile circular orbit on 12 August 1960. during 

the first orbit of the 100-foot sphere, a recording of president eisenhower speaking 

was transmitted from Jpl’s Goldstone, california, earth station to At&t’s holmdel, 

new Jersey, earth station. in spite of echo’s success, it was clear that active, rather than 

passive, satellites were the technology to develop.29 in a 13 may 1960 letter to leonard 

Jaffe at nASA headquarters,rudolf Kompfner had described the currentAt&t/Btl 

research program as shifting to active satellites. in this letter Kompfner reviews the active 

satellite component/subsystem studies that had been underway since late 1959.30 

23. “economic Statistics for noAA,” (Washington, dc: u.S. department of commerce, noAA, may 

2005),pp.10,38. 

24. Arthur c. clarke,“extra-terrestrial relays.” 

25. John r. pierce,“orbital radio relays,” Jet Propulsion (April 1955): p. 44; John r. pierce and rudolf 

Kompfner,“transoceanic communications by means of Satellites,” Proceedings of the IRE (march 1959): 

pp.372–380. 

26. donald c. elder, Out From Behind the Eight-Ball:A History of Project Echo (San diego, cA:American 

Astronautical Society, 1995), p. 25. 

27. pierce and Kompfner,“transoceanic communications by means of Satellites.” 

28. J.r.pierce, The Beginnings of Satellite Communications (San Francisco:San Francisco press,1968),pp.9–12. 

29. nASA, Fourth Semi-Annual Report to Congress (Washington, dc: u.S. Government printing office, 

1961), pp. 10–17. 

30. A. c. dickieson, TELSTAR–Management (Bell telephone laboratories, July 1970), pp. 34–39. 
302 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

By 1960, pierce had convinced At&t management to build and launch a 

medium-earth-orbit (meo) satellite system. even earlier, the pierce and Kompfner 

paper had also energized a group of young engineers—harold rosen and donald 

d.Williams—at hughes Aircraft company to prove wrong their 1959 argument that 

geosynchronous earth orbit (Geo) satellites were beyond the state of the art.At&t’s 

plan to launch a satellite system was put on hold when nASA refused to provide launch 

services. nASA argued that launch vehicles were in short supply and must be rationed. 

the rationing mechanism would be a competition to design a meo communications 

satellite. proposals were submitted to nASA by seven companies—including hughes 

(Syncom) and At&t (telstar). rcA won the competition for the relay satellite in 

may 1961, but At&t was allowed to purchase launch services and the hughes satellite 

was jointly funded by nASA and dod by the end of that summer. 

on 10 July 1962, at 8:25 ut (4:25 a.m. edt) the delta carrying telstar 1 

lifted off from its pad at cape canaveral.At&t had placed a commercially funded 

communications satellite in orbit before the government-funded projects, but the 

communications Satellite Act would be passed less than two months later. At&t, 

after expending more than $100 million (in 1960 uSd) was out of the satellite 

manufacturing business for good.the nASA/rcA relay (meo) and the hughes/ 

nASA Syncom (Geo) satellites would be launched over the next two years. 

the communications Satellite Act of 1962 

Just after nASA’s announcement of the relay communications satellite program 

award to rcA,president John F.Kennedy delivered a speech to congress on“urgent 

national needs.” in this famous 25 may 1961 speech, Kennedy promised to land a 

man on the moon and also asked the congress to provide the funds that “will make 

the most of our present leadership,by accelerating the use of space satellites for worldwide communications.” this speech has been characterized as being driven by the 

unfortunate events of April 1961—Gagarin’s orbital flight and the Bay of pigs—but 

his comments echo the Wiesner committee’s “report to the president-elect of the 

Ad hoc committee on Space,” delivered to Kennedy on 10 January 1961.31 it is also 

consistent with his State of the union message of 30 January 1961: 

Finally,thisAdministration intends to explore promptly all possible 

areas of cooperation with the Soviet union and other nations “to 

invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors.” Specifically, 

i now invite all nations—including the Soviet union—to join 

with us in developing a weather prediction program, in a new 

communications satellite program and in preparation for probing 

the distant planets of mars andvenus,probes which may someday 

unlock the deepest secrets of the universe.32 

31. http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/report61.html (accessed 24 August 2007). 

32. http://www.infoplease.com/t/hist/state-of-the-union/174.html (accessed 24 August 2007). 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 303 

in any case, politics—cold war politics—would be a driver in deployment of 

communications satellites. 

the Space council drafted an Administration Bill in november 1961 

providing for a public-private corporation directly regulated by the president. 

Before it was submitted, Senator robert Kerr (d-oklahoma) submitted a similar 

bill that gave more control to the international communications carriers—as the 

Fcc recommended. Another bill was introduced by Senator estes Kefauver (dtennessee) that advocated government ownership.the Administration Bill passed 

the house 354 to 9 and, after a liberal filibuster, passed the Senate 66 to 11. on 31 

August 1962, president Kennedy signed the bill into law. 

the interim Agreements 

comsat had been advised by the common carriers—especially At&t—that 

bilateral arrangements between comsat and each of the foreign post, telegraph, and 

telephone (ptt) organizations were preferable. even as bilateral negotiations were 

being considered and before the incorporators had met, a u.K., canada, and u.S. 

(Foreign ministry/State department) conference on satellite communications took 

place in Washington. in october of 1963, the international telecommunications 

union (itu) held an extraordinary Administrative radio conference (eArc) 

in Geneva to discuss frequencies for satellite communications. Somewhat to their 

surprise, comsat got almost everything they wanted out of the conference. 33 

comsat, and later intelsat, had a major problem: Were they “commercial” 

entities, in the limited sense that government-owned ptts were “commercial,” 

or were they instruments of foreign policy? if they were commercial entities, then 

their purpose was to earn a profit for their owners by providing global satellite 

communications. if they were profit-oriented, then decisions should be based on 

costs and profits. For a long period, purchase of American satellites by comsat and 

intelsat was based on the cost-benefit analysis that these showed these satellites 

would provide the best service—and hence greatest profits—at the lowest cost. 

if intelsat and comsat were instruments of foreign policy, however, then profits 

were irrelevant. if these organizations were instruments of technological advance, 

then each country should obtain “work” (manufacturing contracts) in proportion 

to their contribution of funding.this later became the european Space Agency’s 

(eSA’s) principle of juste retour.

34 

in early 1964, the united States (the State department and comsat) met with 

the europeans in rome. it was clear at this meeting that the europeans would insist 

on some amount of control over satellite communications.the next meeting was 

in london with additional participation. At this meeting it became obvious that 

33. Joseph mcconnell interviewed by Frederick durant iii, 18 July 1985; William Gilbert carter 

interviewed by nina Seavey, 15 July 1985. 

34. ibid. 
304 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

there would be two agreements: a government-to-government agreement and a 

ptt-to-ptt agreement, with comsat as the American ptt.the final version of 

the interim agreements was presented to the world on 20 August 1964 in vatican 

city, where 14 countries immediately signed it. it is interesting to note that during 

this negotiation process, comsat contracted for the geosynchronous early Bird and 

raised $200 million in an initial public offering (ipo).35 

the three most important consequences of this interim agreement were: (1) 

comsat would not go it alone, but it would manage the interim system under 

an interim communications Satellite committee (icSc); (2) the organization 

would have both Foreign office and ptt representation; and (3) a new definitive 

agreement would be negotiated in five years.36 

early Bird and intelsat-ii 

early Bird was launched inApril 1965 and entered service in June.A few months 

later,the interim organization adopted the name intelsat.Four intelsat ii series satellites 

were launched in 1966–1967;three were successful.the intelsat ii series was launched 

to support nASA’sApollo program.early Bird covered only the northern hemisphere 

over the Atlantic ocean region (Aor).the intelsat ii series covered the globe and 

were located over both the Aor and pacific ocean region (por). 

the intelsat definitive Agreements 

When it came time to meet in February 1969 to discuss the definitive arrangements, 

the old disagreements were still present.the icSc,representing the intelsat consortium, 

had been dominated by comsat.the first plenipotentiary conference was held from 

24 February to 21 march 1969 in Washington. All but one of intelsat’s 68 member 

states sent a delegation. Some indication of where things might be headed was the 

reception that Katherine Johnsen of AviationWeek & SpaceTechnology got when she tried 

to interview the members of the icSc in 1967:17 agreed to be interviewed;only John 

A. Johnson refused. Similarly, at an icSc meeting in december 1968, a vote was taken 

as to whether comsat should remain as manager: the result was 17 to 1 against.37 

the third and final conference on definitiveAgreements began on 14April 1971. 

on 20 August 1971, the Agreements were opened for signature and by 14 december 

1972 two-thirds of the members had signed. Sixty days later, on 12 February 1973, the 

interim agreements were terminated and the new agreement entered into force.38 

35. ibid. 

36. A dry but fairly complete discussion of both the interim and permanent (definitive) Agreements 

can be found in marcellus S. Snow, The International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (BadenBaden, Germany: momos verlagsgesellschaft, 1987). 

37. Katherine Johnsen, “France Backs un intelsat control,” Aviation Week & Space Technology (13 

February 1967); maddox, Babel, pp. 103-104. 

38. richard r.colino,The INTELSAT Definitive Arrangements (Geneva:european Broadcasting union, 

1973), pp. 19–21. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 305 

the strange public-private, commercial-political nature of comsat was also 

reflected in the structure of intelsat.intelsat had two “governing bodies”:nations signed 

the intelsat Agreement (also referred to as the intelsat treaty), but telecommunications 

entities (signatories) signed the intelsat operating Agreement. the intelsat Assembly 

of parties consisted of the sovereign governments that signed the intelsat Agreement. 

voting in the Assembly was by country: one nation–one vote. its powers were limited. 

the meeting of Signatories consisted of all the telecommunications entities that signed 

the intelsat operating Agreement.voting in the meeting was on the basis of shares and 

the shares were allocated (and paid for) on the basis of usage.this has been referred to 

as “one telephone call–one vote.” A board of governors had functions similar to the 

icSc, or to the functions of a commercial board of directors. the Board consisted 

of about 20 members, each having a minimum specified investment, and individual 

representatives of member-groups whose total investment met the minimum specified 

(about 2 percent).Finally,there was a manager (comsat for six years after the agreements 

enter into force,terminating on 12 February 1979),reporting to a secretary general until 

31 december 1976 and to a director general thereafter. 

themajorantagonists,theunitedStatesandtheFranco-europeans,eachcompromised 

in some way but the result was both semi-commercial and semi-political.it could be argued 

that the State department got what it wanted because the third-world countries wanted 

international communications at reasonable rates and with some national control—at least 

control of their own earth stations.the europeans continued to complain that satellite 

contracts went exclusively to the united States (until the 1990s), but the third-world 

countries preferred cheaper,higher-qualityAmerican satellites and launch vehicles. 

intelsat iii and iv 

comsat had not officially chosen geosynchronous orbit when the intelsat iii 

contract was put out for bids.hughes decided not to bid an meo option.this allowed 

trW to sneak in a winning bid.these satellites were the first to provide coverage of 

the indian ocean region (ior). Almost in parallel to the intelsat iii program was 

the intelsat iv program. the first three generations had relatively limited capacity. 

intelsat iv would be a significant increase in power, number of transponders, mass, 

and coverage options.the first three generations had earth coverage only. intelsat iii 

was considered a big advance because it had a despun antenna that always pointed at 

earth—dramatically increasing equivalent isotropically radiated power (eirp). intelsat 

iv had two narrowbeam antennas covering the east andWest hemispheres. Because of 

its size,this series would use theAtlas-centaur launch vehicle instead of the delta.About 

20 percent of the content was provided by international manufacturers. 

it was no surprise when intelsat discovered that north Atlantic traffic (Aor) 

was greater than por or ior. intelsat ivA F6 was the last satellite launched by 

comsat as intelsat “manager.”the definitive agreements left them without a major 

role in satellite development.comsat still monitored construction under contract to 

intelsat, but executive decisions were made by intelsat. 
306 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

domestic Satellite communications 

neither the communications Satellite Act of 1962 nor the interim intelsat 

Agreements precluded domestic communications satellites (domsats). it was 

assumed—and later made explicit—that domsats should not interfere with 

intelsat. A small working group was put together in 1969 to formulate nixon 

administration domsat policy. Among the members of the group was clay t. 

Whitehead.Whitehead’s boss, peter Flanigan, sent a memo to dean Burch at the 

Federal communications commission (Fcc) recommending open entry—“open 

skies”—on 23 January 1970.thirteen entities had already filed for authorization to 

launch domsats. in march 1972, the Fcc released a proposed Second report and 

order on domSAts, requesting that the filers consolidate their filings. nobody 

liked this.the actual Second report and order was released on 16 June 1972 after 

a 4 to 3 vote by the commissioners.the dissenters objected to the restrictions on 

At&t and comsat. A final report on domSAt was issued 22 december 1972 

modifying (but retaining) these restrictions. 

meanwhile, canada had quickly decided to launch a canadian satellite to 

service the Far north. in 1967, the chapman report recommended that a satellite 

system be developed. in 1969, telesat canada was established. on 9 november 

1972, Anik A1—a hughes hS-333—was launched on an American delta launch 

vehicle. rcA Global communications began service to Alaska on Anik. rcA may 

have been first into service, but Western union (the telegraph company) was the 

first u.S. company to launch its own satellite (13 April 1974). 

rcA built its own satellite using the services of rcA Astro-electronics in 

east Windsor, new Jersey and rcA canada (later Spar) in montreal. the rcA 

satellites had twice the number of transponders and twice the power of the hS333. they were the first operational (as opposed to the experimental AtS-6 and 

Symphonie) three-axis-stabilized communications satellites. 

At&t had built its own experimental telstar satellites but opted to buy 

hughes satellites for its operational program. more accurately, it leased satellites 

from comsat. At&t was constrained to provide only point-to-point services— 

they could not offer television distribution services. 

indonesia was the third nation to launch a commercial geosynchronous 

communications satellite business.the palapa series, like Anik and Westar, was based 

on the hS-333. Within a few years of the first launch, the tens of thousands of 

indonesian islands were connected via satellite. 

the television revolution 

the original u.S. filing for a domestic communications satellite had been 

made in 1965 by ABc with encouragement from hughes. comsat and intelsat had 

never been much interested in television—some at comsat argued that only four 

television transponders were necessary, one for each network (ABc, cBS, nBc, 

and educational television). Some at rcA (owners of nBc) argued that at least 20 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 307 

transponders were needed—one for each of the four networks in each of the three 

time zones plus one for each nFl game. Although a few had seen the future, the 

explosion in television,especially non-network cable television,was a shock.Within 

a few years there were a dozen satellites carrying more than 200 transponders.twothirds of the traffic was television—a ratio that persists to this day. By the 1990s 

in the u.S. (earlier in europe) dedicated direct-to-home broadcast satellites had 

revenues in the tens of billions of dollars. 

Comsat and Intelsat: 


Competition and Other Problems


comsat was looking for a mission after 1979. the company tried domestic 

satellites (comstar with At&t, SBS with iBm), broadcast satellites (Stc), software, 

ground systems, and especially earth stations (rSi). none of them worked. By 

the mid-1980s the company’s profits were bouncing up and down. it seemed that 

every other year the company lost tens of millions of dollars. intelsat did well in 

these years, and it was still the largest and most profitable satellite company. it had 

few business barriers because its owners were the national ptts. in the late 1980s 

competition did begin to affect intelsat. more dangerous was the fact that the u.S. 

government was seeking to destroy its monopoly. 

therehadlongbeenconcernsthatcomsat/intelsatwasamonopolyandmonopolies 

are “bad.”on 28 november 1984 president reagan announced that “separate systems” 

were required in the national interest.Based on the president’s decision,the Fcc began 

granting conditional licenses. on 25 July 1985 the Fcc issued its Separate Systems 

report and order. on 1 June 1988 panAmSat’s pAS-1 was launched and eventually 

drifted to a longitude of 45°W to provide trans-Atlantic service. 

that same year, the fiber-optic tAt-8 cable began to provide service across 

the Atlantic—service that was cheaper than intelsat.the trans-Atlantic telephone 

cables had always competed with satellite transmission across the Atlantic but the 

savings, if any, were minimal. Fiber-optic cables were cheaper, provided higherquality transmissions, and much higher data rates. 

comsat and lockheed 

how did it all begin? in 1995 lockheed and martin marietta merged.the earlier 

combination of rcA Astro and Ge Space that had been purchased by martin marietta 

became lockheed martin commercial Space Systems (lmcSS). martin marietta had 

been looking at getting into communications satellite operations rather than (or in addition 

to) manufacturing.profit margins in manufacturing looked slim compared to operations. 

By early 1998, it seemed clear that comsat was on the market. early in the 

year, comsat denied that it was being acquired by loral.39 in July, fallout from the 

cox report caused aerospace stocks to tumble: comsat fell to $28.75 from $42 

39. “comSAt denies Acquisition report,” Washington Business Journal, 18 February 1998. 
308 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

over a “couple months.”40 comsat claimed it was in the process of “unlocking the 

value of investments in intelsat and inmarsat.” on September 20, lockheed (lmt) 

announced plans to purchase comsat after failing to buy northrup Grumman for 

$8.3 billion.the lockheed offer was for 49 percent of the comsat stock at $45.50 

per share with the last 51 percent to be purchased, with one share of lockheed 

for two shares of comsat.the total value of the purchase was about $2.7 billion. 

the lockheed offering of $45.50 was about one-third higher than the market 

price $341/8. comsat was apparently vulnerable to takeover due to its small size. 

lockheed shares fell while comsat shares climbed.41 

onAugust 20,1999 comsat shareholders voted to accept lmt’s offer (99 percent 

of votes,74 percent of shares).the plunge in value of lockheed shares reduced the value 

of the deal from $2.7 billion to $2.2 billion.42 on September 15 the Fcc authorized 

lockheed to purchase 49 percent of comsat. lockheed was also authorized to buy 

comsat Government Services, inc. (cGSi).43 in addition to buying 49 percent of the 

shares at $45.50 per share, the remaining 51 percent would be a share-for-share deal 

(lockheed had split). lockheed would also assume $455 million in comsat debt.44 on 

September 16, the department of Justice authorized the lockheed-comsat merger.45 

the orbit Act of 2000 

in 1996 the u.S. Government Accountability office (GAo) made a report to 

congress, requested by thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (r-virginia), on intelsat restructuring. 46 

in 1997 Bliley and edward J. markey (d-massachusetts) submitted a bill (h.r. 1872) 

to privatize intelsat and inmarsat.47 on 30 July 1997 Senator conrad Burns (rmontana) and his communications subcommittee held hearings on “Satellites and 

the telecommunications Act.” the Fcc, ntiA, and State departments testified, as 

did intelsat, panAmSat, and comsat.48 the claim was made that comsat’s markup on 

40. Jerry Knight,“A probe of uS-china policy pummels Satellite Stocks,” Washington Business Journal, 

13 July 1998: p. 7. 

41. “lockmart Swallows comSAt,” Space Daily (21 September 1998). 

42. tim dobbyn, “comSAt Shareholders Back lockheed Sale,” 20 August 1999, http://www.space. 

com (accessed 24 August 2007). 

43. “Fcc Authorizes lockheed martin to purchase up to 49 percent of comSAt,” FCC News (15 

September 1999). 

44. tim Smart,“Fcc oKs lockheed-comSAt deal,” 15 September 1999, http://www.washingtonpost. 

com (accessed 24 August 2007). 

45. “receives department of Justice clearance for comSAt corp.merger,”S&P Daily News (5 october 1999). 

46. “telecommunications: competitive impact of restructuring the international Satellite organizations,” 

GAo report GAo/rced-96-204,July 1996. 

47. doug Abrahms,“Bearing Weight of 141 nations,intelsat tries to change itself,” Washington Business 

Times, 23 June 1997: pp. d13–d14. 

48. u.S.Senate commerce,Science,and transportation committee,Subcommittee on communications, 

hearing on Satellites and the telecommunications Act, 30 July 1997. 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 309 

intelsat pricing was as much as 86 percent.49 on 25 march 1998,the house committee 

passed the Bliley bill (h.r.1872),including“direct access” and a variant of “fresh look.” 

“direct access” allowed customers to deal directly with intelsat—bypassing comsat. 

“Fresh look” afforded customers an opportunity to renegotiate all comsat-mediated 

contracts for intelsat bandwidth. intelsat’s tony trujillo commented that the bill was 

fatally flawed.50 nevertheless, h.r. 1872 passed the entire house on 6 may 1998. 

the house bill provided for both “direct access” and a variant of “fresh look.” 

Sen.Burns introduced a different bill (S.2365) on July 29,a bill seen as more favorable 

to comsat.51 panAmSat claimed that S. 376, the open-market reorganization for 

the Betterment of international telecommunications (orBit) bill did not go far 

enough. on January 21,tom Bliley asked the Fcc to reject any ownership greater 

than 10 percent until after the passage of reform legislation. on 5 may 1999, the 

full Senate committee approved the orBit bill (S. 376).52 on July 1, the orBit 

bill was passed unanimously by the Senate.“Fresh look” was not allowed, but “direct 

access” was.tony trujillo of intelsat described the bill as “the heavy hand of the u.S. 

congress.”53 Senator lott insisted that Burns allow “direct access” by 1 July 2002. 

the Bliley house bill passed in 1998 had removed almost all comsat privileges.54 

onFebruary17thehouseandSenateconferencecommitteereachedacompromise. 

direct access was allowed and the intelsat ipo was delayed to 1 January 2003.55 on April 

4, an Fcc public notice was published to the effect that lmt had applied to transfer 

control of comsat to lmt/cGS.56 on July 31 the Fcc authorized lockheed to merge 

with comsat based on the provisions of the 17 march 2000 orBit Act.57 

the end of comsat 

lockheed martin Global telecommunications (lmGt) did not last long. 

on 7 december 2001 (the 60th anniversary of pearl harbor), lmGt announced 

49. “ending a high-Flying monopoly,” Washington Post, 20 march 1998: p.A10. 

50. “house commerce committee passes Bliley Bill, But hurdles remain,” Satellite News (30 march 

1998): p. 1. 

51. Sam Silverstein,“comSAt prefers Senate Bill,” Space News, 3–9 August 1998): p. 3. 

52. “international Satellite 	reform Bill Approved by committee,” u.S. Senate committee on 

commerce, Science, and transportation committee press release, 5 may 1999. 

53. daniel Sood, “Senate unanimously passes Satellite reform,” 1 July 1999, http://www.space.com 

(accessed 24 August 2007). 

54. “Senate Satellite Bill Faces tough Fight in the house,” Aerospace Daily (6 July 1999). 

55. Greg Schneider, “Accord reached on Bid for comSAt,” Washington Post, 18 February 2000: p. 

e01; mary motta, “lockheed Gets Good news on comSAt deal,” 19 February 2000, http:// 

www.space.com (accessed 24 August 2007). 

56. Fcc public notice, report no. SAt-00040, 4 April 2000. 

57. “commission Authorizes lockheed martin to take control of comSAt,” FCC News (31 July 

2000).yuki noguchi,“intelsat Agrees to merger deal With panAmSat,” Washington Post, 29 August 

2005: p.A7. 
310 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

that it was shutting down its operations. Some units would be absorbed by other 

lockheed divisions, some units would be sold off, and some units would simply 

disappear. earlier that year, much of comsat laboratories was sold to viaSat. in 

January 2002 the sale of comsat mobile communications to telenor had been 

finalized. in march 2002 lockheed sold its remaining comsat World Systems 

facilities to intelsat. Finally, in 2004 comsat General’s remaining facilities were also 

sold to intelsat by lockheed.the public-private experiment was over. 

merger with panAmSat 

After the dot-com crash and general telecom meltdown of the early twenty-first 

century, market share and profitability became critical. on 28 August 2005 intelsat 

and panAmSat agreed to merge.the merger of the second- and fourth-largest fixed 

service satellite (FSS) companies would produce a giant that owned between a quarter 

and a third of all FSS satellites.What makes this merger particularly strange is that 

panAmSat was formed as“the non-intelsat”by renéAnselmo in 1984.the panAmSat 

motto was “truth and technology will triumph over bullshit and bureaucracy.” rené 

despised the comsat-intelsat monopoly.the panAmSat mascot was the dog Spot— 

usually seen urinating on the leg of a representative of bullshit and bureaucracy. 

intelsat agreed to buy panAmSat holding corp. for $3.2 billion in cash.the 

merged companies would form the world’s largest satellite company and give the 

companies a more diversified set of businesses. the new company would own 53 

satellites spanning the globe and generate annual revenues of more than $1.9 billion. 

on 7 July 2006,the $6.4-billion purchase of panAmSat was completed,creating 

a merged company carrying one-quarter of the world’s commercial satellite-delivered 

television programming.the acquisition leaves panAmSat a wholly owned subsidiary 

of intelsat.the combined company would initially lose money. panAmSat earned 

$72.7 million in 2005 but intelsat lost about $325 million. intelsat chief executive 

david mcGlade told The Washington Post that, given the level of debt and interest 

payments, the company did not expect to become profitable in the foreseeable 

future. he said the company’s investors have been pleased with intelsat’s positive 

cash flow and its heavy backlog of orders.the traditional core of intelsat’s business 

has been telephony, a difficult market in recent years.the combined company will 

be more diverse with the addition of panAmSat’s television customers.58 

Societal impact of communications Satellites 

revenues for commercial satellite applications have been dominated by satellite 

communications.59 this industry has yet to attain the $100 billion estimated in the 

58. http://broadcastengineering.com/beyond_the_headlines/intelsat_mergers_panamsat/?r=1 (accessed 24August 2007). 

59. much of the material for this section comes from the Satellite industry Association and Futron. 

SiA/Futron, State of the Satellite Industry Report (San diego, cA: SiA/Futron, June 2006). 
For All Mankind: Societal Impacts of Application Satellites 311 

early days, but total revenues are approaching this figure ($88.8 billion according to 

SiA/Futron).the fixed (FSS), mobile (mSS), and broadcast (BSS) satellite service 

sectors had revenues exceeding $50 billion in 2005. direct broadcast satellite (dBS) 

revenues led at $41.3 billion, followed by FSS revenues at $9.8 billion and mSS 

revenues at $1.7 billion. 

Some Final Thoughts 

the first space application to be operationalized was remote sensing with the 

launch of the first discover on 28 February 1959. one could argue that “success” 

wasn’t achieved until August 1960 but, in any case, this was the first application 

where significant funds were expended.these funds came from dod (Air Force) 

and the intelligence community (ciA). neither nASA nor commercial firms were 

involved except as manufacturers or other contractors. Although nASA launched 

the first earth resources technology (ert)/landsat satellite in 1972, it is not clear 

that remote sensing has ever been truly commercialized, although one can argue 

that by the twenty-first century it was possible to buy fairly high-resolution imaging 

on the open market. 

the second space application to be operationalized was navigation with the 

launch of the first transit on 17 September 1959.transit funding came from dod 

(navy),as did funding for GpS/nAvStAr (Air Force) later.in 1967,transit use by 

the civilian maritime industry was allowed. Although funding for the satellites has 

come exclusively from dod,this application has definitely been commercialized,as 

evidenced by the billions of dollars expended every year for GpS receivers. 

the third space application to be operationalized was weather with the launch 

of the first tiroS on 1 April 1960.tiroS was based on the rcA proposal for a 

reconnaissance satellite. initial funding came from the Army but the project was 

transferred to nASA. nASA fundedtiroS and many of its upgrades, although many 

of these upgrades were initially funded by dod on the dmSp program.theWeather 

Bureau eventually began funding operation of the satellites and, somewhat later, 

satellite procurement. nASA seems to have taken the lead on geosynchronous weather 

satellites, launching the first Synchronous meteorological Satellite (SmS-1) in 1974. 

commercialization of this application probably started with the launch of tiroS-1, 

but transfer to theWeather Bureau (eSSA) didn’t formally occur untiltoS in 1966. 

the fourth space application to be operationalized was communications with 

the first launch of telstar on 10 July 1962. earlier dates (courier and echo in 

1960) and later dates (Syncom 2 in 1963) can be proposed, but it is fascinating to 

observe that the most commercial of all space applications was the last to be actually 

launched. not surprisingly, it was the first to be commercialized—in every sense of 

that word—when early Bird was launched on 6 April 1965. Funding for the earliest 

communications satellites is complicated. By far the largest investor was At&t but 

much of that investment was for manufacturing capability. nASA was the second­
312 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

largest investor, funding most of Syncom and all of relay. hughes was the thirdlargest investor and may have gained the greatest profit by building proto-Syncom 

with its own funds. 

communications satellites showed the most interesting behaviors, possibly 

because they are so commercial.the failures—Aerosat, SBS, Stc, the leos, and the 

meos—all seemed to have misread the market for their offerings.the international 

projects (inmarsat and intelsat) seemed to have generated geopolitical hassles. others 

have had trouble generating profits, such as dArS and, to a lesser extent, dth tv. 

it is interesting to note that the earliest space applications are the ones 

developed by or for dod (reconnaissance and navigation). it should be no 

surprise that the most commercial of all the applications (communications) shows 

the greatest commercial funding and the earliest commercialization. the role of 

nASA is hard to evaluate. nASA seems to have been more of a facilitator than 

anything else.nASA had no real part in reconnaissance and navigation but certainly 

“facilitated” the development of weather satellites. it is also possible to claim that 

nASA “facilitated” the development of communications satellites. if nASA had 

not been involved, At&t would have gone ahead with its meo telstar system. 

this might have made it very difficult for the hughes “better idea” to make it into 

a marketplace that was dominated by At&t. it would be interesting to examine 

the effect on nASA priorities of its r&d agency status.Any application developed 

by nASA would have to be given away. perhaps one measure of nASA’s influence 

would be to examine what would have happened without nASA. reconnaissance, 

navigation, and communications satellites would have been developed by dod 

and industry, but the weather story is more complicated. dod did not want their 

weather pictures circulated; dmSp is proof of this. it is not clear that the Weather 

Bureau would have invested the funds that nASA made available. nASA is still 

supporting development of weather satellites. 

Applications satellites are not as glamorous as moon landings—or mars 

landings—but they have made a huge difference in the world we live in: financially, 

culturally, and in the areas of safety and security.they have created the global village. 

it is a feisty, angry, violent village, but there are fewer unknowns and a greater 

chance for peace and prosperity. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 313

chApter 16 

NASA and the Environment:


Science in a Political Context


W. henry lambright1 

the advent of the Space Age has paralleled the rise of the environmental 

movement. nASA was born in 1958 and rachel carson wrote Silent Spring in 

1962;that book is generally seen as marking the onset of modern environmentalism.2 

nASA has intersected with the environmental movement—a set of values and 

interest groups concerned about the need to protect our natural setting for the 

current and future generations—in many ways over the years. how did nASA do 

so? how did it evolve an environmental mission? What did it do with that mission? 

What were the consequences for society—and nASA—of its environmental role? 

to answer these questions, this paper will discuss two of the most important ways 

nASA and the environmental movement related. 

First, nASA has had direct impacts through the images of earth taken by 

Apollo astronauts as well as by satellites in earth orbit.those satellite images and 

theories about earth as a system evolved into an organized nASA program, initially 

called mission to planet earth (mtpe), later the earth Sciences program. Second, 

there was an indirect relation through nASA’s mission from earth. comparative 

planetology came into existence as a new field; learning about other planets 

stimulated better understanding of earth. 

there are many other issues in the nASA–environment relation, such as 

space debris and the contamination of other planets, but these two themes—earth 

monitoring and comparative planetology—are especially salient in nASA’s history, 

present, and likely future.the first theme focused on the use of space-based remote 

sensing and became the dominant emphasis in nASA’s environmental history. 

1. the author wishes to thank nASA for support for this paper’s research and also Sara pesek for 

research assistance.ms.pesek was a master of public Administration graduate student at the maxwell 

School of Syracuse university. 

2. there are those who would date the beginning of the modern environmental movement from 

an earlier rachel carson book, The Sea Around Us (1951). Silent Spring came out in 1962. carson 

worked for the Bureau of Fisheries, which became the national marine Fisheries Service within 

noAA. personal correspondence, John cloud, noAA, to author, 25 September 2006. 
314 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

there evolved a set of satellites that can be seen as environmental satellites. they 

are the centerpiece of nASA’s mission to earth.that mission has had an uncertain, 

somewhat uneasy relationship with other parts of nASA and other agencies. Some 

people think it is nASA’s most societally relevant mission whereas others think 

it is extraneous to nASA and belongs somewhere else—the national oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration (noAA) is the usual candidate.virtually every 

observer has found it a controversial mission, one in need of high-level policy 

attention and improvement for the sake of nASA, the nation, and the world. 

the second theme, comparative planetology, has indirectly influenced the 

main debate—a reminder of the fact that earth is an island home in the vast sea of 

space and is the only planet (so far) supporting life. nASA’s long association with 

the environmental and earth sciences has been fruitful but it has also been contested 

and even tortuous.the history of nASA and its environmental mission is one of 

science in a political context. 

Beginnings in the Apollo Years 

in the 1960s,as nASA concentrated on the moon project and environmentalism 

emerged as a conscious political and philosophical movement, nASA began to 

monitor aspects of the environment in the name of an “applications” program, 

part of nASA’s office of Space Science and Applications (oSSA). its chief activity 

was initially weather satellites. early on, nASA negotiated a relationship with the 

predecessor of noAA, the Weather Bureau, such that nASA developed weather 

satellite technology and then transferred it to the weather forecasting agency for 

operational use.the weather satellite program was clearly one of the great successes 

of the 1960s. it was obvious to all that weather satellites improved forecasts and 

aided early warnings of approaching hurricanes.there was a technology push from 

nASA and a pull from a user agency.3 

comparative planetology also began in the 1960s, with the mariner spacecraft 

flybys of venus and mars.venus revealed a runaway greenhouse effect that heated it 

into an inferno, providing an early example to some scientists of what could happen 

here. mars also seemed inhospitable to life. But the most important impacts on the 

environmental movement of the early space program were pictures of earth taken 

by Apollo astronauts, beginning with Apollo 8 in 1968—the christmas eve flight 

around the moon. For the first time, humanity saw a blue earth in the desolate 

blackness of space. As the environmental movement emerged, it used these images 

3. homer newell,“Space Science and practical Applications” in Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of 

Space Science (Washington, dc: nASA, 1980). 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 315 

of our planet as a symbol for the first earth day in 1970.Without a doubt, the space 

program helped catalyze the environmental movement, especially insofar as getting 

it to think about the global environment.4 

NASA in the 1970s 

the 1970s are often called an environmental decade. one reason is that 

environmental protection Agency (epA) was born in 1970 and congress enacted a 

sequence of laws to deal with water,air,and other forms of pollution.Another reason 

was the energy crisis of the decade, and writings on “limits to growth.”5the carter 

administration, in particular, integrated environment and energy conservation and 

conveyed the notion that “small is beautiful.”this notion was applied to technology, 

which environmentalists argued had to be “appropriate” to the user.6 

the space program in the 1970s mirrored the decade’s political setting. nASA 

devolved from Apollo, whose moon flights ended in 1972, to the Space Shuttle. 

nASA diminished in size and exploratory capacity.the nASA Administrator,James 

Fletcher, who served from 1972 to 1977 (the first of two terms at nASA’s helm) 

was personally interested in environmental stewardship, a characteristic launius has 

linked in part to his mormon roots.however,the situation he faced was problematic. 

the environmental movement of the early 1970s had a distinctly anti-technological 

flavor. it contributed to the termination of the supersonic transport (SSt) in 1971. 

there were concerns in nASA that environmentalists might attack the Space 

Shuttle as they had attacked SSt, on environmental factors. nASA realized that 

it needed to research environmental-atmospheric impacts of the shuttle to defend 

itself, if necessary, against possible opposition7 more positively, Fletcher sought to align 

his Agency with environmental values.in 1973,he told congress that nASA should be 

considered“an environmental agency.”he declared:“everything we do ...helps in some 

practical way to improve the environment of our planet and helps us understand the 

4. comparative planetology helped crystallize global warming as an issue.See SpencerWeart,The Discovery 

of GlobalWarming (cambridge,mA:harvard university press,2003),pp.87–89.See also Steven dick and 

James Strick,The Living Universe:NASA and the Development ofAstrobiology (new Brunswick,nJ:rutgers 

university press,2004);marina Benjamin, Rocket Dreams (newyork:Free press,2003);and neil maher, 

“Gallery: Shooting the moon,” Environmental History (July 2004). 

5. Limits to Growth was the name of a best-selling book authored by donella meadows and others and 

published in 1972 under the auspices of a business group called the club of rome. it modeled the 

consequences of a world with a growing population and limited resources. it was republished in 

2002 by chelsea Green publishing,White river Junction,vermont. 

6. For views of appropriate technology, see e. F. Schumacher, “Buddhist economics,” and paul 

Goodman, “can technology be humane?” in Technology and the Future, 7th ed., Albert teich, ed. 

(new york: St. martin’s press, 1997). 

7. Kim mcQuaid illuminates nASA’s early ambivalence about environmentalism in “Selling the Space 

Age: nASA and earth’s environment, 1958–90,” Environment and History 12 (2006), pp. 127–163. 
316 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

forces that affect it. perhaps that is our essential task, to study and understand the 

earth and its environment.”8 

Fletcher promoted a new earth-oriented satellite, called landsat, launched in 

1972, that was capable of helping to forecast world food harvests and other resource 

issues. conscious of environmentalist concern about pollution of the stratosphere 

from high-flying planes that could extend to the shuttle, he sought legislation to 

undergird nASA’s emergent environmental (and shuttle) interests. in 1975 congress 

authorized nASA “to conduct a comprehensive program of research,technology,and 

monitoring of the phenomena of the upper atmosphere.” in 1977, congress required 

nASA to issue biennial reports to congress on the status of ozone depletion, an issue 

beginning to worry some scientists and environmentalists.this legislation (1975 and 

1977) was important;it gave nASA legitimacy not only to do environmental research 

but also to link it with policy.9 it was not a“given”that nASA would have this mission 

rather than another agency. it reflected nASA’s administrative entrepreneurship and 

congressional support relative to that of potential rivals. 

the 1970s also featured the growth of comparative planetology, as a field, 

energized by the 1976 viking mission to mars and James lovelock’s Gaia 

hypothesis. lovelock, who published his ideas in 1974, held that earth was a living 

system in which physical and biological components worked together to enable life. 

As it developed, the Gaia hypothesis drew on studies of other planets, including 

viking’s apparent failure to find life on mars. it made a number of scientists and 

environmentalists better appreciate earth as a precious and vulnerable home and the 

role of human beings in altering it.there even were those such as Gerard o’neill, a 

princeton physicist, who speculated that man might need to migrate beyond earth 

and establish colonies in space—a new, better place, a utopia where a more ecofriendly existence could be practiced.10 

The Rise of NASA’s Environmental Role in the 1980s 

the 1970s produced a set of ideas about earth as an interacting system. Also, 

some scientists felt that techniques used to study mars could be applied on earth.11 

the decade also gave rise to nASA’s thinking more strategically about crafting an 

8. roger launius,“A Western mormon in Washington, dc: James c. Fletcher, nASA and the Final 

Frontier,” Pacific Historical Review (1995), p. 236. 

9. W. henry lambright, NASA and the Environment:The Case of Ozone Depletion (Washington, dc: 

nASA, 2005), pp. 7–8. 

10. dick and Strick, p. 49; Benjamin, pp. 51, 121–138. 

11. in 1976,when nASA sentviking to mars,it found the intended landing spot to be unsuitable.nASA and 

leading mars specialists searched for three weeks to find a good place,surveying virtually the entire planet. 

At the end,michael mcelroy of harvard declared:“you know,we’ve never done anything like this for the 

earth.”Burton edelson,“mission to planet earth,”Science,227,no.4185 (25 January 1985),p.6. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 317 

environmental mission and how better to use the legislation it had obtained for 

its atmospheric research. in the 1980s, nASA charted a larger and broader earth 

observation program that built on its work in weather, land satellite monitoring, 

and initial attempts at ocean surveys.What nASA contributed, through its satellites 

and comparative planetology studies, was a perspective different in scale from other 

agencies—literally a global view.there were certain environmental issues that were 

indeed global in scale and nASA, in the view of some of its officials and external 

supporters, was particularly suited to address these. 

in 1982, nASA Administrator James Beggs, responding to overtures from oSSA, 

went to the united nations conference on the peaceful uses of outer Space, where 

he called for “an international cooperative project to use space technology to address 

natural and manmade changes affecting habitability of earth.” the reaction to his 

“Global habitability” overture was overwhelmingly negative—not to the idea of global 

habitability but to nASA as leader.“it came across like nASA was trying to take over 

the world,”Burton edelson,associate administrator of oSSA,recalled.12 there had been 

no spadework ahead of time to build a coalition of support for the proposed endeavor. 

Beggs told edelson to build that support base with other agencies,theWhite house,the 

scientific community, and the public before surfacing the proposal again. 

this he began to do,starting in 1983 with a broad-gauged earth System Science 

committee. edelson worked outside and inside nASA—outside with the scientific 

community, the national Science Foundation (nSF), and the national oceanic 

and Atmospheric Administration (noAA) in particular, and inside by establishing 

an earth Sciences and Applications division within oSSA to augment the earth 

science personnel and presence within nASA. in 1985, edelson wrote an editorial 

in Science magazine. dropping the “Global habitability” name, he proclaimed the 

need for a new “mission to planet earth.”13 While this planning and supportbuilding was underway, events provided nASA an opportunity to demonstrate how 

it could lead in a new global environmental mission. 

the issue was ozone depletion.it had risen and declined as an issue in the 1970s 

but in the mid-1980s had returned with a vengeance. in 1985, British scientists 

using ground-based studies discovered extraordinary and shocking ozone depletion 

over Antarctica. nASA quickly followed-up with satellite observations confirming 

what became known as the “ozone hole.”14 

the media,using nASA satellite images,conveyed an eerie and graphic display 

of a gigantic hole that seemed to grow like an organism over Antarctica.the images 

alarmed the public,as they were accompanied with reports of how skin cancer could 

be caused by ozone depletion if the hole spread to more populated places. Scientists, 

12. W. henry lambright,“entrepreneurship and Space technology:the ups and downs of ‘mission to 

planet earth,’” Public Administration Review (march/April 1994), pp. 97–104. 

13. edelson,“mission to planet earth.” 

14. lambright, NASA and the Environment. 
318 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

media, environmentalists and politicians sounded the alarm. industry defended itself 

against over-hasty regulations, but was on the defensive. 

nASA seized the initiative. it had the legislation from the 1970s that gave it 

legitimacy to take a “lead agency” role on the science side of this issue. it organized a 

scientific expedition toAntarctica.enlisting noAA,nSF,academic scientists from the 

united States and abroad, and even industry researchers, nASA and its allies sought 

to determine the cause of the hole. robert Watson, an energetic oSSA manager, 

was the prime mover in the Antarctic expedition. he struck a close alliance with a 

key scientist-administrator of noAA, dan Albritton, and practiced what Albritton 

called “ecumenical” leadership. one Antarctic expedition was soon followed by 

another, more extensive one. it became increasingly clear to the scientists that the 

prime suspects behind the hole were common chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, 

or cFcs, found in a host of everyday products.this growing consensus extended to 

industry scientists involved in the expedition and was endorsed by an independent 

group of scientists Watson set up to review the expeditions’ findings. 

Watson and Albritton played dual roles—scientist-administrators of two agencies 

collaborating in an ad hoc program to determine causality in ozone depletion, and 

science advisors to the State department and the epA.these “policy agencies” were 

users,in real time,of information from the science agencies.there was again a push and 

pull on the part of providers and users.the technical information—what was known 

and what was not known—was conveyed to diplomats in the field.the diplomats were 

meeting under international political pressure to act, and did so in 1987, producing 

the pathbreaking montreal protocol, an agreement which set deadlines for replacing 

cFcs with less harmful chemicals.the montreal protocol was remarkable in calling 

for amendments as science produced more precise knowledge. ozone depletion in 

many ways became the model for subsequent international environmental policy. 

it was also seen as a potential model for nASA.nASA leaders contemplated ozone 

depletion as the first step in the broader global environmental initiative it had sought since 

1982.the ozone experience, highly positive for nASA in a public relations sense, took 

place in a period when the Agency otherwise suffered severe criticism for the Challenger 

Space Shuttle disaster.that disaster,in 1986,had brought James Fletcher back to theAgency. 

While presiding over nASA’s return to flight, he also looked ahead to new missions. he 

asked Sally ride,America’s first woman in space, to study possible initiatives beyond the 

space station,nASA’s existing flagship project,that would give long-term direction to the 

Agency. her 1987 report listed four options, without giving any priority.the first she 

listed, however, was a mission to planet earth. calling the mission of “fundamental 

importance to humanity’s future,” ride said nASA was “uniquely suited to lead the 

effort.” in the wake of the ozone experience, nASA was now in a far better position 

to make the case politically for a new mission than it had been in 1982.15 

15. lambright,“entrepreneurship and Space technology.” 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 319 

Achieving Policy Adoption 

Advocates of the new mission,largely in oSSA,began pushing harder for policy 

adoption of a new program. drawing on the work of the earth System Science 

committee, which completed its studies in 1986, nASA set as the new program’s 

centerpiece an earth observation System (eoS). eoS would feature two 13-ton, 

bus-sized platforms launched by the Space Shuttle and linked with the Space Station 

Freedom.they would have multiple sensors, enough to permit comprehensive and 

simultaneous views of land,atmosphere,and sea interactions.the estimated cost of a 

system that delivered 15 years of observations was $30 billion.the full system would 

be launched by 2001. A series of specialized “precursory” missions in the 1990s 

would lead up to the main event, an operational two-platform eoS replete with 

an unprecedented data-handling and disbursing system.the eoS vision included 

potential additional systems contributed by other nations. 

A program this big could only be justified if applied to a very big problem. 

the problem that had emerged over the 1980s in parallel with eoS planning was 

called “global change.” Global change included, but was not limited to, climate 

change. climate change was a politically neutral way of referring to global 

warming. Global warming was controversial among scientists and even more so 

among politicians. climate change was a much more complicated problem than 

ozone, both scientifically and politically. climate change had even been connected 

with scientific opposition to the reagan administration’s nuclear weapons policy. 

Scientists, led by space scientist carl Sagan, warned against a “nuclear winter” if 

atomic weapons were ever used.Whether hot or cold, earth’s climate was complex 

and many scientists felt it premature to forecast a dire future, for whatever reason, 

given existing understanding. moreover, there was not an ozone hole to focus 

scientific work and trigger policy action. instead, there was a slow accumulation 

of contentious scientific information. Although nASA’s lead role in investigating 

ozone depletion might be seen by the Agency to be a model for a mission to 

planet earth, the transfer of the model to climate and global change would not be 

straightforward. nASA had no special legislation that gave it legitimacy to assert its 

claims, but at least one man within nASA was asserting his own views. 

in 1988,James hansen,director of nASA’s institute for Space Studies,proclaimed 

before congress that global warming was almost certainly a reality now. he declared 

to reporters afterward that it was time to “stop waffling and say that the evidence is 

pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”16 his view was not popular with 

the reagan White house. the reagan administration established an interagency 

committee, whose dominant members were nASA, noAA, and nSF, to get at the 

facts. From this committee, initially called committee on earth Sciences (ceS), 

16. Weart, p. 155. 
320 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

came the proposal for a u.S. Global change research program (uSGcrp). 

When George h. W. Bush became president in 1989, ceS had a report waiting 

for him and his science advisor, Alan Bromley. Bush said he wished to be “the 

environmental president” and, on the advice of Bromley, made global change his 

first “presidential priority” in science and technology. Such a designation slated 

global change for policy adoption and budget support.the uSGcrp combined 

space and ground-based observations. the largest single item in the interagency 

effort would be eoS, but nASA was not a “lead” agency. leadership was vested 

in the uSGcrp interagency committee, whose name was broadened, along with 

its membership, to committee on earth and environmental Sciences (ceeS). in 

1990,Bush officially adopted mission to planet earth as a nASA priority.congress 

provided endorsements and an initial appropriation to start eoS.the advocates of a 

greater nASA role in global environmental monitoring thereby achieved a victory 

after almost a decade of planning and strategizing. nASA was poised to use space 

technology in a grand effort to develop an “earth System Science.” Such a science 

would pave the way for a “predictive capability” in global change that would guide 

policy makers, and thereby protect planet earth.17 

Wounded at the Outset 

in theory,a new government program moves from adoption to implementation, 

at which point it has the opportunity to show its mettle before later undergoing 

evaluation and possible mid-course correction. not so mtpe/eoS. nASA’s 

environmental initiative faced drastic reorientation almost as soon as it got underway, 

before implementation could commence in a serious way.there were five obstacles 

to stable growth it confronted in the years of George h.W. Bush.the first was a 

larger, more compelling national policy imperative concerning the overall federal 

budget.With the cold war waning and the federal budget deficit soaring, politicians 

increasingly wanted to cap spending on discretionary programs as much as possible 

to lower the deficit. this put all “big science” programs in danger, and eoS was 

clearly big science at a projected $30 billion.the Bush White house and congress 

pressed nASA for redesign to lower costs. 

oSSA’s associate administrator,len Fisk,argued in 1991 for staying the course in 

plans and budget.Stating that a “comprehensive”approach was essential,he declared 

that earth was “too complicated, and its workings too interrelated” for a piecemeal 

strategy. “it’s a big earth,” he stated. “and there are big consequences for getting 

the wrong answers.”18 unfortunately for eoS, there was a second problem: lack 

17. lambright,“entrepreneurship and Space technology.” 

18. lennard Fisk, “mission to planet earth,” address to maryland Space Business round table, 26 

February 1991, nASA history office Files. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 321 

of cohesion in support on the part of the scientific-environmentalist constituency. 

nASA’s own hansen, clearly alarmed about the global warming issue, said that the 

comprehensive approach of eoS would take too long to show results.While saying 

he supported eoS, he proposed a short-term, smaller-satellite strategy specifically 

geared to resolving the climate change debate.19 the hansen view was shared by 

various environmentalists and their prime legislative spokesman, Senator Al Gore 

(d-tennessee). many environmentalists in fact regarded eoS as an administration 

delaying tactic—researching instead of responding to climate change with emissions 

controls.At a time when Fisk needed solid backing for eoS, there were fissures in 

his potential scientific and environmental constituency. 

the third problem Fisk faced was that nASA’s flagship program, Space Station 

Freedom, was running into serious opposition in congress. in her 1987 report, ride 

had mentioned mtpe as one of four new initiatives that would build on the space 

station. however, eoS seemed now to be competing with the space station for 

funds. Both programs would cost billions. congress told Bush and nASA: prioritize! 

When congressional threats to terminate the space station forced Bush and nASA 

Administrator richard truly to choose, they made it clear that the space station was 

their priority.congress in 1991 directed nASA to cap eoS expenditures at $11 billion 

through the year 2000.this was $6 billion less than nASA had projected during the 

1990s for the two-platform design. reorientation of the program became essential.20 

the fourth obstacle to the program adopted in 1990 came in April 1992, 

when dan Goldin arrived as nASA Administrator. By this time, the two-platform 

design was giving way to a fleet of six satellites, carrying fewer instruments. Goldin 

removed Fisk and reorganized oSSA into three smaller units.mtpe/eoS survived, 

but Goldin demanded it adhere to his philosophy of faster, better, cheaper (FBc). 

he called the original eoS design a “Battlestar Galactica,” and even the six-satellite 

fleet failed his criteria.21 

the fifth obstacle to implementing the original vision was the end of the relative 

political bipartisanship that had made adoption of mtpe/eoS possible in the first 

place. in the view of some conservative republican lawmakers, nASA became 

politicized in the early 1990s. ironically, nASA gave ammunition to its critics. As 

it shifted emphasis from ozone depletion to global climate change, it continued its 

ozone work, using the first satellite deployed under the mtpe rubric, the upper 

Atmosphere research Satellite (uArS).the focus of nASA’s ozone research moved 

from the South pole to the Arctic. nASA researchers in early 1992 detected an Arctic 

ozone hole opening up and publicly announced that fact with a sense of alarm. 

19. James hansen et al.,“the missing data on Global climate change,” Issues in Science andTechnology, vii, 

no. 1 (Fall 1990), pp. 62–69. 

20. lambright,“entrepreneurship and Space technology,” p. 102. 

21. Stephanie roy, “the origin of the Smaller, Faster, cheaper Approach in nASA’s Solar System 

exploration program,” Space Policy 14 (1998), p. 165–167. 
322 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

environmentalists,the media,and various legislators demanded action.Senator 

Gore, whose book, Earth in the Balance, came out in 1992, pointed out the danger 

of an Arctic ozone hole spreading over populated territory in the north. critics of 

Bush said that there would soon be an ozone hole over Bush’s head in his summer 

home in Kennebunkport, maine. Bush did in fact act, using powers he had under 

domestic legislation related to the montreal protocol. he ordered a speed-up in the 

phasing out of ozone-depleting chemicals.there was thus again a swift progress from 

science to policy.the only problem this time was that nASA subsequently admitted 

that it had sounded the alarm prematurely and that there was no Arctic ozone hole. 

nor, said a chastened nASA spokesman, was there a hole over Kennebunkport.22 

the consequence was that conservative lawmakers and media seized the moment 

to criticize nASA’s credibility and link the space agency to the environmentalists’ 

agenda on global warming.As Bush left office, nASA’s environmental mission was 

flayed by critics as politicized, and opposition in congress loomed. 

thus, in the course of just four years—one presidential administration— 

nASA’s environmental mission went seemingly from a high priority of nASA and 

the nation, with bipartisan support, to an embattled program struggling to survive, 

technically and politically. 

More Turbulence Under Clinton 

the inauguration of Bill clinton as president,and especially Al Gore as his vice 

president,in 1993 guaranteed that nASA would continue to have an environmental 

role.the issue remained one of content and scale.clinton retained Goldin as nASA 

Administrator,and nASA’s robert Watson moved up to the White house office of 

Science and technology to a new post of associate director of the office of Science 

and technology policy (oStp) for environment. 

the problem for mtpe/eoS was that clinton, not Gore, was president.Also, 

both men had many other priorities and were far more interested in environmental 

action—including co2 emissions reduction—than a long-term research program like 

eoS. moreover, the larger enterprise of which eoS was the centerpiece, uSGcrp, 

continued but lost momentum as a federal coordinating vehicle. the interagency 

committee that led uSGcrp (and to some extent mtpe/eoS) found itself engaged 

in turf battles with the oStp environmental office. “Who was in charge of what” 

became an issue that caused confusion in global change policy generally.23 

most importantly, clinton made deficit reduction and economic growth his 

top priority and looked to nASA for budget savings.there was at first no guarantee 

that nASA’s major program, Space Station Freedom, would survive the transition 

22. lambright, NASA and the Environment. 

23. W. henry lambright, The Challenge of Coordinating “Big Science” (Washington, dc: iBm, 2003). 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 323 

to the clinton White house and the new congress. Following clinton’s decision 

to reduce the space station in scale and then his decision to merge Space Station 

Freedom with russia’s Mir-2 space station effort, the nASA flagship project was 

secured within the nASA budget.the president and congress agreed to stabilize 

the budget of the newly rechristened international Space Station (iSS) in succeeding 

years. however, the overall nASA budget would hold steady or even decrease, thus 

putting strain on other programs. 

Goldin applied his faster, better, cheaper formula to space science and mtpe, 

but his heart was clearly more with missions beyond earth, especially mars, than 

mission to planet earth. he cut the mtpe/eoS budget further and brought 

charles Kennell, an astrophysicist from uclA, aboard to head mtpe. Shelby 

tilford, architect of the eoS program under Fisk, departed, complaining that 

faster, better, cheaper was not better in eoS’s case.the budget for eoS was now 

down to $7.25 billion for the period from 1993 to 2000. Kennell’s job was to 

reorient eoS further and adapt mtpe generally to Goldin and administration 

priorities. Adaptation included landsat’s return. landsat, a 1970s nASA initiative, 

had spun off in the 1980s to noAA in what proved a fruitless effort to privatize the 

program. it now came back to nASA to become part of an effort to bring space 

remote sensing applications “down to earth.”the aim was to apply space remote 

sensing to agriculture, city planning, fisheries, and other practical concerns. the 

new emphasis won friends for the program in congress and the states.the flagship 

mtpe program, eoS, continued in development but its ambition was lowered in 

accord with the budget. 

Although mtpe won friends because of its new “down to earth” approach, 

eoS continued to be a target of critics. Because of its association with global 

change and especially global warming, eoS continued to be controversial.When 

the republicans gained control of congress in 1995, they sought substantial cuts 

in eoS. rep. dana rohrabacher (r-california), chair of the house Science 

committee’s energy and environmental Subcommittee,derided eoS as concerned 

with “scientific nonsense.” Global warming, he charged, was at best “unproven and 

at worst . . . liberal claptrap.” Goldin strongly defended mtpe/eoS and, in the 

end, the effort to make draconian cuts failed.24 the budget projection did go down, 

however, to $6.8 billion, along with nASA’s budget generally.25 defenders of eoS 

commented sardonically that it was “restructured,” “rescoped,” “rebaselined,” and 

“reshaped.” in the end, it stabilized around the development of three intermediatesized, multi-sensor satellites, one oriented to land, another to water, and the third 

to the atmosphere. 

24. W. henry lambright, “the rise and Fall of interagency coordination: the uS Global change 

research program,” Public Administration Review (January, February 1997), pp. 41–42. 

25. “Senators rally Around nASA, mission to planet earth,” The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of 

Science Policy News (17 may 1996). 
324 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

MTPE/EOS in the Second Clinton Administration 

there was relative stability for mtpe/eoS in clinton’s second term.to be 

sure, every year was a budget struggle. however, the precursor and applications 

missions showed results and the three eoS satellites made progress in development. 

Some of the partisan heat surrounding the program cooled,aided perhaps by nASA’s 

changing the name of mtpe in 1998 to the more innocuous “earth Sciences.”the 

aim was to emphasize it as a policy-relevant, not policy-driven, science program—a 

subtle shift. Gore did not help nASA’s effort to convey a neutral-science approach, 

however, when he proposed a new environmental satellite, called triana, largely 

as an educational/inspirational tool. detractors called it “Goresat” and congress 

postponed its introduction, thereby taking some of the political heat off nASA.26 

meanwhile, positive results for the environment did flow from nASA 

precursor (i.e., pre-eoS) missions. the Agency’s work in ozone was continuing 

to bear fruit.the uArS satellite helped nASA monitor ozone depletion and thus 

global compliance with the montreal protocol. Although it would take years for 

the ozone depletion problem to be fully alleviated, there was evidence that the 

depletion situation was beginning to improve. 

other important results in precursor missions lay with el niño.Working with 

France,nASA developed a specialized satellite,called topex-poseidon,for measuring 

sea-surface temperatures. in march 1997,topex-poseidon detected a significant rise 

in sea level that spread across the pacific toward the South American coast. in April, 

it found a rise in sea-level temperatures off the coast of ecuador and peru and 

monitored its spread north and south.this early discovery of a developing el niño 

indicated that space technology, linked with other technologies of communication, 

could provide early warnings for natural disasters associated with the el niño 

phenomenon.27 Similarly, in 1998, nASA used the tropical rainfall measuring 

mission (trmm) satellite to model more precisely the formation of hurricanes and 

other storms off the coast of Florida.topex-poseidon and trmm again pointed up 

the practical value of environmental satellites. nASA’s work in these “near-term” 

disasters was generally applauded. it still ran into controversy when it came to global 

warming, however.this was because it could not avoid what was happening in its 

political setting, where the controversy over the issue intensified. 

26. office of the vice president,“vice president Gore challenges nASA to Build a new Satellite to 

provide live images of earth from outer Space,”the White house,press release (13 march 1998); 

“Scripps institution, GSFc, picked to put Goresat at l-1 point,” Aerospace Daily (29 october 1998), 

article 117803. the satellite was eventually terminated. See Andrew lawler, “nASA terminates 

Gore’s eye on earth,” Science (6 January 2006), p. 26. 

27. madeline nash, El Nino (new york:Warner Books, 2002), pp. 91, 114. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 325 

in late 1997,vice president Gore defied congressional sentiment when he 

went to Kyoto, Japan, and agreed to a protocol with other nations to cut back 

greenhouse gas emissions by a specific amount over a designated span of time. 

clinton said he agreed with Gore but that he would not submit the Kyoto protocol 

to the Senate for confirmation. he would instead emphasize voluntary measures to 

reduce emissions to Kyoto standards.the political consensus for binding emissions 

reduction and thus the regulation of the energy and automobile industries was not 

present, in clinton’s view.the political debate over Kyoto spilled over to make the 

setting for research on climate change more conflictual. 28 

in 1999, nASA launched the first of its climate-related eoS satellites,terra. 

this satellite emphasized land masses but also had sensors relevant to other aspects of 

the physical environment.At $1.3 billion,terra was intermediate in scale.Although 

far from the original concept, it was bigger than the faster, better, cheaper model 

Goldin had initially promoted. the remaining two satellites in the three-satellite 

series were scheduled to go up in the first term of clinton’s successor. 

Environment at NASA Under George W. Bush 

When George W. Bush became president in January 2001, the major policy 

question for the new administration involving nASA and the environment was: 

What would be nASA’s role in environmental research after eoS? the answer has 

come slowly, tortuously, and is still emerging. 

in march, Bush withdrew the united States from agreements under Kyoto. 

the negative reaction to that decision in the united States and europe caused 

him to subsequently announce he would support research on climate change and 

take policy action if it proved necessary. the uSGcrp was maintained under 

a new label, climate change research initiative, with the assistant secretary of 

commerce in charge of the interagency effort. For a year, nASA’s earth Science 

program was essentially on hold while the administration determined what it would 

do. meanwhile, at the beginning of January 2002, Sean o’Keefe came aboard as 

new nASA Administrator. o’Keefe’s priority was the iSS cost overrun, not earth 

Sciences, but he provided support for eoS to complete what had begun under 

Goldin.the first eoS satellite was performing well, and the second,Aqua (costing 

$1 billion), was launched may 4. As its name implied, Aqua’s mission was to study 

the global water cycle, including precipitation and evaporation.29 o’Keefe also 

symbolized nASA’s environmental concern by including in its mission statement 

the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet.” 

28. lamont hempel,“climate policy on the installment plan,” in Environmental Policy, 6th ed., norman 

vig and michael Kraft, ed. (Washington, dc: cQ press, 2006), pp. 294–297. 

29. Brian Berger,“nASA Aqua mission to Study GlobalWater cycle,” Space News (29 April 2005),p.18. 
326 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

on 1 February 2003 the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated, killing all 

astronauts aboard. once again, momentum for nASA’s future, earth Sciences 

included,was interrupted.that there would be some kind of future for earth Sciences 

seemed clear. in the summer 2003, the State department held an international 

earth observations Summit. the united States pledged to provide leadership in 

climate change research through an international “system of systems” in which 

satellite capabilities of many nations would be coordinated and linked. Following 

the conference, nASA announced it would develop on an accelerated pace a new, 

post-eoS, climate change-oriented satellite called Glory.30 

on 14 January 2004, president Bush announced his vision for Space 

exploration (vSe) initiative,“to the moon,mars,and Beyond.”in line with the new 

priority, o’Keefe reorganized the Agency, creating an exploration Systems division 

and merging nASA’s separate earth Science and Space Science programs into a 

single organization, the Science mission directorate. proponents of earth Science 

viewed the reorganization as a downgrading in priority.Advocates of reorganization 

argued that the moving of earth and Space Science together promoted synergy and 

enhanced learning about planetary change in general from work on earth, mars, 

and other planets.they gave a comparative planetology perspective, one historically 

always present as part of nASA’s environmental mission but usually as a background 

element. now it was moved to the foreground to emphasize mutual learning from 

missions to and from earth. 

in July, nASA launched Aura, the third and final leg of eoS.Another billiondollar satellite, Aura would make comprehensive measurements of the atmosphere 

and take over for the aging uArS in monitoring ozone trends.31 the completion 

of eoS after so many years was a matter of relief for some earth Science observers, 

but frustrating for others.valuable though they would be, the eoS satellites were far 

short of the program creators’ vision: large dual platforms providing comprehensive 

and simultaneous air, land, and sea interactive images over a 15-year time frame. 

there were many gaps in knowledge to be filled. 

the more pressing problem continued to be:What next for earth Sciences? 

especially: What next in an era when moon-mars would increasingly shape all 

priorities for nASA? that is, the closer a program was to vSe, the more relevant it 

could be seen to be to nASA’s future.the further away, the less relevant.there was 

a great deal of concern among scientists and administrators involved with nASA’s 

environmental mission that, when push came to shove, they would suffer. indeed, 

budget projections seemed to indicate that fact, as did a decision to cancel the 

Glory climate satellite. moreover, there were rumors that the administration was 

considering moving much of nASA’s earth observation work to noAA. 

30. Brian Berger,“reversing course,” Space News (25 July 2005), p. 10. 

31. tariq malik,“last eoS Satellite to Study Air Quality at earth’s Surface,” Space News (14 June 2004),p.8. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 327 

the future remained murky when o’Keefe departed and michael Griffin 

came aboard as nASA’s leader in April 2005.Griffin reversed a number of o’Keefe’s 

decisions, including the Glory termination. earth Science had friends in congress, 

especially Sherwood Boehlert (r-ny), chair of the house Science committee.32 

however, Griffin had to deal with the reality of increased shuttle repair costs and a 

relatively static overall nASA budget. if vSe were to move forward, money would 

have to come from lower-priority programs, including earth Sciences.At the same 

time, the cross-pressured Griffin found himself dealing with a highly public dispute 

involving nASA’s outspoken James hansen.the nASA scientist complained to the 

media that administration appointees in nASA’s public affairs office were censoring 

his statements about global warming. Griffin declared that nASA scientists could 

comment freely about science, and even its implications, but they should make clear 

that they spoke for themselves, not nASA, when they crossed the line into policy. 

A nASA public affairs official who had allegedly censored hansen was fired when 

it was revealed he had lied about his educational credentials.33 

in 2006 Griffin presented a budget that delayed various post-eoS missions but 

reinstated Glory.34 eoS orbited and provided considerable information, but there 

was worry about whether there was enough money to analyze the information 

properly. there were also various older specialized satellites, including landsat, 

which needed replacement in some way. nASA was a junior partner in a noAAdepartment of defense operationally-oriented system called the national polar 

orbiting operational environmental Satellite System (npoeSS). For a while, the 

Bush administration seemed intent on linking nASA’s post-eoS climate science 

future to npoeSS, but when npoeSS ran into budget problems of its own, 

connecting nASA’s climate role to npoeSS lost a great deal of its rationale.35 

What nASA needed was an overarching strategy for its future in earth Science, 

one like the one it developed in the 1980s prior to the birth of mtpe and eoS.to 

help provide advice, the national research council undertook an earth Science 

decadal survey on priorities in the next 10 years.to be completed by november 

2006, the survey was intended to help Griffin determine what made sense for the 

earth Sciences program. Griffin, in turn, would require major decisions from the 

White house and congress to set nASA on a course fruitful both for science and 

climate policy. 

32. Brian Berger, “nASA’s exploration Focus Blamed for earth Science cuts,” Space News (2 may 

2005), p. 4. 

33. rick Weiss, “nASA Sets new rules on media,” The Washington Post, 31 march 2006, p. A10; 

Warren leary, “new nASA policy Backs Free discussion by Scientists,” The New York Times, 31 

march 2006, http://www.nytimes.com. 

34. Berger,“reversing course.” 

35. Jeffrey mervis, “climate Sensors dropped from uS Weather Satellite package,” Science (16 June 

2006), p. 1580. 
328 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Without question, the earth Science program was at a crossroad. nASA’s 

environmental role was not explicitly mentioned in the overarching nASA mission 

statement of 2006. the phrase o’Keefe had used in his mission statement—“to 

understand and protect our home planet”—was gone. the new Griffin mission 

statement read “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and 

aeronautics research.”36 Whether the omission was symbolic or substantive remained 

to be seen.the basic problem nASA Administrator Griffin has faced is that he has 

too many programs on nASA’s plate and not enough money for all. 

Conclusion 

how did nASA evolve an environmental mission? the answer is that it did so 

gradually and somewhat tortuously, with ups and downs along the way.What did 

it do with that mission? it did a great deal that was positive in a host of ways, but 

with special significance in regard to ozone depletion and the montreal protocol. 

What has this meant for society? it has meant benefits in knowledge with spillover 

into policy. What has the environmental mission meant for nASA? it has meant 

enmeshment in a political context that has helped it survive and grow at some 

points in history and made it extremely controversial at other times. 

taking the long view of history, nASA has had an enormous impact on 

environmental policy since its founding in 1958. the weather satellite and its 

successors, developed by nASA and transferred to operational use, have saved lives 

and money through early warnings of hurricanes and improved weather forecasting. 

the first pictures of earth from the Apollo program crystallized the vulnerability 

and beauty of earth and were used by environmentalists to mobilize support for 

the first earth day in 1970.As the environmental movement gathered momentum, 

nASA in the 1970s aligned itself with the new imperative and extended its weather 

satellite effort to land- and sea-oriented images.this activity took place as nASA’s 

planetary program stimulated a comparative planetology consciousness in which 

earth seemed increasingly unique as a home to life. the Gaia hypothesis, which 

emerged from comparative planetology, stressed thinking about earth as a living 

system of interacting and interdependent parts. 

in 1972, with landsat, nASA initiated a long series of earth monitoring 

satellites. in doing so, it became more and more, as nASA administrator Fletcher 

said,“an environmental agency.” Becoming “an environmental agency,” through the 

science it provided, immersed nASA in the controversies and political emotions 

surrounding the environmental question. Sometimes the political winds were 

favorable to nASA;at other times they were not so.in the 1980s nASA,armed with 

36. Andrew revkin,“nASA’s Goals delete mention of home planet,”The NewYorkTimes, 22 July 2006. 
NASA and the Environment: Science in a Political Context 329 

legislative authority gained in the 1970s, played a lead role within the government 

in responding to the ozone depletion threat. it was the ozone crisis that provided a 

proactive model for nASA as an environmental agency, one that could conduct and 

transfer policy-relevant science.Advocates of a larger global environmental mission 

sought to build on the ozone success to position nASA for an expanded role. 

After Challenger, in 1987 Sally ride listed mission to planet earth as first among 

new initiatives that could galvanize a shaken agency and make it more relevant to 

American society and the world’s needs. 

Such a mission seemed ripe indeed in the wake of the montreal protocol 

as the new concern about climate change rose on the nation’s agenda, propelled 

in part as nASA’s James hansen. president George h. W. Bush and congress in 

1990 provided authority and initial funding for mtpe and its centerpiece, eoS. 

however, in the 1990s, mtpe ran into a budgetary crunch and competition with 

other nASA programs—human spaceflight and space science—and was never 

funded as its founders expected. eoS was downsized and split up, subject not 

only to budget constraints but also pressures to conform to Goldin’s faster, better, 

cheaper doctrine.What finally was launched as eoS in 1999, 2002, and 2004 was 

a much circumscribed version of what its architects had planned in the late 1980s. 

the system could not realize the promise of a 15-year comprehensive data set 

from the simultaneous monitoring of land, sea, and atmosphere interaction.A new 

earth System Science got started but did not get as far as expected.the “predictive 

capability” remained to be developed for global change. 

With ozone depletion, nASA had legitimacy to lead and a crisis context in 

which there was science push and policy pull.With climate change,however,nASA 

had no special mandate to lead and the science push has come gradually in a societal 

context where the perception of crisis is lacking. rather than policy pull, there has 

been policy discord and even “push back.” 

A strategy for the post-eoS era has yet to be fully charted and adopted, much 

less implemented. Agreement on next steps has to be forged. it is easy today for 

advocates of global environmental satellites to see a glass half empty. however, 

a more positive, glass half-full view surely would say that it is remarkable how 

much a space agency has done in directing attention to earth. nASA is the space 

research and development arm of the federal government when it comes to global 

environment. in addition to eoS, there have been numerous specialized satellites 

that have monitored ice melting, el niño, storms, and others ills. ozone provides 

a genuine success story in science and public policy.there was science-push and 

policy-pull. climate change is not a success story yet. if one were giving grades, 

nASA would get an “A” for ozone depletion and “incomplete” for global climate 

change. having said that, the problem of climate change is more complex than 

ozone for many reasons, and there has been consensus-building progress, at least on 

the science side.there is a limit to what nASA (and science generally) can do in 

eliciting policy response, however. 
330 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the dilemma nASA now faces in designing a post-eoS future is shared with 

other agencies associated with the global change initiative of the early 1990s.this 

interagency initiative never was fully implemented, coordinated, or led.there is a 

need to re-energize the vision many of the early advocates of eoS and uSGcrp 

had—a strong earth system science and a capacity to predict global change (especially 

climate change)—that can be put to policy use. Achieving such a vision requires a 

planetary perspective and that is nASA’s distinctive environmental competence.it is 

based on nASA’s mission to the home planet and the comparative approach derived 

from its work beyond earth. that perspective needs renewal and advocacy for a 

twenty-first century setting.that setting almost surely will be influenced, perhaps 

dramatically, by events involving climate change. remaking nASA’s environmental 

mission, with resources to match, and connecting that role to other agencies and 

nations is a challenge. it is less a problem in science and technology, however, and 

much more a challenge of political will. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 331

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact

chApter 17 

NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System:


A Sampling of Its Military, Civil, and 


Commercial Impact


rick W. Sturdevant 

Historical Background 

the nAvStAr1 Global positioning System (GpS), the first satellite navigation 

system that enabled users to determine precisely their location in three 

dimensions and time within billionths of a second, grew from a concept into a fully 

operational system in slightly more than two decades.this is not to suggest,however, 

that selling the idea was easy.As early as 1969–1970,Aerospace corporation president 

and GpS pioneer ivan Getting had suggested to lee duBridge, president richard 

nixon’s science advisor, that a presidential commission be created to review how 

satellite navigation ought to proceed, because there were so many potential users. 

After thinking about it for several weeks, duBridge concluded that execution of 

Getting’s proposal would be too difficult. he told Getting, “there are too many 

people, too many bureaucracies, too much politics, and too many agencies involved. 

Why don’t you just have the Air Force develop it the way we always did?”2 

By 1972,both the u.S.Air Force (uSAF) and the u.S.navy had been studying 

for several years the possibility of improved satellite-based radio navigation.three 

earlier space-based navigation systems or programs contributed to GpS:the Johns 

hopkins university Applied physics laboratory (Apl) transit, otherwise known as 

the naval navigation Satellite System; the naval research laboratory’s timation 

satellite program, led by roger easton; and uSAF project 621B. colonel Bradford 

1. over time, some people identified “nAvStAr” as an acronym derived from either “navigation 

Signal timing and ranging” or “navigation Satellite timing and ranging.”Apparently,trW had 

once advocated a navigational system for which nAvStAr was an acronym (nAvigation System 

timing And ranging). Bradford W. parkinson,“GpS eyewitness:the early years,” GPS World 5 (9 

September 1994): pp. 32–45, explained that his team at the Joint program office never considered 

“nAvStAr” an acronym but “simply a nice-sounding name.” 

2. Jacob neufeld, ed., Research and Development in the United States Air Force (Washington, dc: center 

for Air Force history, 1993), pp. 91–92. 
332 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

parkinson, uSAF director of the newly formed multi-service Joint program office 

(Jpo) for GpS,assembled about a dozen members of the Jpo over labor day weekend 

in 1973 and directed them to synthesize the design for a new satellite navigation 

system by drawing the best ideas and technology from everything then available.3 

From that point, GpS developed at a reasonably steady pace. By June 1974, 

the Jpo had selected rockwell international as the satellite contractor. the Jpo 

oversaw deployment of the initial control segment at the Army’s yuma proving 

Ground in Arizona, followed by the launch of the first operational prototype in 

February 1978. eleven years later, in February 1989, the uSAF launched the first 

fully operational Block 2 version.Although a complete constellation of 24 Block 2 

satellites existed in december 1993, GpS did not officially achieve full operational 

status until April 1995.it had cost $10–$12 billion to field the system,and the uSAF 

estimated the cost annually of sustaining minimal GpS services at $400 million.4 

the main reasons for GpS development were the need to deliver weapons 

precisely on target and to reverse the proliferation of navigation systems in the u.S. 

military.From the beginning,however,the department of defense (dod) recognized 

the usefulness of GpS to the worldwide civilian community.to withhold full accuracy 

from enemies but provide GpS service to civilian users,the uSAF designed the system 

with a protective feature called “selective availability” (SA) that, when used, gave the 

u.S. military and its allies significantly more precise satellite signals than what other 

users received. After Korean Airline Flight 007 went astray in September 1983 and 

Soviet fighters shot it down, president ronald reagan reassured the world that the 

coarser signal would remain continually and universally available at no cost once 

GpS became fully operational. As GpS approached that status in the early 1990s, 

civilian and commercial users,who already had 10 times as many GpS receivers as the 

military, mounted an increasingly vocal campaign for unrestricted access to the more 

precise satellite signals. many GpS equipment manufacturers, anticipating a multitude 

of applications, had begun forming strategic alliances with outside companies in such 

fields as communications, Geographic information Systems (GiS), computing, and 

transportation. Finally, in may 2000, president William clinton acknowledged the 

global utility of GpS and directed immediate discontinuation of SA, thereby giving 

millions of nonmilitary users access to the more precise GpS signals.5 

3. Bradford W. parkinson, “introduction and heritage of nAvStAr, the Global positioning System” in 

Global Positioning System:Theory and Applications,Volume I,BradfordW.parkinson and James J.Spiker,Jr.,ed. 

(Washington, dc: American institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996), pp. 3–28; ivan A. Getting, 

All in a Lifetime: Science in the Defense of Democracy (newyork:vantage press, 1989), pp. 574–599; richard 

easton, “Who invented the Global positioning System?” The Space Review (22 may 2006), http://www. 

thespacereview.com/article/626/1 (accessed 12 September 2006). 

4. michael russell rip and James m. hasik, The Precision Revolution: GPS and the Future of Aerial 

Warfare (Annapolis, md: naval institute press, 2002), pp. 68–79. 

5. parkinson, “GpS eyewitness,” pp. 42–44; rip and hasik, The Precision Revolution, pp. 9–10 and 429–441; 

Anthony r.Foster,“GpS Strategic Alliances,part i:Settingthem up,” GPSWorld 5 (5 may 1994):pp.34–42; 

national research council,The Global Positioning System—A Shared NationalAsset:Recommendations forTechnical 

Improvements and Enhancements (Washington,dc:nationalAcademies press,1995),pp.1–12. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 333 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

With increasing demand for accuracy beyond what GpS alone yielded, users 

found ways to augment it. For small areas, those included pseudolites (ground-based 

transmitters that could be configured to emit GpS-like signals) and differential GpS 

(dGpS), which required a high-quality GpS “reference receiver” at a known, surveyed 

location. Wide Area dGpS (WAdGpS), involving reference receivers at multiple 

monitor stations and a master-control hub, would achieve similar results over a broader 

region.An example of WAdGpS was the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), 

which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) believed would eventually provide 

the integrity, reliability, time availability, and accuracy to permit pilots and air traffic 

controllers to rely confidently and safely on GpS as their primary navigation system.6By 

2006,continuously operating reference stations (corS),coordinated across the united 

States by the national Geodetic Survey, enhanced GpS services to millions of users.7 

meanwhile, other countries and geographic regions had begun developing their 

own GpS augmentation systems: the european Geostationary navigation overlay 

System (eGnoS);india’s GpS and GeostationaryAugmentation network (GAGAn); 

Australia’s Ground-based regionalAugmentation System (GrAS);and Japan’s multitransport Satellite Augmentation System (mSAS). in addition, russia operated its 

own Global navigation Satellite System (GlonASS); china experimented with its 

Beidou navigation satellites; and europe pressed hard toward launching the Galileo 

satellite navigation system.Whether all those capabilities could be melded into a fully 

integrated Global navigation Satellite System (GnSS) remained a question without 

an immediate answer, but the military, civil, and commercial utility of GpS was 

unquestionable. Since a full accounting of the GpS’s societal impact would require 

hundreds of pages, what follows is merely suggestive. 8 

6. Bradford W. parkinson and James J. Spilker, Jr., eds., Global Positioning System:Theory and Applications, 

Volume II (Washington, dc: American institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 1996), pp. 3–142; 

robert o. deBolt et al., A Technical Report to the Secretary of Transportation on a National Approach to 

Augmented GPS Services (u.S.department of commerce,ntiA Special publication 94-30,december 

1994), http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/pubs/gps/gpsaug/auggps.doc (accessed 13 September 2006). 

7. James Stowell, “GpS reference Stations: 24/7, high Accuracy, differential data in your own 

Backyard,” ce news (may 2002), http://www.leica-geosystems.com/us/articles/2002/CE%20News_ 

May%202002_GPS%20Reference%20Stations.pdf (accessed 12 September 2006); “continuously 

operating reference Stations,” national Geodetic Survey—corS, http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/ 

CORS/ (accessed 12 September 2006). 

8. rosalind lewis et al., Building a Multinational Global Navigation Satellite System:An Initial Look (Santa 

monica, cA: rAnd corporation, 2005);“new u.S. policy for positioning,timing and navigation 

(pnt) Services,” embassy of the united States, Spain (12 January 2005), http://barcelona.usconsulate. 

gov/emba/pntpolicyb.html (accessed 12 September 2006);Brian evans,“Setting a course:Beyond GpS,” 

Aviation today (1 may 2006), http://www.aviationtoday.com/cgi/av/show_mag.cgi?pub=av&mon=0506& 

file=beyondgps.htm (accessed 12 September 2006). 
334 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Military Applications 

the first weapon in the u.S. arsenal to become operational using GpS 

navigation was the conventional Air-launched cruise missile (cAlcm) or 

AGm-86c. its development began in June 1986 when Boeing company received 

a 12-month contract for rapid conversion of existing Alcms, the inaccuracy of 

which had resulted in accidentally bombing the French embassy during operation 

eldorado canyon,a night attack against libya two months earlier.A loosely coupled 

integration of GpS capabilities with the missile’s existing inertial navigation system 

(inS) permitted Boeing to deliver the first cAlcms to the u.S.Air Force in June 

1987. during the initial hours of the air campaign for operation desert Storm 

in January 1991, seven B-52G bombers flying from Barksdale Air Force Base, 

louisiana, delivered a total of 35 cAlcms against eight high-value targets in iraq 

and achieved 85 percent to 91 percent success, including several exact hits.9 

in the 1990s, the u.S. military fielded a host of air-dropped munitions that used 

GpS to one degree or another.Foremost among them,the Joint directAttack munition 

(JdAm) turned fundamentally “dumb” bombs into high-precision ordnance capable of 

destroyingmultipletargetsinasinglesortieanytimeofdayornight,inanykindofweather, 

no matter how adverse.during operationAllied Force,the nAto air campaign against 

Serbia in 1999, u.S. B-2 Spirit bombers dropped more than 500 relatively inexpensive 

JdAms with such great success that u.S. military strategists foresaw the possibility of 

unguided bombs completely disappearing from the arsenal.other GpS-aided u.S.aerial 

weapons that debuted in the 1990s included the AGm-154 Joint Stand-off Weapon 

(JSoW), the AGm-130 air-to-surface missile, the BGm-109 tomahawk cruise missile, 

and the SlAm-er (Stand-off land Attack missile—enhanced response).10 

A suite of technologies known as Advanced Spinning-vehicle navigation 

(ASvn) permitted GpS/inS guidance in smaller and smaller munitions. By 2001, 

the u.S. Army planned to use it in artillery shells; the u.S. navy had similar plans 

for rocket-assisted projectiles fired from its deck guns.the Army’s howitzer-fired, 

155-mm Xm982 excalibur round underwent a demonstration at yuma proving 

Ground,Arizona, on 15 September 2005 in which its accuracy was better than 33 

ft (10 m) at a distance of 9 mi (15 km). excalibur tests continued into February 

2007, with operational fielding scheduled for later that year.A navy contract with 

raytheon missile Systems, primary designer of the Army’s excalibur, called for 

development of the 5-in (13-cm) mK-171 extended-range Guided munition 

(erGm).Although achieving satisfactory erGm performance proved harder than 

9. John tirpak,“the Secret Squirrels,” Air Force Magazine 77, no. 4 (April 1994), http://www.afa.org/ 

magazine/perspectives/desert_storm/0494squirrels.asp (accessed 5 September 2006); John t. nielson, 

“the untold Story of the cAlcm:the Secret GpS Weapon used in the Gulf War,” GPS World 6, 

no. 1 (January 1995): pp. 26–32. 

10. rip and hasik, The Precision Revolution, pp. 233–264. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 335 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

for excalibur and delayed its operational deployment,flight demonstrations at White 

Sands missile range, new mexico, on 16 February 2005 proved the erGm could 

achieve great accuracy at a distance of more than 40 nautical miles. in both cases, 

these new projectiles offered greater lethality and lower collateral damage, with 

increased range and a considerably reduced logistical burden for deployed forces.11 

in early 2003,the public became aware of GpS guidance for precision airdrops. 

the u.S. Army operational test command employed GpS in two different 

instrument packages—one to verify the optimal parachute rigging for heavy cargo 

pallets, and the other to evaluate new troop-parachute designs.Within months, the 

u.S. military operationally tested onyx, an autonomously guided parachute system 

developed by Atair Aerospace, for delivering payloads ranging from 75 to 2,200 lbs 

(34 to 998 kg) within 246 ft (75 m) circular error probable from altitudes up the 

35,000 ft (10,668 m) in darkness and other extreme conditions. on 9 August 2004, 

u.S. marines near camp Korean village, iraq, witnessed the first operational use of 

a GpS-assisted Sherpa parafoil cargo delivery system, a key component of the Joint 

precision Airdrop System (JpAdS) technology demonstration program, in a combat 

zone.two years later,the first joint Air Force-Army operational drop using JpAdS in 

Southwest Asia supplied ammunition and water to troops in Afghanistan.meanwhile, 

design and testing of GpS-equipped navigation units for paratroopers proceeded. in 

2005,theFrenchmilitaryAgency(dGA)andArmySpecialForcesinSingaporewereusing 

more than 200 GpS-assisted operational paratroopers navigation System (opAnAS) 

11. James h.doty,“revolution in GpS:Advanced Spinning-vehicle navigation,” GPSWorld (September 

2004), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=120802 (accessed 14 August 

2006); lawrence l.Wells, “GpS Guidance for projectiles,” GPS World (october 2001), http://www. 

gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=1806 (accessed 14 August 2006);raymond Sicignano, 

“picatinny Support the Warfighter: new picatinny-developed Smart Artillery munition could 

reach troops by march,” The Voice 18, no. 18 (7 october 2005), http://w4.pica.army.mil/Voice2005/ 

051007/051007%20Smart%20artillery.htm (accessed 14 August 2006); raytheon news release, 

“Successful Flight test of GpS-guided Artillery projectile puts raytheon-Bofors excalibur closer 

to Fielding,” 26 September 2005, http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=6839 

34&TICK=RTN7&STORY=/www/story/09-26-2005/0004131807&EDATE=Sep+26,+2005 

(accessed 14 August 2006); Staff Writers,“testing of GpS-Guided projectile puts raytheon-BAe 

excalibur closer to Fielding,” GPS Daily (21 August 2006), http://www.gpsdaily.com/reports/Testing_ 

Of_GPS_Guided_Projectile_Puts_Raytheon_BAE_Excalibur_Closer_To_Fielding_999.html (accessed 

21 August 2006); raytheon news release, “raytheon’s excalibur Successfully completes Final 

testing, clearing the path for early Fielding,” http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?A 

CCT=910473&TICK=RTNB12&STORY=/www/story/03-08-2007/0004542432&EDATE=M 

ar+8,+200 (accessed 31 July 2007); raytheon news release, “raytheon’s erGm Guides into 

Success,” 17 February 2005, http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=683934&TI 

CK=RTN7&STORY=/www/story/02-17-2005/0003027460&EDATE=Feb+17,+2005 (accessed 

14 August 2006); dan coskren, tim easterly, and robert polutchko, “more Bang, less Buck: 

low-cost GpS/inS Guidance for navy munitions launches,” GpS World (September 2005), 

http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=180139 (accessed 14 August 2006); 

John pike, “eX-171 erGm extended-range Guided munition,” http://www.globalsecurity.org/ 

military/systems/munitions/ergm.htm (accessed 14 August 2006); rupert pengelley,“Guided Artillery 

projectiles turn the corner,” Jane’s international defence review 39 (February 2006): pp. 57–61. 
336 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Onyx autonomously guided parachute system 

using GPS navigation. 

units produced by SSK industries, 

and north Atlantic treaty 

organization (nAto) countries 

were testing opAnAS for highaltitude, high-opening (hAho) 

jumps. these new capabilities 

ensured more accurate landings for 

both cargo and troops in all kinds 

of conditions and, by permitting 

releases from altitudes above 

25,000 ft (7,620 m), protected 

aircraft and personnel from hostile 

forces armed with inexpensive 

surface-to-air missiles.12 

After 2000, a rapidly 

expanding family of autonomous or remotely controlled robotic military 

systems relied on GpS navigation to perform a wide variety of tasks on land, at 

sea, underwater, and in the air or outer space. unpiloted aerial vehicles (uAvs) 

equipped with GpS, which had been under development since the 1980s, flew 

reconnaissance and surveillance missions over Bosnia and Kosovo during the 

late 1990s and, thereafter, proliferated among military organizations worldwide. 

in 2001–2002, predator drones carrying AGm-114 hellfire missiles attacked 

taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Afghanistan.13 on 25 January 2002, a GpS-Aided 

inertial navigation System (GAinS) on the third stage of an Sm-3 interceptor 

launched from a u.S. navy Aegis cruiser helped successfully demonstrate the exo12. Joseph Strus et al., “15 tons. 1500 Feet. 4 Gs.—Airdrop Behavior of parachuted cargo pallets,” GPS 

World (April 2003), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=53305 (accessed 17 

August 2006); nanker phelge,“take the plunge—navigating from 35,000 Feet,” GPS World (August 

2003), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=65593 (accessed 17 August 2006); Bill 

lisbon, “GpS-Guided paradrop,” Special Operations Technology 2, no. 6 (2004): pp. 29–31;tom vanden 

Brook,“‘Smart’Airdrops may Save lives of u.S.troops,” USAToday, 8 January 2007; Joseph Strus et al., 

“Stand up.hook up.Go!—instrumenting paratroopers,”GPSWorld (April 2003),http://www.gpsworld. 

com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=53449 (accessed 17 August 2006); Jason i.thompson,“A three 

dimensional helmet mounted primary Flight reference for paratroopers,” master’s thesis, Air Force 

institute oftechnology,march 2005),pp.1–8. 

13. defenseAirborne reconnaissance office,“uAvAnnual report Fy 1997,”(6 november 1997),http://www. 

fas.org/irp/agency/daro/uav97/toc.html (accessed 17 August 2006); John pike,“rQ-1 predator mAe uAv,” 6 

november 2002,http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/predator.htm (accessed 17August 2006);Greg loegering, 

“the Global hawk Advantage,” GeoIntelligence Magazine (november 2004), http://www.geointelmag.com/ 

geointelligence/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=134277 (accessed 17August 2006). 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 337 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

atmospheric interception of an incoming target missile.14 during operation iraqi 

Freedom in 2003, the u.S. navy ordered the first wartime deployment of the 

GpS-equipped, remote environmental monitoring units (remuS) autonomous 

underwater vehicle (Auv) to locate suspected mines in the port of umm Qasr.15 

By november 2004, the dod had contracted with Applied perception, inc. (Api) 

to build two interrelated, GpS-enabled robotic prototypes—a 3,500-lb (1,588-kg) 

robotic evacuation vehicle (rev) and a 600-lb (272-kg) robotic extraction 

vehicle (reX)—for the safe recovery and transport of wounded soldiers from the 

battlefield to a nearby field hospital. clearly, such vehicles could have numerous 

other military and nonmilitary applications ranging from logistical supply, ordnance 

disposal, surveillance, and assault to fire fighting, crowd control, soil sampling, pest 

abatement, and exploration of hazardous environments.16 

perhaps the most pervasive u.S. military application of GpS by 2006 involved 

the tracking and coordination of various battle elements in real time using the 

GpS-enabled Force XXi Battle command, Brigade-and-Below (FBcB2) satellitebased tracking system and its Blue Force tracking (BFt) variant.American soldiers 

had suffered roughly a quarter-million casualties in the twentieth century due to 

so-called friendly fire, primarily because of the difficulty during intense conflict 

of discriminating quickly between friend and foe. As early as springtime of 1987, 

engineers and scouts from the u.S. Army’s 4th infantry division used two 17.5­

lb (8-kg) GpS manpacks during exercises in the pinõn canyon training area of 

southern colorado to maneuver through “enemy” lines in snow, rain, fog, and 

darkness to accomplish their objective. Four years later in operation desert Storm, 

with only 16 satellites in the constellation, GpS aided positioning and maneuvering 

of large troop formations, plus precision bombing, artillery fire support, and special 

operations in relatively featureless desert terrain. coalition forces relying primarily 

on more than 12,000 personal receivers, each costing about $3,500, prevented 

countless casualties by reducing the so-called fog of battle.17 

14. James l. Anders et al.,“From view to Kill—integrated System Guides Ballistic missile intercept,” 

GPS World (may 2003), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=57971 (accessed 

17 August 2006). 

15. Ken Jordan, “remuS Auv plays Key role in iraq War,” underWater magazine (July/August 2003), 

http://www.diveweb.com/rovs/features/034.01.htm (accessed 17August 2006);Kevin mccarthy,“remuS— 

A role model for Auvtechnologytransfer,” International Ocean Systems 7, no. 6 (november/december 

2003), http://www.hydroidinc.com/pdfs/Hydroid_REMUS.pdf (accessed 17 August 2006); marty Whitford, 

“in the Swim—GpS Guides Autonomous underwater vehicles,” GPS World (April 2005), http:// 

www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=154866 (accessed 17 August 2006). 

16. martyWhitford,“robotic rescue—no one Gets left Behind,” GPSWorld (november 2004), http:// 

www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=131750 (accessed 17 August 2006); paul J. lewis et 

al.,“Applications Suitable for unmanned and Autonomous missions utilizing thetactical Amphibious 

Ground Support (tAGS) platform,” http://www.autonomoussolutions.com/Press/SPIE%20TAGS.html 

(accessed 17 August 2006). 

17. “u.S.Army trains on new System—exercise in piñon canyon teaches usefulness of GpS,” Space 

Trace (29 may 1987): p. 2. 
338 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

A decade after desert Storm,u.S.forces conducting war games in california 

and Florida located and tracked troops, aircraft, and assorted equipment in 

real time using an inexpensive range instrumentation System (iriS). that 

experimentation demonstrated that low-cost,commercial off-the-shelf hardware 

could be used to coordinate ground and air activities, thereby enhancing the 

safety of friendly forces. By 2005, u.S. and allied forces in Kosovo, Afghanistan, 

and iraq relied on more than 8,000 GpS-enabled FBcB2 units and another 

2,000 FBcB2-BFt units to track their own positions, neighboring friendly 

forces, and spotted enemy forces along with the location of bridges, mine fields, 

and other potentially dangerous geo-points. in 2006, Globecomm Systems won 

a $7.8 million contract to provide nAto forces with a similar BFt capability. 

the enhanced situational awareness provided by FBcB2 and its BFt variant also 

allowed battlefield commanders to plan and coordinate maneuvers—offensive 

and defensive—with unprecedented precision. 18 

Navigation 

the most rapidly expanding area of GpS use for civil, commercial, and 

personal purposes was probably location-based services (lBS)—positioning and 

navigation. land-based users include automobile drivers, railroads, fleet managers of 

trucks, delivery vehicles, and public transportation; emergency responders such as 

fire,ambulance,and police;and recreational activities such as hiking,hunting,skiing, 

biking, and golfing. According to Alan A.varghese from ABi research in oyster 

Bay, new york, shipments of recreational GpS devices alone rose from 3.2 million 

in 2002 to 5 million in 2003, with a predicted annual growth of 31 percent until 

2009. Sea-based applications ranged from recreational sailing, fishing, and managing 

shipping fleets, to assisted steering, risk assessment, and hazard warning. pilots of 

all varieties—airplane, helicopter, hot-air balloon—relied increasingly on GpS for 

monitoring their flight path, for collision avoidance, and for landing. Search-andrescue personnel on land,at sea,and in the air all came to view GpS as indispensable. 

ultimately, scientists and engineers experimented with using GpS for launch and 

on-orbit operation of spacecraft.19 

18. James madeiros, “new tracking System Keeps eye on troops,” Air Force Link (25 october 2001), 

http://www.af.mil/news/Oct2001/n20011025 1525.shtml (accessed 26 october 2001);martyWhitford, 

“Friend or Foe?—FBcB2 enhances Battle planning, reduces ‘Friendly Fire’” GPSWorld (February 

2005), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=146087 (accessed 17 August 2006); 

tony Skinner,“nAto orders GpS-Based Blue Forcetracking System,” Jane’s DefenceWeekly 43, no. 

33 (16 August 2006): p. 31. 

19. Joe mehaffey, “recreational and car navigator GpS Sales and Sales projections” (15 may 2005), 

http://gpsinformation.us/joe/gpssalesprojections.html (accessed 30 August 2006); “GpS Applications” 

(20 may 2003), mSu Global positioning System (GpS) laboratory, http://www.montana.edu/places/ 

gps/ (accessed 21 August 2006); martin J. unwin,“experience with the use of GpS in a low earth 

orbit,” Satellite Communications 13, no. 1 (1995): pp. 25–34. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 339 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

When GpS receiver technology and cellular phones started to become more 

affordable during the mid-1990s, industry analysts and entrepreneurs perceived lBS 

as an emerging multibillion-dollar market. By 2002, however, only two automotive 

companies—General motors (onStar) and mercedes (teleAid)—offered consumers 

telematic lBS; such factors as cost, technological drawbacks of early-generation 

systems, and privacy concerns had led to slower than expected market growth. 

nonetheless, an April 2002 nationwide survey of 20,000 u.S. households revealed 

strong consumer interest in using GpS for security-related purposes, especially for 

stolen vehicle tracking, with more moderate interest in services such as real-time 

traffic alerts, navigation assistance, and monitoring family vehicles. By 2006, north 

American sales of GpS-equipped navigation systems built into many different makes 

of automobiles, in portable devices, and in cell phones totaled 4.5 million units, 

with an increase of nearly 50 percent anticipated for 2007. demand for up-to-date 

digital maps, derived in large part using GpS, of 7.3 million miles of north American 

highways caused the revenues ofteleAtlas and navteq corporation,the two principal 

competitors, to grow by 57 percent and 26 percent, respectively, in 2005. meanwhile, 

after a decade of work,developers were ready to begin marketing in the united States 

and canada an in-vehicle navigation system (ivnS) that promised to save private 

motorists billions (in terms of gallons,hours,and dollars) by integrating real-time data 

on traffic incidents, construction, and traffic flow to suggest alternate routes.20 

use of GpS-aided technology for management of vehicle fleets has saved 

governments and businesses hundreds of millions of dollars by enabling more efficient 

planning of routes,monitoring misuse by employees,or locating stolen vehicles. 21 the 

proliferation of organizations and conferences promoting development of automatic 

vehicle location (Avl) systems and intelligent vehicle/highway systems (ivhS) began 

in the late 1980s and fostered a veritable parade of specific projects in the early 

1990s. By 1993, cities including denver, colorado, and dallas, texas, had begun 

installing GpS-based Avl systems in their buses and other city vehicles to keep 

riders informed of projected arrival times, to assist mobility-impaired riders, and to 

expedite response time in emergency situations.22 meanwhile, netherlands-based 

20. clement driscoll, “What do consumers really think?” GpS World (1 July 2002), http://www. 

gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=25975 accessed 30 August 2006); rafe 

needleman, “navigation pdAs look for their market,” Business 2.0 (19 June 2003), http://www. 

business2.com/subscribers/articles/web/0,1653,50392,00.html?cnn=yes (accessed 24 october 2003);“the 

new navigation,” The Gazette (colorado Springs, co), 11 June 2006; Business 2.0 Staff,“nowhere 

to hide: GpS is Spreading,” Business 2.0 (march 2002), http://www.business2.com/subscribers/articles/ 

mag/0,1640,37777,00.html?cnn=yes (accessed 24 october 2003); marty Whitford, “unstuck in 

traffic,” GPS World (1 June 2005), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup. 

jsp?id=165057 (accessed 30 August 2006). 

21. W. eric martin,“mobilizing the Fleet,” Mobile Government (may 2003): pp. 6–9. 

22. Glen Gibbons et al., “Automatic vehicle location: GpS meets ivhS,” GPS World 4, no. 4 (April 

1993): pp. 22–26; paul ledwitz, “dArt Avl hits transit Bull’s-eye with GpS,” GPS World 4, 

no. 4 (April 1993): pp. 29–34; Steve Blacksher and tom Foley, “Boulder hops Aboard GpS 

tracking,” GPS World (1 January 2002), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup. 

jsp?id=7782 (accessed 5 September 2006). 
340 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Büchner transport, which owned 50 trucks and specialized in delivery of house 

plants, fruits, and vegetables under controlled temperatures throughout europe, had 

experimented with a GpS-assisted Avl system in two of its trucks from december 

1991 to June 1992 and decided, despite the high price of the hardware, to begin 

equipping its entire fleet over the next five years.23 during 1988–2004, San diegobased Qualcomm, the largest Avl supplier worldwide, installed its positionreporting system on more than 500,000 commercial vehicles belonging to more 

than 1,500 trucking firms.By autumn of 2004,the defense transportation tracking 

System used GpS-derived location reports to monitor annually more than 47,000 

arms, ammunition, and explosives shipments by commercial motor carriers in the 

continental united States.24 

emergency responders found GpS capabilities invaluable. in January–may 

1992, Amoco tested a GpS-aided response system in its large crossfield natural 

gas field north of calgary,Alberta, and concluded that it offered noteworthy cost 

and safety improvements over earlier systems by “providing nearly immediate 

identification of an alarm site and the nearest field personnel, as well as detailed 

maps that show the best route to the scene of an alarm.”25 the San Francisco Bay 

Area’s Freeway Service patrol (FSp), a special team of approximately 40 towtruck drivers who patrolled the most congested freeways during peak commute 

hours, began using a GpS-supported Avl system in August 1993 to assist stranded 

motorists. on average, FSp trucks arrived at the scene of a breakdown within 

seven minutes, almost six times faster than regular tow services.26 Also, in 1993, 

doug Baker, founder and president of laSalle Ambulance Service of Buffalo, 

new york, adopted a GpS-equipped tracking and dispatch system for his fleet of 

42 vehicles, two aero-medical helicopters, and one fixed-wing aircraft to ensure 

speedier response times and, consequently, save more lives.27 

recovery of stolen vehicles became much more likely with GpS. Founded in 

1998 by pakistani crime fighter and businessman Jameel yusuf,trakker pvt. limited 

used GpS technology to track and recover more than 1,000 stolen rental cars and 

private vehicles in Karachi by october 2003. By then, the trakker system had been 

installed in 12,000 pakistani vehicles and attracted roughly 500 new customers 

23. J. A. J. Beerens, “Fleet monitoring with GpS and Satellite communications,” GPS World 4, no. 4 

(April 1993): pp. 42–46. 

24. clement driscoll,“Finding the Fleet:vehicle location Systems and technologies,” GPSWorld 5, no. 4 

(April 1994): pp. 66–70; Glen Gibbons,“hAZmAt Keeps ontruckin’,” GpSWorld (1 october 2004), 

http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=126157 (accessed 31 August 2006). 

25. edward J. Krakiwsky and donald chalmers, “emergency response with GpS in oil and Gas 

Fields,” GPS World 4, no. 4 (April 1993): pp. 48–51. 

26. michelle morris,“high-tech White Knights on the Freeway,” GPS World 5, no. 4 (April 1994): pp. 

54–59. 

27. margaret Ferrentino, “code red: GpS and emergency medical response,” GPS World 5, no. 4 

(April 1994): pp. 28–38. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 341 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

per month, each paying up to $750 for installation and $17 monthly for service.28 

meanwhile, in January 2002 a thief stole a taxicab in colorado Springs, colorado, 

when the driver left the engine running while he went inside a 7-eleven. in the 

first incident of its kind locally, a yellow cab dispatcher used the vehicle’s on-board 

tracking system to update police on the car’s location, and they arrested the culprit 

a short while later.29 during less than a year with integrated GpS/cellular tracking 

systems, lieutenant tim Stewart of the north texas Auto theft task Force reported 

in 2004 that his agency had recovered more than $6 million worth of property, 

including more than 50 truck tractors and 75 trailers—many filled with stolen 

equipment or merchandise.30 

Among the recreational uses for GpS, golfing became prominent. in 1997, 

darryl Sharp’s Geodetic Services, inc., began using GpS technology for threedimensional mapping of premier golf courses in the united States and, by may 

2002, had mapped 55 u.S. courses. Sharp estimated he would have lost $5,000– 

$6,000 per job without GpS but, with advances in GpS equipment, he had tripled 

his production. under a five-year contract, videogame manufacturer eA SportS 

used Sharp’s data to make playing simulated golf on some of the country’s topranked courses stimulating and amazingly realistic for anyone with a personal 

computer or playStation. pGA tour later contracted with Geodetic Services 

to map courses for its new Shotlink scoring and statistics system that brought 

television or cyberspace fans closer to the game by reporting real-time information 

on every shot by every player in every tournament.31 

professional,amateur,and casual golfers all latched onto GpS-aided technology 

to improve their performance, and course managers enthusiastically supported 

the demand by purchasing GpS-equipped golf carts. in addition to recording exact 

yardage with each stroke and displaying actual yardage to the green, which aided 

club selection, personal GpS systems helped golfers maintain the pace of play. After 

courting by the electronics industry and a couple of years testing equipment such 

as the handheld Skycaddie, the united States Golf Association finally permitted 

“distance-measuring devices, including GpS-based systems and laser range finders” 

by local rule starting in 2006. As demand for GpS-equipped golf carts surged in 

early 2006, uplink corporation, one of the three largest suppliers of golf-related 

GpS equipment, signed up 26 new courses with its system after a single trade show, 

28. reuters, “Satellites help Slash Karachi car thefts, Kidnaps,” cnn.com/technology (24 october 

2003), http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/10/24/satellite.tracking.reut/index.html (accessed 24 

october 2003). 

29. Anslee Willett, “Global Satellite System tracks down Suspect in theft of taxicab,” The Gazette 

(colorado Springs, co), 18 January 2002. 

30. marty Whitford, “thief relief—GpS/cellular combo Acquires Abducted Assets,” GPS World (1 

october 2004), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=128322 (accessed 

30 August 2006). 

31. Krista Stevens,“GpS Fore the Golf course,”Point of Beginning (30 April 2002), http://www.pobonline. 

com/CDA/Archives/6c07817cac0f6010VgnVCM100000f932a8c0 (accessed 30 August 2006). 
342 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

thereby generating $7.4 million in sales.uplink technology allowed course managers 

to track every golf cart in their fleet, a financially important capability considering 

that golf-cart rentals yielded the largest source of revenue outside green fees at most 

courses. For example, a 2005 progress report from the mayor of South Bend, indiana, 

mentioned that golf-cart revenue from GpS was more than $70,000.32 

Agriculture 

use of GpS for precision farming (i.e., site-specific management) commenced 

in the early 1990s and rapidly took a variety of forms.these included planting or 

cultivating crops at night; locating weed, insect, and disease infestations; applying 

fertilizer or pesticides at a variable rate;preventing skips or overlaps when fertilizing; 

monitoring and mapping crop yield; and pinpointing crop damage due to hail or 

drought. John ruth, chief executive officer of Amana Farms in iowa, explained in a 

1992 interview,“With GpS, we’ll be able to determine crop yield by the square foot 

and not by the traditional bushels per acre ....this will dramatically change the way 

farmers plant, fertilize, apply weed killers and harvest crops.”33 to further improve 

efficiency and increase the profitability of their operations, farmers also used GpS 

for detailed base-mapping of physical features such as borders, fence lines, wells, 

buildings, landscape features, irrigation canals or pipelines, and wetlands.34 

montana State university (mSu) began research and planning in 1986 for a 

GpS-assisted navigation system that would enable agricultural producers to apply 

variable amounts of seed and fertilizer exactly where needed to maximize crop yield in 

the most cost-effective manner. in August 1990 mSu researchers used the first GpSguided agricultural fertilizer application system in a field trial near power, montana.35 

two years later, agronomist mitch Schefcik and electrical engineer William Bauer 

32. doug pike, “high tech takes a Big Step Forward,” Houston Chronicle, 18 october 2005, http://www. 

uplinkgolf.com/cms/website/mediacoverage/HoustonChron10_18_05.pdf (accessed 30 August 2006); mayor 

Stephen J. luecke, “South Bend, indiana—progress report, 2005,” http://www.southbendin.gov/doc/ 

Comm_ProgressReport2005.pdf (accessed 30 August 2006); roger Graves, “From the dailies—Golf 

cars drive up course revenues with new models,technology,” PGA Magazine (26 January 2006), 

http://www.pgamagazine.com/article.aspx$id=2750 (accessed 30 August 2006);tim Schooley,“tracking a 

new market—Global positioning Systems FindtheirWay into Golf carts,providing much more than 

distance readings,” Pittsburgh Business Times (12 June 2006), http://pittsburgh.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/ 

stories/2006/06/12/focus1.html (accessed 30August 2006);pat dailey,“GpS SystemWelcomeAddition,” 

Branson Daily News, 29 August 2006, http://www.bransondailynews.com/story_print.php?storyID=1540 

(accessed 30 August 2006); Skycaddie advertisement, Sky mall (early Spring 2006): p. 31; GolfpS 

personal GpS Golf SystemWeb site, http://www.golfps.com/index.htm (accessed 30 August 2006). 

33. markW.Brown,“GpS helps Farmers reap higher cropyields,” SpaceTrace (november 1992):p.4. 

34. “GpS Applications” (20 may 2003), mSu Global positioning System (GpS) laboratory, http:// 

www.montana.edu/places/gps/ (accessed 21 August 2006); robert “Bobby” Grisso et al., “precision 

Farming tools: Global positioning System (GpS),” July 2003, virginia cooperative extension, 

http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/bse/442-503/442-503.html (accessed 21 August 2006). 

35. carolyn peterson,“precision GpS navigation for improving Agricultural productivity,” GPS World 

2, no. 1 (January 1991): pp. 38–44. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 343 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

combined their expertise to devise a dGpS/Geographic information System (GiS) 

system to vary the herbicide application rate on sugar-beet fields in western nebraska, 

thereby increasing crop yield while satisfying government chemical application 

regulations. experimentation by the Agricultural research Service of the u.S. 

department ofAgriculture (uSdA) found dGpS extremely useful for mapping initial, 

variable applications of nitrogen fertilizer and evaluating the effect on crop yields in 

irrigated central nebraska cornfields during 1995. improvement in nitrogen fertilizer 

management also offered the prospect of improved groundwater (i.e.,drinking water) 

quality, something much desired by the u.S. environmental protection Agency.36 

one expert estimated in 1994 that only 5 percent of u.S. farms, mostly in the 

corn-producing states of the midwest, used GpS-derived reference points for soilspecific management, but the technology was “booming.” A study of soil-specific 

management in Stoddard county, missouri, during that period showed reductions 

in fertilizer costs of $18.70 per acre with no loss of crop yields.37 By 2003 university 

of Florida researchers touted GpS/GiS technology’s great value for locating and 

managing site-specific crop losses (more than $77 billion worldwide in 1987) 

due to plant-parasitic nematodes.38 According to an Associated press story in late 

november 2004, up to 15 percent of u.S. farmers had GpS-controlled tractors or 

combines and were saving as much as 5 percent in fertilizers and pesticides by using 

precision guidance systems. Farmers in Kentucky, where rolling terrain led to both 

high and low production in the same field, realized a cost saving of $30/acre by 

using GpS-enabled yield monitors. meanwhile, under a nASA grant, researchers at 

ohio State university worked to perfect a GpS-enabled tomato-picking robot that 

could significantly reduce labor costs on large corporate farms.39 

to meet demand for greater accuracy, lower labor costs, and documentation of 

spraying, the uSdA began in the early 1990s to explore GpS-aided navigation for 

precision aerial applications to control insects on cropland or rangeland. during the 

autumn of 1992, the plains cotton Growers diapause program in texas had used a 

GpS flight guidance system from Satloc, inc., to spray more than 450,000 acres of 

cotton for boll weevils.that application offered savings by eliminating the need for 

approximately 170 ground flaggers. Based on that program’s success, the uSdA’s 

Grasshopper integrated pest management (Ghipm) project near Watford city in 

northwestern north dakota tested a dGpS system in 1993 on a 6,400-acre (2,590­

hectare) section of rangeland. chief pilot tim roland for the uSdA’s Animal and 

plant health inspection Service, plant protection and Quarantine (AphiS/ppQ) 

36. William d. Bauer and mitch Schefcik,“using differential GpS to improve crop yields,” GPS World 

5, no. 2 (February 1994): pp. 38–41;tracy m. Blackmer and James S. Schepers, “using dGpS to 

improve corn production and Water Quality,” GPS World 7, no. 3 (march 1996): pp. 44–52. 

37. hale montgomery,“GpS down on the Farm,” GpS World 5, no. 9 (September 1994): p. 18. 

38. Jim rich et al., “using GiS/GpS for variable-rate nematicide Application in row crops,” 

university of Florida iFAS extension, http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IN464 (accessed 21 August 2006). 

39. Associated press,“GpS Goes down on the Farm—technologies can help Some Farms cut costs,”29 

november 2004, mSnBc, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6608881/ (accessed 21 August 2006). 
344 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

division subsequently remarked,“We’re just getting our foot in the door with GpS, 

but i’m so confident [about the] equipment that i’d recommend it to support any 

of our programs.”40 When the accuracy of loran-c navigation proved inadequate to 

meet the parallel-swathing requirements of california’s cooperative medfly project 

during 1993, roland recommended dGpS guidance. in california’s war against the 

mediterranean fruit fly, which could cause more than $1 billion in damage annually 

to fruit, nut, and vegetable crops, not to mention the loss of thousands of jobs, 

dGpS brought significant savings and provided a previously unavailable element of 

quality control to aerial treatments.41 

Disaster Relief And Recovery 

use of GpS in conjunction with GiS, cartographic mapping, and other 

technologies proved beneficial in disaster relief and recovery efforts.After hurricane 

Andrew devastated Florida in 1992, the Federal emergency management Agency 

(FemA) contracted with survey crews to experimentally inventory the damage using 

GpS/GiS technology instead of the traditional, manual assessment that involved 

house-by-house interviews. Based on encouraging results from that experiment, 

FemA, the u.S. Army corps of engineers, and a private contractor with GpS/ 

GiS expertise formed a team in July 1993 to produce maps for disaster response, 

recovery efforts, and risk mitigation in the wake of severe mississippi river floods 

that inundated more than 13 million acres, destroyed billions of dollars in crops, and 

left hundreds of people homeless. Following a GpS-equipped helicopter survey, 

a pair of two-person ground observer teams with GpS/GiS handheld receivers 

inspected and inventoried structures in approximately 75 communities south of 

Quincy, illinois. more than 1,500 maps/data sheets were produced within a week 

of the teams’ initial transfer of data to the corps of engineers’ rock island, illinois, 

base station. prior to GpS/GiS, it would have taken a team of 50 people years 

to complete the same task. With the maps quickly delivered to FemA decision 

makers, they began meeting with local officials and citizens to discuss assistance and 

requirements to rebuild above the 100-year flood elevation.42 

When new york city officials faced the daunting cleanup of “Ground Zero” 

after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World trade center,they found 

multiple applications for GpS. As Fire department teams and others began the 

monumental task of sifting through the rubble to recover and manually catalog 

thousands of pieces of evidence at the crash site, which was also a crime scene, 

it became obvious the process was too time-consuming and too error-prone. to 

40. mike W. Sampson, “Getting the Bugs out: GpS-Guided Aerial Spraying,” GPS World 4, no. 9 

(September 1993): pp. 28–34. 

41. mike W. Sampson, “no Small Affair: dGpS Battle the california medfly,” GPS World 6, no. 2 

(February 1995): pp. 32–38. 

42. harry Bottorff, “rapid relief: GpS helps Assess mississippi river Flood damage,” GPS World 5, 

no. 3 (march 1994): pp. 22–26. 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 345 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

automate it, the city gave a handheld device equipped with a GpS receiver and 

an attached bar-code reader to one person on each of the eight recovery units 

working at the 16-acre site at any given time. Searchers put a bar-coded tag on each 

significant piece of recovered evidence;scanned the tag to create an electronic record 

that included the exact location, date, and time; and selected an item description 

from a scroll-down list programmed into the handheld device. At the end of each 

shift, searchers placed their handhelds into a cradle to download their information 

to a central database, from which the city produced maps that helped investigators 

pinpoint where various kinds of vehicles, equipment, and personnel were when the 

buildings collapsed.the fire and police departments could analyze that information 

to improve their response to future emergencies.43 

A second challenge related to the September 11 disaster involved learning how 

various buildings in a 10-square-block area surrounding the World trade center 

survived, because that knowledge would permit the design and construction of 

more damage-resistant structures.the solution lay in modification of a GpS/GiS 

software application for a palm pilot developed by Georgia institute of technology 

civil engineering professor david Frost and graduate student Scott deaton. this 

handheld damage assessment technology,which Frost had conceived while surveying 

damage from a 1999 earthquake in izmit, turkey, allowed researchers to capture 

digital images and select an option from a list of damage descriptions, at which time 

the information was automatically linked to GpS coordinates. the collected data 

could be uploaded periodically to a single, spatial database. in approximately four 

days during mid-october 2001, Frost, deaton, and master’s student prateek Goel 

documented and mapped in nearly real time most of the structures in the study area. 

A team using more traditional methods would have taken at least a month just to 

enter all the data into a computer for mapping and analysis.44 

yet another GpS application in disaster recovery efforts at Ground Zero involved 

debris removal. hauling away 1.8 million tons of debris efficiently became a top 

priority,because experience suggested this would be the most expensive aspect of the 

recovery effort.new york city’s department of design and construction employed 

a team of contractors led by criticom international corporation of minneapolis, 

minnesota, to devise a GpS-based management system for debris removal. the 

contract team quickly assembled and installed commercial off-the-shelf components 

in 235 trucks and a control center, thereby creating a management system that 

integrated GpS-based positioning with communications, camera monitoring, and 

internet data.this first use of GpS-based Avl to manage debris removal in a disaster 

43. John rendleman,“GpS Aids recovery effort,” InformationWeek (12 november 2001), http://www. 

informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YH2WRBQHCAKCCQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2J 

VN?articleID=6507967 (accessed 12 September 2006). 

44. Beth Bacheldor, “damage Assessment: lessons from Ground Zero,” InformationWeek (18 march 

2002), http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=YH2WRBQHCAKCCQSNDL 

PSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=6501464 (accessed 12 September 2006). 
346 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Artistic rendition of GPS Block 3 satellite. 

recovery operation contributed 

substantially to finishing the 

removal project four months 

earlier than originally predicted 

and at a cost of $750 million, 

far less than the $7 billion city 

officials initially estimated.45 

during and after hurricane 

Katrina in August 2005, experts 

found further applications for 

GpS.military pilots flew into the 

approaching hurricane to deploy 

GpS-enabled dropsondes, first 

used in 1996–1997, that helped 

scientists predict the strength, speed, and direction of the storm with greater precision 

than allowed by previous systems. After Katrina hit the Gulf coast, the urban 

and regional information Systems Association (uriSA) GiScorps, a volunteer 

organization,wenttheretosupportu.S.coastGuardoperationsbytranslatingdistressed 

survivors’ addresses or locations into GpS coordinates, which enabled dispatch of 

rescue helicopters.Within two weeks after the storm, major ports in the Gulf region 

reopened, due in large measure to nationwide dGpS (ndGpS) allowing the coast 

Guard to precisely reposition 1,800 buoys and fixed aids to navigation; the Army 

corps of engineers to survey and dredge 38 critical waterways;and commercial pilots 

to navigate even when they could not “read” silt-clouded waterways.the national 

park Service used ndGpS to map areas rendered unsafe by hazardous materials and 

to mark safe passageways; the department of Agriculture used it help locate disposal 

sites for animal carcasses and to map areas where blocked drainage demanded future 

clearing.despite problems with keeping the ndGpS signal available in the aftermath 

of hurricane Katrina, it proved crucial to relief and recovery efforts.46 

45. raymond J. menard and Jocelyn l. Knieff, “GpS at Ground Zero: tracking World trade center 

recovery,”GpSWorld (2 September 2002), http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup. 

jsp?id=30686 (accessed 12 September 2006). 

46. martyWhitford,“hurricane hunters:GpS dropsondestrace Katrina’s course,” GPSWorld (1 october 

2005), http://mg.gpsworld.com/gpsmg/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=262187 (accessed 13 September 

2006); Bob henson, ed.,“hurricane!” SN Monthly (october 1998), http://www.ucar.edu/communications/ 

staffnotes/9810/hurricane.html (accessed 13 September 2006); “the nationwide differential Global 

positioning System’s role with hurricane Katrina’s recovery,” u.S. coast Guard navigation center, 

January 2006, http://www.navcenter.org/misc/HurricaneKatrina.pdf (accessed 13 September 2006). 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 347 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

Timing 

people generally think of GpS as a navigation system and,consequently,do not 

fully comprehend its usefulness in the dissemination of precise time, time intervals, 

and frequency. Because a GpS receiver location is established through simultaneous 

ranging of signals from several GpS satellites, every signal from each satellite 

includes time of transmission. Atomic clocks on every satellite ensure that system 

time is closely synchronized through cesium and rubidium frequency standards. 

By providing timing and frequency accuracies in the range of 100 nanoseconds 

and a few picoseconds, respectively, to receivers worldwide 24 hours a day, GpS 

quickly became a boon to specialists in a wide variety of fields ranging from science, 

satellite tracking, and industrial plant operations to power distribution, television 

broadcasting, and banking.47 

the Bonneville power Administration (BpA), which supplies about half of 

all electrical power used in the pacific northwest, began gradually integrating 

GpS technology into its various operations in 1988. its ultimate goal was a GpSbased infrastructure for measuring voltage and current at selected generation 

and transmission sites and for time-tagging that information with microsecond 

precision to more effectively and efficiently stabilize the electrical grid, thereby 

minimizing system disturbances that potentially could cascade into major blackouts. 

in 1989,BpA began using GpS in its power-line fault location system and in solving 

problems associated with standard time distribution across the grid. meanwhile, it 

started investigating GpS as a source of precise time for its phasor measurement 

units (pmus), which computed the phase angle between points on various circuits 

to provide a good representation of the power system’s “health.”during 1991–1992, 

BpA tested two GpS-synchronized prototype pmus on a 260-mile section of a 

main transmission link, the resulting data being more accurate and less noisy than 

comparable analog information. A new GpS-based central time System (ctS) 

with triple redundancy went into the BpA dittmer control center in 1994. By 

2005, BpA was touting its Wide Area control System (WAcS), a demonstration 

project that BpA engineers predicted could route $7.2 million worth of additional 

power—enough for 20,000–60,000 typical homes—from the pacific northwest to 

california and could prevent a system blackout costing more than $1 billion.48 

47. peter h. dana 	and Bruce m. penrod, “the role of GpS in precise time and Frequency 

dissemination,” GPS World 1, no. 4 (July/August 1990): pp. 38–43; harold hough,“A GpS precise 

timing Sampler,” GPS World 2, no. 9 (october 1991): pp. 33–36; edgar W. Butterline,“reach out 

and time Someone,” GPS World 4, no. 1 (January 1993): pp. 32–40; hewlett-packard company, 

“GpS and precision timing Applications,” Application note 1272 (1996), http://www.fgg.unilj.si/~/mkuhar/Zalozba/HP1272.pdf (accessed 10 September 2006). 

48. Kenneth e. martin, “powerful connections: high-energy transmission with high-precision GpS 

time,” GPSWorld 7,no.3 (march 1996):pp.20–36;dennis c.erickson and carsontaylor,“pacify the 

power: GpS harness for large-Area electrical Grid,” GpSWorld (1 April 2005), http://www.gpsworld. 

com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=154868 (accessed 8 September 2006). 
348 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the explosive growth of computer networks from the 1980s onward 

made high-quality time synchronization essential for proper functioning and for 

rendering failures more manageable. GpS-enabled time synchronization directly 

affected network operations in several key areas ranging from file time stamping 

and directory services to access security, log file accuracy, and fault diagnosis and 

recovery; it also affected applications in numerous areas from transaction processing 

and e-mail to software development and legal or regulatory requirements.49 

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, financial institutions relied on 

millions of networked computers to execute billions of transactions per second 

involving extremely rapid changes in value. on 14 november 2001, for example, 

during the closing minutes of trading on the new york Stock exchange, a single 

stock—intel—averaged six transactions/second and as high as 20/second during 

intense trading.With traders frequently calling their brokering institution to dispute 

the recorded value of a particular transaction among countless others, computersystem clock resolution had to be less than the minimum transaction composition 

and transmission time—hence, 5- to 20-millisecond resolution. An international 

investment banking firm already had begun using a palisade network time protocol 

(ntp) synchronization kit, introduced by trimble navigation ltd. in 1999, to 

ensure simultaneous recording of transactions at its london, new york, and tokyo 

offices. By mid-2002, the new york Stock exchange, the World Bank, and other 

major financial institutions used Symmetricomm (formerly truetime),Spectracom, 

or other corporations’ GpS-based ntp products to synchronize their computer 

systems at the required level of accuracy. experimenters at ireland’s university of 

Galway had installed trimble’s newer Acutime 2000 GpS synchronization kit to 

create what they called a Stratum-1 (defined as micro-second accurate) ntp server 

that other european servers and clients used for time synchronization.So important had 

GpS become as a time-reference standard for the world’s aggregate financial network 

that the heritage Foundation advised designating it a critical infrastructure. 50 

As wireless communication networks expanded at the end of the twentieth century, 

GpS receivers replaced less reliable timing technologies. So-called smart GpS antennas in 

base stations synchronized transmitter sites to precisely the same time, which prevented a 

49. paul Skoog,“the importance of network time Synchronization,”truetime (2001), http://www. 

truetime.net/pdf/imp_netsync.pdf (accessed 8 September 2006). 

50. timble navigation ltd., “trimble launches GpS clock for micro-Second Synchronization of 

network computers and internet Applications,” directions magazine (27 July 1999), http:// 

www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/index.php?duty=Show&id=742&trv=1 (accessed 10 September 

2006);“trimble offers internet GpS time Standard,” Space Daily, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ 

gps-99j.html (accessed 10 September 2006); Fact Sheet, “Acutime 2000 GpS Smart Antenna for 

precise timing and Synchronization,” trimble navigation ltd. (2000), http://www.navgeocom.ru/ 

oem/download/main/sync/a2000/acutime2k_info.pdf (accessed 10 September 2006); Alan cameron, 

“Billions per Second: timing Financial transactions,” GPS World (31 July 2002), http://www. 

gpsworld.com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=30096 (accessed 10 September 2006);“GpS 

tutorial—timing,”trimble navigation ltd.(2006), http://www.trimble.com/gps/gpswork-timing.shtml 

(accessed 10 September 2006). 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 349 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

userfromreceivingthesamecellulartelephone,pager,orotherwirelesssignalmultipletimes. 

in August 1996 at the republican national convention in San diego,california,pacific 

Bell mobile Services (pBmS) implemented a new type of all-digital, wireless telephone 

network called personal communications service (pcS), which relied on relatively lowcost,GpS-based time synchronization.By early 1997,pBmS had begun building on that 

success by installing an identical capability in lasvegas,nevada.51 

Wireless positioning and tracking also benefit immeasurably from the accuracy of 

GpS timing.A caller’s handset,for example,can be located by calculating and triangulating 

the time differences in arrival of its signal at cell towers whose positions are accurately 

known.in1993,theFederalcommunicationscommission(Fcc)tookregulatoryinterest 

in extending enhanced-911 (e911) emergency service, including automatic location of 

a caller, to wireless mobile subscribers; in october 1999 congress passed the Wireless 

communications and public Safety Act mandating that manufacturers incorporate e911 

features in cell phones and,thereafter,the Fcc stipulated that 95 percent of all new digital 

cell phones must have the automatic location identification (Ali) feature by 1 october 

2002.the Fcc later extended that deadline three years when wireless carriers appealed 

for more implementation time. At the beginning of 2005, nextel communications, 

inc., was the only national wireless provider offering GpS services, and nearly all carriers 

doubted they could meet the end-of-year deadline for having 95 percent of their 

handsets upgraded to GpS-capable models.Although wireless e911 offered the prospect 

of improving the personal safety of millions of people nationwide, indications were 

that its availability would be piecemeal for years to come, and some citizens questioned 

whether the government, employers, spouses, or parents might misuse the Ali feature 

to infringe upon personal privacy and constitutional rights.52 

51. “Wireless profile,”Wireless magazine (2006),http://www.trimble.com/tmg_wirelessprofile.shtml (accessed 

10 September 2006); don Britten,“Wireless and Seamless: GpS-timed mobile communications,” 

GPS World 8, no. 3 (march 1997): pp. 32–39. 

52. peter Kuykendall and peterv.W.loomis,“in Sync with GpS:GpS clocks for theWireless infrastructure,” 

trimble navigation (2006), http://trl.trimble.com/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-8439 (accessed 10 

September 2006);dale n.hatfield,“A report ontechnical and operational issues impacting the provision 

of Wireless enhanced 911 Services,” Federal communications commission, 24 november 2004, http:// 

gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/retrieve.cgi?native_or_pdf=pdf&id_document=6513296239 (accessed 10 September 

2006);u.S.GovernmentAccountability office,“telecommunications:uneven implementation ofWireless 

enhanced 911 raises prospect of piecemealAvailability foryears to come,”GAo-04-55,november 2003, 

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0455.pdf (accessed10September2006);davidh.Williams,“Wirelesscarriers 

are making Great progress implementingWireless e911 ...SoWhat’s the problem?”directions magazine 

(22 September 2004), http://www.directionsmag.com/article.php?article_id=665 (accessed 10 September 2006); 

david colker,“parents,Bosses call on GpStracking cell phones,”LosAngelesTimes,9 January 2005;Sascha 

Segan,“inexpensive emergency phones for children, elders could Be used As GpS tracking device,” 

PS Magazine (8 January 2005), http://www.infowars.com/articles/bb/parents_bosses_gps_track_cellphones.htm 

(accessed 10 September 2006); david h.Williams,“the deadline for the e911 mandate Approaches . . 

.Where do things Stand?” Directions Magazine (30 november 2005), http://www.directionsmag.com/article. 

php?article_id=2014&trv=1 (accessed 10 September 2006);Associated press,“Satellite navigation Finds its 

Way to phones: latest technology Allows you to track people’s Whereabouts,” mSnBc, 7 April 2006, 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12206651 (accessed 10 September 2006); “Sprint service tracks children: 

parent can locate kid’s cell with GpS,”The Gazette (colorado Springs,colorado),14April 2006. 
350 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Summary 

nothing about GpS could be more obvious than the rapid expansion of 

entrepreneurial activity and the veritable explosion of applications from the early 

1990s into the first decade of the twenty-first century.one can measure that growth, 

at least notionally, in several ways: patent activity, manufacturers, employment, 

revenues, and sales. the number of GpS-related patent families (a family being a 

collection of related patents and published patent applications) grew internationally 

from less than 20 in 1988 to nearly 80 in 1991, with u.S. and Japanese corporations 

holding the most.53 meanwhile, the dod procured only 7,253 GpS receivers 

during 1986–1992 but zoomed to 19,086 receivers in 1993 alone.54 Firms that 

listed themselves as providing GpS-related goods or services totaled 301 in 1997 

compared to 109 in 1992. north American revenues from GpS products in 1999 

grew 21.1 percent from 1998, indicating that “an increasing number of end users in 

previously untapped markets” had begun accepting the new technology. revenues 

worldwide from GpS user equipment sales totaled $3.39 billion in 1996 and rose 

to $6.22 billion in 1999; during the same period, the number of GpS industry 

employees worldwide increased from 16,688 to 30,622. With average prices for 

GpS products expected to decrease 7.4 percent annually through 2006, according 

to strategic research by the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan,the number of products 

sold for nontraditional applications in commercial and consumer markets would 

steadily increase. Among the five basic GpS market segments—land, aviation, 

marine, military, and timing—examined by Frost & Sullivan analyst ron Stearns, 

the land-based segment alone accounted for 61.8 percent of total north American 

revenues in 1999, a statistic unlikely to change appreciably through 2006.55 

While the average price of GpS products continued downward in the 

new century, the number of units sold and total revenues advanced according to 

predictions. one estimate in 2000 put the number of GpS users worldwide at 1.5 

million, with an economic impact of $6.2 billion. According to Frost & Sullivan, 

total revenues from the north American GpS equipment market alone amounted 

to $3.46 billion in 2003.A breakdown of that figure by end-user group—consumer, 

commercial,and military—revealed 52 percent,40 percent,and 8 percent,respectively. 

53. Scott pace,et al., The Global Positioning System:Assessing National Policies (Santa monica,cA:rAnd 

corp., 1995), pp. 114–118. 

54. national Academy of public Administration, The Global Positioning System: Charting the Future 

(Washington, dc: nApA, 1995), pp. 62–68. 

55. Scott pace and James e.Wilson, Global Positioning System: Market Projections andTrends in the Newest Global 

Information Utility, international trade Administration, office of telecommunications, u.S. department 

of commerce, September 1998, http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/space/library/reports/1998-09-gps.pdf (accessed 

13 September 2006); Frost & Sullivan,“price points, product integration Fuel GpS revenue Growth,” 

Directions Magazine (26 April 2000), http://www.directionsmag.com/press.releases/index.php?duty=Show&id=16 

94&PRSID (accessed 11 September 2006);Futron corporation,Trends in Space Commerce,office of Space 

commercialization,u.S.department of commerce,may 2001, http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/space/library/ 

reports/2001-06-trends.pdf (accessed 13 September 2006). 
NAVSTAR, the Global Positioning System: A Sampling 351 

of its Military, Civil, and Commercial Impact 

recreational GpS devices constituted a huge market, with shipments rising from 

3.2 million in 2002 to 5 million in 2003.56 Sales of portable navigation devices, used 

primarily for in-vehicle navigation, rose faster than projected in the united States 

from 300,000 units in 2003 to 550,000 in 2004 and about one million in 2005. 

Analyst ron Stearns of Frost & Sullivan calculated the automotive portion of the 

consumer GpS business at $922 million, with estimated unit sales of 1.2 million for 

2006; the addition of outdoor units for recreational users would send sales to $1.8 

billion and more than 4 million units for 2006. Stearns expected combined annual 

sales for automotive and outdoor GpS units to reach 8.3 million, worth $2.7 billion 

in revenues, by 2010.57 As Bradford parkinson, one of the founders of GpS, said in 

1980, the “potential uses [of GpS] are limited only by our imaginations.”58 

56. “Keeping pace with consumer Applicationsvital to GpS market expansion,” Frost & Sullivan, 

9 February 2004, http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/press-release.pag?mode=open&docid=1012761 

5 (accessed 11 September 2006);“GpS market,”GoogleAnswers,28 February 2005, http://answers. 

google.com/answers/threadview?id=481415 (accessed 11 September 2006); “u.S. GpS market Size,” 

Google Answers, 27 August 2005, http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=561093 (accessed 

11 September 2006). 

57. “taiwan GpS Sector update,” masterlink Securities, 30 december 2005, http://web6.masterlink.com. 

tw/project/english/main_page/files/company_reports/GPS_DEC_2005_20051230.pdf(accessed11September 

2006);“Wirelesstracking:one GpS Gianttoo many?”BPMToday (21 June 2006),http://www.bpm-today. 

com/story.xhtml?story_id=012000EP08VC (accessed 11 September 2006); clem driscoll, “Strong 

consumer interest in GpS for traffic, nav, lBS,” GPS World (1 August 2006), http://www.gpsworld. 

com/gpsworld/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=360934 (accessed 11 September 2006). 

58. Bradford W. parkinson,“overview,” in Global Position System: Papers Published in Navigation,Volume 

I, p. m. Janiczek, ed. (Washington, dc:the institute of navigation, 1980), pp. 1–2. 
352 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht
chApter 18 

Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver:


The American Bubble


roger handberg 

i

n the earliest days of the Space Age, the u.S. government, for diverse and pressing 

policy reasons, elaborated the dual-use distinction.their view became that space 

activities could in fact easily be delineated into peaceful civil purposes and clearly 

military purposes.this distinction in practice ultimately proved unsustainable but was 

especially convenient for arms control purposes beginning with the 1960s nuclear 

arms race.the dual-use concept has proven to embody several unanticipated effects 

which decisively and negatively impact future u.S. engagement in space commerce. 

this policy arose when the united States was effectively a monopolist with regard 

to space applications, but has different implications in a globalizing economy. 

this paper analyzes,first,the rise of the dual-use concept and its general impact on 

civil/commercial space applications; second, how that situation changed with the cold 

war’s end and the lessening of security restrictions;and,third,the destabilizing economic 

effects that have arisen for the united States.this analysis focuses mostly on theAmerican 

experience, but the dual-use concept proved particularly useful internationally with 

regard to slowing nuclear proliferation (the nonproliferation treaty)1

; it was extended 

specifically in 1987 to space launch technologies with the missile technology control 

regime (mtcr),2 and more broadly with the “Wassenear Arrangement on export 

controls for conventional Arms and dual-use Goods andtechnologies.”3the latter is 

more wide-sweeping in its implications for transfer of dual-use technologies. 

1. treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear Weapons (entered into force 5 march 1970), http:// 

disarmament.un.org/TreatyStatus.nsf (accessed 15 october 2006). 

2. the original signatories were allies of the united States: canada, France, Germany, italy, Japan, and 

the united Kingdom. http://www.mtcr.info/english/index.html (accessed 15 october 2006). 

3. the Arrangement “complements and reinforces, without duplication, the existing regimes for nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems, by focusing on the threats to 

international and regional peace and security which may arise from transfers of armaments and sensitive 

dual-use goods and technologies where the risks are judged greatest.this arrangement is also intended to 

enhance co-operation to prevent the acquisition of armaments and sensitive dual-use items for military 

end-uses,if the situation in a region or the behaviour of a state is,or becomes,a cause for serious concern 

to the participating States.” http://www.wassenaar.org/publicdocuments/Basic%20documents%202006%20­

%20January.doc (accessed 15 october 2006). 
354 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the application areas focused on here include remote sensing (including 

weather), navigation, and communications satellite policies as the most obvious 

areas. launch vehicle restrictions arose later than the others due to other factors. 

the changes occurring are not merely technological (i.e., improvement in the 

scale of images provided or accuracy of positioning information or enhanced 

communications) but are due to the fact that these largely military-initiated and 

-dominated sectors are becoming engines for economic growth and improvements 

in productivity. these applications are driving the commercial space sector to 

become more truly international in scope and operations. early space visionaries 

often envisioned a world economically and politically integrated through the use of 

space applications, but that has not occurred because of national security restraints. 

those security restraints have not vanished in the American case, but the global 

spread of technological competence regarding space technologies has removed the 

capacity of any single state to control these applications. the image projected by 

these changes is a cooperative,peaceful world but,for the united States,the political 

focus remains upon these applications’ potential to disrupt the u.S. economy and 

security operations. 

Dual-use as a Concept—Beginnings 

From the perspective of the late 1940s and early 1950s, at the cusp of the 

first Space Age, the dual-use concept was largely irrelevant because the operative 

assumption was that national space programs would be controlled and led by their 

military, with whatever civilian presence that developed being clearly subordinate 

one.4 the historical u.S. model for nonmilitary participation in space activities was 

the scientific expedition,such as lewis and clark in 1804,led by the military.Wernher 

von Braun’s famous series of articles in Collier’s assumed that the expeditionary 

model would continue.5 this concept faded in the 1960s but has been resurrected 

by u.S. Air Force space power advocates as a means by which to recapture their 

control over human spaceflight.6 

the purely civilian (especially commercial) aspect of space activities existed 

initially as a theoretical concept, despite robert Goddard’s pioneering research 

on launch vehicles and early speculation by Arthur clarke about communications 

4. howard e. mccurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution 

press, 1997), chapter 1. 

5. William e. Burrows, This New Ocean:The Story of the First Space Age (new york: modern library, 

1998), pp. 142–146. For excerpts of the original articles, see John m. logsdon, ed., Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume I: Organizing for 

Exploration (Washington, dc: u.S. Government printing office, 1995), pp. 176–200. 

6. Simon p. Worden and John e. Shaw, Whither Space Power? Forging a Strategy for the New Century 

(maxwell Air Force Base,Al:Air university press, September 2002), pp. 110–112. 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 355 

using earth-orbiting satellites. the dominant reality became that the military 

(the nazis and Soviets first, later the Americans) controlled the space technology 

development process, including funding of whatever launch technology was 

deemed useful.the military’s initial and primary interest focused on building more 

effective and farther-reaching weapons carriers.7 the wider possibilities for space 

activities were understood to exist and were the subject of preliminary analysis 

but all were considered within the paradigm of military control over any spacerelated technologies that might be developed.8 in fact, the original thought was 

that the military itself, through an arsenal system, would control production of 

such technologies. in the American case, however, the u.S.Air Force had extensive 

experience with contractors as technology producers under military supervision. 

this contractor approach fit better with American ideological proclivities and 

provided greater flexibility for expansion and contraction of production, it being 

easier to lay off contractor employees than civil servants employed at an arsenal. 

one direct consequence of this approach was creation of an aerospace industry 

that was in place if and when military control loosened. the aeronautical side of 

the industry was an excellent prototype of a dual-use capability, although it was not 

thought of in those terms. 

embedded in the beginnings of the Space Age was the shadow of a dualuse concept, but even there the military remained dominant. the rise of space 

scientists was in part built around the reality that their initial value was as payload 

providers whose results had direct military relevance, especially improvement in 

communications and scanning capabilities through better understanding of the 

ionosphere and other environmental forces impacting radio wave transmissions at 

different frequencies and thus, by extension, military operations.9 Beginning with 

sounding rockets (high-altitude balloons were already in use), scientists found 

that the ability to leave the atmosphere even briefly to observe atmospheric and 

celestial events was truly liberating, opening up new vistas of scientific information 

and understanding.this original relationship explains why the first successful u.S. 

satellite launch carried a scientific experiment on-board whereas the Soviets’ first 

satellite was basically a transmitter in space, famously annoying the Americans with 

its repetitive beeping.10 

7. Walter A. mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (new york: 

Basic Books, 1985), pp. 100–111. 

8. ibid., pp. 116–124. 

9. david h. devorkin, Science with a vengeance: how the military created the u.S. Space Sciences 

after World War ii (new york: Springer-verlag, 1992). 

10. paul dickson, Sputnik: Shock of the Century (new york: Berkeley publishing, 2001), pp. 108–109. 

the original satellite payload for the Sputnik was downsized in order to ensure that success would 

occur when the attempt was made to orbit a satellite. cf.Asif A. Siddiqi, Sputnik and the Soviet Space 

Challenge (Gainesville, Fl: university press of Florida, 2000), pp. 152–170. 
356 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

concurrent with these military-dominated development efforts were research 

efforts within the communications industry exploring the use of satellites for 

facilitating global communications.11 these efforts were less publicly visible since the 

corporations involved, including At&t (“ma Bell”) and rcA, focused more on 

securing corporate economic advantage rather than the publicity sought by military 

services in their quest for congressional attention.the 1940s and 1950s saw intense 

public campaigns by the military services to gain appropriations advantages relative to 

other services.in one sense,these private efforts were more realistically the harbingers 

of the dual-use concept because they were truly nonmilitary although communications 

satellites (comsats) possessed obvious military usefulness regardless of their origin. 

therefore, the dual-use concept is premised on a distinction that 

technologically had no reality but was considered politically critical if weapons of mass 

destruction (Wmd) proliferation threats to world security were to be controlled.this 

nonproliferation effort focused heavily on missiles or rockets that could deliver weapons 

with no effective means of defense, although other applications came under similar 

constraints. however, the biggest political booster of this distinction, president dwight 

eisenhower,saw the dual-use concept’s value first with regard to his herculean struggle 

to keep the u.S.budget under control (i.e., fiscally balanced).12 eisenhower’s greatest 

political nightmare was that the united States would rush off in pursuit of glory in 

the heavens—a quest that he considered to be of little relevance security-wise. 

on 4 october 1957,the first Sputnik launch led to an immediate and vociferous 

public demand for a u.S. space effort commensurate with that being apparently 

mounted by the Soviets.the public’s demand was fed by a congress controlled by 

the president’s political adversaries.13 this situation further inflamed existing rivalries 

among the three u.S. military services, especially between the Air Force and Army; 

each eagerly sought to seize outer space as its new area of operations, just as they 

had previously squabbled over missile systems.14 With visions of large but separate 

competing military space programs dancing in his head, eisenhower moved at once 

11. david J.Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965 (Washington, dc: Smithsonian 

institution press,2002).Whalen’s argument is that these private efforts got lost in the publicity given 

to nASA for forays into communications satellite development. 

12. david callahan and Fred i. Greenstein,“the reluctant racer: eisenhower and u.S. Space policy,” 

in Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership, roger d. launius and howard e. mccurdy, eds. 

(urbana, il: university of illinois press, 1997), pp. 31–39. 

13. For example, Senate majority leader lyndon Johnson opened committee hearings on the question 

of the American space program and what was to be done in the fall of 1957. robert A. divine, The 

Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite (new york: oxford university press, 

1993), pp. 41–76; eugene m. emme, “presidents and Space,” in Between Sputnik and the Shuttle: 

New Perspectives on American Astronautics, Frederick c. durant, iii, ed. (San diego, cA: American 

Astronautical Society, 1981), pp. 16–23. 

14. david n. Spires, Beyond Horizons: A Half Century of Air Force Space Leadership (peterson Air Force 

Base, co:Air Force Space command, u.S.Air Force, 1997), pp. 21–38. 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 357 

to first, stop the interservice rivalry, and second, to cut off any military aspirations for 

pursuing human spaceflight, the most expensive and difficult of space activities.All of 

this domestic activity occurred against an international background where the global 

nuclear arms race loomed as an enormously expensive contest with no end in sight, 

except possibly Armageddon. eisenhower was definitely not interested in having this 

nuclear arms race spread to the heavens, raining death from space. plus, eisenhower 

had severe doubts as to the military usefulness of outer space in terms of weapons. 

cutting off a potential interservice rivalry was politically easier than stopping 

the political rush to start a human spaceflight program.the Air Force had earlier been 

awarded control over land-based, long-range ballistic missiles; the competitive Army 

missile effort had been reduced to developing short-range or tactical missiles.15 this 

decision,however,had come only after years of bitter service infighting but was only 

put in place just prior to the first satellite launch.the president further confronted 

the political reality that his original effort to stymie the Army’s growing space efforts 

had come a cropper when the first vanguard launch (a civilian program run by the 

naval research lab) failed to leave the pad in december 1957—a perfectly dismal 

response to two Soviet successes with their larger and physically more impressive 

Sputniks. prior to the vanguard launch, the administration had hedged its bets by 

authorizing theArmy Ballistic missileAgency team,led byWernher von Braun,to build 

a back-up launcher and satellite.this cobbled-together effort flew to orbit on 31 January 

1958—explorer i became the first u.S. satellite.the Army had argued in 1956 that it 

could orbit a satellite immediately but that option was rejected by the administration 

whose interests were different and more internationally focused.16 After the very public 

vanguard failure, eisenhower needed the political success symbolized by a successful 

explorer launch, but von Braun’s and the Army’s larger space ambitions, including 

manned spaceflight, were not encouraged and were finally terminated. 

eisenhower’s resistance was premised on two views he held regarding a 

potential manned spaceflight race:first,the cost was too high given available national 

resources (remember,balanced budgets),and second,the Army could not be allowed 

to build up its space efforts in competition with the Air Force.the latter goal was 

comparatively easily achieved with the Army space program being shut down.that 

decision was bitterly resisted (almost to the point of active insubordination) but the 

president was adamant.that left the other piece—the question of a manned space 

effort run by the Air Force, the victor in the interservice space wars, with visions of 

a vast space effort to compete with the Soviets across the spectrum of activities. 

15. raymond h. dawson,“congressional innovation and intervention in defense policy: legislative 

Authorization of Weapons Systems,” American Political Science Review 56 (march 1962): pp. 49–50. 

the dispute began over air defense systems and escalated. 

16. rip Bulkeley, The Sputniks Crisis and Early United States Space Policy (Bloomington, in: indiana 

university press, 1991), pp. 95–101. 
358 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the answer to eisenhower’s latter problem came in the form of nASA, killing 

the proverbial two birds with one stone. nASA became the president’s stalking 

horse for removing the Air Force from the manned space arena. his view was 

that a manned space program run by a military service would be impossible to 

control in terms of budget growth because the military could always invoke military 

necessity in order to stymie any presidential efforts at budget control.the problem 

of military services end-running around the president to congress regarding 

their relative budget share had been a continuing feature of domestic politics in 

the 1950s, especially since the other party, the democrats, controlled congress.17 

eisenhower’s great prestige as the commander of Allied victory in europe helped 

him beat back some efforts, but military space activities were literally completely 

new—the president was considered no more expert than many others.Also, equally 

relevant was the u.S. desire to slow down the proliferation of nuclear weapons. 

nASA became the stalking horse for achieving the president’s efforts—first 

to deflect Air Force ambitions and second to initiate successful arms control.the 

Air Force part was somewhat easier because, as a military service, it had to have 

an assigned mission in order to pursue a particular technology or approach. the 

decision was to transfer all manned or crewed spaceflight operations to the new 

agency, nASA, established 1 october 1958, leaving the Air Force out of the picture. 

the decision to make this move had two bases. 

First, eisenhower thought that a civilian agency would be more easily 

managed in terms of budget, lacking the political clout of the military services. in 

his assumption of nASA’s political weakness, eisenhower was ultimately correct 

but mistaken in the short term—the Southern paladins within congress (especially 

at the committee level) saw great opportunities for constituency service in terms 

of creating constituent jobs.18 When the mercury program was approved despite 

eisenhower’s misgivings, the door was opened for congressional pork. With 

president Kennedy’s announcement of the Apollo program in 1961, nASA entered 

its Golden Age. even in its relative political eclipse later, nASA has retained its 

usefulness for congress as a source of constituent jobs. 19 

17. Samuel p.huntington,The Common Defense:Strategic Programs in National Politics (newyork:columbia 

university press, 1961), pp. 374–378. 

18. robert A. divine, “lyndon B. Johnson and the politics of Space,” in The Johnson Years,Volume 2: 

Vietnam, the Environment and Science, robert A. divine, ed. (lawrence, KS: university press of 

Kansas,1990). 

19. eisenhower’s resistance to government growth stymied congressional leaders’ desire to create jobs.the 

creation of nASA presented the golden goose since eisenhower was constrained by the political pressures 

to “do something about space.” new nASA centers—Goddard Space Flight center, Johnson Space 

center, Stennis Space center, and Kennedy Space center—were established, while former nAcA 

centers—langley research center,Glenn research center,dryden Flight research center,andAmes 

research center—were upgraded and formerArmy space assets—marshall Space Flight center and the 

Jet propulsion lab—were acquired.All kinds of economic opportunities were brought to the southern 

united States, which historically had a severe deficit of such facilities and industries. 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 359 

Second and more critical, by transferring manned spaceflight to a nonmilitary 

agency, the political opportunity existed for establishing outer space as an 

international sanctuary devoid of space-based weapons. this latter was extremely 

important for nuclear arms control purposes since, for the first time, the parties 

were not attempting to remove or restrict weapons already fielded; rather, they were 

attempting to deny weapons’ initial entry into a location.the realm of outer space 

was defined as the common heritage of mankind, as stated in Article 1 of the socalled outer Space treaty: 

the exploration and use of outer space,including the moon and 

other celestial bodies, shall be carried out for the benefit and 

in the interests of all countries, irrespective of their degree of 

economic or scientific development, and shall be the province 

of all mankind. 

it was not to be an arena for direct military confrontation (Article 4): 

States parties to the treaty undertake not to place in orbit around 

the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other 

kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on 

celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any 

other manner. 20 

this perspective allowed an intense public space race competition between 

the two nuclear space powers to occur without necessarily leading to a military 

confrontation.21 After the cuban missile crisis in october 1962, the Soviets and 

Americans were both aware of how fragile the nuclear peace was—a fact which 

heightened their interest in decreasing confrontation potential. thus, the race for 

the lunar surface could end with a clear winner, the united States, but without the 

hazardous outcome implied by an arms race. 

out of this mishmash of goals and motivations, the concept of dual-use arose 

as one primary methodology by which all space-related technologies could be 

evaluated as to whether they possessed significant military implications.this concept 

created a truly artificial distinction since the only real difference between military 

and civilian or commercial uses was, at its essence, user intent. the technology 

remained basically the same but its purposes varied. military technologies were 

often more robust in terms of their survivability (i.e., military specifications or “milspecs”), but the central application remained the same for both. 

20. treaty on principles Governing the Activities of States in the exploration and use of outer Space, 

including the moon and other celestial Bodies (entered into force 10 october 1967), http://www. 

state.gov/t/ac/trt/5181.htm (accessed 15 october 2006). 

21. in the interest of this nonmilitary space race, president richard nixon has been identified as 

reshuffling the Apollo crew schedule in order to ensure that a civilian was first to set foot on the 

lunar surface.Worden and Shaw, pp. 112. 
360 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

those with a more machiavellian orientation might think that another 

important motivation was economic in that the dual-use concept permitted 

tightened political control over the dissemination of such technologies.the united 

States, for example, aggressively protected its monopoly over other Western nations 

with regard to space lift and any other space technologies they might develop that 

potentially competed with u.S. economic interests.22 For example, the launching of 

experimental communications satellites built by potential economic competitors 

was resisted until sufficient political pressure was brought to bear, one example 

being the French-German Symphonie comsat in 1974. once that political barrier 

was broken, space communications technologies could now be sent to orbit by 

other nations, increasing their competitiveness with the united States. Success 

there, however, did not change the reality that military security-imposed limitations 

still affected their usefulness. in effect, these externally imposed technological 

disabilities distinguished the nonmilitary usefulness of the same technologies from 

the military—the essence of dual-use. 

the impact of the dual-use distinction was very real economically because it 

imposed restrictions upon the usefulness of several space applications in competition 

with terrestrial-based competitors. often discussions of space-based commercial 

applications ignore the existence of robust and established economic competitors. 

in fact, those competitors either directly or indirectly have impacted development of 

space applications. early u.S. policy regarding comsats was driven by awareness that 

At&t (the Bell system) and it&t sought to dominate the new field of space-based 

communications. controlling their monopolistic tendencies was a major factor in 

u.S. policy. ironically, the pathway chosen solidified their critical role in the field’s 

future development since the initial satellite linkages were to their phone lines. 

Domestic Implications of Dual-Use 

dual-use space applications are, by definition, useful for civilians but their 

military potential renders their dissemination problematic. Simply put, during the 

cold war the domestic economic usefulness of such technologies was, as a matter 

of policy, subordinated to their potential as a threat enhancer for other nations. 

therefore, strict constraints were imposed regarding how useful the application 

could be made or how widely it was disseminated. the universe of dual-use 

applications has become large and comprehensive, as can be seen in the various lists 

generated under the Wassenear Arrangement.23 

22. roger handberg, international Space Commerce: Building from Scratch (Gainesville, Fl: university press of 

Florida,2006),pp.52–58;lorenza Sebesta, The Availability of American Launchers and Europe’s Decision “To 

Go It Alone,” (noordwijk,the netherlands: eSA publications division, 1996). 

23. the control lists generated by theArrangement include:“list of dual-use Goods and munitions list,” 

which is publicly available on theirWeb site: http://www.wassenaar.org (accessed 15 october 2006). 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 361 

the reality is that the united States has adhered to a much more restrictive view 

regarding dual-use technologies.efforts at loosening those restrictions were underway 

in the 1990s but were partially reversed with regard to exports when allegations were 

made that china was stealing u.S. secrets.24 congressional action in 1998 led to 

stricter enforcement of existing international traffic in Arms regulations (itAr) 

by the department of State rather than the department of commerce, which was 

deemed to be too willing to facilitate expanded international trade by loosening 

security restrictions. As a result, the united States returned to a policy similar to 

that during the cold war, when the trend was toward liberalized global trade of such 

technologies. Global trade in space applications expanded, but with less and less u.S. 

participation. American fears were that certain nations were stealing u.S. secrets— 

many with military implications, since the technologies involved were dual-use. 

launch technologies are the obvious dual-use technology; however, policy 

makers at first did not consider them critical simply because governments, through 

their militaries, controlled all the missile launch vehicle derivatives. in fact, not until 

after the Space Shuttle Challenger accident in January 1986 did a private launch 

sector come into view in the united States.25 this privatized sector flew legacy 

launch systems received from the government. internationally, all major launch 

vehicles have been government-developed and -owned, even when they were 

spun off in the Arianespace context as a commercial corporation. development of 

new launchers or upgrades of existing ones have thus far always been governmentfunded and ultimately government-controlled. 

efforts at purely private launchers have been more disappointing than 

successful, and even the successes (or near-successes such as SpaceX’s Falcon series) 

get sucked into the government orbit.26 As a result, launch technologies did not 

pose an issue—the u.S. had an effective monopoly over space launch in the West 

while the Soviets controlled the rest. As launch technology spread in the form of 

ballistic missiles rather than space transportation,the united States and other nations 

concerned with weapons proliferation became alarmed at the fact that rogue and 

other unsavory states could readily acquire such militarily useful technology. out 

of that concern arose the missile technology control regime (mtcr) in 1987 

as the mechanism by which the dissemination of such dual-use technology could 

be regulated. mtcr attracted only limited support initially but its existence has 

24. christopher cox, Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial 

Concerns with the People’s Republic of China. house report 105-851, 25 may 1999 (Washington, dc: 

u.S. house of representatives); Joan Johnson-Freese, “Alice in licenseland: u.S. Satellite export 

controls since 1990,” Space Policy 16 (July 2000): pp. 195–204. 

25. handberg, international Space commerce, pp. 82–83. 

26. the commercial orbital transportation Services (cotS) demonstration program involves up to 

$500 million for support of the international Space Station using either the rocketplane Kistler or 

Space exploration technologies (SpaceX) as the supply vehicles. 
362 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

been used to leverage other nations into compliance. india’s attempted purchase of 

cryogenic upper-stage engine technologies from russia was derailed because of 

russia’s need for Western support and investment to support the newly established 

Federation.the mtcr has not prevented the dissemination of missile technologies 

but, similar to nonproliferation treaties, has slowed the process. 27 

comsats 

communications satellites remain the lodestar of commercial space activity since 

their applications can generate significant revenues while also being militarily useful. 

developmentofthefieldwasdominatedatfirstbytheunitedStates,bothtechnologically 

and organizationally. establishment of intelsat was orchestrated to put the united States 

in the dominant position—it was defined as the monopoly over international satellitebased communications. in the early years, u.S. satellite manufacturers were favored, 

but once that monopoly was broken by the europeans the united States argued that 

no comsat could be launched that operated outside the purview of intelsat or later 

inmarsat. in time, that broke down with the canadian Anik satellites and later with 

regional systems such as eutelsat and Arabsat, and finally in the commercial comsat 

vendors, the first being panAmSat.the opening up of the comsat market made direct 

broadcast service (dBS) available, which individual consumers or groups can access 

directly without going through the gateways of the intelsat system.28 in addition,comsat 

companies became increasingly international in their ownership, which restricted u.S. 

ability to control communications in and out of certain nations.the international nature 

of these corporations made them less responsive to u.S. demands, although access to 

u.S. markets could be denied in retaliation. 

in dual-use terms, comsats are available to an even wider group of users, 

including nations that the united States does not wish to have such access. For 

comsats, the dual-use argument was weaker and has largely been discarded except 

by the united States, since the idea of globalization implies and translates into more 

and more access to the worldwide communications net (never mind the World 

Wide Web, which is in fact a minor part of it). proliferation of comsats and their 

methods of operation have completely undermined u.S. efforts at control since the 

united States no longer controls the manufacture or launch of such spacecraft.the 

europeans are the strongest competitors, but other nations such as Japan and china 

are developing their manufacturing capabilities. 

27. the standard treatments of u.S. policy regarding intelsat in the early years can be seen in Joseph n. 

pelton, Global Communications Satellite Policy: INTELSAT, Politics, and Functionalism (mt.Airy, md: 

lomond Books,1974);and Jonathan F.Galloway,The Politics and Technology of Satellite Communications 

(lexington, mA: lexington Books, 1972). 

28. ironically, panAmSat was later acquired by a privatized intelsat in 2005—a move symbolic of the 

changed policy environment. 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 363 

remote Sensing 

the two areas most directly impacted by the dual-use concept are remote 

sensing and navigation. clear restrictions were placed on all nonmilitary remote 

sensing satellites; weather satellites were the major exception, but even there the 

level of resolution was kept large (i.e., the aperture was kept at the half-mile 

[kilometer] level or higher rather than at the 3-foot [meter] or less level in order 

to deny any military usefulness to the images produced). in the late 1960s nASA 

began looking for space applications that would have social utility; remote sensing 

was one obvious application because the images produced had great social potential 

for social purposes, including environmental monitoring in particular. 

With the empowerment of the environmental movement in the early 1970s, 

such a satellite became an obvious route to pursue.the earth resources technology 

Satellite (renamed landsat 1) was the result. the fact was that the satellite was 

deliberately kept less accurate than it could have been, ranging from approximately 

131 feet (40 meters) to 246 feet (75 meters) with an approximately 115-mile (185­

kilometer) swath depending upon the imager used. the effect was to thwart any 

attempt at commercialization of the landsat or equivalent systems. the securityrelated fear was that a truly commercialized remote sensing approach would allow 

potential enemies to acquire detailed images at little cost even though they did not 

own space assets capable of doing the job or any space assets at all. 

A series of struggles ensued over the next two decades,reaching their crescendo 

in the reagan administration’s efforts to commercialize landsat.29 that effort failed 

because,in reality,there was no large commercial market for the images produced— 

the images had usefulness but their large scale limited what could be observed. on 

a macro level, the images produced were useful but further advances in landsat 

technology were effectively stymied by dual-use considerations.the pictures taken 

could be manipulated to improve the view, but that was of limited utility despite 

significant increase in resolution.the reality was that for two decades the remote 

sensing field was effectively a dead-end in terms of civilian applications. efforts to 

open the field to commercial or other players took form in the passage of the land 

remote Sensing Act of 1992.30 this allowed the entry of commercial interests but 

did not change the security restrictions, which meant it remained a dead-end until 

that last part was put in place.the French, with their Spot image satellite, were 

the only international competitor; its images had somewhat greater resolution but 

also were not considered to be of military significance. 

29. For an abbreviated summary of the controversy, see roger handberg, The Future of Space Industry: 

Private Enterprise and Public Policy (Westport, ct: Quorum Books, 1995), chapter 4. 

30. pamela e. mack and ray A. Williamson, “observing the earth from Space,” in Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume III: Using Space, 

John logsdon, ed. (Washington, dc: u.S. Government printing office, 1998), pp. 173–176. 
364 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

this national security dimension weakened in the 1990s as a consequence 

of two factors, the first Gulf War and the rising u.S. concern about international 

economic competitors. during the run-up to the 1991 coalition attack on iraqi 

forces in Kuwait and iraq,images from both landsat and Spot image satellites were 

incorporated into military planning. their large scale was in fact more useful for 

some purposes than the images acquired from intelligence satellites, which provided 

detail but no larger perspective. that usage meant that the security restrictions 

imposed over the years were in fact less useful than originally thought. 

Subsequently, in 1994, the clinton administration effectively removed any 

restrictions on the image resolution being sought. that led to an explosion of 

applications for remote sensing licenses, although economic reality proved much 

harsher since most applicants lacked the financial resources to make their satellites 

happen.31 ironically, the department of defense (dod) now found this looseningup to its advantage because the existence of such commercial options meant that 

the military did not have to build as large a remote sensing fleet as was earlier 

projected.this became particularly important after the Soviet union’s collapse and 

the general decline in defense spending (partially reversed after 9/11). 

the 11 September 2001 terrorist attack provided evidence as to this new 

operating environment: for example, in october–december 2001 dod purchased 

all ikonos images of Afghanistan so that others could not gain access. however, 

the commercial sector remains dependent upon the dod for its survival given 

the competition with the aerial surveying industry. improvements have occurred 

but delivery of space-based images is still too slow for many customers. Also, the 

problem of satellite revisit times to take subsequent images still advantages the aerial 

surveying industry. Further complicating the situation is the existence of a number 

of international competitors, including the russians, using military-grade remote 

sensing data,the French,and,interestingly,the canadians with their radarsat system. 

clearly, the technology has spread beyond the control of one nation. 

navigation 

navigation represents the clearest example of dual-use applications, since its 

pedigree was entirely military. What occurs is fairly straightforward; the military 

are obsessed with knowing their forces’ exact location (regardless of the enemy’s 

location). this is particularly true for the navy, which operates beyond sight 

of landmarks. establishing one’s position at sea awaited the development of the 

sextant where one shoots the stars to determine location and accurate clocks. like 

a communications satellite, a navigation satellite provides a signal which, when 

31. For a broader overview of the global remote sensing market,see John c.Baker,Kevin m.o’connell, 

and ray Williamson, eds., Commercial Observation Satellites:At the Leading Edge of Global Transparency 

(Santa monica, cA: rAnd corp., 2001). 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 365 

combined with signals from other navsats, gives one their exact location on earth’s 

surface.the u.S. navy pursued such a navsat system first with its transit system in 

the 1960s, until the Air Force and navy combined efforts to build what became 

known as the nAv GpS system.32 

using this combination of radio signals and atomic clocks, the receiver can 

determine a location on the surface and/or in the air with great exactitude.this 

application was developed for positioning and search and rescue,although the civilian 

applications became quickly obvious. For the military, GpS reduced “friendly fire” 

incidents and other blunders due to the fog of war and facilitated development of 

GpS-guided munitions, greatly enhancing weapon effectiveness and lethality.the 

essence of the military transformation hinges on global GpS access. 

the degree of precision provided was particularly sensitive because the u.S. 

military did not want to enhance the ability of America’s enemies to find targets 

employing the same GpS signal. initially, the united States established two signals 

(now more)—one very accurate and precise for the military and other authorized 

users, and a second signal with a deliberate distortion (selective availability, SA) built 

into that signal. 

in response to the shooting down of Korean Airline Flight 007 in 1983 when 

it strayed into Soviet air space, president ronald reagan had ordered the dod to 

allow civilian access to the GpS signal. opening the door to civilian use proved the 

equivalent to opening pandora’s Box as the military, in time, lost control. Another 

aspect was that the dod retained the capacity to completely deny the civilian signal 

under some conditions due to threat, imminence of war, or actual conflict.this SA 

function was controversial for non-u.S. users of GpS. despite the u.S. military’s 

resistance, American and especially Japanese commercial vendors were relatively 

quickly able to create software that effectively negated the built-in distortion.in fact, 

the first large military conflict employment of GpS was during the first iraq war in 

1991 when, due to a shortage of military GpS receivers, the united States turned 

off SA so that commercial receivers given to the troops would work accurately.this 

decision further dramatized the dod’s waning control over what was becoming a 

major commercial sector. 

Afterwards,the navigation business exploded as more applications were developed 

that provided even greater precision.one powerful application was the timing function 

of the navigation satellites (each carries an atomic clock), which is used to control 

computer networks to allow greater efficiency in moving data across the globe.this 

enormously increased economic efficiency across large distances in moving information 

and money transactions.Absolute u.S.control over this critical business resource became 

a major controversy between the united States and other nations. 

32. handberg, international Space commerce, chapter 6. 
366 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

the europeans, especially, saw SA and dod control over the turnkey not 

as security-driven but as further attempts by the American monopolists to protect 

their economic dominance. the result, after some acrimony, was development of 

the Galileo satellite radio navigation system as an alternative to the GpS system. 

this Galileo system, the europeans say, will not be turned off in a time of military 

conflict or imminent conflict, although that may not prove out in the long term 

as the europeans come to see themselves as becoming more proactive globally, 

partially replacing the Americans. the dod’s response was initially to reject any 

change but that view was overridden by president clinton with the 2 may 2000 

removal of distortion from the GpS signal.that decision attempted to forestall the 

Galileo program or at least make its development proceed more slowly. All such 

efforts failed, although splits within europe over various Galileo issues have slowed 

development.in addition,the europeans have solicited Galileo participation by noneuropean nations, including china, a fact that further feeds American concerns. 

Dual-Use and Its Implications 

the point being made here is simple: dual-use considerations directly 

and heavily impacted American domestic and international commercial space 

policy—international considerations are what drive the system even though the 

major economic impacts occur domestically. those impacts are the unintended 

consequences of an American policy generated in an earlier period. no nation has 

been totally deprived of the capacity to acquire needed space applications because 

of the u.S. prohibitions, especially in the cases of communications, remote sensing, 

and navigation (and arguably rocket technology).the reality is that these restrictions 

have had more of an adverse impact on the u.S. economy than elsewhere. the 

united States is creating a bubble around its space commerce efforts by imposing 

security-driven restrictions that significantly blunt any u.S. efforts at competing 

economically in the global marketplace.33 

over time, the global spread of space technologies has eliminated u.S. capacity 

to determine to whom and for what uses the technologies will be available.that 

raises some interesting implications for the broader question of u.S. security policy. 

As a general policy concept, dual-use embodies several implications, the most 

significant of which is keeping the united States secure from its enemies by denying 

them improved militarily useful technology. What has slipped out of u.S. hands 

33. the “bubble analogy” arose during the discussions of the original papers at the Societal impact 

conference in September 2006; i regret not writing down who the author of the phrase was at 

that time. it is used here as shorthand for the isolation of American space industry from the global 

marketplace due to security restrictions. in other contexts, Joan Johnson-Freese has written and 

spoken extensively on the effects of the 1998 decision to reimpose security restrictions on u.S. 

technology exports, including space applications. 
Dual-Use as Unintended Policy Driver: The American Bubble 367 

is the ability to control dissemination due to the multiplicity of players.take any 

major space technology and you can find multiple providers outside the united 

States.this issue arose first in the 1980s when Japan, for example, was deemed more 

advanced in a number of militarily relevant technologies than the united States. 

that situation has grown worse.that translates into a situation in which u.S. space 

industry runs the risk of becoming less competitive and,by extension,falling behind 

possible military competitors in terms of application quality. 

during the cold war there were two central players with their alliances; now 

there exist multiple combinations of players who may coalesce in opposition to 

the united States regarding various issues.the key problem is that the instruments 

through which America military power is exercised are now exceedingly vulnerable. 

one of the critical lessons learned, fortunately by analogy and not by attack, is 

that earth-orbiting satellites are vulnerable to interference either directly through 

physical attack, or indirectly through manipulation of their operating programs 

or disruption of their signals. proceeding along orbital paths, easily predictable by 

observation, means that satellites cannot hide. in fact, in orbital space, commercial 

satellites are growing even more vulnerable to disruption. Growing u.S. military 

dependence on commercial comsats and remote sensing satellites for critical tasks 

increases their vulnerability to disruption since commercial vendors find no reason 

to harden satellites or provide other means of protection.the costs are not justifiable 

for a commercial venture.the GpS system itself is capable of being jammed by any 

combatant more sophisticated than iraq—their efforts in 2003 were not successful, 

but the way is clear. 

the dual-use concept represented one effort at delaying American vulnerability 

to nations equipped with equivalent military technologies;the economic motivation 

has persisted even though the security justification has lost its potency. Both 

have lost their persuasiveness, especially the latter; American companies are now 

effectively excluded from many international economic opportunities regarding 

use of space technologies—strong, technologically sophisticated competitors are 

taking increasing market share in the different sectors of space commerce. the 

difficulty is that for the united States, change demands a rethinking of what is to 

be accomplished using space applications. previously, u.S. policy was to bind others 

to the united States through security and economic ties, with the latter thought 

to be the more lasting.those days are gone. Space history has seen the relative (not 

absolute) decline of American dominance with the entry of the russians and the 

formerly excluded chinese into the field, along with the rise of the europeans and 

others to increasing prominence. 
368 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Conclusion


dwight eisenhower, along with others, effectively fabricated the dual-use 

concept to solve certain political problems that he otherwise felt would spin out 

of control.to that end, eisenhower was successful and dual-use became embedded 

in u.S. policy thinking, although initially its implications were not entirely clear if 

the international environment were to change. over time, the earlier question of 

security faded in intensity but not out of existence.the emergence of china as a 

potential rival led to an intensification of dual-use concerns, with the economic 

component much more publicly muted. ironically, the result is that china has not 

been delayed by u.S. actions; the larger effect has been to severely cripple American 

space industry competitiveness more by inadvertence than by design.the two are 

now not mutually supportive, as in the beginnings when dual-use allowed the 

pursuit of American security and economic interests simultaneously. in a world of 

global economic competitions, balancing the values of economic competitiveness 

and security is no longer as simple or clear as before. 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 369

chApter 19 

Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, 

and National Security 

Glenn hastedt 

policy arenas do not arrive on the scene full-blown, nor do they remain static 

over time.they grow and evolve.We are witnessing this today with homeland 

security. more than a half-century ago we saw it with national security. one way 

to conceptualize the dynamics involved in the development of a policy arena is as 

a stream of activity. much like the origins of a river are found in the merging of 

smaller tributaries, a policy arena is the product of several different forces coming 

together. typically they involve a definition of a problem, the emergence of a 

collection of institutions designated to address that problem, and the identification 

of a strategy set to solve the problem. once under way, a river reinvents itself daily. 

the changes are not necessarily visible at the outset, but over time they become 

clear. external events, both man-made and natural occurrences, play their part in 

this evolution, but so, too, do the currents of the river and the life its waters sustain 

within it. international crises, accidents, bureaucratic politics, personalities, as well 

as new ideas and technologies are such driving and shaping forces in policy arenas. 

Finally,given enough time,rivers themselves disappear by either merging into larger 

bodies of water or vanishing into the ground as their water flow is reduced to a 

trickle. changing perceptions of a problem or the proper way to address it may 

cause the first phenomenon to occur in a policy arena, whereas shrinking budgets 

and public apathy may bring about the second. 

A key element of the policy stream that is national security was the development 

of reconnaissance satellites.they were not present in 1947 at the formal founding of 

national security as a policy arena—with the passage of the national Security Act— 

but they became an important force in its subsequent downstream development.1 

its effects can be seen in the identity and influence of the government agencies 

that make up the intelligence community; the manner in which intelligence was 

1. See r. cargill hall,“clandestine victory: eisenhower and overhead reconnaissance in the cold 

War,” in Forging the Shield: Eisenhower and National Security for the 21st Century, dennis Showalter, ed. 

(chicago: imprints publications, 2005) for a discussion of the technological and political streams 

from which reconnaissance satellites emerged. 
370 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

thought about by policy makers; and the problems to which intelligence was put. in 

none of these cases were reconnaissance satellites the sole factor in producing these 

changes but in each case they played a major role. 

Formative Currents 

Four forces can be seen as having a formative influence on the development 

of the national security policy stream into which reconnaissance satellites would 

enter. the first was the problem of strategic surprise as symbolized by pearl 

harbor. this was the event that, in the minds of many, national security policy 

had to make sure was not repeated.the second force was the solution of greater 

centralization and cooperation at the national level among bureaucracies involved 

in foreign diplomatic, military, and economic policy. pearl harbor occurred in spite 

of warning; intelligence was present, but it was not recognized or acted upon.the 

inherent validity of this solution was reinforced by the wartime experience of ad 

hoc military centralization that came about out of the need to cooperate with the 

British. to bring this about, the 1947 national Security Act created the central 

intelligence Agency (ciA), the national Security council (nSc), and unified the 

military services under a Secretary of defense in a national defense establishment 

that would soon become the department of defense (dod). 

the third force was the de facto establishment of an intelligence community that 

was to work together to prevent another pearl harbor.Along with the newly created 

ciA the other founding members were the Bureau of intelligence and research 

(inr) at the State department and u.S.Army, navy, and Air Force intelligence.the 

final force that exerted great influence on the origins of American national security 

policy was the advent of the cold war. it presented the united States—and national 

security policy—with a clearly identifiable enemy in the Soviet union and then a 

strategy—containment—around which policy makers could unite. 

Growth and Development of the 


Intelligence Community


today there are 16 organizations that officially constitute the intelligence 

community. reconnaissance satellites played a central role in the formation of 

one organization and had a substantial impact on the development of two others. 

reconnaissance satellites can be most directly linked to the establishment of the 

national reconnaissance office (nro). president eisenhower established the 

nro by executive order in August 1960. it became operational on 6 September 

1961, following an agreement between the ciA and the Air Force setting it up as a 

joint operation.the Air Force was placed in charge of launching the satellites and 

recovering the film capsules; the ciA was charged with developing the satellites. 

the director of the nro was to be the undersecretary of the Air Force and 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 371 

the deputy director was to be drawn from the ciA. under terms of the initial 

agreement, neither the ciA nor the Air Force had to give up control over any of its 

reconnaissance satellite programs to the nro. instead, they would be merged at a 

higher level into a national reconnaissance program. 

reconnaissance satellites also played a role in creating the national photographic 

interpretation center (npic), the predecessor of one of the newest members is the 

national Geospatial intelligence Agency (nGiA). the original impetus for creating 

npic lay in a march 1960 suggestion by Secretary of defense thomas Gates that 

eisenhower commission a study of the defense intelligence bureaucracy, describing it as 

an inefficient,huge conglomerate.Gates’s proposal languished until Francis Gary powers’s 

u-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down.After this incident a Joint Study Group was 

formed that reported out just prior to the end of eisenhower’s presidency. Among its 

conclusions were that the military was playing too prominent a role in the intelligence 

process,and it called for increased efficiency through the creation of npic.Both the ciA 

and dod sought to run npic,with the dod proposing the creation of a new unit and 

the ciA calling for the expansion of its already existing photographic intelligence center. 

Secretary of defense robert mcnamara acted on this recommendation and npic came 

into existence in 1961 as a community-wide asset in the interpretation of aerial photos. 

he also followed eisenhower’s inclination to place npic within the ciA. 

the third member of the intelligence community whose existence and 

development is tied to reconnaissance satellites is the national Security Agency 

(nSA). it was established by a secret executive order, national Security council 

intelligence directive (nScid) no. 6, entitled “communications intelligence and 

electronics intelligence,” on 15 September 1952. it formally came into existence on 

4 november 1952. nSA is the successor organization to the Armed Forces Security 

Agency (AFSA). it was set up as the result of a Joint chiefs of Staff directive signed 

by Secretary of defense louis Johnson on 20 may 1949. located within the dod, 

the AFSA was assigned responsibility for directing the communications intelligence 

and electronic intelligence of the three military services signals intelligence units. in 

spite of this broad mandate, the AFSA had little power. For the most, part its activities 

consisted of tasks not being performed by theArmyAgency,the naval Security Group, 

and the Air Force Security Service—the units whose work it was to direct. 

Walter Bedell Smith, president harry S. truman’s executive director of the 

national Security council,found this state of affairs to be unsatisfactory.particularly 

troubling was the failure of the AFSA’s performance during the Korean War when 

it was unable to break the chinese and north Korean codes. his view was shared 

by General James van Fleet, commander of the u.S. eighth Army who complained 

that “[W]e have lost, through neglect, disinterest and possibly jealousy, much of 

the effectiveness in intelligence work we acquired so painfully in World War ii.”2 

2. James Bamford, Body of Secrets:Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (new york:Anchor 

Books, 2002), p. 30. 
372 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Smith wrote a memo in december 1951 calling for a review of communications 

intelligence activities, describing the current system for collecting and processing 

communications intelligence as “ineffective.”three days later,on 13 december 1951, 

the national Security council set up a committee (commonly referred to as the 

Brownell committee after its chair, herbert Brownell) to examine the matter.the 

Brownell committee recommended strengthening the national-level coordination 

and direction of communications intelligence activities.the nSA was created as a 

result of these recommendations. 

nSA got off to an inauspicious start.Although it successfully engaged in overflights 

of the Soviet union, it lacked a capacity to provide intelligence on events elsewhere, 

such as the Suez crisis.moreover,its efforts to break Soviet codes repeatedly met with 

failure. James Bamford goes so far as to speculate that in the 1950s nSA faced the 

prospect of going out of business and that a “produce or else” atmosphere had settled 

over the agency.3 Salvation came in two forms.First,there was support from president 

eisenhower and his Board of consultants along with an influx of funds in an effort 

to strengthen its code-breaking abilities. Second, there arose the perceived necessity 

of obtaining signals intelligence from Soviet missiles as a result of the launching of 

Sputnik in 1957.the initial solution to this need was the construction of earth-based 

receiving dishes.the second-generation solution was the deployment of space-based 

satellite receivers. president eisenhower gave his approval for the first launching of an 

elint satellite five days after Gary Francis powers’s u-2 was shot down. 

the story of the creation and growth of these national security organizations is 

more complicated than a straight-line response of policy makers to the development 

of reconnaissance satellites. it is one in which the existing currents of the national 

security policy stream heavily influenced organizational design.this comes through 

most vividly in the development of the national reconnaissance office. 

the decision to create the nro came years after explorations into the 

feasibility of space reconnaissance satellites had already begun. not surprisingly, the 

Air Force was first to move in this direction.officials were attracted by the potential 

power of long-range missiles and tasked the rAnd corporation to study whether 

they might be used to launch space reconnaissance satellites. its report,“preliminary 

design of an experimental earth-circling Spaceship,” was delivered in may 1946. 

three others followed in 1947, 1952, and 1954. the last study was cosponsored 

by the ciA and recommended that the Air Force begin at “the earliest possible 

date completion and use of an efficient satellite reconnaissance vehicle.”4 rAnd’s 

report formed the basis for General operational requirement no. 80, issued by 

the Air Force in march 1955, requesting proposals from the private sector for the 

development of a photographic reconnaissance satellite. 

3. ibid., p. 355. 

4. William Burrows, Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (new york: random house, 

1986), p. 83. 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 373 

discussions were also under way at the presidential level. on 27 march 1954, 

president eisenhower held a meeting with James B.conant,James r.Killian,Jr.,and other 

scientists that led to the formation of a study group under Killian’s direction to develop 

solutions to the problem of surprise attack. its report, “meeting the threat of Surprise 

Attack,” was completed on 14 February 1955. project 3 dealt with intelligence and was 

chaired by edwin land. in their briefings to eisenhower, land and Killian identified 

satellites as a promising system for collecting intelligence that would provide warning 

to the united States of an impending Soviet surprise attack.they also noted that the 

technology to realize this collection platform would take time to develop and suggested an 

interim technology:a high-flying reconnaissance aircraft.it would become the u-2. 

interest in space reconnaissance satellites led in multiple directions in the search 

for a technology to accomplish this mission. the favored Air Force option was to 

transmit photographs through a radio downlink.First known asWS-117l/pied piper 

and then Sentry,it would ultimately be known as the Satellite and missile observation 

System (SAmoS).the ciA advocated the mid-air capsule recovery system that had 

been rejected by the Air Force. it became known to the world as discoverer and to 

those involved in intelligence collection as coronA. competition continued even 

after a February 1958 eisenhower meeting with Killian and land that reviewed the 

difficulties the Air Force was having in developing its reconnaissance satellite. As a 

result of that meeting, eisenhower decided to give the ciA primary responsibility for 

developing a reconnaissance satellite.the Air Force did not,however,stop work on its 

preferred option. it proceeded with its Sentry system. 

the search for an appropriate technology to use for satellite reconnaissance 

went hand-in-hand with efforts to devise an organizational structure within which to 

house it.the search did not begin with a clean slate.A stream of activity was already 

in place and had left a legacy into which organizational thinking would enter.When 

the earlier decision had been made to build the u-2,eisenhower determined that the 

ciA—not the Air Force—would be in charge of the operation.there was nothing 

automatic about this. director of central intelligence (dci) Allen dulles was a firm 

believer that human intelligence gathering should be at the core of the ciA’s covert 

operations. he had shown little interest in the project earlier in 1954 and is described 

as “accepting the inevitable” in later accepting ciA jurisdiction over it.5 this came 

after edwin land wrote a letter to him strongly urging the ciA to take the lead in 

the cl-282 project that would become the u-2. land wrote “i am not sure that we 

have made clear that we feel there are many reasons why this activity is appropriate for 

the ciA . . . .We told you that this seems to us the kind of action and technique that 

is right for the contemporary version of the ciA: a modern and scientific way for an 

Agency that is always supposed to be looking, to do its looking.”6 

5. Jeffrey richelson, The Wizards of Langley:Inside the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology (Boulder, 

co:Westview, 2002), p. 13. 

6. The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 (Washington, dc: center for the Study of intelligence, 

central intelligence Agency, 1998), p. 33. 
374 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

richard Bissell, a special assistant to dulles, was given the assignment to 

develop the u-2, and a special standalone unit within the directorate of plans, the 

development projects Staff, was created to manage it.this decision did not put an 

end to bureaucratic jockeying for control over the u-2 program. Air Force chief 

of Staff General nathan twining believed that the Strategic Air command (SAc) 

under the direction of General curtis lemay should be in charge of the u-2. in the 

spring and summer of 1955, he lobbied for such a change, only to have SAc settle 

for limited participation in the u-2 program. 

Given the speed with which the u-2 was developed and became operational, 

it is not surprising that eisenhower again turned to Bissell and his development 

projects Staff in 1958 as the lead organization after the decision was made to go 

ahead with the discoverer/coronA reconnaissance satellite program. Beneath 

them,the ciA and Air Force continued to go their separate ways.each encountered 

internal organizational problems. Within the Air Force, responsibility for space 

satellite reconnaissance shifted from unit to unit with dizzying frequency.At different 

times it was the responsibility of the Air Force and the Advanced research projects 

Agency, sometimes leaving the Air Force with responsibility for little more than 

supervising global surveillance studies and at other times being in charge of total 

control over satellite reconnaissance programs. 

At the ciA a different sort of organizational problem arose. Bissell was appointed 

deputy director for plans,putting him in charge of all ciA covert operations.in moving 

into this new position in 1959, he took with him control over u-2 and coronA, 

effectively removing them from the development projects Staff. this move alarmed 

Killian and land, who saw covert action and human espionage as very distinct from 

espionage based on science and technology.moreover,they were concerned that within 

the ciA there was now insufficient attention being given to science and technology 

issues which were now found in virtually all quarters of the ciA. 

the establishment of the nro as an operational unit in 1961 did not end the 

conflict between the ciA and Air Force over control over reconnaissance satellites. 

Where the ciA saw the Air Force and the nro as one and the same, and as 

together trying to force it out of the satellite reconnaissance business by taking 

over its successful coronA program, the nro saw itself as a truly national 

intelligence agency having a small Air Force component.over the next several years, 

each body recommended that the other all but go out of the satellite reconnaissance 

business. in november 1962 Air Force officials proposed that many (if not all) ciA 

reconnaissance projects should be transferred to the Air Force and that all program 

functions should be consolidated within the nro.the ciA would later counter 

with a proposal to eliminate the nro with “all research, preliminary design, system 

development, engineering, and operational employment” going to the ciA. it was 

not until April 1965 that a truce was achieved with dci Admiral William raborn 

and Secretary of defense cyrus vance agreeing to a formula whereby the Secretary 

of defense had ultimate responsibility for managing the nro, including its budget 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 375 

and choosing the director. the dci was to have responsibility for determining 

collection priorities and the ciA was to continue to be responsible for coronA 

and the development of new systems once the concept was selected. 

A New Decision-Making Environment 

reconnaissance satellites not only helped to create new organizations or transform 

existing ones;they also altered the shape of the national security policy decision-making 

environment into which they flowed in three ways.A first change was to complicate and 

accentuate the managerial challenge facing the dci.From the outset this individual was 

simultaneously the head of the ciA and the head of the intelligence community.And 

from the outset the dci struggled to transform this grant of authority into something 

meaningful. not only was the ciA a new organization but also the other founding 

members of the intelligence community were located in existing organizations.this 

would also be true of all others who later joined the intelligence community. this 

created an immediate point of contention between a dci trying to forge a community

wide policy and intelligence officials in these agencies who were part of organizations 

that did not always agree with this policy. 

this problem was noted by the First hoover commission in its 1948 report. its 

subcommittee on national security policy,the eberstadt committee,wrote that“[t]he 

central intelligence Agency deserves and must have a greater degree of acceptance 

and support from old-line intelligence services than it has had in the past.”7 Singled 

out as still unsatisfactory were relations between the ciA and G-2 (Army intelligence), 

the FBi, the Atomic energy commission, and the State department. 

As we have seen, the development of reconnaissance satellites quickly elevated 

the Air Force to the position of the ciA’s primary antagonist. conflicts of interest 

also developed between intelligence agencies involved with the operation and 

development of reconnaissance satellites and the analysis of their products. nSA 

and nro have quarreled over the proper mix of space-based systems, with nro 

consistently supporting a more costly systems mix. in addition to competing with 

nSA,nro also solicits funds directly from the military services through the promise 

of tactical intelligence that will support their missions. in an effort to resolve these 

conflicts the national imagery and mapping Agency (nimA) was created in 1996 

by bringing together several offices including npic. the creation of nimA did 

not end bureaucratic disputes over imagery intelligence.the ciA’s directorate of 

Science and technology sought to regain control over functions lost to nimA, 

while the nro continued to have program and budgetary control over ground 

station and mission control elements of space-based imagery. 

7. Frank Gervasi, Big Government:The Meaning and Purpose of the Hoover Commission Report (new york: 

Whittlesey house, 1949), p. 279. 
376 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Second, the development of reconnaissance satellites also contributed to 

changing the balance of power among the members of the intelligence community 

by directing spending toward some agencies and away from others.current estimates 

are that by 9/11, 85 percent of the intelligence budget lay beyond the control of the 

ciA.the overwhelming portion of this money went to dod intelligence agencies, 

most notably nSA and nro.the inability to control intelligence budgets beyond 

the ciA, and especially those in the dod, became a constant issue in studies of 

intelligence reorganization and a point of debate in the creation of the director 

of national intelligence position. the 9/11 commission’s proposal to create a 

director of national intelligence gave this individual significant budgetary powers 

over all intelligence community funds.As passed, the legislation accepted the view 

put forward by the dod that this power should be limited. 

third,reconnaissance satellites contributed to the development of collection “silos.” 

under ideal conditions, the relationship between analysts and collectors is one where 

analysts identify intelligence needs and collectors translate those needs into specific targets. 

instead,a system has developed that is driven by collectors and the technology they control. 

Additionally,the information gathered by these collection systems,more often than not,is 

treated in a proprietary fashion.its distribution is controlled and limited.As a consequence, 

intelligence from different collection sources tends not to merge together in a constructive 

fashion so that analysts can provide policy makers with answers their questions; instead, it 

comes forward in competing streams from different collection silos. 

even in their early stages,the managerial impact of these changes was recognized.in 

1971theSchlesingerreport,aninquiryintotheoperationoftheintelligencecommunity, 

began by stating what it saw as two disturbing trends in the operation of the intelligence 

community. the first was the “impressive” rise in cost and size. the second was the 

inability to translate those two features into improved intelligence products.Among the 

factors it cited as responsible for this state of affairs were competition between collection 

units that has led to unproductive duplication and unplanned growth, which has led to 

a series of compromise solutions.it concluded that the main hope for realizing any such 

improvement lay in a “fundamental reform of the intelligence community’s decision 

making bodies and procedures.”What was needed were “governing institutions.”8 

View of Intelligence 

reconnaissance satellites fit uneasily into the ongoing thinking about the role 

of intelligence in the national security process. this relationship was anchored in 

two guiding assumptions. First, the purpose of intelligence was to prevent strategic 

8. the Schlesinger report, “A review of the intelligence community,” can be found at George 

Washington university’s national Security Archive Web site, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/ 

NSAEBB/NSAEBB144/document%204.pdf (accessed 15 February 2006). 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 377 

surprise.the development of reconnaissance satellites fit comfortably here. Second, 

the collection of intelligence was thought about primarily in human terms: covert 

action and espionage. reconnaissance satellites ran counter to this assumption and 

would ultimately undermine this tendency to equate intelligence collection with 

human intelligence. in the process it would lend an aura of legitimacy to espionage 

that had never existed. 

reconnaissance satellites, along with their predecessor, the u-2 reconnaissance 

aircraft, were quick to demonstrate their value as instruments for preventing strategic 

surprise. Beginning in the mid 1950s, political forces within the u.S. intelligence 

community (led by theAir Force) raised the specter of a bomber gap in which the Soviet 

union held a decided and threatening lead over the united States in the development 

of a large strategic bomber force,creating anAmerican vulnerability to a surprise attack. 

u-2 overflights in 1956 provided visual evidence that this gap did not exist. Satellite 

reconnaissance photographs would do the same just a few years later when they provided 

visual evidence that led to a repudiation of the charge that a missile gap now existed. 

the change in emphasis from human to technological intelligence collection 

can be traced both to failures of the former and successes in the field of photographic 

reconnaissance.the late 1940s and 1950s were the heyday of covert action against 

procommunist regimes around the world and efforts to place agents inside the 

Soviet union and behind the iron curtain. the failed 1961 Bay of pigs invasion 

marked the end of that period, calling into question the credibility of the ciA and 

its top leadership in the area of covert action. eighteen months later, the cuban 

missile crisis cast doubt upon relying on human intelligence to prevent strategic 

surprise. u-2 photographs provided the conclusive proof needed by the Kennedy 

administration,confirming that Soviet missiles were being installed in cuba.classical 

human espionage in cuba had been unable to provide such intelligence. 

there is, however, one aspect of intelligence that the increased prominence 

of information (especially photographic images) gathered from u-2 overflights or 

reconnaissance satellites did not change. it did not provide a silver bullet that ended 

policy debates over how to interpret intelligence. Army and navy intelligence, 

along with the ciA, saw in early u-2 photographs evidence that future Soviet 

icBm launching sites would resemble the testing site at tyuratam, Kazakhstan.the 

Air Force disagreed and argued that no particular configuration could be assumed.9 

in fact, the arrival of the u-2 photographs may have accentuated the problem 

of interpretation. photographs were compelling and easily understood by policy 

makers. At the same time, they were too compelling and lent themselves to selfdeception and wishful thinking.10 

9. lawrence Freedman, U.S. Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat, 2nd ed. (princeton: princeton 

university press, 1986), p. 71. 

10. mark lowenthal, Intelligence from Secrets to Policy,2nd ed.(Washington,dc:cQ press,2003),p.64. 
378 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

Emergence of a New Policy Area 

the success of first aerial reconnaissance and then satellite reconnaissance in 

determining Soviet weapons capabilities helped to usher in a shift to thinking about 

the fundamental purpose of intelligence and national security policy more broadly. 

Although a concern for preventing a surprise attack never totally disappeared, it was 

now joined by a concern for developing a framework for managing u.S.–Soviet 

superpower relations. 

historically,attempts at reducing international tensions were predicated on two 

assumptions and frustrated by one overriding concern. First, military cooperation 

among enemies had to be preceded by some form of political accommodation. 

Second, such cooperation was negotiated into existence by a treaty or similar 

international agreement. even when these were realized, a reduction in tensions 

could be frustrated by the fear of cheating. 

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, the cold war had become recognized by 

all as an international fact of life. no abatement was in sight. efforts to formally 

negotiate cooperation, such as the open Skies proposal, had not met with success. 

the development of huge nuclear inventories also made it clear that neither side in 

this struggle could hope for a military triumph over the other at anything except a 

tremendous cost.the cuban missile crisis reminded policy makers and the public that 

conflicts between the two superpowers were not a thing of the past and that they held 

the real potential for leading to war.together,large nuclear inventories and the danger 

of accidental war made it increasingly clear to policy makers in both countries that 

even though they were enemies they had an interest in reducing tensions. 

Steps such as the hot line linking moscow and Washington were post–cuban 

missile crisis moves in the direction of seeking to have a more peaceful and stable 

relationship without a formal treaty of any kind.this was followed later by interest 

in negotiating a reduction in the number of nuclear weapons through the Strategic 

Arms limitations talks (SAlt i). Still, the problem of cheating remained and it was 

accentuated by the recognition that the united States and Soviet union remained 

enemies. Where political considerations made on-site inspections impossible, 

reconnaissance satellites offered a more reliable and politically acceptable method 

for ensuring that each side lived up to the SAlt i agreement.they did not infringe 

on state sovereignty in a traditional sense because the principle of nonterritorial 

spaceflights had been established in 1955, when the eisenhower administration and 

the Soviet union both announced plans for launching of international Geophysical 

year satellites. reconnaissance satellites also operated unilaterally; they did not 

require the formal cooperation of other states. 

their ability to verify behavior and act as a stabilizing force in world politics 

was dependent, however, on three conditions being met. First, both sides had to 

possess this satellite capability.the first Soviet reconnaissance satellite was launched 

in April 1962 and it appears that the Soviet union reached this capability in 1963 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 379 

when Khrushchev began to publicly refer to such a capability. Second, both the 

united States and Soviet union had to agree not to try and shield information from 

the reconnaissance satellites.this was accomplished in SAlt i with the agreement 

on noninterference with national technical means of verification. third, neither 

side could have a serious anti-satellite capability.11 the u.S. moved its policy in 

this direction in late 1962 when the dod “reoriented” or canceled the Air Force’s 

Satellite interception program.the Soviet union ceased its anti-satellite testing in 

1971, on the verge of the SAlt i treaty. 

As we asserted at the outset,policy arenas are constantly evolving and changing 

as they move forward in time. So it was with conflict management.the ability of 

reconnaissance satellites to perform their verification function was dependent upon 

more than technology. As the political foundations of détente began to crumble 

in the late 1970s, unilateral actions on the part of the Soviet union and united 

States began to undermine this verification function.talk of winning nuclear wars 

appeared in official pronouncements; definitions and standards of verification were 

now openly debated; and both sides moved once again to test and develop antisatellite capabilities.currently the development of a strategy of preemption threatens 

to reduce the stabilizing influence of space reconnaissance satellites by making them 

early targets for military action. 

A spinoff from the employing space reconnaissance satellites as a key element 

in the development of a conflict management framework for stabilizing u.S.–Soviet 

relations was the need to obtain ground stations to receive the information they 

collected.here again,reconnaissance satellites did not create a new national security 

issue area as much as they added a new element with its own unique dynamics into 

an ongoing policy stream.the early 1950s saw the united States establish ground 

stations to support the gathering of electronic intelligence and to monitor Soviet 

nuclear tests from Great Britain and norway. more politically sensitive ground 

stations were set up in turkey and iran. 

the 1966 decision to rely upon satellites in geostationary orbit to detect Soviet 

missile launches required the construction of ground stations outside of the united 

States.the most advantageous site for such a station was Australia.two would be 

constructed,one at nurrangar and the other at pine Gap.over the next few decades 

this decision became the focal point of conflict within Australia and consequently 

an occasional issue in u.S.–Australian relations.12 one point of contention was the 

potential such a station created for making Australia the target of a nuclear attack. 

this issue was raised in Australia’s parliament by the opposition labor party.Another 

11. John Gaddis, “the 	evolution of a Satellite reconnaissance regime,” in U.S.-Soviet Security 

Cooperation:Achievements,Failures,Lessons,Alexander George et al.,eds.(new york:oxford university 

press, 1988), pp. 353–374. 

12. Jeffrey richelson, America’s Space Sentinels: DSP Satellites and National Security (lawrence, KS: 

university of Kansas press, 1999), pp. 137–156. 
380 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

issue (and one that resonated well in Australia) was the secrecy surrounding the 

project. Gough Whitlam, the head of the labor party, raised this point in parliament, 

asserting that while it was right for Australia to cooperate with the united States, it 

was wrong for the Australian government to withhold information on the project 

from parliament and the public. relations between the united States and Australia 

became particularly touchy during and immediately afterWhitlam’s short-lived labor 

government of 1973–1975.Whitlam had made it known that he wanted to review the 

future of American bases on Australian territory.in 1975,with his government locked 

in a budget crisis,Governor-General Sir John Kerr removedWhitlam from office and 

replaced him with conservative leader malcolm Fraser. left-wing forces in Australia 

asserted that Whitlam’s removal from office was a ciA-engineered coup. 

The Post–Cold War Era 

the impact of reconnaissance satellites on intelligence and national security 

policy did not end with the passing of the cold war. instead, the policy stream in 

which reconnaissance satellites now operate has altered course. in most cases the 

changes now evident were present as ripples in the latter part of the cold war, and 

subsequently have gained in strength. As was the case with the cold war national 

security policy stream, we can expect reconnaissance satellites and the content of 

this policy to affect one another.Several indicators already point in directions where 

this interactive effect is likely to be most pronounced over time. 

one notable and already evident area of impact on national security policy is 

the increased use of reconnaissance satellite imagery for tactical military purposes. 

Satellites had provided support for military operations on a limited scale prior 

to the end of the cold war, in the 1986 bombing campaign against libya, and 

operation Just cause in 1989. A quantum leap in the reliance on satellites took 

place in 1991 with the persian Gulf War. Satellite intelligence was used to provide 

warning of Scud attacks,target patriot anti-tactical ballistic missile rockets,provide 

weather data, aid with land navigation and aerial bombardment, and serve as a 

communication channel.the war against terrorism also has seen a heavy reliance 

upon satellite imagery and electronic intelligence in efforts to trace the movements 

of key terrorist leaders and identify targets. 

this changed role for reconnaissance satellites (away from strategic intelligence 

to tactical intelligence) has brought with it the necessity for adjustments by both 

the providers of this intelligence and its recipients. in the 1991 persian Gulf War, 

postmortems noted that distribution of intelligence was a significant problem and 

that some senior commanders were unfamiliar with the capabilities and limitations 

of u.S. intelligence systems.13 

13. house committee on Armed Services, Intelligence Successes and Failures in Operations Desert Shield/ 

Storm, committee print 5, 16 August 1993. 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 381 

A second emerging change is that the united States and russia no longer have 

a monopoly over satellite reconnaissance. two sets of competitors with different 

interests have emerged. one group is made of states that have begun to pursue a 

reconnaissance satellite capability for national security reasons.14 Foremost among 

them is israel, which in the past chafed at the inability or unwillingness of the united 

States to provide it with satellite images. it launched its first reconnaissance satellite in 

April 1995.Japan has also acted on regional security concerns to launch reconnaissance 

satellites; its first launch was in march 2003. Germany, italy, Spain, india, and pakistan 

are also moving in this direction. down the road, the ability of other states to use 

satellite reconnaissance for self-defense or offensive maneuvers reduces the ability of 

the united States to use reconnaissance satellites as a conflict management tool. 

Also emerging as competitors are commercial reconnaissance or observation 

satellites.15 the first u.S.commercial observation satellite was launched in 1972.France 

followed in 1986, as did the Soviet union one year later.the increased technological 

sophistication of commercial reconnaissance or observation satellites effectively makes 

them dual-use systems with commercial and military applications. they have the 

potential for revealing sensitive information that states would otherwise like to keep 

secret, such as when Spot and landsat photos showed the level of devastation at 

chernobyl.they also have the ability to allow states to challenge the united States’ 

interpretation of events.this occurred in 1996 when France did not support a cruise 

missile strike on iraq because imagery at its disposal did not show a significant iraqi 

troop movement into Kurdish areas. commercial observation satellites may also serve 

as auxiliary or adjunct intelligence services for states.this occurred in the war against 

terrorism in Afghanistan when nimA bought exclusive and perpetual rights to all 

imagery taken of Afghanistan by the ikonos satellite.16 

A third emerging trend is a broadened demand for the services of 

reconnaissance satellites that transcend the traditional dividing line between 

national security and non-national security policy issues.these include monitoring 

of environmental conditions such as droughts and natural disasters, and narcotics 

trafficking and potential terrorist targets. nimA was tasked to provide support to 

the 2002 Winter olympics in utah and the 2004 Summer olympics in Greece. 

the national Geospatial intelligence Agency supported hurricane Katrina relief 

efforts by providing information to the Federal emergency management Agency 

on affected areas from u.S.government satellites,commercial satellites,and airborne 

reconnaissance platforms. 

14. Jeffrey richelson,“the Whole World is Watching,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (January/ 

February 2006): pp. 26–35. 

15. michael Krepon et al., eds., Commercial Observation Satellites and International Security (new york: 

carnegie endowment for international peace, 1990). 

16. lowenthal, Intelligence from Secrets to Policy, p. 68. 
382 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht 

in looking to the future impact of reconnaissance satellites on national security 

policy, the key questions may not be technological in nature as much as they will 

be contextual. three features related to intelligence are of particular importance. 

First, during the cold war the intelligence challenge largely was defined in terms 

of unearthing secrets.today, the challenge is more to unravel mysteries.17 Searching 

for secrets involves searching for something that is knowable but being denied to 

you. mysteries are open-ended and evolving. reconnaissance satellites proved their 

worth in revealing secrets; solving mysteries may be a different matter. photographs 

could not establish whether Saddam hussein had weapons of mass destruction or 

what his intentions were.years of electronic and communication intercepts have not 

clarified the nature of the global war on terrorism. 

Second, a strong current of reform in intelligence circles pertains to the need to 

integrate open-source intelligence into both collection and analytic processes.18 during 

the cold war, secret intelligence gathered by reconnaissance satellites was combined 

with secret intelligence collected by human sources to provide the basis for intelligence 

analysis.the possibility now exists that secret information gathered by reconnaissance 

satellites and other sources will be combined with information from public sources 

to produce intelligence products. one consequence may be a reorientation among 

intelligence agencies and a shift in the balance of power among them. 

Finally, should terrorism continue to provide the main context for American 

national security policy, a readjustment in the place of reconnaissance satellites in 

the strategy to fight it may come about.conceptualizing the conflict with terrorism 

as a war works to place military action at the core of an anti-terrorism strategy. 

it also favors reconnaissance satellites over other means of intelligence collection 

for bureaucratic and historical reasons. Should the conflict with terrorism come 

to be viewed in a criminal justice context, then intelligence from reconnaissance 

satellites is not so favored. instead, policing strategies will be most heavily relied 

upon, and intelligence gathered by reconnaissance satellites will be read by analysts 

and consumers with different notions about how to use intelligence and what type 

of intelligence is most valuable. 

Conclusion 

reconnaissance satellites have contributed in a number of ways to the changing 

face of intelligence within the national security policy arena. their influence has 

been considered not so much as an isolated variable forcing change, but as one force 

17. Gregory treverton, Reshaping National Intelligence in an Age of Information (new york: cambridge 

university press, 2001). 

18. Jennifer Sims and Barton Gerber, eds. Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Washington, dc: Georgetown 

university press, 2005), pp. 63–78. 
Reconnaissance Satellites, Intelligence, and National Security 383 

of many.this is because the national security policy arena into which reconnaissance 

satellites entered already existed as a stream of activity. reconnaissance satellites 

entered this stream and helped change it.the impact of reconnaissance satellites on 

intelligence and national security policy does not end because the cold war is over. 

they will continue to shape intelligence and national security policy as this policy 

arena moves further downstream. 

in the cold war period, two particular areas of impact were, first, on the 

changing fortunes of the ciA within the intelligence community, and second, on 

the development of a framework for managing superpower cold war relations.From 

the outset, the ciA faced challenges in establishing a position of leadership within 

the intelligence community.the advent of reconnaissance satellites, combined with 

the ciA’s own failings in the areas of covert action and human espionage, helped 

bring into existence an intelligence community whose key organizational players 

lay beyond its effective control and whose key intelligence collection methodologies 

were rooted in science and technology.the resulting situation proved to be a mixed 

blessing.on one hand,reconnaissance satellites produced unprecedented insight into 

the national security policies of the Soviet union. on the other hand, collection 

silos arose, human intelligence capabilities declined, costs rose dramatically, and 

managerial problems festered. 

reconnaissance satellites also helped usher in an era of conflict management 

between the united States and Soviet union.they were instrumental in transforming 

an area of competition into one of conflict management by providing each side 

with a largely unilateral means of verifying the behavior of the other. Students of 

international relations have long commented that it is the absence of trust and the 

fear of cheating that makes cooperation so difficult in world politics.reconnaissance 

satellites showed that, with proper motivation, technology can provide a mechanism 

allowing states to cooperate in the absence of trust.the changed atmosphere of the 

cold war during the reagan administration also showed the limits of technology as 

a proxy for trust. 
384 SocietAl impAct oF SpAceFliGht
Section V


Social impact 

~


Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 387

chapter 20 

Space History from the Bottom Up:


Using Social History To Interpret the 


Societal Impact of Spaceflight


Glen asner 

the methods and concerns of social history, or what is often referred to as the 

“new Social history,” came to dominate the study of U.S. history during the 

960s and 970s.to this day, practitioners in the field continue to shape the history 

curricula at major universities and the content of leading professional journals. 

Despite the popularity of social history,it has had almost no influence on the practice 

of space history. Social historians have ignored spaceflight as a topic of study and 

space historians have looked infrequently to social history for ideas and inspiration. 

perhaps the reason for this divide rests on how each field addresses a fundamental 

methodological question, namely: What activities, events, and individuals are 

worthy of inclusion in the historical record? Whereas social historians see matters 

of historical importance in the lives and experiences of ordinary people, space 

historians,following a tradition established by nineteenth-century Scottish historian 

thomas carlyle, tend to look to the other end of the social ladder for material and 

inspiration—to the actions and accomplishments of cultural elites.2 

although ordinary people remain bit players in space history, the field has 

not been a staid backwater of historical analysis. With the emergence in the past 

two decades of what former naSa chief historian roger launius has labeled the 

. the description of the field as “new” is to distinguish it from an older body of social history, often 

derided as “pots and pans history,” that chronicled domestic practices and local cultural life without 

paying attention to larger socioeconomic issues, such as the influence of race and gender on the 

organization of work and social life. alice Kessler-harris, “Social history,” in The New American 

History, eric Foner, ed. (philadelphia:temple University press, 990), pp. 63–65. 

2. For carlyle’s 840 lectures on “great man” history, see thomas carlyle, with introduction by 

michael K. Goldberg, On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History (Berkeley, ca: University 

of california press, 993). 
388 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

“new aerospace history,”3 space historians have moved away from hagiographic 

approaches that uncritically relate tales of inspirational individuals, revolutionary 

technologies, and momentous political decisions. the new aerospace history 

includes an impressive range of topics,from studies that explore the role of spaceflight 

in american culture to those that illuminate the broader political, diplomatic, and 

cultural context in which political leaders have made major decisions regarding 

federal space policy.the field, nonetheless, remains focused on elites and artifacts.4 

the central question of this conference—the impact of spaceflight on society— 

is itself an indication of the gulf separating space history from both social history and 

mainstream historical practice.the concept of societal impact is problematic to the 

extent that it is based on an assumption that the influence of spaceflight on society 

is more worthy of analysis than other conceptualizations of the relationship, such 

as the influence of society on spaceflight or the mutual shaping of spaceflight and 

society. By framing the conference with a unidirectional model of historical change 

(from government to society; from technology to social change), the conference 

organizers (among whom i was one) unwittingly encouraged presenters to focus on 

the production end of spaceflight (the accomplishments and products of government 

space activities) and to ignore the individuals and social groups who ostensibly were 

“impacted” by space activities. as presented in the program for this conference, 

society appears as a monolithic, homogenous blob that reacts as a singular entity to 

new capabilities and ideas generated from federal space activities. Society does not 

3. roger D. launius,“the historical Dimension of Space exploration: reflections and possibilities,” 

Space Policy 6 (2000): pp. 23–38. the ideas in this paper fit squarely in the realm of the new 

aerospace history. launius, as well as margaret a.Weitekamp and asif a. Siddiqi, have noted the 

absence of social history ideas in the history of spaceflight and have suggested interesting avenues 

for filling the gap in the literature.this paper differs from those of Siddiqi, launius, and Weitekamp 

primarily in that it focuses almost exclusively on social history and extends the discussion on avenues 

for future research. margaret a.Weitekamp, “critical theory as a toolbox: Suggestions for Space 

history’s relationship to the history Subdisciplines,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, 

Steven J. Dick and roger D. launius, eds. (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-2006-4702, 2006), pp. 

549–572; and asif a. Siddiqi,“american Space history: legacies, Questions, and opportunities for 

Future research,” in Dick and launius, eds., Critical Issues, pp. 433–480. 

4. historians who consider the role of spaceflight in popular culture—a topic of recent and growing 

interest—tend to focus more on the spectacle of space technology and its presentation (in museums, 

movies, books, television, etc.) than on the spectators.the emphasis on ideas and meaning is welcome, 

but to the extent that such works substitute the perspectives of spaceflight elites and the culture industry 

for broader popular sentiments, they serve as a crutch that allows yet another generation of historians to 

avoid the difficult work of explaining how spaceflight has influenced the material conditions of everyday 

life.For examples,see the essays in the culture and ideology sections of this volume. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 389 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

act but is acted upon.5 in this context, conference presenters made strong assertions 

about the influence of space on society with very little, if any, evidence about 

changes in the lives of ordinary people to support those assertions. 

By bringing ordinary people and social groups into our analysis, we can avoid 

reifying the concept of society and relegating masses of people to passive subjects 

of historical forces.to assess the role of spaceflight in society, we need to know the 

extent to which such activities altered work patterns, social practices, value systems, 

and how people relate to one another. We also need to know whether and how 

ordinary people resisted, reshaped, and adapted to changes brought on or supported 

in some way by space-related activities. 

this paper suggests possibilities for examining the history of spaceflight through 

the lens of social history,focusing primarily on the relationship between the national 

space program and conceptions of status, race, and gender in the context of work, 

the community, and education.the most basic step for incorporating the concerns 

of social history into the history of spaceflight is to recognize as viable subjects 

for historical analysis all individuals and social groups involved in space endeavors 

regardless of their social standing.6 adopting a social history perspective also requires 

dispensing with the notion of one-way impacts and instead understanding the 

space program as a site of human activity in which individuals, social networks, 

communities, and institutions are all participants in the process of change and in the 

attribution of meaning to historical changes.a third concept to borrow from social 

history is the notion that individual and group identities—how we see ourselves 

5. Several schools of thought within the historical profession, from both social history and the history of 

technology,call into question the conceptual foundation of this conference.to historians of technology, 

for example, the conference theme may appear to have been conceived without consideration of 

longstanding discussions about technological determinism, the social shaping of technology, and the 

uneven benefits of new technologies. For a brief introduction to these streams of research, see Donald 

macKenzie, Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change (cambridge, ma: mit press, 996); ruth 

Schwartz cowan, More Work for Mother:The Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the 

Microwave (new York: Basic Books, 983); merritt roe Smith and leo marx, eds., Does Technology 

Drive History?The Dilemma ofTechnological Determinism (cambridge,ma:mit press,994);andWiebe 

e. Bijker,thomas p. hughes, and trevor J. pinch, eds., The Social Construction of Technological Systems: 

New Directions in the Sociology and History ofTechnology (cambridge, ma: mit press, 987). Given that 

historical changes are typically the result of multiple forces, attempting to single out the contributions 

of spaceflight/naSa to specific changes (whether they are technological,social,political,or economic) 

may be an exercise in futility.a more coherent and balanced approach would be to reverse the search 

process—to start with specific changes and then attempt to identify contributing factors, focusing on 

the relative significance of spaceflight in comparison to the other factors. 

6. peter n. Stearns,“Social history present and Future,” Journal of Social History 37/ (Fall 2003):pp.9–9. 
390 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

and how others see us—are social creations that vary across time and place.7 With 

these basic concepts and the literature of social history as a foundation, this paper 

raises questions for further exploration regarding the role of the space program in 

creating the conditions for social and economic mobility and providing a forum for 

the negotiation of social norms and conceptions of race, gender, and status for the 

millions of americans who benefited from naSa’s educational programs, lived in 

close proximity to naSa centers, or worked directly for the agency or one of its 

contractors over the past 50 years. 

What Is Social History and How Might It 


Contribute to Space History?


Social history was a product of the 960s,but not the 960s the space community 

knows as the apollo era.tensions over civil rights, gender relations, and an unpopular 

war inVietnam inspired historians that entered the profession in the tumultuous decade 

to focus attention on groups that previously had been on the sidelines of american 

history,including women,the poor and working classes,and ethnic and racial minorities. 

Studies of migration, social movements, women, labor, and slavery dominated the field 

in these early years.as social history expanded,its practitioners borrowed methodologies 

from other academic disciplines.one group turned to quantitative methods to interpret 

changes in the material conditions of daily life,while others laid a foundation for cultural 

history by employing ethnographic techniques to explore the belief systems, rituals, 

language, and symbolic behavior of discrete communities.the field also broadened its 

topical scope and provided new insights on a variety of themes in american and world 

history, including immigration, social movements, demographic changes, education, 

leisure, ritual, social networks, sexuality, globalization, and consumerism.8 

Social history has also influenced or bolstered similar trends in other history 

subdisciplines, including military history, urban history, the history of technology, 

holocaust studies, and environmental history. Social history’s greatest contribution to 

the study of history has been its challenge to the assumption that formal politics, wars, 

and great men alone shape history and are the only subjects worthy of study. From the 

start, social history was based on the premise that everyday people are worthy subjects 

of analysis, not for sentimental reasons but because their actions, behaviors, ideas, and 

experiences contribute to historical change and offer a broader perspective on the past. 

7. Barbara Jeanne Fields,“ideology and race inamerican history,”in Region,Race,and Reconstruction:Essays 

in Honor of C.Vann Woodward, J. morgan Kousser and James m. mcpherson, eds. (new York: oxford 

University press, 982); Joan W. Scott, “Gender: a Useful category of historical analysis,” American 

Historical Review 9/5 (December 986):pp.053–075;David r.roediger,TheWages ofWhiteness:Race 

and the Making of the AmericanWorking Class (newYork:Verso,99);and roger horowitz,ed., Boys and 

TheirToys? Masculinity,Class,andTechnology in America (newYork: routledge,200). 

8. For a brief overview of the field, see Kessler-harris,“Social history,” pp. 63–84. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 39 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

thewillingnessofsocialhistorianstoexperimentwithawiderangeofmethodologies 

has complemented the field’s topical diversity. over the years, social historians have 

borrowed freely from other academic disciplines, including anthropology, economics, 

sociology,psychology,philosophy,and literary studies.Grand narratives of societal change 

sit comfortably alongside quantitative studies of slavery’s effects and thick descriptions of 

local cultures on the shelves of social historians.While this interdisciplinarity has at times 

factionalized the field, it is indicative of a pluralist ethos that puts resolving questions 

about historical change over narrow methodological commitments.9 

thetwogreatestweaknessesofsocialhistoryhavebeenthetendencyofsomewriters 

to exaggerate the influence of the oppressed on historical change and the unwillingness 

of a large portion of the field to grapple with politics and political institutions.0 the 

tendency to portray minority groups as more influential in social and political change 

came in response to earlier histories that completely ignored the contributions of such 

social groups or portrayed them merely as victims. although individual authors may 

still exhibit a bias one way or the other, the field as a whole has come to recognize the 

importance of capturing the contributions of all relevant social actors to political and 

social change. Despite a widely held assumption that social history is allergic to politics, 

furthermore, the earliest practitioners in the field never intended to abandon formal 

politics and political institutions completely. Some topics in social history have proven 

resistant to the incorporation of discussion of politics, but many of the most influential 

studies have explained changes in the lives of ordinary people within the context of 

larger political and socioeconomic trends.the best scholarship of the past 20 years,while 

not always identified explicitly as social history, has explored societal transformations 

through grand narratives that integrate politics, economics, demographics, and the 

experiences of ordinary people.2 

9. Stearns,“Social history present and Future,” pp. 9–2. 

0. ibid., p. 3; Jürgen Kocka,“losses, Gains and opportunities: Social history today,” Journal of Social 

History 37/ (Fall 2003): pp. 2–28; and nicole eustace,“When Fish Walk on land: Social history 

in a postmodern World,” Journal of Social History 37/ (Fall 2003): pp. 77–9. 

. Social history works that explore groups other than the disenfranchised include nancy maclean,Behind 

the Mask of Chivalry:The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (newYork: oxford University press, 994); 

James oakes, The Ruling Race:A History of American Slaveholders (newYork:alfred a. Knopf, 982); and 

elaine tyler may, Homeward Bound:American Families in the ColdWar Era (newYork: Basic Books, inc., 

988).among one of the most profound explorations of relationships between social groups is eugene 

D.Genovese, Roll,Jordan,Roll:TheWorld the Slaves Made (newYork: random house,972). 

2. pathbreaking works that explain changes in daily life within the context of larger political and 

socioeconomic trends include alice Kessler-harris, Out to Work:A History of Wage-Earning Women in 

the United States (new York: oxford University press, 982); Kenneth t. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: 

The Suburbanization of the United States (new York: oxford University press, 985); may, Homeward 

Bound; lizabeth cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (cambridge, 

U.K.: cambridge University press, 990);William cronon, Nature’s Metropolis, Chicago and the Great 

West (new York: W. W. norton and company, 99); and Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: 

Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, ca: University of california press, 995). 
392 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

to reiterate, the best of social history is driven by the central concerns of 

historical practice: understanding causation, change, and continuity, and providing a 

basis for comparison of similarities and differences across cultures and societies.Social 

history is also malleable and expansive. rather than a rigid commitment to a single 

methodology or theory, social history has been receptive to new approaches. Social 

history is also expansive in the sense that it attempts to understand the contributions 

of all relevant actors to the process of historical change, and its practitioners have 

always had a hunger for new topics (except those related to space history, of course). 

as with the new aerospace history, furthermore, the best social history studies are 

situated within a larger historical and political context. 

rather than a side note in space history, the social history of naSa can be 

understoodasacentralelementofU.S.historyifwediscussitinthecontextofthefederal 

government’s expanded role in science, education, and technological development in 

the twentieth century, and with reference to the individuals, communities, and social 

groups that defined their own existence and their ambitions in the shadow of the 

space program.the mundane aspects of naSa’s existence, including its relationship 

with employees, contractors, grantees, and the communities in which it has facilities, 

become more central to twentieth-century history when we recognize that they 

embody the tensions of a capitalist state attempting to retain its superiority over an 

anti-capitalist foe through technological advance.3 Discussing naSa as an arm of an 

expanded cold war state, rather than as it has defined itself—by its civilian spaceflight 

mission—allows us to deal more coherently with the agency’s role in society. 

With these ideas in mind, this essay will now suggest ways for incorporating 

the concerns of social history into the history of spaceflight in three contexts: the 

context of work at the naSa centers and among space contractors; the context 

of naSa’s educational programs; and the context of the relationship between the 

centers and the communities in which they are located. 

Work 

although the topic of work has received a great deal of attention among social 

historians, studies that explore the labor process in the aerospace industry and the 

lives or aerospace workers are sparse. We have some sense of the perspectives of 

aerospace workers through Sylvia Fries’s study of apollo era engineers, and howard 

mccurdy’s Inside NASA surveys naSa’s changing “confederation of cultures” 

throughout the decades.4 Some of the center histories touch upon the social 

3. on the political context of the space race, see Walter a. mcDougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth:A 

Political History of the Space Age (new York: Basic Books, 985). 

4. howard e. mccurdy, Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space 

Program (Baltimore, mD: Johns hopkins University press, 993); and Sylvia Fries, NASA Engineers 

and the Age of Apollo (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp 404, 992). 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 393 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

lives of naSa workers and episodes of conflict between workers and managers,5 

but our overall historical knowledge of the experiences of government and space 

industry workers remains shallow. no significant works in the field of space history 

explore the daily lives and work environment of the construction workers who built 

the centers; the engineers, machinists, and production workers who created the 

technologies of exploration; the workers involved in assuring safe and continuous 

space operations; or the individuals at the lowest rungs of the employment ladder. 

David onkst’s dissertation, which focuses on the work lives of Grumman 

engineers, stands alone in dealing with questions of race, ethnicity, and workplace 

relations in the aerospace industry.it raises a few basic questions that deserve emphasis 

and should be explored in other settings. For example, what motivated workers 

involved in the space race? Were they motivated by national objectives, simple 

financial gain, personal pride, or a commitment to their peers? onkst finds that the 

desire to do a good job and to attract positive recognition for themselves,their work 

unit, and their company, rather than patriotism or competition with the Soviet 

Union, served as the central motivation for Grumman aerospace engineers.6 

From this starting point, we can ask a whole new set of questions. how did 

the workplace culture and the approach of managers influence the motivations 

of workers and how they perceived their contributions to the space race? Were 

relations between workers and managers paternalistic, fraternal, or conflict-ridden? 

Did employees and managers share a common perspective on the quality of 

workplace conditions and the performance of work units? a few center histories 

discuss labor conflict at naSa, but mostly in the context of the apollo era.We have 

little sense of how management–employee relations have played out over time and 

among different segments of the workplace.7 

5. mack r. herring, Way Station to Space: A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center (Washington, Dc: 

naSa Sp-430,997),pp.56–62;andandrew J.Dunar and Stephen p.Waring,Power to Explore:A History 

of Marshall Space Flight Center,1960–1990 (Washington,Dc:,naSa Sp-433,999),pp.42–78. 

6.David h.onkst,“thetriumph and the Decline of the ‘Squares’:Grumman engineers andWorkers in 

the apollo era,” working paper for presentation to the historical Seminar on contemporary Science 

and technology at the national air and Space museum, 5 February 200, in author’s possession. 

7.Benson and Faherty’s brief treatment of conflicts at cape canaveral in the 950s and 960s between 

the government and its employees, between craft workers and contractors, and between union 

and nonunion employees, suggests that a rich labor history of KSc workers remains to be told. 

although president Kennedy took measures to prevent the rampant work stoppages that plagued 

government missile sites in the late 950s and early 960s from continuing in the 960s and 

infecting the civilian space program, naSa’s relations with the construction trade unions remained 

contentious throughout the building of KSc. charles D. Benson and William Barnaby Faherty, 

Moonport: A History of Apollo Launch Facilities and Operations (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-4204, 

978), pp. 299–308. See also William Barnaby Faherty, Florida’s Space Coast:The Impact of NASA on 

the Sunshine State (Gainesville, Fl: University press of Florida, 2002). 
394 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Despite the weakness of unions in the space industry, they were not entirely 

absent.Grumman was somewhat unique in that it successfully prevented unionization 

through a combination of good compensation and paternalistic labor practices.8 

What techniques and incentives did naSa and other space industry employers 

use to reduce the attractiveness of unionization? how did unionized corners of the 

space program differ from nonunionized corners in terms of the conditions of work 

and the attitudes of workers and managers? 

Did workers throughout naSa and the space industry share the sentiments 

of one Grumman employee who described the company as a “classless work 

environment?”9 Benson and Faherty similarly described the atmosphere at the 

Kennedy Space center (KSc) as devoid of “snobbishness.”20 What did “classless” 

mean in the high-tech workplace of the 960s? Did differences exist across the 

centers? Was the sense of classlessness greater at KSc than at the Jet propulsion lab 

(Jpl), for example? my sense is that despite such claims, the notion of meritocracy 

was undergoing a transformation in the post–WWii period.Scientific and technical 

knowledge replaced pedigree and other forms of knowledge as markers of status.2 in 

this context,how did such meritocratic ideals shape how workers viewed themselves 

and others? Was a “classless environment”fostered,intentionally or unconsciously,to 

mute very real differences in power and status? if so,why was a putatively egalitarian 

rather than a strictly hierarchical atmosphere seemingly more appropriate for the 

aerospace workplace? 

the contention that the technologies and organization of work structure 

both the workplace and broader social relations has its roots in nineteenth-century 

philosophy and remains influential in some corners of the historical profession today. 

in the context of naSa and the space industry, a softer version of the argument is 

worth considering—that certain production regimes privilege certain types of social 

8. onkst,“the triumph and the Decline,” pp. 23–28. 

9. ibid., p. 8. 

20. Benson and Faherty, Moonport, p. 36.

2. on the increased influence of the scientific community and its postwar efforts to strengthen 

the association between social privilege and scientific and technical knowledge, see Daniel J. Kevles, 

The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America (cambridge, ma: harvard 

University press, 97; reprint 995); patrick mcGrath, Scientists, Business, and the State, 1890–1960 

(chapel hill, nc: University of north carolina press, 2002); h. l. nieburg, In the Name of Science 

(chicago: Quadrangle, 966; revised edition 970); and nicholas lemann, The Big Test:The Secret 

History of the American Meritocracy (new York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 395 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

relations and behaviors within the workplace.22 how did the format of the space 

complex—batch production, heavy design and testing elements, heavily reliance on 

networks of contractors and subcontractors, heavy government oversight, etc.— 

influence relationships between managers and workers?23 how did employees get 

around the imperfections and limitations of formalized management and reporting 

systems? What informal practices facilitated the completion of projects? 

accordingtothehistorianoftechnologyeugeneFerguson,engineeringeducation 

became based more on mathematical modeling in the 950s and engineering schools 

stopped teaching design.24 Did trained engineers from the best universities need to 

go through a process of re-education to learn how to use slide rules when they 

entered the aerospace workplace, or did the new methods of the engineering schools 

come to dominate? to what extent did different educational experiences generate 

conflicts between older and newer generations of engineers? Sylvia Fries’s discussion 

of the reaction of apollo engineers confirms both the dominance of computing over 

time and the concerns of older engineers with what might have been lost with the 

turn to computers.25 in terms of what was lost, Ferguson suggests that the Space 

Shuttle Challenger explosion and the problems the agency faced with the hubble 

space telescope were products of the engineering profession’s turn away from older 

22. See, for example, harry Braverman,	 Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in 

the Twentieth Century (new York: monthly review press, 974);allen J. Scott and michael Storper, 

Production,Work,Territory:The Geographical Anatomy of Industrial Capitalism (Boston:allen & Unwin, 

986);nelson lichtenstein,“auto Worker militancy and the Structure of Factory life,937–955,” 

Journal of American History 67/2 (980):pp.335–353;Simon marcson,ed., Automation,Alienation,and 

Anomie (new York:harper & row,970);and Shoshana Zuboff, In the Age of the Smart Machine:The 

Future of Work and Power (new York: Basic Books, 988). 

23. on the history of batch production and other flexible production formats, see philip Scranton, 

Endless Novelty:Specialty Production andAmerican Industrialization,1865–1925 (princeton,nJ:princeton 

University press, 997); philip Scranton, Proprietary Capitalism:The Textile Manufacture at Philadelphia, 

1800–1885 (newYork:cambridge University press,983);philip Scranton,FiguredTapestry:Production, 

Markets and Power in PhiladelphiaTextiles, 1855–1941 (newYork: cambridge University press, 989). 

24. eugene S. Ferguson, Engineering and the Mind’s Eye (cambridge, ma: the mit press, 992), 

pp. 53–94. 

25. Sylvia Fries, NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp 404, 992), 

pp.54–59. 
396 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

practices, such as visualization and “bottom-up design.”26 although determining the 

veracity of such claims should be left to technical experts, historians can contribute to 

such debates by explaining how changes in techniques and knowledge have shaped 

relations across generations of naSa engineers. 

how did conceptions of status and hierarchy relate to the opportunities for 

economic mobility that existed in the space complex? Social historians have long 

been interested in documenting both the reality and the ideology of economic 

mobility in the United States.27 to what extent did space work create a steppingstone into the middle class? how important was economic mobility to workers in 

the space complex? For people who did move from lesser circumstances, what did 

their newfound status and wealth mean for them?What were the visible signs of their 

economic mobility? how did they relate to those who had come from better financial 

circumstances? Did the economically mobile retain ties to their friends and family 

who were not so fortunate? Finally, to what extent did conceptions of economic 

mobility, class, and social status change over time among space workers?28 

Social historians and labor historians have also studied the lives of workers 

outside of the workplace.29 iconic images of risk-taking astronauts and “geeky” 

26. Bottom-up design involves the design, testing, and modification of components before stabilizing the 

design of a technological system. in top-down design (also known as concurrency), all components 

of a system are designed at once and then tested as an integrated system, which makes identifying 

problematic components more difficult and fixing them more costly and time-consuming.Ferguson’s 

critique of naSa was based,in part,on the ideas of richard Feynman.eugene S.Ferguson,Engineering 

and the Mind’s Eye (cambridge, ma:the mit press, 992), pp. 86–89; and richard p. Feynman, 

What DoYou CareWhat Other PeopleThink? (newYork:W.W. norton, 988). 

27. Stephan thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth Century City (cambridge, 

ma: harvard University press, 964); and John Bodnar, The Transplanted:A History of Immigrants in 

Urban America (Bloomington, in: indiana University press, 985). 

28.the theme of economic and social mobility resonates throughout the memoir of homer hickam, 

a former naSa aerospace engineer.the memoir, of course, formed the basis of the popular movie, 

October Sky. homer hickam, Rocket Boys (new York: random house, 998). 

29. historians first began to study leisure as an offshoot of labor history in the 960s. From studies of 

working-class cultural traditions,the field expanded to include a diversity of topics,including the role of 

mass entertainment in the lives of immigrants, the dating and social rituals of working women,african 

american travel experiences in the Jim crow era,and the relationship between sports and social identity. 

See, for example, e. p.thompson, The Making of the EnglishWorking Class (newYork: pantheon, 964); 

Keith thomas,“Work and leisure in pre-industrial Society,” Past and Present, no. 29 (December 964): 

pp.50–66;roy rosenzweig, Eight Hours forWhatWeWill:Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City,1870– 

1920 (new York: cambridge University press, 983); Kathy peiss, Cheap Amusements:Working Women 

and Leisure inTurn-of-the-Century NewYork (philadelphia:temple University press, 986); cohen, Making 

a New Deal; eliot Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Prize Fighting in America (ithaca, nY: cornell 

University press,986);Gail Bederman,Manliness and Civilization:A Cultural History of Gender and Race in 

the United States,1880–1917 (chicago:chicago University press,995);and cotton Seiler,“SothatWe 

as a race might have Something authentic to travel By:african american automobility and coldWar liberalism,” American Quarterly 58/4 (December 2006):pp.09–7. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 397 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

engineers notwithstanding,30 we know little about the social lives of the men and 

women who built and operated the equipment that made spaceflight possible. 

Few historians who have studied the naSa centers have provided insight into 

the social lives of naSa contractors and employees, perhaps considering it a 

pedestrian topic or fearing intruding too much into the personal lives of individual 

workers. how did space workers deal with the stresses of work?3 Did managers 

and workers socialize? Was it common for engineers and scientists to intermingle? 

Did occupational categories factor into socializing? how important were bars or 

sports in social life? What role did formal and informal rituals play in work and 

social life? to what extent were sexually integrated or sexually segregated activities 

important to the social lives of workers? Were class, status, and gender differences 

muted or accentuated by such activities? how have formal naSa social events 

differed from informal gatherings among employees? What were the unarticulated 

rules of engaging in such activities? What were the implications of socializing for 

workplace camaraderie? Did such activities create a sense of common purposes and 

positive sentiments toward naSa? Did they serve as a safety valve? Did they help 

to homogenize social, political, or ethical values? 

historians have begun to explore questions about women and gender in the 

context of the space program.Yet, as margaret Weitekamp notes in her excellent 

essay in the Critical Issues volume, much of this literature falls in the realm of 

compensatory history, adding the stories of women to the historical record rather 

than contextualizing their stories.Weitekamp’s analysis and proscriptions for dealing 

with gender stand on their own as essential reading for anyone interested in the 

topic.32 the point that the literature to date on women focuses almost entirely on 

30. roger D. launius,“heroes in a Vacuum:the apollo astronaut as cultural icon,”aiaa 2005-702, 

paper delivered at the 43rd aiaa aerospace Sciences meeting and exhibit, 0–3 January 2005, 

reno, nevada; and m. G. lord, Astro Turf:The Private Life of Rocket Science (new York:Walker & 

company, 2005). 

3. Bowles provides a few pages on the topic of social outlets at plum Brook, which included playing 

music, formal social functions, dances, athletics, games, and practical jokes, some of which were 

loaded with gendered assumptions. mark D. Bowles, Science in Flux: NASA’s Nuclear Program at 

Plum Brook Station, 1955–2005 (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-437, 2006), pp. 88–92. Benson 

and Faherty discuss the stresses of male engineers at KSc during the moon race. although KSc 

employees enjoyed opportunities for recreation along the Banana river and the waters of the 

atlantic ocean, work life was so consuming that the stresses of work commonly spilled over into 

the home.the children of space workers, according to a titusville physician, had unusually high 

rates of ulcers. Benson and Faherty, Moonport, pp. 34–36. 

32.Weitekamp,“critical theory as a toolbox,” pp. 549–572. 
398 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

women astronauts deserves emphasis.33 With the exception of a couple of studies 

that deal with women engineers, women workers and gender conceptions in 

the context of work have been ignored almost completely. Sylvia Fries’s study of 

engineers during the apollo era includes mention of women engineers, as does 

Sheryll Goecke powers’s short monograph on Women in Flight Research at Dryden. 

From these two works we get a sense of the hurdles that women scientists and 

engineers faced, as well as the nature of their work and changing opportunities for 

women within naSa over time.34 

m. G. lord’s memoir, Astro Turf, is exemplary in its treatment of historically 

situated gender constructions and could be applied to an analysis of masculinity at 

the centers, as Weitekamp suggests. Following lord’s lead, historians could explore 

changes over time in gender conceptions, as well as differences across the centers. 

conceptions of gender, including topics such as manliness, domesticity, motherhood, 

and sexuality,deserve a great deal more discussion within the context of the workplace 

of the naSa centers and the space industry.35 But we must not allow the discussion 

of gender and gender conceptions to remain isolated to those at the top of the work 

pyramid. Women in nonprofessional roles, including secretaries and support staff, 

deserve to be explored as legitimate historical subjects, as do the men at the lowest 

rungs of the work hierarchy, such as entry-level technicians and janitors.36 

the story of race is similar to that of gender in the sense that we have some 

sense of the experiences of black astronauts37 and a few of the histories of naSa 

centers located in the south mention racial issues, primarily in the context of the 

civil rights movement and from a broad, top-down perspective. Dunar and Waring’s 

history of marshall Space Flight center and Steven moss’s excellent master’s thesis on 

naSa’s implementation of federal civil rights policy in the South indicate that the 

33. margaret 	a. Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America’s First Women in Space Program 

(Baltimore, mD: Johns hopkins University press, 2004); Joseph D.atkinson, Jr., and Jay m. Shafritz, 

The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s Astronaut Recruitment Program (new York: praeger, 985); and 

Stephanie nolen, Promised the Moon:The Untold Story of the First Women in the Space Race (new York: 

Four Walls eight Windows, 2002). 

34. Sylvia Fries,	 NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo; and Sheryll Goecke powers, Women in 

Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center from 1946 to 1995, monograph in aerospace 

history no. 6 (Washington, Dc: national aeronautics and Space administration, 997). 

35. Weitekamp,“critical theory,” p. 569; and lord, Astro Turf. 

36. For historical work dealing with gender in the workplace, see horowitz, ed., Boys and Their 

Toys?;ava Baron, ed., Word Engendered:Toward a New History of American Labor (ithaca, nY: cornell 

University press, 99); arwen mohun, Steam Laundries: Gender,Technology, and Work in the United 

States and Great Britain, 1880–1940 (Baltimore, mD: John hopkins University press, 999). 

37. See, for example, Joseph D. atkinson, Jr., and Jay m. Shafritz, The Real Stuff: A History of NASA’s 

Astronaut Recruitment Program (newYork: praeger, 985); J.alfred phelps, They Had a Dream:The Story 

of African-American Astronauts (novato, ca: presidio, 994); and James haskins and Kathleen Benson, 

Space Challenger:The Story of Guion Bluford (minneapolis, mn: carolrhoda Books, 984). 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 399 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

agency as a whole took a strong stance on equal rights—promoting desegregation 

among contractors, universities, and local businesses near the centers—but naSa 

fell short of its goals in recruiting black engineers and skilled workers.38 

Without taking anything away from these studies, the literature to date falls 

short in several respects. First, it focuses exclusively on the South.the struggle for 

equality and improved work opportunities for african americans was not confined 

to the South. Second, it tells little of the post-960s story.the struggle to integrate 

the workplace did not end with the first apollo lunar landing, nor did our habit 

of seeing ourselves and one another through a racial lens.third, these studies leave 

the perspectives and actions of african american workers out of the story entirely. 

as David onkst’s excellent dissertation chapter on race relations at Grumman on 

long island shows,african american workers and civil rights groups that supported 

them engaged in a wide variety of confrontational tactics to secure promotions and 

better-paying jobs. african americans were not merely passive recipients of the 

actions of well-intentioned employers.39 

onkst’s dissertation points to numerous opportunities for exploring race 

throughout naSa and among its contractors. in addition to further exploration of 

conditions in the South,historians might wish to look at changes in job opportunities 

and conceptions of race across all of the centers and beyond the 960s. if the 

history is not readily apparent, we might wish to search for instances of conflict in 

lawsuits, complaints from workers filed with the equal employment opportunity 

commission, and congressional hearings. onkst points out the startling figure of 

25,000 cases in the eeoc’s case backlog in the 970s.40 

in addition to cases of conflict, we need to gain a better sense of the less 

contentious ways in which minorities created advancement opportunities for 

themselves and in which the agency aided their advancement.We know little about 

how formal groups (i.e., hispanics in Government, Blacks in Government) and 

informal social networks have operated to provide career advancement opportunities, 

a sense of community, and have aided the quest for full workplace equality. 

38.andrew J. Dunar and Stephen p.Waring, Power to Explore:A History of Marshall Space Flight Center, 

1960–1990 (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-433, 999), pp. 5–35; and Steven l. moss, “naSa 

and racial equality in the South, 96–968,” m.S. thesis,texas tech University, 997. 

39. David h. onkst, “David and Goliath? race relations at Grumman,” working paper, 3 January 

2005, in author’s possession. 

40. ibid., p. 0. 
400 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Local Communities 

Despite numerous studies of naSa centers and some solid quantitative data 

on the local economic impact of naSa centers,4 our knowledge of the role of 

the centers, their employees, and naSa contractors in those communities remains 

shallow.42 Studies of the centers focus primarily on activities within their gates. 

Some do not deal with the surrounding community at all,43 while others deal with 

it only in a cursory fashion, focusing primarily on quantifiable demographic and 

economic changes.44 one study discusses the naSa’s relationship with the local 

community from the perspective of the agency—as a problem to be managed 

rather than a subject to be explored.45Yet a few valiant attempts to explain the role 

of naSa centers in generating and resolving local conflicts, and to characterize the 

contributions of naSa centers to local communities, raise possibilities for writing 

the history of naSa from a local or multi-local perspective. 

Despite the general lack of interest in understanding the local context of 

naSa centers, at least two histories have explored specific conflicts between the 

naSa centers and their communities. in Science in Flux, mark Bowles skillfully 

examines the conflict between the government and local farmers over the World 

War ii War Department’s forcible acquisition of the land that would eventually 

become plum Brook. Bowles also remains sensitive to the viewpoints of members 

4.See,for example,annie mary hartsfield,mary alice Griffin,and charles m.Grigg,NASA Impact on 

Brevard County (tallahassee, Fl: Florida State University, 966); and richard J. Keegan,“economic 

and Social impact of the national Space program,” a report of the Stanford-Sloan program, 

Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, 97. 

42. Studies that document the social, economic, and demographic patterns of geographically defined 

areas have been a staple of social history and other related fields, such as sociology and the history 

of technology, for decades. Works that deal with industrialization and social change provide a 

foundation for examining the role of naSa and the space community in the socioeconomic 

transformation of towns and regions. See, for example,anthony F. c.Wallace, Rockdale:The Growth 

of an American Village in the Early Industrial Revolution (new York: norton, 978); Judith a. mcGaw, 

Most Wonderful Machine: Mechanization and Social Change in Berkshire Paper Making, 1801–1885 

(princeton: princeton University press, 987); David F. crew, Town in the Ruhr: A Social History 

of Bochum, 1860–1914 (new York: columbia University press, 979); John Demos, A Little 

Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (new York: oxford University press, 970); and 

philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts 

(ithaca, nY: cornell University press, 970). 

43.alfred rosenthal, Venture into Space: EarlyYears of Goddard Space Flight Center (Washington,Dc:naSa 

Sp-430, 968); edwin p. hartmann, Adventures in Research:A History of Ames Research Center, 1940– 

1965 (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-4302, 970); and clayton r. Koppes, JPL and the American Space 

Program:A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (new haven, ct:Yale University press, 982). 

44. Benson and Faherty, Moonport, pp. 309–33; and henry c. Dethloff, Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .A 

History of the Johnson Space Center (Washington, Dc: naSa Sp-4307, 993), pp. 257–27. 

45.mack r.herring, Way Station to Space:A History of the John C.Stennis Space Center (Washington,Dc: 

naSa Sp-430, 997), pp. 27–37. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 40 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

of the community surrounding plum Brook who were concerned about living 

near a nuclear reactor in the 960s and early 970s. in Power to Explore, Dunar and 

Waring shed light on the relationship between the marshall Space Flight center and 

the city of huntsville,alabama, particularly in regard to civil rights, education, and 

the local economy. Despite their meticulous research and thoughtful presentation of 

what some might consider sensitive issues, Dunar and Waring provide only a toplevel overview and leave readers with the sense that much more could be written 

on marshall’s place in the rise of huntsville as one of the most important small cities 

in the United States.46 

elizabeth muenger’s brief description of the changing relationship between 

the ames research center and Silicon Valley suggests the possibility of discussing 

change over time in the character of the relationship between naSa centers 

and their communities rather than merely providing snapshots of controversies 

and collaboration or listing quantitative data on changing demographics and local 

economic conditions. muenger explains the shift at ames from isolation in relation 

to its surrounding community to stronger public relations after the formation of 

naSa. Under the national advisory committee for aeronautics (naca),ames’s 

leader, Smith J. De France, discouraged employees from interacting in a formal 

capacity with members of the surrounding community and denied the broader 

public the privilege to attend triennial open houses. however, in the 960s ames 

became more active in promoting public education through teacher education 

and prize competitions, providing employment opportunities for local youth, and 

assisting local, small businesses.47 

one theme that comes through in some of these studies is an insider/outside 

divide between employees at the centers and the local community. although based on 

limited evidence, the concept of insider and outsider deserves further consideration. 

in reality, we know very little about how well naSa employees integrated into 

the communities they inhabited.48 one would expect that they became regular 

members of the local community in every respect but, at least for the first waves 

of employees at newly built centers after the formation of naSa, the question 

of initial contact is an important one. how did the entrance of highly educated 

outsiders into the community influence local social and political dynamics? how 

did local elites deal with sharing influence with newcomers,particularly newcomers 

who held meritocratic conceptions of status based on educational achievement? Did 

46. mark D. Bowles, Science in Flux, pp. –34; and Dunar and Waring, Power to Explore, pp. 6–30. 

47.elizabeth muenger,Searching the Horizon:A History of Ames Research Center,1940–1976 (Washington, 

Dc: naSa Sp-4304, 985), pp. 83–95. 

48. on the movement of outsiders into new communities, see Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain; Bodnar, The 

Transplanted; and clyde and Sally Griffen, Natives and Newcomers:The Ordering of Opportunity in MidNineteenth Century Poughkeepsie (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 978). 
402 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

newcomers integrate into existing social institutions, such as churches and social 

clubs, or did they create their own? Did local residents warmly accept the outsiders, 

or did conflict exist at the local political level or interpersonal level? What was the 

basis of such conflicts? class? culture? racial or gender attitudes? how were such 

conflicts muted? to what extent did outsiders adopt local attitudes? to what extent 

did they simply grin and bear existing social and racial relations? 

or did the centers have a significant influence on local perspectives? Did 

individuals who worked at the centers, both outsiders and locals, learn anything 

from working in an environment that promoted equal opportunity that they carried 

with them to the local community? Did, for example, work at the centers provide 

a context for reconfiguring conceptions of race and gender? Did the presence of 

a large federal employer mute racial antipathy? Did increased social standing in 

the workplace, for example, translate into increased social power outside of the 

workplace for african americans and women? Did naSa employees draw upon 

their equal status within a federal institution to reshape local institutions and 

conceptions of race? 

Works that hail the local economic impact of naSa centers have attempted 

to put a positive spin on the negative consequences of naSa’s arrival in new 

locations.in his study of the Stennis Space center,for example,herring includes the 

perspectives of residents of hancock county,mississippi,who were forcibly removed 

from their properties to make way for the center.Yet, he adopts the perspective 

of political leaders in framing the involuntary sacrifices of discontented residents 

as a necessary step in the path toward progress.

49 it would be nice to know how 

the arrival of naSa facilities altered local economic patterns in each community 

and what the consequences were for native residents.Who, in particular, benefited? 

existing elites? the poor? the middle classes? Did the centers in any sense facilitate 

the opening up of local communities to broader national or international trade 

or social networks? Did the local economy become dependent on government 

largesse or did the naSa centers facilitate the growth of self-sustaining companies 

that generated wealth from commercial ventures?50 to what extent did the children 

49. herring, Way Station to Space, pp. 27–37. Faherty’s compact history on the impact of KSc on the 

Space coast is well written, well conceived, and filled with excellent statistics and economic data, 

but it breezes too quickly over topics that would be of interest to social historians. Faherty, Florida’s 

Space Coast. 

50. in this regard, studies of the communities surrounding the naSa centers should engage with the 

literature on high-tech regional development,the growth of western cities,and suburbanization.See, 

for example, carl abbott, The Metropolitan Frontier: Cities in the Modern American West (tucson,aZ: 

University of arizona press, 993); annalee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition 

in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (cambridge, ma: harvard University press, 994); richard Florida, 

Cities and the Creative Class (new York: routledge, 2005); and margaret pugh o’mara, Cities 

of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (princeton, nJ: princeton 

University press, 2004). 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 403 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

of locals and newcomers, especially in previously isolated rural locations such as 

KSc and Stennis, follow similar life paths after graduating from high school? Did 

locals and outsiders come to share a common destiny and culture? 

Education 

naSa’s role in the education of millions of americans is a topic barely 

examined except in the context of scientific and engineering programs.5 naSa has 

a long history of sponsoring education programs for elementary and high school 

teachers and students, providing grants to universities for research and training, and 

serving as a site of education through internships, temporary work positions, onthe-job training,and summer fellowships for university professors. a 988 inventory 

of education programs listed 59 separate elementary and secondary education 

programs, 37 university programs, 30 minority outreach programs, 9 employment 

programs, and 7 public education programs—62 in total. While the combined 

programs reached millions of teachers and students, most programs supported a 

more limited number of individuals, often under 00, and a large number, at least 

at that time, were run out of the Field centers.52 the implications of such activities 

for economic mobility are significant. 

Who benefited from these programs? can we identify any common patterns 

in their personal backgrounds? to what extent has naSa served as a conduit for 

social and economic mobility? in the course of such educational programs, what 

values unrelated to science and engineering have naSa conveyed? to what extent, 

for example,have educational programs succeeded in indoctrinating students toward 

the goals of the space program? how have such values conflicted with or reinforced 

other values and goals,such as religious values or requirements for diversity? to what 

extent, furthermore, have educators altered the space curriculum to accommodate 

competing social values? 

one of the early directors of naSa’s educational programs Division claimed 

that many of the programs were established in response to external demands.53 

this statement raises interesting questions about whether naSa was pulled into 

5.one important exception is Virginia Dawson’s book on the lewis laboratory (now Glenn research 

center) in which she discusses the laboratory’s role as a locus of knowledge production and 

education.through their research programs, most of the naSa centers have served an educational 

function. Virginia p. Dawson, Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American Propulsion 

Technology (Washington, Dc: national aeronautics and Space administration, 99), pp. 65–23. 

52. education affairs Division, office of external relations,“naSa and the educational community: 

an inventory of programs,”august 988 (Washington, Dc: naSa, 988). 

53.aaron p.Seamster,“the nature of naSa’s educational programs and Services office,and its interest 

in Science education,” in Science Education in the Space Age (Washington, Dc: naSa, november 

964), proceedings of a national conference conducted at the naSa Western operations office, 

–4 June 964, pp. 9–20. 
404 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

supporting education for reasons apart from the agency’s mission, or whether 

internal needs, or even presumed future needs, were the primary impetus for 

establishing educational programs.While the Space act contains provisions for the 

widest practical dissemination of information possible, and naSa has been active 

in promoting education, to what extent has demand for knowledge, educational 

materials, and educational opportunities stimulated the agency’s programs? Did the 

agency ultimately benefit in cases in which the demand was largely without an 

identifiable naSa requirement or need? to what extent has the adoption of nonspace-related responsibilities contributed to or detracted from the agency’s ability 

to fulfill its central mission? 

Women,minorities,and economically disadvantaged youth have been a focus 

of many of the educational programs.the only historian that i am aware of who 

has ventured into this territory is amy Slaton, who studied the history of one 

university, prairie View college in texas, which received research and graduate 

training funding through naSa’s historically Black colleges and Universities 

program.54 Beyond the practical benefits of such programs, both for economic 

mobility for participants and workforce training and recruitment for naSa, 

what messages did such programs send to society at large regarding the federal 

commitment to equality? in what sense did such programs generate loyalty to the 

agency? to what extent were such programs inspired by or tailored to local needs 

and socioeconomic patterns? how have external factors, such as the civil rights 

and women’s rights movements, impinged on both the focus and the content of 

naSa’s educational programs? 

Conclusion 

By whatever name—the Space age, the atomic age, the information age— 

the period from achievement of the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction on 2 

December 942 to at least the end of the cold war in 989 represented a cohesive 

era in american history. although many in the space community believe that the 

apollo  landing on the moon was the single most significant event of the century, 

we must not forget that the technologies of space exploration—not just the space 

race itself—were products of the cold war. the post-atomic military imperative 

to quickly and efficiently deliver nuclear weapons to precise locations spurred the 

federal government to invest massive sums of money in nuclear technology,rocketry, 

computers, and materials research. While the specific technological systems that 

made the mercury, Gemini, and apollo missions possible represented spectacular 

54. amy Slaton, “naSa Funding for historically Black Universities: Diversity in Scale and Scope,” 

paper presented 28 april 2006 at the Fourth laboratory history conference at Green college, 

University of British columbia,Vancouver, British columbia. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 405 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

engineering achievements,the likelihood that the space program would have existed 

at all without the discovery of the destructive potential of the atom or the military’s 

cold war space requirements is low. Just as significant portions of the technologies of 

exploration were built upon a foundation of cold war military technologies, so, too, 

naSa was built largely upon a foundation of military organizations. 

rather than isolated entities, the naSa centers represented the civilian tip of 

a vast, interrelated complex of facilities and bases that served the cold war national 

interest. Social and cultural differences undoubtedly separated the people who 

worked from the communities that surrounded military bases,intelligence agencies, 

Department of energy production and research facilities, and the naSa centers, as 

well as the networks or electronics, nuclear, defense, research and development, and 

aerospace contractors that supported the government programs.We have almost no 

basis,however,upon which to make generalizations (let alone comparisons) about the 

social lives and culture of the communities that were most directly shaped by the vast 

expansion and geographical dispersion of U.S. government activities.55 assumptions 

of cultural homogeneity should not prevent historians from studying military and 

space communities as unique cultural formations and considering whether the 

occupants of those communities represented or diverged from american cultural 

traditions and how they compare with other elements of american society. 

Several generations from now, historians looking back at our time are likely 

to be just as interested in understanding how americans of the Space/atomic 

age lived as they will be in understanding our technological achievements and 

changes in economic, political, and international dynamics. robust social histories 

of the cold war and post–cold war may help to guard against the possibility that the 

cultural productions of the television and movie industry will substitute for actual 

knowledge of how americans lived in this era. 

55. notwithstanding the excellent work of historians and geographers on regional transformations as 

a result of cold war imperatives and elaine tyler may’s exegesis on cold war families. abbott, The 

Metropolitan Frontier;ann r. markusen, peter hall, Sabina Deitrick, and Scott campbell, The Rise 

of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (new York: oxford University press, 

99); Bruce J. Schulman, From Cotton Belt to Sun Belt: Federal Policy, Economic Development, and 

the Transformation of the South, 1938–1980 (new York: oxford University press, 99); and may, 

Homeward Bound. 
406 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht
Space Science Education in the United States: 407

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

chapter 2 

Space Science Education in the 

United States:The Good, the Bad, 

and the Ugly 

andrew Fraknoi 

s an astronomer and astronomy educator, i do not have any original historical aresearch to report for this volume. nevertheless, my hope is that this brief 

summary of some issues in the uneasy relationship between space science and 

education in the United States may be of use in getting historians and general readers 

interested, concerned, and perhaps even upset. a much more detailed overview of 

the state of astronomy education can be found on the World Wide Web. 

the history and societal impact of space science education in the United 

States is difficult to sort out from the complexities of education in general. if it were 

an experiment,any scientist would throw up his hands in despair and say,“there are 

simply too many variables!” For example, what was more important in determining 

the attitudes of today’s U.S. adults about the space program: 

•  the various science education reform curricula in the 960s that grew partl

in response to Sputnik, or the growth of television as a pervasive, pernicious, 

and pseudo-educational medium? 

•  the Shuttle accidents and subsequent revelations, or the disintegration of th

U.S. family due to the rise of divorce rates and single-parent families? 

•  the success of the mars exploration rovers, or the consistently low salarie

we have paid science teachers when compared to other professions requiring 

similar training? 

these are very hard questions to answer. 

to prepare this essay, i wrote to about two dozen experts in the field of space 

science education to see if they could help me find the most important parts of 

the literature on the impact of spaceflight on education.With one exception, they 

all wrote back quickly and courteously—to inform me that they knew of no such 

literature but that they were looking forward to our conference starting one. 

. See andrew Fraknoi,“astronomy education in the United States, 998; available online at http:// 

www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/useduc.html (accessed 20 october 2006). 
408 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

has the Space age affected education in the United States? it is a romantic 

notion that it has. everyone cites great anecdotes, memoirs, and tV shows such as 

How William Shatner Changed the World. But no one has been able to tease out the 

effect of the space program from the myriad other factors that affect our educational 

system. and, as educational researchers are fond of pointing out, “the plural of 

anecdote is not data!” 

a recent paper in Astronomy Education Review reported that no research 

could be found that looked at teacher knowledge of astronomy across grade levels 

and multiple astronomy concepts.2 in the absence of relevant data, what i would 

therefore like to do, in the brief space i have, is to get the reader thinking just a bit 

about a few issues in the relationship between space science and education. 

A Brief History of Space Science Education 

in the United States 

astronomy was a subject taught in U.S. high schools toward the end of the 

nineteenth century because it fit with the mental discipline model of curriculum.3 like 

latin and Greek, astronomy was supposed to be good training for student thinking, 

whether students needed it later in life or not.this approach soon began to unravel 

as the schools became less elite and more practical, and colleges demanded more 

practical knowledge from high school graduates. 

also, school curriculum under the mental discipline approach was hard, 

repetitive, and boring. in 93, helen todd, whose job was to inspect factories, 

surveyed 500 children who labored there under difficult conditions. She asked if, 

economic circumstances permitting, they would not rather be back in school. Four 

hundred twelve out of 500 said no.they preferred sweatshops to what she called the 

“monotony, humiliation, and cruelty” of school.4 

in 893, a committee of ten, set up by the national education association, 

was asked to report on a uniform curriculum for high schools that a variety of 

colleges could accept. (Before that, all colleges had set their own requirements and 

the situation was a mess, much like many of the local K–2 standards we have across 

the United States today.) the committee, chaired by harvard president charles 

eliot, had many suggestions and many critics. But for us, one consequence was 

that they defined the main science topics as biology, chemistry, and physics—and 

2. eric Brunsell and Jason 	marcks, “identifying a Baseline for teachers’ astronomy contents 

Knowledge,” Astronomy Education Review 3, issue 2 (october 2004–april 2005): pp. 38–46, available 

online at http://aer.noao.edu/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=119 (accessed 27 march 2007). 

3. herbert Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 2nd ed.(new York:routledge,995).See 

chapter  for a nice introduction to the curriculum in the nineteenth century. 

4. ibid., p. 6. 
Space Science Education in the United States: 409 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

astronomy only as an elective. it soon began to slip into the noise of the demands 

on american curriculum, and today, few schools teach a separate astronomy class 

(and then only as an elective).5 

it is true, as those who follow the politics of the space race know, that the 

national Defense education act of 958 (the reaction to Sputnik) increased the 

amount of science and math being taught and led to some interesting curriculum 

studies and reform, especially in elite schools.6 But it is not clear that things in 

science education got better in the long run. other factors besides curriculum play 

an ever-increasing role in the education of our children. teacher training or lack 

of it, latch-key kids, peer and media pressure against seeming smart (think of films 

such as Dumb and Dumber), mtV—all have combined to “beat us” far better than 

the russians ever could have. 

What space science students do get in our schools today is mostly found in 

general science,earth science,and physical science classes in middle school and high 

school.numbers are hard to come by,but many factors are contributing to a decline 

in the amount of space science being taught. let’s consider just three of them. 

First is “the less is more” movement among science educators and those who 

train them. this movement, which says we should teach fewer topics in science 

but in greater depth and with more hands-on activities, is generally a positive 

development in getting students to learn what real science is about. But there are 

already very few hours devoted to science in the curriculum. Generally, when time 

is short, basic biology, chemistry, and physics take precedence. 

next we have the lack of trained teachers to teach science. During the 999– 

2000 school year, only 55 percent of high school students received physical science 

instruction (chemistry, earth science, and physics) from a teacher with a major or 

minor in physical sciences.at the middle school level, only 8 percent of students 

received physical science instruction from a teacher with a major or minor in 

physical sciences. nearly 50 percent of middle school students received physical 

science instruction from a teacher without a major or minor in any science or 

science education field.7 

5. Kliebard, Struggle for the American Curriculum, discusses the committee of ten in his first chapter. 

For more on the effect of this group on astronomy teaching, see Jeanne Bishop, “U.S. astronomy 

education: past, present and Future,” Science Education 6, no. 3 (977): p. 295. 

6. arthur S. Flemming, “Government Science and the Universities:the philosophy and objectives 

of the national Defense education act,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 

327 (January 960): pp. 32–38. 

7. Statistics in this paper about the state of the U.S.science education system come for the most part from 

the national Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2004 (arlington,Va: national Science 

Foundation, 2004). chapter  contains information about K–2 education, chapter 7 about public 

attitudes toward science. 
40 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Finally, consider the effects of the no child left Behind act (and the general 

tendency in the United States toward simple-minded, multiple-choice testing as 

a measure of teaching and learning). right now, schools are required to test all 

students in math and english, but by the 2007–2008 school year, states must test all 

students in science three times: in grades 3–5, 6–9, and 0–2. 

the good news is that districts that had shifted emphasis away from science in the 

last few years because the testing for english and math was first and science was still in 

the future, will now have to start putting more emphasis again on science, since science 

testing is going to be a reality! the bad news is that science exams will not be used to 

determine whether schools are making “adequate yearly progress,” so the pressure from 

those exams is not as great. Still, science test results will have to be publicly announced 

(to the parents), so they will be part of how parents and the public judge the schools. 

But the far greater issue will be that each state will be allowed to set its own 

standards and to decide just what kind of science tests to offer.and,make no mistake, 

once the tests are set up, science teachers will teach to the tests! anything not being 

fully tested will be much less likely to be taught. in my home state of california, to 

take an example,far more high school students take biology than physics.as you can 

imagine, there is pressure to make the grade 0–2 tests about biology only. if that is 

so, it will tremendously accelerate the trend to take biology over other sciences. 

how will space science do in all this? Unless its teaching and testing are 

mandated by the states, what teachers will have time to teach astronomy with the 

short school days and short school years and all the pressure to do well on the 

standard tests that are increasingly the hallmarks of the U.S. educational system? 

how many of you know how much space science is in your state standards? how 

many of you have participated in the fashioning and review of those standards? how 

many of you have talked with a local science teacher and tried to encourage increased 

teaching of space science?Yet if we, who have a deep interest in space science, are not 

engaged in this process, how can we expect others to carry the torch for us? 

Science Education and Science Literacy 

lest you think that space science education is being uniquely singled out for 

failure, i note that things are not great throughout the arena of science education. in 

2000, the national assessment of educational progress indicated that in the United 

States only 29 percent of 4th graders, 32 percent of 8th graders, and a depressing 8 

percent of 2th graders performed at or above the level termed proficient in science 

for their grade.8 roughly half of all freshmen entering california state colleges 

8. ibid., chapter . 
Space Science Education in the United States: 4 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

cannot understand english or math at the college level and need remedial courses.9 

it is also an interesting statistic that in 956,the year before Sputnik, there were twice 

as many B.a.’s in physics in the United States than there were in 2004.0 

the results of the lack of good science education in this country is that adult 

americans know very little about science. Jon miller of northwestern University, the 

foremost science pollster in the United States,has come to the conclusion that fewer than 

20percentofadultamericansknowenoughscienceforminimalcivicliteracy.Forexample, 

50 percent of adult americans believe that humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs. 

only 22 percent of adults in the United States can correctly define a molecule. 

at the same time that american science literacy is declining,the U.S.Department 

of labor reports that in the next decade jobs requiring science, engineering, or 

technical training will increase by 5 percent—four times higher than general job 

growth.Where will all the trained people to hold those jobs come from? clearly, 

the reports warning that the competitiveness of our country may be undercut by 

the lack of adequate education in science and engineering are worthy of far greater 

political attention than they have so far received.2 

now that i have thoroughly depressed you in general, let me at least mention 

one comparatively positive trend. others in these conference proceedings are 

focusing their papers mostly on the programs involving human spaceflight. But 

these are only one part of how naSa has transformed public perception; the other 

part is the array of robotic missions and telescopes whose images are now part of 

the visual and verbal vocabulary of our times. 

even the lowest-level science textbooks are full of the images these missions 

have returned to us. Just think about the visual impact and drama of these: 

•  the hubble space telescope views of star birth in the great clouds of cosmic ra

material, black holes at the centers of galaxies, and the depths of galactic space. 

•  the Voyager mission images of Jupiter, Saturn, and their moons

•  the Galileo spacecraft’s first close-up views of asteroids (and an asteroid with a moon)

•  the continuing pictures from Spirit and opportunity, the intrepid little mar

exploration rovers. 

9. this statistic has been cited by california newspaper reports for years. it is confirmed by the 

information provided by the california State University system, such as http://www.calstate.edu/pa/ 

news/2004/proficiency.shtml (accessed 27 march 2007). 

0. national academies of Science, Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing 

America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington,Dc:the national academies press,2004),available 

online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11463.html (accessed 27 march 2007) 

. miller’s work is cited extensively in national Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 

2004. See also Jon D. miller,“the measurement of civic Scientific literacy,” Public Understanding of 

Science 7 (998): pp. 203–223. 

2. national	 academies of Science, Rising above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing 

America for a Brighter Economic Future (Washington,Dc:the national academies press,2004),available 

online at http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11463.html (accessed 27 march 2007). 
42 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

planetary science,as carl Sagan stressed,has in one lifetime converted the planets 

from dots in the sky to worlds with tourist attractions. and hubble images adorn 

musical cD covers, advertising, popular books and magazines, and even toys.3 

one benefit of all this is that people seem to have an almost proprietary interest 

in the solar system these days.Witness the public and media uproar that followed 

the perceived downgrading of pluto’s planetary status.4 naSa officials have also 

told me that the millions of hits on the mars rover Web sites and images have far 

exceeded everyone’s expectations. in this way, the vision of robotic spaceflight has 

succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. it is part of the cultural landscape—video 

games, movies, television, comic books, and amusement parks all take a public 

familiarity with space probes and the planets for granted. 

a marvelous example of this was the television program The West Wing, created 

by aaron Sorkin.although the show portrayed mostly Washington politics and the 

lives of those working in the White house, it was also one of the best “stealth space 

science education” vehicles i have ever seen. (and, not coincidentally, it was one 

of the few shows on television that made being smart an object of pride rather 

than ridicule.) throughout the series, Sorkin introduced naSa missions and 

astronomical ideas. (even the program i directed at the astronomical Society of 

the pacific, project aStro, was mentioned once.) and the president of the United 

States was shown as loving space science and robotic planetary exploration and 

eager to show off about it to school kids.5 

We need to enlist other friends in the media and public relations world to do more 

stealth science—science that becomes part of our popular culture and can insinuate itself 

into the public awareness.We should be putting stealth science into ourtV shows,malls, 

parks, airport waiting areas, fast food places, and anywhere else we can. 

The Mixed Blessing of Astronomical Pseudoscience 

one negative result of this widespread but suffused public interest in space 

travel and astronomical ideas is that some of our cultural need for the supernatural 

has recently become translated into space-related terms. Whereas people in past 

3. images from planetary exploration can be found at naSa’s planetary photojournal Web site, 

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html. hubble images are best organized at the Space telescope 

Science institute public information site, http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/ 

image_category/ (both accessed 27 march 2007). 

4. See, for example, andrew Fraknoi, “Teaching What a Planet Is: A Roundtable on the Educational 

Implications of the New Definition of a Planet,”astronomy education review 5, no. 2 (2006), available 

online at http://aer.noao.edu/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=207 (accessed 27 march 2007). references at the 

end of this roundtable discussion can lead you further into other responses. 

5. r. lance holbert, David a. tschida, maria Dixon, Kristin cherry, Keli Steuber, David airne, 

“TheWestWing and Depictions of the american presidency: expanding the Domains of Framing in 

political communication,” Communication Quarterly 53 (october 2005): pp. 505–522; Staci l. Beavers, 

“TheWestWing as a pedagogical tool,” PS: Political Science & Politics 23 (2002): pp. 23–26. 
Space Science Education in the United States: 43 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

centuries saw supernatural visions in terms of guardian angels or leprechauns or 

haunted houses, today these same feelings are expressed through UFo and alien 

abduction experiences.6 a 200 Gallup poll, for example, revealed that fully onethird of adult americans believe that extraterrestrials are visiting earth. and 3 

percent accept the tenets of astrology, that the position of the Sun, moon, and 

planets at the time of our birth can affect our personality and destiny.7 

in a way, those of us concerned with education should be grateful for the 

growth of tabloid-level interest in alien life-forms or completely misinterpreted 

“faces” on mars.although some students or adults may become interested in space 

science through such nonsense, they can sometimes go on to learn or read about 

the real world of space and astronomy once their interest is piqued. Still, without 

better information about the scientific method in our schools, our media, and in 

our public consciousness, too few people have the tools to go beyond a fascination 

with pseudoscience to the real science that would await them.8 

Still more disturbing, a 2004 Gallup poll said that 45 percent of americans 

believe that God created humans in their present form at some time in the last 0,000 

years.When asked about the origin of humanity and being given several choices, 

only 3 percent of americans chose an answer that did not include something about 

God’s role. a December 2004 Newsweek poll asked whether respondents favored 

teaching creation science in addition to evolution: 60 percent favored it, 2 percent 

were undecided, and only 28 percent were opposed. For many people, this seems to 

be only fair, in a loose, democratic sort of sense. many of these people are the ones 

who have a problem understanding the scientific method and ways of deciding on 

evidence in science.9 

6. See, for example, carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (new York: 

random house, 995).a listing of resources about astronomical pseudoscience by the present author is 

kept at http://www.astrosociety.org/education/resources/pseudobib.html (accessed 27 march 2007). 

7. national Science Board, Science and Engineering Indicators 2004, chapter 7. Belief in pseudoscience 

is discussed on pp. 7–2 to 7–23. See also martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science 

(newYork:Dover publications,957);michael Shermer, Why People BelieveWeirdThings:Pseudoscience, 

Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (newYork: owl Books, 2002); robert l. park, Voodoo 

Science:The Road from Foolishness to Fraud (newYork: oxford University press, 200). 

8. this is the approach of phil plait, who uses these crackpot ideas to teach about science. See 

philip c. plait, Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing 

“Hoax” (englewood cliffs, nJ:Wiley, 2002). 

9. a Web site that keeps tabs on polls related to science and follows public attitude surveys about 

evolution is http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm (accessed 27 march 2007). Useful introductions 

to this subject may be found in mark perakh, Unintelligent Design (amherst,nY:prometheus Books, 

2004); niles eldredge, The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism (new York: W. h. 

Freeman and co., 2000);tim m. Berra, Evolution and the Myth of Creationism:A Basic Guide to the 

Facts in the Evolution Debate (Stanford, ca: Stanford University press, 990). 
44 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

this ambiguity about (or ignorance of) the scientific method spills over into 

public views of the teaching of astronomy as well.the legislatures of a number of states 

(including Kansas) have begun to pass laws, at the behest of fundamentalist religious 

groups, to include anything that contradicts a young earth and young universe in the 

subjects that should be taught “only as a theory” or taught with “alternative theories” 

or de-emphasized.this includes radioactive dating and Big Bang cosmology—ideas 

essential to understanding the longevity and formation of the universe.(the key issue 

is that the time scales of our modern understanding are too long to satisfy those who 

seek to promulgate a very literal interpretation of the Bible as science.)20 

in response, scientists have begun to speak up and write about these issues.the 

education Board of the american astronomical Society has produced a booklet 

and Web site called An Ancient Universe to help teachers and school board members 

understand how we know that the natural world is old.2 other members of the 

space science community are now writing and talking more about the need to 

answer such claims, particularly to help beleaguered teachers in those states where 

the fundamentalist pressure is the greatest.22 

We might note, as one example of why science educators are concerned, 

that religious radio stations now number almost 2,000—all but a few controlled by 

evangelical christian organizations.they outnumber every other radio format except 

for country music and news talk.23 in general,the political and media clout of evangelical 

christian organizations is growing,while the amount of time devoted to serious science 

on the radio and manytV networks is shrinking.there are two syndicated short radio 

features about space science, StarDate and Earth & Sky, but their brief spots are hardly 

enough to overcome the relentless radio proselytizing of the religious right. 

Case Study: A NASA Education and 


Outreach “Ecosystem”


i hope it is clear even from such a brief introduction that those interested in 

the expansion (or even continuation) of astronomy and space science education 

in the United States have a huge task before them. most teachers, especially at the 

elementary level, have little or no background in the field and are unlikely to teach 

20. an excellent discussion of the history of the Big Bang theory may be found in Simon Singh, 

Big Bang:The Origin of the Universe (new York: Fourth estate, 2004). 

2. andrew Fraknoi et al., An Ancient Universe (Washington, Dc: american astronomical Society, 

2004), http://www.aas.org/education/ancientuniverse.html. 

22. See, for example, matt Bobrowski, “Dealing with Disbelieving Students on issues of evolutionary 

processes and long time Scales,” Astronomy Education Review 4, issue  (2005): pp. 95–8, on theWeb 

at http://aer.noao.edu/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=143 (accessed 27 march 2007). 

23. mariah Blake, “Stations of the cross,” Columbia Journalism Review (may/June 2005), available o 

theWeb at http://www.cjr.org/issues/2005/3/blake-evangelist.asp (accessed 27 march 2007). 
Space Science Education in the United States: 45 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

much of it without requirements to do so, or active training or assistance. even 

many upper-level teachers see it only as possible appetizer for the main dish of the 

“regular” sciences. 

Since there are only on the order of about 0,000 space scientists in the 

country, it is hard for a community that small to have a major effect.What is needed 

is either a larger community of interpreters to help us, or a “leveraged” effect 

where the work we do can translate into a cascade of influence. the first thrust 

is being pursued by the astronomical Society of the pacific, among others. For 

example, project aStro is a program that trains amateur as well as professional 

astronomers (and college students) to partner with teachers in grades 4–9 to bring 

effective, hands-on astronomy activities into classrooms. it is presently operating in 

3 regional sites around the country.24 

the second thrust is far more difficult and requires the kinds of effort that only 

a major government initiative might have the resources to undertake. in the brief 

space i have, i would like to conclude with one specific case study where naSa’s 

educational efforts have had a disproportionately important and salutary effect. 

today, about $40 million per year is flowing from the naSa’s division formerly 

known as the office of Space Science (now part of the oddly named Science mission 

Directorate) to a whole range of educational and public outreach (epo) programs. 

it has been, over the last few years, the largest investment space science epo in the 

history of our country.25 it’s a good story about a little-known effect of spaceflight on 

education that i hope will be written up in more detail by future historians. 

in the early 990s congress began to ask the science enterprise in the United 

States to document how it was benefiting the nation and it asked the science 

funding agencies, such as the national Science Foundation and naSa, to be more 

explicit in requiring such justification. at the same time, naSa’s office of Space 

Science also had some concerns about how effectively naSa’s office of education 

was conveying the excitement of fundamental science, as opposed to piloted 

spaceflight done for political and other reasons (that sometimes wound up having 

little connection to science). 

So the office of Space Science hired (in a quiet way) a series of dynamic leaders 

in the field of education to create its own epo program—focused much more 

strongly on space science and not on what astronauts ate for lunch. another aim 

24. andrew Fraknoi and S. lalor, “project aStro: how to Survive a Visit to a 6th Grade classroom 

and come Back for more,” in Amateur-Professional Partnerships in Astronomy, J. percy and J.Wilson, eds. 

(San Francisco,ca:a.S.p.conference Series,2000),vol.220,pp.260–263.also see andrew Fraknoi and 

D.Zevin,“tenYears of project aStro,” Mercury (September/october 2003): p. 2. 

25. See, for example, Jeffrey rosendhal et al., “the naSa office of Space Science education and 

public outreach program,” available online at http://science.hq.nasa.gov/research/Cospar_Manuscript. 

pdf (accessed 27 march 2007). See also the publications listed at http://science.hq.nasa.gov/research/ 

epo.htm (accessed 27 march 2007). 
46	 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

of the program was to involve space scientists in an active and leveraged way in the 

education effort. eventually, the program would find its influence by requiring each 

of its instruments (missions) and research programs to devote  percent to 2 percent 

of its budget to epo.When larger programs,such as the hubble space telescope,were 

involved, those small percentages generated a considerable amount of money. 

Dr. cheri morrow began to organize this community in smart ways and to 

write material to facilitate better epo programs,but the real progress came with the 

appointment of Dr. Jeffrey rosendhal, a veteran Washington and naSa hand, who 

in 993 took this effort in a novel direction. after getting advice from education 

experts around the country, rosendhal set up what he called an “ecosystem” for 

epo. rather than each scientist, each institution, and each mission pursuing epo 

on its own, the ecosystem would coordinate and amplify the individual efforts so 

that the overall effect could be greater than the sum of its component parts.26there 

were two distinct parts to the organizing ecosystem: 

•  a series of topical forums to coordinate epo activities among like missions (fo

example, among those exploring the solar system), and 

•  a set of regional brokers/facilitators to link missions and scientists to the rea

world of education. 

the brokers were supposed to act like old-fashioned marriage brokers did— 

setting up relationships between the scientists and professional staff doing a naSa 

mission and local school systems,museums,educational publishers,nonprofit societies, 

etc.although not all parts of this system worked right away, the coordination these 

strategically placed elements provided did help take the naSa space science epo 

program to a new level, going way beyond the usual bookmarks, key chains, and 

pretty lithographs that were the hallmark of earlier mission outreach.27 

rosendhal and his staff also set up a series of small educational start-up grants 

(the iDeaS program) and a way for scientists who already had research grants from 

the office of Space Science to request an epo supplemental grant for some kind 

of educational project involving scientists or graduate students. 

When all these vehicles for doing education and outreach were added together, 

by the year 2003, 400,000 people around the country had participated in 5,000 

educational programs or events; 6 million had visited some internet site sponsored 

under the program; and a whole host of curriculum modules and learning materials 

had been created and infused into the educational system. 

26. See, for	 example, “partners in education,” http://spacescience.nasa.gov/admin/pubs/edu/educov.htm; and 

“office of Space Science education implementation plan,” http://spacescience.nasa.gov/admin/pubs/edu/ 

imp_plan.htm (both accessed 27 march 2007). 

27. the system’s Web site can be found at	 http://science.hq.nasa.gov/research/ecosystem.htm (accessed 27 

march 2007). 
Space Science Education in the United States: 47 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

as someone who served on the review committee that was set up to see 

how well the system was doing after the first few years, i can personally attest to 

the fact that the leaders were open to criticism, able to make changes and course 

corrections, and had the best interests of education in mind.28 i was also impressed 

by the fact that the system worked not only by itself, as naSa education has often 

tended to do, but was willing to partner with respected institutions and programs 

in the outside world. 

an excellent example of this is that the program, instead of merely inventing 

more curriculum modules of its own, worked with such curriculum developers as 

the GemS program at the lawrence hall of Science. and instead of developing 

curricula focused solely on naSa missions, the investment was in modules that 

would increase students’ general background in space science (including elementary 

ideas that are often taught incorrectly in the schools.) 

The Growth of the Community of EPO Professionals 

now don’t get me wrong. naSa’s office of Space Science was not alone in 

making investments in and becoming more sophisticated in its understanding of 

the real worlds of education and outreach.the national Science Foundation, the 

national observatories, the american astronomical Society, and the astronomical 

Society of the pacific were also increasing their involvement in these areas around 

the same time. Universities, research labs, and observatories also found it to their 

political advantage to become more involved in public education. But there is no 

question that the naSa investment and involvement were the most significant, 

both in terms of the size of the budget and the sophistication of the approach. 

as a result, there was suddenly a critical mass of education and outreach 

workers in the United States, all doing work outside the traditional classroom— 

and a new profession may have been born.29 think about how a job category 

becomes a “profession” in this country, whether we are thinking of lawyers (who 

have done a great job with this), podiatrists, teachers, or naSa historians. Some of 

the factors that make a profession include professional organizations, journals and 

newsletters, awards, and a shared literature. Soon, most professions develop a mode 

of certification—a way of training candidates for the profession which guarantees 

that certain shared goals and standards will be observed (and that those who do not 

share those goals and standards will be excluded). Such modes of certification can 

include undergraduate or graduate degree programs, apprenticeships, examinations, 

28.the review can be found on the Web at http://newfrontiers.larc.nasa.gov/PDF_FILES/NASA_OSS_ 

EPO_TF_Report_FINAL.pdf (accessed 27 march 2007). 

29. For more on the specifics of this development, see andrew Fraknoi, “astronomy education and 

public outreach:Steps and missteps toward an emerging profession”Mercury (September/october 

2005): p. 9, available online at http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/34_05/epo.pdf (accessed 27 

march 2007). 
48 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

certifying boards, professional development programs, and (of course) fancy 

certificates printed on parchment to put on your wall. 

the new profession is just beginning to make its way through this list.there 

is now a journal, called Astronomy Education Review;

30 there is an annual conference, 

held by the astronomical Society of the pacific; and several awards (including the 

american astronomical Society education prize, the Klumpke-robert prize, the 

las cumbres outreach award, and a new education prize from the astronomical 

league) are now given specifically for education and outreach work. at least one 

group, at the center for educational technology in Wheeling, West Virginia, is 

beginning to think about a master’s degree program in epo work. Several of these 

profession-building steps are happening with naSa support but there is still a way 

to go before the community of such workers becomes a profession. 

For example,there are still no agreed upon standards for entering the profession, 

so that some people come with extensive background in science and/or education 

whereas others are trained on the job. many scientists dabble in the field without 

feeling the responsibility to get to know the literature of astronomy education, 

in the way that they would if they dabbled in a field of space science research.to 

some degree the new epo profession is still what physics education researcher Joe 

redish calls “a community of weakly interacting individuals.” nevertheless, the 

seeds of a new profession seem to have been planted and naSa’s efforts have been 

a major cause of why some of those seeds may be starting to bloom. 

although some disturbing recent changes in the naSa funding picture may 

profoundly impact the support this fledgling profession that naSa has had such a 

strong part in creating, i suspect the sense of community and the movement toward 

professionalization could well continue if the funding is diminished.3 

Conclusion 

So what can we conclude about the impact of the space program on education 

in the United States from this brief review? there were certainly strong influences 

on small subgroups, which are recorded mostly anecdotally and are worthy of more 

serious study.there are cases, such as the naSa office of Space Science ecosystem, 

where a small, leveraged infusion of funds can make a significant difference in the 

30. the journal is available only online at http://aer.noao.edu (accessed 27 march 2007). 

3. the new administration at naSa is indicating that they do not believe that education should 

be a primary mission of the agency.they are also being quite honest in letting congress and the public 

know that they simply cannot accomplish all the goals set for naSa with their present funding.By giving 

higher priority to piloted spaceflight, replacing the Shuttle, continuing the international Space Station, 

and other (often politically motivated) programs, they are consigning science and science education to 

lower priorities. many commentators are predicting this will soon translate into lower funding and thus 

to less money being available for the epo system. 
Space Science Education in the United States: 49 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 

effectiveness of epo programs. But changing the educational system in the United 

States as whole is a monumental undertaking, one completely beyond the resources 

of a small government agency, a single industry, and a group of enthusiasts.Whether 

space science can play a pivotal role (or even a supporting role) in bringing such a 

change about remains to be seen. 

the educational system in our country reflects and enforces our best and worst 

values.pockets of entrepreneurial effectiveness can be found among vast bureaucratic 

morasses of lazy and lackluster learning and teaching. having an influence on this 

system will require a concentrated national effort whose expense and difficulty 

might well put the apollo program to shame. 
420 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 42

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond

chapter 22 

“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”:


Civil Rights at Nasa in the 


Nixon Era and Beyond


Kim mcQuaid 

ace and gender are almost invisible aspects of the early Space age.the civil rrights movement, the women’s movement, and early spaceflight occurred 

simultaneously, but they are normally analyzed as if they occurred in separate 

universes. realities were different; there was a social history of the Space age. 

exclusions of women and racial minorities from key portions of america’s civilian 

space effort have had major effects on the political credibility of spaceflight. 

recent books on how the U.S.astronaut corps stayed closed to women in the late 

950s and early 960s,and about how it opened to women of all races and minority men 

after 978,tell part of this story.But the political struggles within and around naSa that 

made such openings a political necessity remain unknown.this essay addresses the fight to 

make america’s space program—like america itself—more diverse and inclusive. 

NASA’s Troubles 

late in 973, naSa was an agency in budgetary, policy, and staffing trouble. 

efforts to gain public or political support for a human mission to mars had failed 

resoundingly in 969 and 970. as the apollo lunar program ended in December 

972,naSa was losing no less than one-third of its civil service workforce.Between 

965 and 975, the agency also lost half of its budget, in purchasing power terms. 

in national opinion polls, only foreign aid had less support than space exploration; 

even welfare spending fared better. 

. George m. low, personal notes, “Fiscal Year 972 . . . Discussions,” pp. 3–4, 8 July 970, Box 

27, rensselaer polytechnic institute archives,troy, new York (hereafter designated “low/rpi”); 

howard e. mccurdy, Inside NASA: High Technology and Organizational Change in the U.S. Space 

Program (Baltimore, mD: Johns hopkins, 993), esp. p. 24ff; mark e. Byrnes, Politics and Space: 

Image-Making by NASA (Westport, ct: praeger, 994), p. 5. 
422 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

a major reason for naSa’s difficulties was that the society around it was 

changing.an era of external cold war military and diplomatic concerns was giving way 

to an era dominated by domestic social and economic issues. chief among these were the 

fast-paced rise of environmentalism,the women’s movement,and theafricanamerican civil 

rights movement.every recent poll,naSa’s George m.low noted privately as early as July 

970,showed that space and national defense had little appeal.american society was opening 

up to major new political constituencies in a fashion not seen in almost 40 years.2 

By october of 973,Washington,Dc,and the nation beyond it were also in the 

midst of the wrenching constitutional crisis called Watergate.in June,former White 

house counsel John W. Dean implicated republican president richard m. nixon 

in a conspiracy to obstruct justice regarding political spying and sabotage carried 

out against his Democratic and other enemies. in July, investigators for a special 

prosecutor’s office created by congress uncovered the existence of a White house 

taping system that could confirm or disprove Dean’s charges. political stonewalling 

and judicial guerilla warfare then commenced in earnest after nixon refused to 

provide access to unsanitized versions of the official records of this presidency.3 

Finally, accumulated pressures caused multiple political faults. First, on 0 

october 973,Vice president Spiro t.agnew resigned over a bribery scandal.as one 

of nixon’s key partisan warriors against “radical liberals” surrendered, nixon himself 

counterattacked. From 5 to 9 october, nixon demanded that Special prosecutor 

archibald m. cox cease requiring unedited White house tapes. after cox refused, 

nixon fired him in the “Saturday night massacre” of the 20th of october. in a 

pre-internet world, 250,000 to 300,000 telegrams then cascaded into Washington, 

demanding nixon’s impeachment for high political crimes and misdeeds.the mood 

in congress was grim.The NewYorkTimes and major regional papers editorialized that 

nixon should resign,and The Washington Post called for impeachment.Time magazine, 

long a nixon supporter,sadly noted he had“irredeemably lost his moral authority,the 

confidence of most of the country, and therefore his ability to govern effectively.”4 

Until precisely this point, naSa had avoided any connection with the 

dangerous and polarizing politics of Watergate. But, on the th of october, one day 

after agnew’s resignation and as the battle between nixon and congress, the courts, 

and the special prosecutor’s office peaked, naSa performed a “nixonesque purge” 

2. low, “Fiscal Year 972 . . . Discussions,” pp. 3–4; Samuel lubell, The Future of American Politics 

(new York: Doubleday, 965 ed.) and Samuel lubell, The Hidden Crisis of American Politics (new 

York:W.W. norton & co., 970) chart the sometimes explosive politics of race. 

3. Kim mcQuaid,AnxiousYears (newYork:Basic Books,989),pp.232–246 provides a succinct chronicle. 

See also Stanley Kutler, TheWars ofWatergate (newYork:alfred a. Knopf, 990), esp. p. 390ff. 

4. three good sources forWatergate are James Doyle,NotAbove the Law:The Battles ofWatergate Prosecutors 

Cox and Jaworski (newYork: morrow, 977); elizabeth Drew, Washington Journal:The Events of 1973­

1974 (newYork: random house, 975); and Gladys and curt lang, The Battle for Public Opinion:The 

President, the Press, and the Polls DuringWatergate (newYork: columbia, 982), esp. pp. 99–05. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 423 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

of its own. in doing so, it threw itself into the firestorms of the final year of nixon’s 

plagued presidency. ironically, it also began a process of political protest and oversight 

that opened up the U.S. civilian space program to women and to racial minorities.5 

The “Nixonesque Purge” 

the occupational desegregation process began when naSa fired mrs. ruth 

Bates harris,the highest-ranking woman in theagency,for submitting a private report 

to naSa administrator James Fletcher stating that naSa’s belated equal opportunity 

program was “a near total failure.” naSa still employed fewer racial minorities and 

women than any other agency in the federal government.What women it did hire 

were almost all clustered in dead-end clerical jobs, and still nothing had been done to 

open the astronaut corps to anyone but white men.“Without denying the validity of 

the materials in the report, the agency fired its principal author,” noted an indignant 

Washington Post editorial of november 24. Despite Fletcher’s statements that naSa 

understood and was dealing with civil rights in employment problems for previously 

excluded or discriminated-against groups in its largely Southern installations, The 

Washington Post (located in a city which had grown from half to two-thirds african 

american in the 960s) was not impressed.“institutionalized racism and sexism”existed 

throughout naSa, it concluded.“[n]either simple pieties nor eloquent declarations of 

principle” would change that fact. The Washington Post illustrated this by quoting a 

naSa headquarters spokesman who “made a large point of the fact that the agency 

official who [most immediately] recommended harris’s dismissal was himself black”— 

“physically blacker than mrs. harris,” he said.6 

naSa was now in major political trouble with no strong president to protect it.its 

rocky ride through the new politics ofamerica in the 970s was about to get rockier still. 

how had it all begun? Basically, an elite agency began coming to social understandings 

late; when it did, it proceeded to address them in a half-hearted and ambivalent fashion. 

not feeling it had much to learn, it denied that problems—or solutions—existed.7 

5. recent books about the abortive early involvements of women in the space program include martha 

ackmann,The Mercury 13:The Untold Story ofThirteenAmericanWomen and the Dream of Space Flight (newYork: 

random house,2003);margaret a.Weitekamp, Right Stuff,Wrong Sex:America’s FirstWomen in Space Program 

(Baltimore, mD: Johns hopkins University press, 2004); and Bettyann holtzmann Kevles, Almost Heaven: 

The Story ofWomen in Space (newYork:Basic Books,2003) and the revised second edition (mit press,2006), 

which extends the story on into the era of the first female astronauts of the 980s and 990s;see also David J. 

Shayler and iana.moule,Women in Space—FollowingValentina (chichester,U.K.:Springer-praxis,2005). 

6. “racism, Sexism, and SpaceVentures,” The Washington Post, 24 november 973: p.a4. For the increase 

in african american population inWashington,Dc,in the 960s,see Historical Statistics of the United States: 

ColonialTimes to 1970,Volume 1 (Washington,Dc:U.S.Government printing office,975),p.26. 

7. one way to understand how visible and important was the case started by the ruth Bates harris 

firing is to see how many stories exist about her, in whole or part, in the online index to The 

Washington Post. From 965 to 985, this number totals 222. See http://pqasb.parchiver.com/

washingtonpost/search.html/?nav=left (accessed 8 January 2005). 
424 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

naSa ignored social issues such as affirmative action (compensatory activity for 

those previously excluded from occupations or training by rules or custom) for as long as 

it could.it was not alone.The NewYorkTimes,Newsweek,andaBc news all discriminated 

against and excluded women from many jobs, just as television news stations generally 

refused to hire female reporters of any hue throughout the early 970s.968 through97 

nevertheless marked a watershed in enforcement of civil rights in employment laws for 

women and racial minorities in both the private and public sectors. 

Further, in 97 the Supreme court, in the Griggs v. Duke Power Company 

case, enunciated a clear compensatory action and preferential treatment argument. a 

previously segregated Southern utility was using competency tests that had a “disparate 

impact” on minority groups.the court ruled it could not do so unless the tests had 

a very clear relationship to advertised jobs. “Business necessity” claims for minimum 

educational attainments or literacy levels were not enough. no intent to discriminate 

against individual applicants needed to be proved if a pattern of group exclusion was 

demonstrated. the burden of legal proof, bluntly, was shifted from the historically 

excluded worker to the employer.Given the very long history of occupational exclusions 

and low funding for segregated african american schools in Southern states, the utility 

had to make up for the effects of past discrimination in the present and the future.8 

most naSa installations were located in the apartheid american South. the 

aerospace sector of the economy was also no stranger to job discrimination.aWharton 

School report of 966 noted that african americans were simply excluded from the 

aviation industry until World War ii and very rarely achieved higher occupational 

standing thereafter. Just as there were no african american aviators until the wartime 

tuskegee airmen proved to segregationists that african americans were mentally 

capable of flight, pre-94 anti–african american policies were not disguised in 

corporations.african americans pushed brooms; whites built airplanes. in the apollo 

era of the 960s, one-third of  percent of managers and seven-tenths of  percent of 

professionals in the 60 percent of firms supplying data were african american.the 

largest wartime and cold war changes,most pushed by unions such as the Unitedauto 

Workers, were in semi- and unskilled labor ranks, where 8 percent and 4 percent of 

workers, respectively, were african american. office and clerical staff (2 percent) and 

skilled workers (3 percent) lagged badly, compared with the 20 percent of broompushers who were african american in 966. aerospace executives generally stated 

that “direct experience” was essential to success in their industry, while making few, if 

any, efforts to upgrade such minorities or women as they had already hired.9 

8.	 By far the best survey of affirmative action is nancy maclean, Freedom Is Not Enough:The Opening 

of the America n Workplace (new York: russell Sage Foundation and cambridge, ma: harvard 

University press,2006),esp.pp.08–27,40–4.For Griggs,see herman Belz,Equality Transformed: 

A Quarter Century of Affirmative Action (new Brunswick, nJ:transaction, 990), pp. 52–54, 8–85. 

9. herbert r.northrup,The Negro in the Aerospace Industry (industrial research Unit,Wharton School, 

University of pennsylvania press, 966), p. 7ff, esp. n. 29. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 425 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

naSa reflected the mindsets and occupational patterns of the sector of the 

economy from which most of its engineers, scientists, and technical managers came. 

Despite a brief “rosie the riveter” interlude during World War ii, (white) women 

disappeared from aerospace—except as clerks and typists—postwar.Women of any 

race were also not normally admitted to technical schools or to undergraduate 

or graduate training in engineering and the physical sciences until the late 960s 

without intense personal effort. Female engineering ph.D.’s, accordingly, were less 

than 4 percent of the total even 25 years after Sputnik. levels of 0 percent weren’t 

reached until 990. in that latter year, by comparison, 40 percent of ph.D.’s in 

biology and 50 percent in the social sciences and humanities were women.african 

americans, meanwhile, still only earned 2 percent of all doctorates in all fields of 

science and engineering in the 990s, and only 5 percent of the bachelor’s degrees 

in aerospace, electrical, and mechanical engineering specialties of prime interest to 

naSa in 2002, while native americans and hispanics were as low and lower.0 

the effects of the lags in both the aerospace sector and in physical sciences 

and engineering education could be seen in naSa’s approach to race and gender 

issues. Until September 97 (in the wake of Griggs), naSa had no systematic 

civil rights element in its employment program at all, even though three-quarters 

of its facilities were located in Southern states, including Virginia, alabama,texas, 

louisiana, Florida, and mississippi. instead, naSa’s director of personnel in 

Washington carried out tasks “on a part-time basis.”the labs where most of naSa’s 

people worked, meanwhile, were generally devoid of any organizational structure, 

lines of responsibility, or policy guidelines regarding affirmative action. 

the ad hoc approach, however, was no longer enough because, also in 97, 

groups such as the Women’s equity action league, the naacp legal Defense 

Fund,and the national organization of Women banded together to bring successful 

suits against for-profit and nonprofit organizations accepting federal money in any 

form. Suddenly and decisively, elite meritocracies such as harvard University and 

0. house committee on education and labor, A Report on Equal Employment Opportunity 

and Affirmative Action in the Southern California Aerospace Industry, 00th cong., 2d sess., June 988, 

pp. 46–52.the first investigations of hiring and promotion of racial minorities and women in the 

aerospace industry by this house committee began in 975, immediately after the harris case was 

concluded. See U.S. Department of education, Digest of Education Statistics—1997 (Washington, 

Dc: U.S. Government printing office, 999), pp. 38–320; national Science Foundation, Science 

and Engineering Degrees by Race and Ethnicity [and Gender] of Recipients (arlington,Va: nSF, 2000). 

. George m. low, “corrected Draft of Forthcoming congressional testimony for eeo head 

Dr. Dudley mcconnell Dated January 0, 974,” Box 67, file 4, low/rpi; W. henry lambright, 

Powering Apollo: James E.Webb of NASA (Baltimore, mD: Johns hopkins University press, 995), p. 

33,and an accompanying file of clippings from The Huntsville [alabama]Times at the naSa history 

office,Washington, Dc (hereafter “nho”). lambright’s brief discussion of race relations and naSa 

is almost unique. normally, a single anecdote suffices. See, for example,Walter mcDougall, . . . the 

Heavens and the Earth:A Political History of the Space Age (newYork: Basic Books, 985), p. 42. 
the University of michigan were in the same legal position as any of the 0 major 

integrated aerospace contractors at that time. By 972, congress further extended 

the scope of affirmative action when it ordered all executive-branch agencies, 

including naSa, to obey the same civil rights employment rules now mandated 

on private firms and state governments.2

A “Harlem Princess” Comes to NASA

ccordingly, S ’s newly installed dministrator James Fletcher started off his 

tenure as the fourth leader of the U.S. civilian space program with bold moves on the 

civil rights front. n 24 ugust 97 , several months after he assumed office, a press 

release signed by Fletcher announced that a 52-year-old frican merican woman, 

uth Bates arris, would become S

eadquarters’s new Director of qual 

pportunity. arris would “provide 

direction” to all civil rights in employment 

programs for all the “approximately 

29,000 S ivil Service employees.” 

his would include the top managers at 

all of S ’s far-flung labs. She would 

also oversee “contract compliance”: the 

hiring of women and minorities by the 

many private firms providing products 

and services to S facilities. he new 

head of an agency whose “social center 

of gravity was exceedingly conservative” 

had just acted decisively. 3

426 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht

Ruth Bates Harris, who died in 2004, “Courtesy of 

University of Kansas Libraries”

 2. margaret W. rossiter, Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972 (Baltimore, 

mD: Johns hopkins University press, 994), pp. 377–380; Becky thompson, “multicultural Feminism: 

recasting the chronology of Second Wave Feminism,” Feminist Studies (Summer 2002), p. 337ff; 

maren l. carden, The New Feminist Movement (new York: russell Sage Foundation, 974), esp. pp. 

35, 4; Jo Freeman, The Politics of Women’s Liberation: A Case Study of an Emerging Social Movement 

and Its Relation to the Policy Process (new York: mcKay, 975), esp. pp. 49–67. Freeman and carden 

make clear differentiations between feminist generations. For a good survey of how african american 

women related to the civil rights and women’s movements, see paula Giddings, When and Where I 

Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (new York: morrow, 984).

 3. James c. Fletcher, “Director of equal employment opportunity memo Dated august 

24, 97,” eeo (equal employment opportunity)—Very Sensitive file, George m. low papers; 

alphabetical files, nho. (hereafter “low/nho”); Kevles (2003), p. 204; ruth Bates harris, Harlem 

Princess: The Story of Harry Delaney’s Daughter (new York: Vantage press, 99), p. 04.
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 427 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

the woman Fletcher hired was a self-described “harlem princess” whose first 

marriage had been to a tuskegee airman. an honors graduate of Florida a&m 

University, she had gone on to earn an m.B.a. with a specialization in personnel 

and industrial relations from new York University. What Fletcher called her 

“distinguished career in human relations” included service as the executive director 

of the District of columbia commission in human relations,a civil rights oversight 

and implementation group. her nine-year tenure at the Dc commission began 

with a successful push to get The Washington Post to stop carrying racially restricted 

housing ads, and moved on to an increasing variety of housing, community–police 

relations, and other work.through several “long hot summers” of racial discontent 

in the late 960s, harris was among those who exercised front-line leadership in 

restoring peace and stopping (or avoiding) riots. Because inhabitants of the nation’s 

capital had only gotten the right to vote for local government in 967, harris not 

only became a de facto affirmative action officer for city government in a majorityafrican american metropolis, she also learned to work well with the congress 

and senators of all political persuasions who were the overseers of Dc government. 

as the congressional Black caucus was formed (in 969), as Ms. magazine first began 

publishing (in 97), and as the equal rights amendment first passed both houses of 

congress and congresswoman Shirley chisolm became the first woman—and first 

african american—to seek the nomination of a major party for the presidency (in 

972),harris worked hard to understand and guide quiet revolutions in race and gender 

relations. “i’m never just talking about people being nice to each other. i’m talking 

about changing the system,” she told a civil rights oral history interviewer for howard 

University in 97.“We ought to have one big coalition. . . [of african americans and] 

. . . all our minorities [with which] we could change anything in this system.”4 

ruth Bates harris was a bridge-builder, not a wild-eyed or other radical. in 

969, for example, she left the Dc commission to become the human relations 

director for the public school system of montgomery county,maryland.in this very 

affluent county,only 4 percent of the populace was then african american and only 

7 percent nonwhite. her constituents included top policy makers in Washington 

4. harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 247–248. two oral history transcripts of harris’s career at this 

time exist. one is dated 6 march 97 and the other is undated, circa 97.the 44-page and 36­

page transcripts are both available in the ralph Bunche civil rights collection at the moorlandSpingarn research center of howard University,Washington,Dc.the data regarding montgomery 

county’s economic status and racial composition come from the first harris oral history, p. 36. 

hereafter, the transcripts will be designated “harris (97-)” and “harris (97-2).” For profiles 

of harris in this period, see carolyn lewis,“her Job:to pass the peacepipe,” The Washington Post, 

0 october 967: pp. c, c4; paul richard, “ruth harris is named head of human relations 

council,” The Washington Post, 2 may 966: p. B;“harris (97-),” pp. 3, 36;“harris (97-2),” 

pp. 20, 40; harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 42–220, 83ff. The Washington Post coverage of harris began 

in 965 and was regular by the 968–970 period, and harris was honored by the naacp on 

several occasions. 
428 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

and naSa staff from the agency’s Goddard Space Flight center in neighboring 

prince Georges county, maryland. it was via her connections with Goddard that 

naSa headquarters heard of her and hired her.5 

once she was vetted,security cleared,and hired,however,problems with harris’s 

posting immediately developed.in fact,all this started before she had even officially left 

her post at the montgomery county school system to report to work at naSa.only 

one week after publicly announcing harris’s hiring as a change agent with power, 

Fletcher demoted harris and rehired her as an assistant deputy director rather than 

a director. instead of enforcing change in an era of Griggs within a largely Southern 

agency, harris reported to a white male overseeing private companies. instead of 

regulating naSa, and in particular directors and deputy directors of naSa labs, 

harris was sidetracked into an office dealing only with naSa contract employees and 

firms. enforcing virtue upon itself had very quickly ceased being a naSa priority.6 

harris’s immediate demotion before she even arrived for work at naSa 

headquarters on 4 october 97 was a warning signal. it was also what naSa 

Deputy administrator George low later privately admitted was “the weakest part” of 

naSa’s official position.nobody at naSa headquarters ever accepted responsibility 

for the action. lower echelons passed the buck to a man who had died.7 

What had happened? here,organizational culture and cultural context apparently 

interwove. naSa knew it had to do something about including hitherto largely 

unrepresented groups,but it also wasn’t comfortable getting started.naSa headquarters 

staff also might have expected harris to be a patient schoolteacher rather than the streetsmart civil rights implementer that she was, networked into official Washington and to 

organizations such as the naacp. one organizational statistic was eloquent: eight of 

naSa’s dozen major facilities had created equal employment/affirmative action offices 

just before harris was hired. Four of the eight center affirmative action people only 

worked part-time; all eight center people were under the administrative control of 

lower-level procurement officers; and no fewer than six of the eight civil rights in 

employment teams at naSa’s labs were all-white.8 

5. harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 247–248.


6. constance holden, “naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman Stirs concern for equal 


employment” Science (23 november 973): pp. 804–807, esp. 804. the bureaucratic paper trail is 

in Senate appropriations committee, Subcommittee on hUD, naSa and other independent 

agencies, Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations . . . on H.R. 15572, [the 

naSa appropriation act], part , 93rd cong., 2d sess., 97, pp. 6–33, esp. pp. 26 and 33 (regarding 

how harris’s job description was changed in august of 97). (hereafter “Senate appropriations 

committee [974]”.) 

7. George m. low, Box 08, personal notes,“eeo,” 25 november 973, pp. 2–3, low/rpi. 

8. See “Director, equal opportunity programs to mr. harnett,” 5 February 97, in Senate appropriations 

committee (974),pp.20–2. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 429 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

naSa, then, talked about wanting “the best equal opportunity program in 

the federal government,” but using part-time and all-white organizations to do it 

was naïve. naSa employed fewer minorities and women than any other agency in 

government. it claimed this was because of its elite and expert technical structure, 

but far from everyone at naSa was a rocket scientist.this disparity between naSa 

and other federal agencies also grew even as african american professionals sought 

out government agencies as employers because those agencies also most often 

obeyed federal civil rights laws. naSa’s own statistics showed that it did as well 

as private corporations in employing minorities and women in the technical half 

of its operations (at 3.5 percent), but naSa’s leaders did not go on to ask why 

naSa employed only 6 percent of racial minorities in the nontechnical half of its 

operations. people like harris were about to pose such uncomfortable questions.9 

Culture Shock 

as the newly arrived ruth Bates harris began investigating the human side of 

space exploration, she also almost immediately transgressed the unwritten folkways 

of a high-technology agency. at naSa, technical “missions” mattered; personal 

(and personnel) issues did not. number two man in naSa’s hierarchy and chief 

“inside” administrator George low, for example, was so private a man that he 

never had a listing in Who’s Who in America during his naSa years, never spoke 

with reporters, and never let his closest aides at the agency know keys parts of his 

background (which included being an austrian Jewish refugee from hitlerism).20 

one reason for low’s cloak of secrecy about himself shared offices at naSa 

headquarters with him when ruth Bates harris arrived in 97. Wernher von 

Braun, naSa’s premier missile man, had provided weaponry to a regime that had 

deemed the lowensteins of austria subhuman and deprived them of livelihood, 

homeland, and loved ones. low, presented by von Braun’s most recent biographer 

as personally and professionally resentful of von Braun, said nothing publicly against 

him. his favorite managerial advice was for people to “put their emotional hangups aside.”to low, like von Braun,“identity” issues were off-limits.2 

9. “harris (97-),”pp.3,36;“harris (97-2),”pp.20,40; harris, Harlem Princess,pp.42–220. 

20. George 	m. low, personal notes, “meeting record on February 6-7, 974: tSc Deputy 

Directors council meeting,” pp. 2–4, 9, Box 67, low/rpi; Shirley molloy and professor Stephen 

e.Wiberley interview with the author, 5 october 2004,troy, new York. 

2. Bob Ward, Dr. Space: The Life of Wernher von Braun (annapolis, mD: naval institute press, 2005), 

esp. pp. 202–203;“the Groundling Who Won,” Time (3 January 969): p. 3.the rare NewYorkTimes 

coverage of low contains minimal information.the naSa history office files on low are similarly 

sparse. low appeared in Who’sWho only once, shortly before his death in 985. ernst Stuhlinger and 

Frederick i. ordway, Wernher von Braun: Crusader for Space:A Biographical Memoir (malabar, Fl: Krieger 

publishing company, 994), pp. 300–303; Francis t. hoban, Where DoYou Go AfterYou’ve Been to the 

Moon? (malabar,Fl,Krieger,997) esp.pp.53,57,58–59,55,92;hoban uses the phrase “catechism, 

not reformation” to describe low’s approach to people-centered change within naSa (p. 92). 
430 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

ruth Bates harris’s approach to von Braun’s past was quite different. She didn’t 

intimidate easily and she was forceful. So, after reading in a newspaper story in 97 

or 972 that von Braun had used slave labor to build rockets for the nazis, she went 

straight to von Braun’s office to ask him whether the story was true. “the silence 

between us,” she recalled, “was deafening and awesome.”Von Braun finally replied 

that there were journalistic distortions. harris said it was not her role to judge but 

that she was going to refer the story to an “appropriate office” at headquarters. 

Von Braun, harris then recalled, was both sad and understanding. neither he nor 

harris, after all, needed any instruction about how racism was not restricted to nazis. 

indeed, according to harris, von Braun pushed for affirmative action “with courage 

and conviction” at the center he had previously headed in huntsville,alabama. no 

other top naSa official of the era earned such praises from her.Yet, in officially 

bringing up von Braun’s past, harris demonstrated more forthrightness than many of 

her contemporaries in naSa’s administrative hierarchy were comfortable with.22 

Pressure Builds 

harris’s problems involved more than frankness regarding prohibited subjects. 

She also brought uncustomary issues into policy making,via her connections with the 

congressional Black caucus and the naacp. naSa, for instance, had hired africans 

over racist apartheid government opposition at South african tracking stations in the 

960s.But apartheid customs such asafricans eating outside while whites monopolized 

dining facilities continued.Given that the large majority of earth’s population was not 

white, naSa might have to consider (as it eventually did) closing the stations.23 

“political” ideas like this did not endear harris to those who saw space 

exploration as an obvious good that did not require modification. But the major 

problem with harris was that she wanted her original job back. She also wanted to 

do what she had earlier done at the Dc council on human relations: transform a 

junior administrative post into a prominent leadership role after networking within 

naSa and between naSa and civil rights and women’s organizations.24 

in early 973, 8 months after her arrival, harris clearly began pushing top naSa 

leadersbeyondtheircomfortzonesasshetriedtoimplementpolicyregardingallexecutivebranch agencies obeying the same affirmative action laws as private industry. new civil 

service implementation rules also required affirmative action directors within agencies to 

report directly to top administrators of government departments to accomplish this. 

22. harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 257–258. 

23. transcript 	 of “an interview with Diane Graham,” harambee program, Wtop tV, 

Washington, Dc, 2 november 973, 9:00 a.m., pp. , 4, low/nho; harris, hogan and lynn to 

James Fletcher, 20 September 973, low/nho, alphabetical files,“eeo—Very Sensitive” folder. 

24. Belinda robnett, How Long? How Long?: African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights 

(new York: oxford University press, 997), esp. pp. 9–20, 90ff. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 43 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

naSa could not just simply ignore harris. it had 5.6 percent minority and 8 

percent female employees in 973,versus a government average of 20 percent minority 

and 34 percent female.But of the 4,432 women that naSa employed,only 30 were 

in science and engineering and just 4—including harris—were in the highest civil 

service grades.naSa’s technical culture could and did claim that female and minority 

engineers were scarce. But naSa did no better at hiring more numerous female 

and minority lawyers or nontechnical professionals (3.7 percent) than scientists and 

engineers (3.6 percent) in this period. naSa hired more minority male janitors (69 

percent) than the government-wide average of 56 percent. But it hired no women 

at all to do this work and it trailed in all other occupational categories, from pilots to 

guards.What harris, naSa’s highest-ranking woman, was saying about opening up 

naSa jobs and occupational hierarchies was legitimate and principled.25 

naSa leaders,however,still didn’t want harris to formulate or implement standards 

for the agency. instead, Fletcher and low offered harris a deal.they would raise her a 

level above that to which they had demoted her even before she arrived in office. She 

would be number two in a new equal employment opportunity (affirmative action) 

office and also numbertwo in an office overseeing naSa contractors.She still would not 

report directly to either Fletcher or low,nor would she be able to upgrade the inadequate 

affirmative action operations out in naSa’s centers created just before her arrival.harris 

didn’t like the offer,may have threatened to quit,and wanted her original job back.26 

to harris, naSa began to look like the uninterested at headquarters leading the 

uncommitted in the centers.to George low, harris was an administrative lightweight 

lacking the qualifications expected of a nontechnical assistant (rather than deputy 

assistant) administrator. this made naSa’s original hiring of her doubly curious. 

harris’s qualifications were also equivalent to those of the men who were the assistant 

administrators for public affairs and international affairs at headquarters at the time.27 

By march of 973,bureaucratic knives got whetted.low privately commented that 

harris’s affirmative action operation was a“dumping ground for poor people”who“could 

only say yes [to complaints] and not no.” affirmative action, however, was “too low 

in the administrative hierarchy” and there was a “lack of management support and no 

leadership.” low basically agreed with harris’s administrative reasoning while arguing 

that she was a bad administrator.28 

25.“eeo Statistics,” 8 January 974, Box 07, low/rpi;“Senate Space committee hearings” (974), 

pp. 64–65. 

26.low,personal note no.05,2 october 973,pp.–2;Fletcher to all naSa employees (2 november 

973), pp. 2–3, both in Box 68, low/rpi; holden,“naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman,” p. 805. 

27. George low, “comments in november 4, 973 Draft letter to Senator moss,” 9 november 

973, Box 35, low/rpi (these men were, respectively, a chicago businessman and a lawyer with 

the international labor organization). 

28. low to Fletcher, 5 march 973, 3, Box 68; low/rpi; low, personal note no. 9, 4 april 973, pp. 

–2, low/rpi; low,“eeo contr compl,” notes on the reverse of low’s appointment book for 7 

march 973, low/nho; low, personal note no. 9, 4 april 973, p. , low/rpi. 
432 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

this meant low had to find someone else to get more women and minorities 

hired, trained, or promoted within naSa. his eyes lighted on naSa’s only african 

american in a high level (or“super-grade”) scientific and technical position:Dr.Dudley 

mcconnell of naSa’s Scientific andtechnical information office.29two of low’s aides 

told him and Fletcher that mcconnell “would not want the job,” but low persisted. 

low, in fact, had hired mcconnell into naSa as an aeronautical research engineer in 

cleveland,ohio,in october 957.mcconnell’s personnel or civil rights experience was 

far less extensive than harris’s.he was also taken out of a senior science and technology 

position in which there were no other african americans and put into an office where 

african americans were not rare. But, in the end, mcconnell agreed to accept the job 

harris had originally been hired to do a year and a half earlier.30 

McConnell Versus Harris 

crude racism played no part in George low’s decision, but the organizational 

culture of naSa clearly did. low knew and trusted 6-year naSa man Dudley 

mcconnell far more than he did m.B.a.and personnel/civil rights person ruth Bates 

harris. mcconnell, wrote low, understood the “problems of technical management” 

in aerospace. mcconnell impressed a reporter for Science magazine who interviewed 

him as“soft-spoken,ingratiating,exceedingly articulate,and strong willed.”mcconnell 

also compared himself to a ship captain with “unruly crew members.”3 

turbulence was inevitable, given that harris was a popular administrator and 

mcconnell definitely was not. only four months after mcconnell took over in april of 

973,low received two strong oral and written criticisms of mcconnell’s managerial style 

from two departing staffers.mcconnell didn’t relate well to women,“went for appearances 

rather than substance,” and was not communicating affirmative action “concerns to top 

management.” Because “seven or eight” other staffers “might soon be leaving,” Fletcher 

and low both met privately with mcconnell, after which low privately concluded 

mcconnell might indeed have problems with women and communicating concerns 

upward.Some of mcconnell’s difficulties were unintentional.For example,he used a little 

bell to summon secretaries,who then lampooned him as“mr.Ding-a-ling”(a silly,affected 

person).But mcconnell’s major problem was that for the second time ruth Bates harris 

had now been denied the job for which she was originally hired.naSa’s new civil rights 

in employment chief,moreover,refused some of harris’s early offers of cooperation.32 

29. For the best biography on mcconnell, see Senate committee on aeronautical and Space Sciences, 

Review of NASA’s Equal Opportunity Program, 93rd cong., 2d sess., 24 January 974. 

30. low, personal note no. 9, 4 april 973, p. 2, Box 68, low/rpi. 

3. holden,“naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman,” pp. 804, 806. 

32. low, personal note no. 00,  august 973, pp. –2, Box 68, low/rpi; holden,“naSa: Sacking 

of top Black Woman,” p. 805. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 433 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

Discussion therefore soon became argument. harris and her supporters began 

to believe naSa would enforce nothing on balky Southern labs.they also knew that 

organizations such as the national Urban league and the national organization of 

Women were displeased by longstanding exclusions of women and minorities from the 

houston-based astronaut corps.What harris would later call naSa’s “pasteurized 

and insulated from the real world” aspects, moreover, made it harder to interest the 

non-male and non-white in space programs. mcconnell, for his part, moved slowly, 

avoided confrontation, and ordered his staff not to undermine him.33 

this is precisely what ruth Bates harris and two of her associates—Joseph m. 

hogan and retired air Force colonel and tuskegee airman Samuel lynn—did five 

months after mcconnell’s too-gradualist tenure began.in September of 973,the three 

sent an internal report to Fletcher they had prepared on their own time. in the process, 

they also did a bureaucratic end-run around mcconnell’s sponsor, George low.34 

the harris-lynn report was frank, insistent, and began dramatically. naSa’s 

efforts were “a near-total failure.”the agency was denying that problems existed to 

avoid having to address them. minorities and women stayed clustered in the lowest 

civil service job ratings.thirteen of the 35 total minority hires of fiscal year 972 

were brought in at the lowest pay scale of GS-2.three naSa centers had not hired 

any minorities to do anything in 972, all centers in the South—the Kennedy Space 

center,the marshall Space Flight center,and the manned Spacecraft center.Despite 

cutbacks, these same facilities had hired 0, 24, and 22 people, respectively, that year.35 

many considered affirmative action a “sham” at naSa because of uncommitted 

top management,“insensitive middle management,” and “unqualified, uncommitted 

persons” at naSa centers. Some naSa installations simply were not going to hire 

africanamericans or women or others until they were forced to.there was a“striking 

anomaly” between naSa’s technical genius and its social insensitivity.the only three 

females naSa had so far sent into space were two spiders and a monkey.“During an 

entire generation—from 958 until the end of this decade—naSa will not have a 

woman or a minority astronaut in training”; this even as U.S. society was opening up 

to women and minorities in ways previously seen only during major wars that created 

labor shortages of white males. Dudley mcconnell had demonstrated incapacity and 

“immaturity in relating to people” and should be removed. then naSa’s human 

relations policies would begin to match its proven technical excellence.36 

33.harris,Harlem Princess,esp.pp.267,262–264 (quote from p.264);Senate Space committee hearings (974), 

p.88ff;holden,“naSa:Sacking oftop BlackWoman,”pp.804–806,passim.For the astronauts issues,see, 

for instance,marthaackmann,The Mercury 13, pp.76,83,9;Josephatkinson and Jay Shafritz,The Real 

Stuff:A History of NASA’sAstronaut Recruitment Program (newYork:praeger,985),esp.pp.34–37. 

34. ruth Bates harris, Joseph m. hogan, and Samuel lynn to Dr. James c. Fletcher, 20 September 

973, low/nho (three-page unpaginated cover letter). 

35. ibid., points ii [p. ] and iV [p. 2]. 

36. ibid., the final paragraph, the “preamble” and the “Special concerns: no minority or Female 

astronauts” sections. 
434 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

naSa administrator Fletcher listened to his frustrated affirmative action staffers. he 

said vaguely agreeable things about further absorbing their message.then axes fell. Fletcher 

fired harris,transferred hogan,and told lynn to work with mcconnell or resign.Fletcher 

claimed the firing and disciplinary actions had nothing to do with policy recommendations, 

all of which were “already well documented.” instead, in a four-page, single-spaced memo 

senttoallnaSaheadquartersstaff,Fletcherpresentedharrisasa“seriouslydisruptiveforce.” 

though a good advocate, harris was an uncompromising ideologue who had sabotaged 

mcconnell and naSa.naSa’s minority and female hiring record was not one in which it 

could take pride,but the future would be a marked improvement over the past.37 

harris was purged on  october 973.For two weeks,things were quiet.then 

the situation changed decisively after the 27th of october.in his private papers,low 

made no connection whatsoever between nixon’s purge of the Watergate special 

prosecutor on the 20th of october and naSa’s difficulties after harris’s firing that 

involved naSa in far wider political struggles roiling all around it.38 

naSa’s timing,nevertheless,was awful.its leaders could not conceive that anyone 

would doubt their actions or motives,but plenty did.The NewYorkTimes,The Washington 

Post,three Senate committees,majorafricanamerican newspapers,and localWashington 

radio andtV stations all featured the ruth Bates harris story shortly after Fletcher fired 

her. naSa blithely walked into a journalistic tree-shredder. its press was so bad that 

Fletcher’s office forwarded to low a “much more elegant than usual” story about the 

case from Science magazine from 23 november 973, which low should read.39 

NASA’s Political Beating Begins 

the Science article showed just how badly naSa had flunked politically. the 

author, constance holden, found the charges that harris was disruptive or radical to 

be overblown.“it is difficult to imagine,” she concluded,“that it took naSa two years 

to discover that the woman was a ‘divisive’ personality.”“Fletcher’s nixonesque purge” 

had only“opened up a can of worms”at naSa,holden said.Seventy headquarters staff 

had already protested the firing, and civil rights and women’s groups at several naSa 

centers were pledging support for harris.a group called mean (minority employees 

at naSa) had been formed to protest employment conditions. most importantly, the 

naacp legal Defense Fund was about to take on the harris case to establish legal 

precedent regarding executive-branch agencies obeying affirmative action laws.40 

37. low, personal note no. 05, 2 october 973, pp. –2; Fletcher to all naSa employees (2 november 

973),pp.2–3,both in Box 68,low/rpi;holden,“naSa:Sacking oftop BlackWoman,”p.805. 

38. low, personal note no. 07, 3 november 973, pp. 4–5, Box 67, low/rpi. 

39. “h” to Dr. low, 20 november 973, low/nho. 

40. holden,“naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman,” p. 806; holden,“naSa Satellite project:the Boss 

is a Woman,” Science (5 January 973): pp. 48–49;“harris, mrs. ruth Bates” biographical file, nho 

(hereafter harris/nho). part of the “radical” charge may have come from the dedication of the 

harris, hogan, and lynn report to “those who have been victims of economic indignities” and 

“those who are indignant enough to do something about it.” 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 435 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

things only got worse.an eventual 50 national organizations such as the national 

conference of catholic charities and the national organization ofWomen protested. 

So did prominent members of congress.When rep.Fernand St.Germain’s (D-rhode 

island) request for an explanation of harris’s firing was simply ignored by Fletcher, St. 

Germain curtly wrote to Fletcher that his voting on naSa appropriations measures 

would be “equally unsatisfactory.”the congressional Black caucus protested and two 

Senate committees started making serious noise about scheduling hearings.4 

accordingly, by early December James Fletcher badly needed proof of harris’s 

radicalism, so he sent low and others off on a wild goose chase after he received a 

brief note stating,“We Black people do not want this Subversive person representing 

us—she is a known ‘trouble maker.’”today, naSa handles claims like this the way 

it handles claims that it is hiding the truth about UFos—the claims are politely 

dismissed. Fletcher, however, pressed for evidence of subversive associations but 

low—via deniable intermediaries—was able to come up with nothing.42 

as naSa chiefs belatedly realized the burden of proof about disloyalty might 

actually be on them, harris gave interviews to reporters and her naacp lawyers 

petitioned the U.S. civil Service commission against harris’s dismissal as an illegal 

reprisal.naSa leaders had presumed that harris was a political appointee they could fire 

at will; her naacp lawyers cogently argued otherwise. in a climate of constitutional 

crisis, any presidential agency claiming lèse majesté was suicidal. So naSa retreated and 

started paying harris her full salary while her status was being determined.43 

Simultaneously, low was souring on the man he’d selected only six months 

earlier to run affirmative action.“apparently,” he noted privately late in December, 

“mcconnell has all the right ideas but he is not pushing very hard insofar as 

implementing these ideas is concerned.”Despite low’s encouragement,mcconnell 

was “still very slow.”“i think Fletcher and i will have to ‘lead him by the hand’ . . . 

until he can really run the show on his own,” low concluded.44 

4. holden,“naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman,” p. 806; ruth Bates harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 26, 

263–264; St. Germain to Fletcher, 2 December 973, low/nho.the national organization of 

Women (noW) only belatedly protested harris’s firing. it provided harris little or nothing in the 

way of financial or legal assistance.For noW’s “often chaotic”internal organization in its formative 

years, see Freeman, The Politics of Women’s Liberation, p. 7ff. For noW’s after-the-fact protest, see 

Senate Space committee hearings (974), pp. 98–99. 

42. Fletcher to low, 4 December 973 and m. Johnson to James Fletcher, 30 october 973, low/nho; 

low to Fletcher, 4 December 973,low/nho;Unsigned memo from low,undated (circa December, 

973) regarding report from Bart Fugler regarding“concerned citizens foramerica” group,low/nho. 

43. holden,“naSa: Sacking of top Black Woman,” p. 806. 

44. low,personal note no.0,23 December 973,p.7,Box 67,low/rpi.For low’s continuing belief 

that harris was unqualified and his beginning awareness that he actually had to prove that point, see 

low to “aD/Deputy administrator,” 9 november 973, Box 35, low/rpi. 
436 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

By January 974, naSa’s yawning credibility gap got wider. naSa lawyers 

secretly told low and Fletcher the agency was probably going to lose its case against 

harris and her naacp legal Defense Fund attorneys. it also faced the threat of 

class action suits from women and minorities.crucial,here,was the unwillingness of 

those who had attacked harris verbally to risk public exposure or legal repercussions. 

Despite requests from low and Fletcher to repeat their charges to naSa (and 

naacp) lawyers or to civil service representatives, they all refused.45 

Within three months, then, naSa’s case against ruth Bates harris was in 

tatters.Blaming harris wasn’t going to work,so the agency therefore had a “pressing 

need” to make some progress itself. in January, low pushed all naSa center 

Directors to hire “at least one minority or female at the executive level [apiece] 

within the next 6 months.”three Southern center leaders in texas,alabama, and 

Florida refused, saying it was impossible to even begin. naSa had no operational 

and agency-wide plan for recruiting or promoting women or minorities. naSa 

was being flayed in editorials in The Washington Post and elsewhere for trying to 

combat “institutionalized racism and sexism” with “simple pieties.”Worse, naSa 

was by now headed for political appointments on capitol hill with three powerful 

Senate bodies. First on the list was Senator William proxmire of Wisconsin and the 

Senate appropriations subcommittee he chaired, meeting on the th of January.46 

Senator proxmire was trouble, and naSa leaders knew it. he’d worked with 

harris often on District of columbia governance issues in the 960s. he had also 

been a notable critic of naSa for a decade and didn’t care a whit for vague pieties. 

accordingly, Fletcher and low avoided testifying. instead, they sent Dr. Dudley 

mcconnell and two other managers in their places. low, however, “. . . wrote 

Dudley’s [preliminary opening] statement since his was rather weak.”47 

harris and her associates hogan and lynn,meanwhile,argued far more openly. 

hogan said naSa’s approach to hiring women and minorities was “calculated 

to provide the appearance of compliance while not doing so.” harris added that 

naSa was now trying to take credit for proposals, such as recruiting minorities 

and women into the astronaut corps, that she, hogan, and lynn had made—this 

after punishing them and then doing nothing to actually create such a recruitment 

program. Finally, they said, mcconnell had begun his tenure as affirmative action 

45. low,personal note no.,6 January 974,pp.6–7 and low,personal note no.26,8 august 974, 

p. 8, Box 67, low/rpi. 

46. low to “aD/Deputy administrator,” 2 January 974, Box 34, low rpi; “center Director’s meeting, 

December 0-, 973 . . .” (minutes dated 8 December 973), File 5, Box 66, low/rpi; Senate Space 

committee hearings, (974), pp. 26–28;“racism, Sexism, and SpaceVentures” [editorial], TheWashington 

Post, 24 november 973; low, personal note no. , 6 January 974, Box 67, low/rpi. For the lack of 

naSa minority or female hiring plans,see Dudley mcconnell to low,26 november 973,low/nho. 

47. low, personal note no. 2, 20 January 974, p. 3, Box 67, low/rpi. For proxmire and harris in 

the 960s, see “harris (97-),” p. 5ff. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 437 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

head at naSa observing that forwarding civil rights in employment by “saying it 

was the law” was not a good idea,“. . . because naSa always breaks the law.”48 

Senator proxmire then gave the hapless mcconnell a political mauling, starting 

withthe“alwaysbreaksthelaw”statementmcconnellfirstclaimedhecouldn’tremember 

and later publicly apologized for making. no contractor compliance programs existed 

at key naSa centers in houston and huntsville and no “show cause” orders had ever 

been issued to any naSa contractor.naSa representatives themselves used phrases like 

“somewhat poor performance” to describe their efforts. Senator proxmire refused to 

accept naSa’s contention that it had not excluded minorities and (especially) women 

from the six groups of all-male and all-white astronauts it had already selected. the 

color line in professional baseball had fallen in 947,and the civil rights era was now 5 

years old,but naSa was willfully ignoring social change all around it.Dispensing with 

any pretense at political courtesy,Senator proxmire said “congressional monitoring” of 

naSa’s minority and women hiring programs would take place, effective immediately, 

via his subcommittee because of naSa’s “extremely poor record.”49 

Back at naSa, low was oblivious to naSa’s and mcconnell’s mauling. he 

used phrases like “not really unfavorable”and “in reasonably good shape”to describe 

naSa’s standing. Selective awareness and denials, however, did not lead either low 

or Fletcher to want to personally attend the next hearing, this one by the Senate’s 

space committee. aides now protested: both leaders absenting themselves looked 

bad. one or both needed to attend to maintain naSa’s fast-fading organizational 

credibility in the harris case.50 

James Fletcher flatly refused. a Utah mormon, Fletcher feared political and 

religious embarrassment, and with good reason. mormonism had major problems 

with race and gender in the 970s, and Fletcher wanted to keep himself and naSa 

removed from them.“Fletcher,”low recorded on 20 January 974,“. . .is particularly 

concerned because of his mormon church affiliation and the fact that the new 

‘prophet’ of the mormon church has made statements that can be interpreted 

as against women and has also re-emphasized that the mormon church will not 

admit blacks to ‘priesthood’ [and full membership in the faith].” low and others 

argued that Fletcher was not in the mormon hierarchy and would probably not 

48. austin Scott, “naSa hit on minority hiring: agency needs prodding, proxmire Says,” The 

Washington Post, 2 January 974 (clipping in low/nho); Senate appropriations Subcommittee 

hearings (974), esp. pp. 8–2. 

49. The Washington Post, “naSa hit on minority hiring”; Senate appropriations Subcommittee 

hearings, (974), pp. 32–34, 38 (mcconnell had approached one aerospace company’s central 

office to get problems solved informally);“naSa Defends lag onWomen’s Jobs,” The NewYorkTimes, 

2 January 974 (clipping in low/nho). See also Senate appropriations Subcommittee hearings 

(974), p. 37 and, for audience laughter at naSa expense, pp. 38–40. 

50. low, personal note no. 2, 20 January 974, p. 2, Box 67, low/rpi; [Washington, Dc] AfroAmerican,  January 974: 07 (clipping in “harris [99]”). 
438 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

have any difficulty separating his personal beliefs from those of his faith. Fletcher, 

however, demurred. mormonism’s racial exclusion practices, meanwhile, were not 

ended until 978 (after mormon leaders received their first divine revelation since 

polygamy was ended almost a century before).5 

low, however, attended the second Senate hearing of January 974 in Fletcher’s 

place. as he became higher-profile politically, low also further distanced himself 

from the physicist he’d so recently and strongly supported over harris. mcconnell, 

low observed, was “overwhelmed and overworked,” so low pushed him to hire Dr. 

harriett Jenkins, an educator, as a deputy. mcconnell bridled, saying Jenkins was not 

a “professional in eeo [affirmative action].” Given that he wasn’t either, low began 

wondering whether mcconnell wasn’t “a little bit afraid” of Jenkins as a woman.52 

to test this hypothesis, low had an aide talk at length with two senior african 

american women at the nearby naSa Goddard center who had professional 

interactions with mcconnell. neither woman was impressed. “apparently,” low 

concluded, “[mcconnell still had to] learn how to communicate effectively with 

people,especially women.”one of the women and a hispanic section head at Goddard 

told low’s aide that minorities and women really did believe naSa discriminated 

regarding promotions.one method the Kennedy Space center then used particularly 

annoyed the civil Service commission:it had 43 different job rankings for secretaries, 

so women could thus be promoted but kept out of management ranks.53 

austrian immigrant and political refugee George low had remade himself in 

america. he believed “key people” at naSa’s headquarters and its centers would 

do the same.low’s optimism,however,was not widely shared on capitol hill,where 

naSa’s political grilling about administrative unwillingness, unmet promises, and 

belated claims about future virtues continued. By 24 January 974, naSa and 

George low faced frank disbelief at hearings before a normally sympathetic Senate 

aeronautical and Space Sciences committee. ruth Bates harris’s performance at 

the hearings was calm and understated.Watergate was now consuming more and 

more Senatorial energies. harris said naSa had failed in its duty to enforce laws 

passed by congress. She and her supporters had “pricked the conscience” of naSa. 

“institutionalized racism and sexism” existed there.the virtues naSa now claimed 

5. roger D. launius,“aWestern mormon inWashington, Dc: James c. Fletcher, naSa, and the Final 

Frontier,“Pacific Historical Review, 64 (may 995): pp. 27–24, esp. 228; low, personal note no. 2, 

20 January 974, p. 3, Box 67, low/rpi.the exclusion came from a narrow reading of mormon 

scripture, including the Book of alma in The Book of Mormon. industrious nephites and slovenly 

lamanites fought for control of a new World and the latter lost.their skins became dark and they 

became savage by Godly decree. mormon traditionalists put up a 20-year fight against allowing 

african americans full spiritual standing. 

52. low, personal note no. 2, 20 January 974, p. 4, and low, personal note no. 3, 3 February 974, 

Box 67, low/rpi. 

53. low, personal note no. 2, 20 January 974, pp. 4–5, 2; low, personal note no. 87,“Discussions 

with the Service commission,” 7 February 973, p. 4, low/rpi. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 439 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

were belated and deceptive. naSa’s basic problem was that it was letting some of its 

centers evade the law.it had not yet begun internal training and promotion programs 

for female or minority staff. it claimed it could not do what some unspecified 

percentage of aerospace contractors had already done:increase percentages of minority 

and women employees even as overall workforces declined.54 

harris’s performance earned compliments from the committee’s chair; low 

and mcconnell—who avoided being in the same room with harris—got rougher 

treatment. Senators doubted that naSa centers had any intention of doing what 

naSa headquarters said it wanted. it didn’t help that the Department of labor 

said it looked as if every naSa center Director had their own “personal view of 

appropriate compliance policies and procedures.” Democratic Senators said naSa 

was “groping for sympathy”and setting “modest”goals it wasn’t really committed to. 

it didn’t help that these goals [of hiring 80 more women and 80 more minorities in 

professional positions in its 25,000-person workforce in 974] were decided upon 

only two weeks before the Senator proxmire hearing that was held earlier in January. 

“Where’s your sense of urgency?” Senator howard metzenbaum of ohio asked at 

one point.“he thought our performance was lousy and made no bones about it,” 

low later recorded.the committee then, per Senator proxmire, put naSa under 

legislative oversight. affirmative action funding (also per proxmire) was to double; 

naSa had to report on every major professional position it filled; and minorities 

and women were to be put on naSa hiring and promotion boards.55 

NASA Fights On 

Still naSa leaders fought on. harris, naSa representatives told Senators, was 

“little more than a lobbyist for the cause of minorities and women.” low privately 

believed harris and “quite a few” of her supporters within naSa were sabotaging 

mcconnell.the idea that she might be a lightning rod, not a thunderbolt, wasn’t 

considered. naSa’s top leaders now knew their case against harris was legally 

lost. nevertheless, in January they decided that she would never be rehired to her 

former position but, instead, only to a “comparable” post within naSa. if—and 

when—harris won, she could be isolated and marginalized.56 

54. Senate 	committee on aeronautical and Space Sciences, “testimony of ruth Bates harris, 

January 24, 974,” harris/nho; low, personal note no. 2, 20 January 974, pp. 3–6. 

55. austin Scott, “Senators eye naSa eeo Goals,” The Washington Post, 25 January 974 (reprinted 

in naSa Current News, 25 January 974: i); low, personal note no. 3, 3 February 974, p. 3, Box 67, 

low/rpi. 

56. r. tenney Johnson to 	“a” [Fletcher and George low], 3 January 974, low/nho; low 

to mcconnell, “Decision Statement on numerical Goals for 974,” 7 January 974; and low, 

personal note no. 3, 3 February 974, p. 3, Box 67, low/rpi.the “lobbyist” change is in Senate 

appropriations hearings (974), p. 43. 
440 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Dudley mcconnell’s days, meanwhile, were numbered. he still didn’t want 

harriett Jenkins as a deputy, so low got Fletcher to hire Jenkins himself. mcconnell 

still resisted, offering at least one other female candidate the job after a weekend 

interview. low then forced the issue to a final conclusion. harriett Jenkins’s arrival 

at naSa wasn’t quite as messy as ruth Bates harris’s had been, but it demonstrated 

precisely the same organizational ambivalence and infighting.57 

as harriett Jenkins began working as mcconnell’s deputy in February of 

974, the drumbeat of external and internal criticisms intensified. the chairman 

of the civil Service commission, for example, told naSa its record of processing 

racial and sexual discrimination complaints “was not very good.”the Department 

of labor was similarly distinctly unimpressed with naSa’s record on oversight 

of civil rights in employment standards in firms it contracted with at its centers. 

recruitment teams for minority and female scientists and engineers still weren’t in 

place in at least four naSa centers. low’s orders to have entry-level jobs offered 

to likely candidates “on the spot” weren’t happening. a disappointed low told a 

meeting of deputy center directors called to jump-start affirmative action that “most 

of our technical managers were not accustomed to handling human problems.”58 

meanwhile,protest levels within naSa increased.the first training workshops 

regarding racial and sexual issues for senior center leaders were scheduled for 

april and quickly got postponed. By march, top-level meetings were called to 

pick an affirmative action officer “more acceptable to women and minorities.” a 

selection panel should probably consist of three of naSa’s highest-ranking women, 

a hispanic, and the naSa general counsel.they should “probably” pick a minority 

person as the affirmative action officer. low was advising mcconnell to return 

to technical work; trouble was brewing at naSa centers in Virginia and texas; 

and low was addressing all ,000 naSa headquarters staff at “communications” 

(morale-building) sessions. By may, naSa lawyers still advised settling with harris; 

an outside consultant told low and Fletcher they hadn’t done well regarding a 

“generally unstable headquarters situation since ruth Bates harris was terminated,” 

and low wrote that “[o]ur people are still very much concerned . . . and have 

not seen that real progress has been made.” a Government accountability office 

(Gao) investigation based on interviews with naSa employees confirmed low’s 

57. low to Fletcher, “miscellaneous items,” 2 January 974; low to Deputy associate administrator 

for organization and management, 5 February 974; low to Fletcher,“harriet Jenkins,” 5 February 

974, all in Box 67, low/rpi. 

58. low 	to mcconnell, “complaint processing time,” 4 February 974, Box 34, low/rpi; 

low to mcconnell, 28 January 974; low to assistant admin. for institutional management, 

“proposed recruiting plan for minority Scientists and engineers,” 2 February 974; “meeting 

record, February 6-7, 974, JSc, Deputy Directors’ council meeting,” all in Box 67, low/rpi; 

“ex-aide rehired by naSa,” The Washington Post, 8 august 974: p.a20. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 44 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

statement. no fewer than six Senate and house committees—including naSa’s 

authorization and appropriations committees in both houses—got copies of the 

Gao findings.59 

So, after eight months, denials gradually began to end. in June of 974, as 

nixon’s presidency entered its final weeks,naSa and naacp legal Defense Fund 

lawyers sat down to hash out a settlement. two sets of issues especially mattered. 

the first was organizational. ruth Bates harris and her counsel wanted—and 

got—enhanced training and promotion programs, monitoring of minority and 

female hiring at middle and senior management levels,and the beginnings of naSa 

research and development awards to historically Black colleges and universities. 

Fletcher and low refused, however, to give way on a key point. harris wanted 

strong headquarters managerial oversight and control over affirmative action at 

naSa centers. this was the centralized job, of course, she had been originally 

hired by naSa to do. But Fletcher and low refused, citing naSa’s “decentralized 

management concept.” Uncooperative Southern centers got a breathing space.60 

on a second set of issues regarding harris’s personal administrative future 

at naSa, the agency fought even harder. harris still wanted what she’d always 

wanted: Dudley mcconnell’s job. that meant policy-making power. naSa still 

didn’t want her to have this. She had embarrassed an agency that often saw itself 

in elite, even transcendent terms.to low and Fletcher, she was an “advocate,” not 

a “manager.” her skills were ignored. a senior management discrimination case 

at headquarters, for example, had become explosive because of what low called 

“three levels of poor management” where the white supervisors involved refused 

to take training in dealing with minority or female workers until low “urged them 

to do it six times.” harris, who had handled just such intensive “sensitivity training” 

programs for Washington, Dc, police in the 960s, was still persona non grata.6 

meanwhile, a protesting Dudley mcconnell was pushed out of his job in June 

and July.low was now de facto affirmative action head.the naacp legal Defense 

Fund threatened class action lawsuits on behalf of groups of employees at naSa 

centers. naSa’s strongest house ally apparently told naSa the agency’s political 

status was slipping. naSa could not win but it could not settle, either.62 

59. harvey W. herring, “meeting record, march 29, 974, eeo officer, low/nho; “Gao investigation 

of eeo program,” 23 april 974, Box 07; low, personal note no. 7, 30 march 974, p. 4; low, personal 

note no.8,3april 974,p.2;low,personal note no.20, may 974,pp.7–8;low,personal note no.22, 

8 June 974,p.;“notes forall hands meetings [april,974],”all in Box 67,low/rpi. 

60. r.tenney Johnson,“concerns and Views,” circa 5 June 974, Box 67, low/rpi. 

6. George low, “meeting	 with headquarters equal employment opportunity advisory Group,” 26 

June 974,esp.p.3. 

62. low, personal note no. 25, 20 July 974, pp. 5–6, File , Box 67, low/rpi; low to Fletcher, 

“house Staff Study on naSa public affairs activities,”7 July 974,Box 67,low/rpi;constance 

holden,“new eeo leadership at naSa,” Science (30 august 974): p. 769. 
442 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

richard nixon’s presidential resignation on 9 august 974 seems to have helped 

prompt the combatants to settle. mcconnell left office after 6 unhappy months; 

harriett Jenkins promptly succeeded him. ruth Bates harris came back to naSa, 

but only at deputy assistant rank and only on the pr and community outreach 

fringes of the affirmative action office. it was what Science magazine termed “at least 

partial vindication.” on the 7th of august, Fletcher’s official statement welcoming 

back the woman he had fired complimented her “genuine ability to communicate 

to members of communities whom naSa has not reached in the past and whom 

we need to reach.” “[S]ome of the forward movement naSa . . . has made . . . ,” 

he continued,“has been stimulated by forces she so eloquently set in motion.”an 

uncompromising and disloyal ideologue now had redeeming importance.63 

Verbal bouquets, however, did not make reacclimation any easier. harriett 

Jenkins did not work with harris (some of whose efforts involved identifying and 

recruiting african american astronaut candidates via aviation veterans’ organizations 

such as the tuskegee airmen). naSa’s rate of accomplishment remained “abysmally 

low,” George low noted privately. line managers had “not launched a significant 

effort”and top management had not made it clear to line and staff administrators what 

sanctions or rewards would apply to them.“What’s wrong?” a discouraged low wrote 

on the margin of his first annual performance review with harriett Jenkins. pent-up 

tensions also levied a wider toll. harris’s marriage dissolved and a son was stricken 

with aiDS. in 976, harris suffered a nervous breakdown and returned to newYork 

to get her life back together. Fletcher and harris smiled for cameras as she departed, 

but, after her return to Washington in 978, she never worked for naSa again.64 

NASA Starts To Change 

the harris deal ended further Senatorial hearings and negative journalistic 

coverage. all of naSa’s internal records on the harris case were sealed as part of 

her rehiring agreement. after being legally and politically forced into more active 

compliance, naSa started congratulating itself on how well it was doing in hiring 

63. Dudley	 mcconnell was promoted to Deputy Director for advanced programs in the Solar 

System exploration Division. he later became associate Director for applications in naSa’s earth 

Science and applications Division. on 28 october 99, he died of a heart attack at age 55. r.tenney 

to James c. Fletcher, 4 april 974; low, personal note no. 26, 8 august 974, p. i, Box 67, low/ 

rpi; James c. Fletcher,“memorandum to all naSa employees” 6 august 974—all in eeo—Very 

Sensitive file in low/nho;Gloria Borger,“Woman Fired by naSaWins Fight to return,”Washington 

Star-News, 7 august 974: p. a4; “harris, mrs. ruth Bates” biographical file, nho; holden, “new 

eeo leadership at naSa,” p. 769; lawrence Feinberg,“ex-aide rehired by naSa,” TheWashington 

Post, 8 august 974: p.a20;“ruth harris assumes new post at naSa,” 7 august 974. 

64. “Work planning and progress review, Jenkins–low, June 27, 975,” Box 76, low/rpi; “ruth 

Bates harris honored at headquarters Farewell party,” Spaceport News (25 november 976): p. 4; 

“ruth Bates harris appointment at interior,” Weekly Bulletin 20 (5 may 978)—all in “harris, mrs. 

ruth Bates” biographical file, nho. harris, Harlem Princess, p. 279ff. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 443 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

and promoting more women and minorities. the basic norms, beliefs, and practices 

within naSa’s “human spaceflight culture,” however, only changed slowly. Female and 

minority supervisors at levels of GS-4 and above stayed rare until the 980s.a false start 

at recruiting minority and female astronauts was implemented in 978.the first female 

astronauts who“walked through the doors their activist sisters had pried open for them,” 

however, were hardly feminists. Skepticism and distancing only gradually turned into 

general acceptance by male astronauts. naSa had taken the right path after repeatedly 

denying it needed to do so; it thus got little credit for belated understanding.65 

meanwhile, the new head of headquarters civil rights in employment, 

Dr. harriett Jenkins, had to operate in an organizational landscape littered with 

fears and grudges. two vignettes show how her organizational style remained 

nonconfrontational and gradualist. First, in February of 975, an affirmative action 

meeting for top center heads was finally held, almost a year late. During that meeting 

a white manager was “quite rude” to Jenkins.the abuse was thorough enough that a 

normally undemonstrative Jenkins broke into tears and later asked low for managerial 

support. low gave it, but then his initially concerned comments turned flippant. 

after talking with the all-white deputy center directors at the meeting, he privately 

dismissed female and minority objections to Jenkins’s treatment as overreaction.Given 

naSa’s “abysmally slow” record since 97, low’s turnaround was precisely the kind 

of group denial that had cost ruth Bates harris and Dr. Dudley mcconnell their 

jobs. Jenkins was going to have to proceed carefully to survive for long.66 

in case she had any doubts, another indicator of just how far naSa had 

to go occurred late in 975. Jenkins and her associate, peter chen, proposed an 

affirmative action training session “for naSa’s senior [headquarters] management 

from Fletcher and low on down.” they wanted a one-day session led by two 

specialists from arthur D. little, a well-known management consultancy. Fletcher 

and low had a preliminary meeting with the a. D. little people and came back 

utterly opposed. Specifically, they did not want any kind of policy discussions or 

consciousness-raising where disagreements among senior staff might be identified. 

65. Kevles, Almost Heaven, esp. p. 69ff; Weitekamp, Right Stuff, Wrong Sex; and ackmann, The Mercury 13, 

also briefly cover the opening of theastronaut corps to women.only Kevles very briefly mentions harris 

as a change agent (see pp.58–59).For opposition to female astronauts,see mike mullane,Riding Rockets:The 

OutrageousTales of a ShuttleAstronaut (newYork:charles Scribner’s Sons,2006),esp.pp.36ff,346–347,357. 

66. r. tenney Johnson to cashdan, 2 august 974; low to Frank Zarb of office of management 

and Budget, 8 September 974; low,“telephone call From hugh loweth,”  october 974; low 

to ac “center operations,” 20 February 975; low, personal note no. 37,  February 975, pp. 

3, 8; low, personal note no. 39,  march 975, p. 3 (all in Box 66, low/rpi). For “organizational 

culture” at naSa, see admiral harold W. Gehman, Jr., et al., columbia accident investigation Board 

report, vol.  (august, 2003) (Washington, Dc: naSa and the Government printing office, 2003), 

pp. 9, 99–8; mccurdy, Inside NASA; Diane t.Vaughan, The Challenger Launch Decision (chicago: 

University of chicago press,996);Sylvia Fries,NASA Engineers in theAge ofApollo (Washington,Dc: 

naSa,977);charles murray and catherine Bly cox,Apollo:The Race to the Moon (newYork:Simon 

& Schuster, 989). 
444 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Because the a. D. little people “tried to drive a wedge between Fletcher and me, 

and put Fletcher on the carpet for not knowing as much as i did about the situation 

in naSa, [they were] not the right kind of people for a naSa training session,” 

low concluded—especially because they might also drive wedges between low 

and Fletcher and their senior staff, which would only be “counterproductive.”67 

Because precisely such differential understandings and actual or contrived 

ignorance were what the affirmative action mess at naSa was all about, Fletcher’s 

and low’s refusals ensured more policy muddle within headquarters and center 

managerial hierarchies.they also implied that the men leading naSa had nothing 

significant to learn or agree about.those, for instance, who only saw racial or sexual 

bias when white males were excluded from competitions could continue to do so. 

When low told Jenkins and chen this,Jenkins did not protest,but her associate did. 

low’s unusually graphic notes then describe the scene: 

i said that they must realize the implementation of eeo 

[affirmative action] activities at naSa is my responsibility in 

accordance with policies which were established by Fletcher. 

peter [chen] took issue with this and said that if Fletcher were 

[sic] not going to run eeo in naSa and be personally involved 

in its implementation, it would never succeed. i very deliberately 

got mad at peter, told him if he didn’t like the way i was running 

things, he could march right into Fletcher’s office and tell him so, 

but until Fletcher directed me to do differently, i would continue 

to be in charge. peter did not take me up on my offer to go see 

Fletcher, and as a matter of fact backpedaled very nicely.68 

Given the fate of ruth Bates harris,chen’s (or Jenkins’s) reluctance to appeal over 

low’s head to Fletcher was understandable. low, however, was no cardboard villain. he 

knew what racism was and had survived hitlerism.additionally,his efforts to get naSa 

to start addressing the problems harris and her allies identified were relatively strong and 

sustained as compared with others of his managerial era.on the eve of his departure from 

the agency in 976, for instance, he sponsored an unusual three-day retreat for senior 

naSa managers. at this meeting, noel hinners of the office of Space Science was 

unusually frank.“a successful filtering mechanism in the information channel is a major 

problem,” he began.“many people believe that real problems are being submerged [or 

dealt with impatiently].”problems were also“covered-up so top managers won’t know.” 

Finally, hinners added,“[t]here is a failure to face up to personnel problems by many 

managers who don’t like to discuss such issues with their own people.” here was most 

of naSa’s unhappy early experience with minorities and women in a nutshell.69 

67. low, personal note no. 56, 3 December 975, p. 9, Box 65, low/rpi. 

68. ibid. 

69. minutes of Senior management conference, reston, Va, 7–9 march 976, p. 2, Box 65, 

low/rpi; low, personal note no. 67, 4 June 976, p. 3, File , Box 65, low/rpi. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 445 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

The Harriett Jenkins Era, 1974–1992 

affirmative action’s new head at naSa,however,possessed key advantages her 

predecessors harris and mcconnell had not.the most important was timing.harris 

had “lanced the boil,” as Jenkins later put it. Built-up emotional pressures had begun 

to decrease as decades of denial began to end. pioneering affirmative action/eeo 

managers such as harris had jarred and infuriated people, and their casualty rates 

were very high. Succeeding managers such as Jenkins avoided harris and gradually 

operated in a less strife-filled environment. Generational change was a factor. By 

the 980s, the founding generation at naSa, who grew up in a segregated and 

apartheid america in which women rarely existed in aerospace and never gave adult 

males orders about anything, were retiring and dying.70 

harriett Jenkins also benefited because she was the patient teacher, in 

personality and bureaucratic approach, that naSa headquarters may have thought 

it was getting when it originally hired harris in mid-97. Born in Fort Worth, 

texas, Jenkins went to Fisk University in nashville, tennessee, on a scholarship. 

Graduating with a mathematics degree in 945, she joined her sister in california, 

where she worked in clerical roles for the air Force, an insurance company, and the 

oakland police Department from 948 to 954.7 

Jenkins’s real occupational journey began in 954, the year in which the 

Supreme court, in Brown v.Topeka, ruled that educational segregation should end 

“with all deliberate speed.” Jenkins promptly applied for a high school teaching 

position in the public schools of neighboring Berkeley, california, a notable 

university town. notable or not, Berkeley’s public schools also excluded african 

americans from relatively senior teaching jobs at that time. however, Jenkins did 

not give up. if one tactic didn’t work, she tried another. taking several years to 

earn a certificate in elementary education, she applied again and proved herself 

in the Berkeley system with a second-grade class which had “sent two previous 

teachers home” in despair. rising quickly through the ranks as Berkeley slowly and 

peacefully addressed varieties of de facto school segregation, she became the city’s 

first female african american vice principal, director of elementary education, and 

finally assistant superintendent of schools. along the way, she earned her master’s 

in education at the University of california-Berkeley in 957 and her doctorate in 

education there in 973.72 

that same year, Jenkins followed her second husband, a career military man, 

to Washington, where she worked as a consultant before going to naSa.typically, 

Jenkins did not confront power;she educated it via alternate routes.While ruth Bates 

harris had charisma, challenging people to energize and motivate them, harriett 

70. Dr. harriett Jenkins interview with author, 25 august 2005, Bethesda, mD. 

7. carol harvey, “how to Succeed When it’s trying; interview with harriett G. Jenkins 	. . . of 

naSa,” The Bureaucrat: the Journal for Public Managers 20/3 (Fall, l99l), pp. 33–36. 

72. carol harvey,“how to Succeed,” pp. 33–34. 
446 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Jenkins emphasized thoroughness and patience.harris spoke of“changing the system” 

that made discrimination against many groups possible. Jenkins, in contrast, preferred 

value-neutral phraseology like “increasing the pool” of qualified applicants.the only 

naSa headquarters man who officially honored harris’s efforts at opening space 

exploration to women and minorities in the 980s was himself fired for including 

actress Jane Fonda in a bipartisan group of influential women invited to the launch of 

first female astronaut Sally ride in 982. From then until her death in 2004, harris 

was—at best—a footnote in naSa’s organizational memory of itself.73 

as harris (and mcconnell) lapsed into invisibility, Jenkins’s 8-year tenure at 

naSa headquarters left her with honors from the agency, from women in aerospace 

science and engineering organizations,and from the congressionally chartered national 

academy of public administration. moreover, after Jenkins left naSa she became the 

director of the office of Fair employment practices for the U.S. Senate from 992 to 

997. She has continued to do consulting work for naSa and other organizations.74 

Jenkins was honored and harris was forgotten because Jenkins was a 

nonconfrontational gradualist. Key, here, was her willingness to work within a 

decentralized naSa structure and with a center-oriented equal opportunity 

(affirmative action) council of deputy directors of naSa labs, joined with staff 

from Jenkins’s headquarters office. new York-raised harris had always opposed 

this approach, seeing it as one more tool for noncompliance by Southern labs and 

reactionary middle managers who screened matters from upper echelons. native 

Southerner Jenkins seems to have assumed that lower levels of compliance were a 

shorter-term given, one that would be gradually addressed in programs and plans 

taking 0 to 5 years to come to fruition. harris and her allies wanted to force 

centers to stop stonewalling and start doing things. Jenkins and managers like her, 

with a process of sometimes reluctant accommodation under way, wanted naSa 

center managers to buy into the concept that diversifying naSa’s labor force was 

a key part of their jobs, not some radical, liberal excess that would promptly be 

ruled unconstitutional when legislators and judges came to their senses. Jenkins’s 

nonconfrontational “What can we do for you?” approach to center Directors was 

part of this Fabian strategy.harris was shocked that a twentieth-century science- and 

engineering-based agency had significant numbers of people in it with nineteenth73. to illustrate the point about harris’s historical disappearance, no prominent obituaries appeared 

when ruth Bates harris died in 2004. 

74. For 	a harris challenge to James Fletcher that contributed to her getting fired, see Senate 

appropriations committee hearings (974), pp. 56–58; harris, Harlem Princess, pp. 303, 3, 333; 

thomas S.mcFee (and 3 co-authors,including Jenkins), Final Report and Recommendations:The 21st 

Century Federal Manager, Human Resources Management Panel (Washington, Dc: national academy 

of public administration, September 2002) and ralph c. Bledsoe (and 3 co-authors, including 

Jenkins), A Work Experience Second to None: Impelling the Best to Serve (Washington, Dc: national 

academy of public administration, September 200). 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 447 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

century habits of mind. Jenkins already knew, from her experience as a teacher and 

a school administrator in an elite university town, that very smart people could be 

very ignorant outside of their areas of expertise. harris was a primary change agent 

whose firing and rehiring forced naSa to issue quarterly reports on its hiring of 

women and minorities to Senator proxmire and congress generally for three years. 

Jenkins made it possible for naSa to slowly move on once Senator proxmire’s 

reporting requirements were removed in 978.75 

Conclusion 

thus, the american space program went coed and multiracial. in 974, women 

and all minorities combined comprised about 5 percent of the science and engineering 

workforce of a high-technology agency.as physical sciences and engineering education 

very slowly opened up to women and nonwhites, these numbers increased, especially 

for nonminority women and asian americans of both sexes.in 983,harriett Jenkins 

wrote low on naSa’s 25th anniversary to tell him about the progress she had made 

in her first 0 years of integrating women and minorities into naSa’s labor force. 

Jenkins’s effort mixed flattery and bureaucratic self-advertisement with a sure hand. 

She talked about how in a decade nonminority women had risen from 5 percent to 

just under 8 percent of naSa’s total, while minorities had doubled from 6 percent 

to 2 percent.in the science,engineering,and technical half of naSa,the equivalent 

percentages were increases from 2.3 percent to 5.5 percent for nonminority women 

and from 3.9 percent to 8.3 percent for all minorities. calling this “modest progress,” 

Jenkins went on to tell the man who had done more than anyone else to bring her 

into naSa that“[t]he greatest challenge still plagues us—the placement of minorities 

and women in the senior levels of the agency.” the 980s, Jenkins hoped, would 

accelerate gains because of sympathetic leaders within the agency in the reagan 

era. complimenting Jenkins’s work, low replied that “the pipeline is filling rapidly” 

with female candidates qualified for upper managerial ranks, but that the problem of 

minorities remained “more difficult.”76 

So it was in the nation, in physical sciences and engineering education and 

occupations generally, and at naSa. the 980s, as low expected, saw a gradual 

increase in nonminority female (and also asian american) numbers, while progress 

for other groups remained slower. By 99, about 2 percent of all naSa science 

and engineering jobs were held by nonminority women; about 5 percent by asian 

75. Jenkins interview with author, 25 august 2005; “Senate leaders appoint a Director of Fair 

employment,” Jet 82 ( June 992): p. 22; nichelle nichols, Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other 

Memories (new York: G. p. putnam’s Sons, 994), pp. 220–223. Dr. harriett Jenkins to author, 6 

november 2005 (hiring statistics). 

76. harriett Jenkins to George low, no date (circa november 23), with attached statistical sheets; 

low to Jenkins, 4 December l983 (both in Box 38, low/rpi). 
448 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

americans; and about 4 percent each by african americans and hispanics. naSa, 

like the rest of the U.S. society around it, was gradually opening up to new groups 

and constituencies. naSa administrator Dan Goldin flustered many in his agency 

when he announced in 994 that the agency was still too “male, pale, and stale.” But 

important initiatives such as the Science, engineering, mathematics and aerospace 

academy program for precollegiate minority and female students that began in 993 

later went national at naSa because of the efforts of naSa officials like Goldin 

and Jenkins. it also got naSa to establish more serious university research center 

relationships with historically Black colleges and universities in 995. it took until 

999 for air Force colonel eileen collins to command a Space Shuttle mission but, 

42 years after Sputnik,it happened.problems remained,though.the largest gender gap 

for any science and technology issue measured by the national Science Foundation in 

2000 was in space exploration (4 percent).the under-representation of women and 

minorities in the physical sciences and in engineering especially mattered.77 

the bottom line here is that women and minorities comprise nearly twothirds of the population and a majority of the american labor force,but only a vastly 

smaller share of its high-technology and science skills pool. in physics (4 percent) 

and engineering (8 percent), it is still rare to find a woman holding a ph.D.-level 

job.the quarter of the nation’s science and engineering workforce that is female 

has also changed little in the last decade. the growth of science and engineering 

graduates among minorities is still very slow. in a decade when an estimated half 

of all naSa employees and a quarter of all naSa engineers will be eligible for 

retirement, and in which noted trade journal Aviation Week & Space Technology 

reports that the average age of aerospace workers in american corporations is the 

early 50s,recruiting and utilizing historically under-represented groups may be only 

intelligent selfishness in the longer run, for naSa or for any other organization, 

which is “an investment in america’s future.”78 

a person who makes this latter argument cogently and well is Dr. Shirley ann 

Jackson, president of rensselaer polytechnic institute (rpi) in troy, new York, and 

the first african american ph.D. in physics from mit. that Shirley ann Jackson 

77. national Science	 Board, national Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators—2000, 

Vol. I (Washington, Dc: nSF, 2000), chapter 8, p. 2; Dan Goldin, “Bullish on Space Symposium: 

newYork, newYork, July 22, 994,” p. 6; Goldin,“Welcoming remarks: Briefing for Dr. petersen, 

national Science Foundation,august 9, 994,” p. , nho. 

78. “Women, minorities, and people with Disabilities in Science and engineering—2002,” national 

Science Foundation, esp. chapter 6, available at http://www.nasf.gov/statistics/nsf03312/c6/c6o.htm; 

“Semaaannual report:creating new horizons,0Years,”(Washington,Dc:naSa,2003);margaret 

Wertheim,“rational inequality,” The Los Angeles Times (30 march 2006);“a Guide to Womanomics,” 

Economist (5 april 2006): pp. 73–74; Dorothy leonard and Walter Swap,“preserving Deep Smarts at 

naSa, ASK: Academy Sharing Knowledge (Winter 2006) (Washington, Dc: naSa, 2006), pp. 9–2; 

Shirley ann Jackson, “a critical Shortage: We Face an imperative to tap the talent of the ‘new 

majority,’” Rensselaer (Spring 2004):p.2. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 449 

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond 

assumed her presidency in the same year as eileen collins commanded her space 

mission is no historical accident. the fact that she also succeeded naSa’s George 

low as a successful and honored president of rpi also has a lot to do with the change 

era described in this paper. as scholars have recently noted, the early 970s were a 

period in which the “woman question” wouldn’t go away,inside or outside of naSa. 

it was also a period during which an all-male and all-white astronaut corps came 

to exclude too many other americans. naSa’s human spaceflight program would 

have ceased being “manned” and become “human” without ruth Bates harris or 

her supporters, but it would have taken significantly longer than the 20 years it did 

take. naSa and america’s space programs would only have been poorer for it, in 

terms of public interest, understanding, and regard. ruth Bates harris deserves to be 

remembered as an important actor in the social history of the Space age.79 

79. Kevles, Almost Heaven, p. 5; Jodi Dean, Aliens in America (ithaca, nY: cornell University 

press, 998), p. 96. 
450 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 45

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969

chapter 23 

NASA Launches Houston into Orbit:


The Economic and Social Impact of the 


Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969


Kevin m. Brady 

n 9 September 96 naSa administrator James e.Webb announced that othe agency’s manned Spacecraft center, which would serve as the command 

center for the apollo missions and future human spaceflight programs, would be 

located near clear lake in southeast houston,texas, on ,020 acres of land donated 

to the government by rice University.Following the announcement,congressman 

William c. cramer of Florida and Senator Benjamin a. Smith of massachusetts 

cited political pressure from influential texans (including Vice president lyndon B. 

Johnson, who headed the Space council, and texas congressman albert thomas, 

whose district included houston and who controlled naSa’s funds as chairman 

of the house appropriations committee) as the reason why houston was selected 

as the site for the naSa center. During the next year, members of the Space task 

Group transferred from the naSa langley research center in hampton,Virginia, 

to houston, where they worked in temporary facilities throughout the city while 

awaiting the completion of the federal laboratory. 

When president John F. Kennedy arrived in houston on  September 962 

to see the construction of naSa’s manned Spacecraft center (mSc) and visit rice 

University, he greeted nearly 200,000 texans at the city’s airport by saying: 

i do not know whether the people of the Southwest [texas] 

realize the profound effect the whole space program will have 

on the economy of this section of the country. the scientists, 

engineers, and technical people who will be attracted here will 

. The Houston Chronicle, 9 September 96, 20 September 96; The Houston Post, 20 September 

96; “houston manned Spacecraft center,” 0 September 962, naSa 960s Vertical Files, 

houston metropolitan research center, houston, tX. an additional 600 acres of land were 

purchased by naSa in 962. 
452 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

really make the Southwest [texas] a great center of scientific and 

industrial research as this nation reaches out to the moon. in this 

place inamerica [texas] are going to be laid the plans and designs 

by which we will reach out in this decade to explore space.2 

the president’s promise was impressive and the prophetic statement came true 

as the agency’s decision to establish a center near clear lake propelledtexas into the 

Space age by transforming rural towns in the area into highly visible communities 

that surrounded a unique facility for the training of astronauts and the control of 

their spaceflights. During this period of rapid growth, local businesses and nearby 

schools flourished.the federal installation also brought millions of dollars and enticed 

highly educated technical specialists into the area.the relocation of national aerospace 

companies to the clear lake area created new jobs and the need for more support 

services, which primarily added to the diversification of texas’s and the Gulf coast’s 

economy. the close relationship that the mSc established with local academic 

institutions expanded their graduate programs, accelerated their research projects, and 

enlarged their curriculums to meet the needs of the space program. the immense 

effects that the installation had on texas ranks alongside other notable events in 

the state’s history, including the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the opening of the 

houston ship channel, and the creation of the petrochemical and refining industries 

following World War ii. naSa indeed launched houston into orbit by contributing 

to the population, economic, scientific, and technological buildup that the region 

experienced during the 960s.3 this essay focuses on southeast texas between 96 

and 969 in an effort to demonstrate how the federal complex represented a catalyst 

to houston’s economy and enhanced the area’s colleges and universities. 

prior to naSa’s decision to locate a research facility in houston, the clear 

lake area had population of 6,520 people. most of the land in the region, which 

sold for less than $750 an acre, was devoted to cattle and agriculture.there were 

also several producing oil and gas fields in the adjacent town of Friendswood.the 

largest nonagricultural industry was oyster and shrimp fishing, which was centered 

in the neighboring communities of Seabrook and Kemah.4 

as a direct result of the mSc location,the humble oil and refining company 

and Del W. Webb formed the Friendswood Development company to create a 

planned community, known as clear lake city, on 5,000 acres of land adjacent to 

the center. During the 960s, the development company oversaw the construction 

2. The Houston Press, 2 September 962. 

3. The Houston Chronicle, 0 november 986;The Houston Press, 23 September 96;The Houston Post, 

2 July 989;“mSc on the move,” The Houston Magazine (February 963): p. 96. 

4. The Houston Post, 28 august 977; Dave lang, “impact of mSc on the mSc area,” october 

966, economic impact Study, lyndon B. Johnson Space Flight center, management analysis 

office, management analysis Studies, naSa record Group 255, national archives and records 

administration—Southwest region (Fort Worth,tX); The Houston Chronicle,  october 96. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 453 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

of office buildings, service stations, restaurants, motels, shopping centers, banks, a 

golf course, a recreation center with swimming pool and baseball field, apartment 

complexes, and hundreds of homes.With all of these amenities, many of the leading 

scientists, engineers, and technicians working at the federal laboratory made clear 

lake city their home. By the late 960s, the area’s population exceeded 45,000 

people and land values had skyrocketed as half-acre sites sold for more than $6,000. 

aside from the rapid growth and booming land prices,the area’s economy benefited 

from the $00-million development project because houston developers utilized 

local labor to construct the residential subdivisions and commercial buildings.5 

Just across the road from the naSa center were lush pastures owned by 

colonel raymond pearson.With the need for additional housing and commercial 

facilities to be built around the mSc, a group of houston businessmen sought to 

capitalize on the area’s rapid development by purchasing a 570-acre tract of land 

from pearson to develop a community known as nassau Bay. on 5 September 

963 David Bell, who was an aerospace technologist working at the mSc, and his 

family became the first residents of nassau Bay. as other naSa employees and 

workers from the local aerospace companies moved into the development, nassau 

Bay’s residential sales exceeded $5 million by the fall of 964.aside from residential 

homes, nassau Bay also included shopping centers, a bank, several apartment units, 

two motels, a post office, and an office complex which housed the mSc’s press 

corps and more than 25 space-oriented firms. additionally, the community had 

its own telephone company and a power plant operated by thermal Systems inc., 

which supplied year-round metered air conditioning and heating to the commercial 

buildings, townhouses, and apartments.6 

established communities near the naSa site also shared in the land boom 

during the 960s. prior to the construction of the mSc in houston, hurricane 

carla struck the texas coast on  September 96, which destroyed most of the 

Seabrook community and discouraged many of the local residents from rebuilding. 

thus,the area soon became a ghost town.however,news of the federal government’s 

plans to establish a naSa facility nearby revived the community’s hopes and spirits. 

During the 960s, Seabrook experienced rapid growth as naSa employees and 

aerospace company contractors moved to the area. By 967, the Seabrook chamber 

of commerce reported that the town’s population exceeded 5,400 residents. as 

5. The Houston Press, 9 January 962, 24 may 963, 8 June 963;“humble-Webb launch Space,” 

The Houston Magazine (march 962): p. 69; The Houston Chronicle, 2 February 967; lang,“impact 

of mSc on the mSc area”; The Houston Chronicle, 26 may 963; “one Small Step . . . a Giant 

leap,” The Houston Magazine (September 969): p. 8. 

6. The Houston Chronicle, 26 may 963, 2 June 962, 5 September 963, 20 october 963; The 

Houston Post, 29 September 963, 22 november 964, 28 august 977; The Houston Press, 2 June 

962; Suburban Journal (clear lake city,tX), 5 September 963; Spaceland Star (Webster,tX), 25 

February 965. 
454 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Seabrook’s population continued to increase, the community needed additional 

facilities and services to accommodate the new influx of citizens. therefore, the 

once-quiet fishing village witnessed the construction of new shopping centers 

and subdivisions that included 00 new homes and ,000 apartment units. road 

conditions were also improved in Seabrook when a two-lane drawbridge was built 

over the clear creek channel that connected clear lake with Galveston Bay.7 

in 960, Friendswood, which was 0 miles west of the center, represented a 

small rural town of about 75 Quakers who were living off the texas oil boom with 

mainly an agricultural lifestyle.When the mSc was built in the clear lake area, the 

small town developed into a suburban community as new residents moved to the 

area.8 Dramatic growth led to the construction of two water wells, a new sewage 

disposal plant, several subdivisions, shopping centers, and a new drugstore. other 

notable town improvements included the establishment of a new medical clinic, 

which housed Friendswood’s first doctor and dentist. many of the mSc employees 

and aerospace contractors, including Director of Flight operations christopher c. 

Kraft, Jr., Flight Director Glynn S. lynn, and astronaut Donald K. Slayton, made 

Friendswood their home. By the late 960s Friendswood was no longer a quiet 

country village, but the Quaker influence was still visible within the community 

because local grocery and convenience stories did not sell alcohol.9 

the economic impact of the mSc on houston was felt immediately as national 

aerospace companies established regional marketing,service,and engineering liaison 

offices in the area.0 robert h. Brewer, who served as manager of the houston 

chamber of commerce, said this represented “one of the greatest concentrations 

of national corporate interests brought to focus on a single major metropolitan 

area in so short a period of time.” By 966, more than 25 firms had established 

offices in the clear lake area. among the largest space-oriented companies were 

the philco houston operations of honeywell inc., north american aviation inc., 

General electric,lockheed electronics company,international Business machines’s 

Federal System Division, raytheon company, thompson ramo Wooldridge 

(trW) Systems inc.,Volt technologies corp.,the Univac Division of Sperry-rand, 

7. The Houston Post, 9 February 964, 3 may 964, 5 october 98; “character of Seabrook,” 

Seabrook—texas Vertical Files, houston metropolitan research center, houston,tX. 

8. The Houston Chronicle, 24 September 979. 

9. The Houston Post,  november 962; houston Chronicle, 6 June 963; The Houston Chronicle, 26 

September 965; The Houston Chronicle, 26 may 963; manned Spacecraft center news release, 

mSc 7-85, n.d., public affairs office, naSa lyndon B. Johnson Space center, houston, tX; 

manned Spacecraft center news release, mSc 69-79, 26 november 969, public affairs office, 

naSa lyndon B. Johnson Space center, houston,tX. 

0. letter, Fred Staacke to Kenneth S. pitzer, 30 January 962, the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box 

,Woodson research center, Fondren library, rice, University, houston,tX. 

. The Houston Post, 9 February 964.
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 455 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

Beckman instruments inc., texas instruments inc., and Federal electric corp. at 

first, the firms came to houston to work exclusively with the agency, but many 

of them stayed as the apollo program drew to a conclusion because they viewed 

the area as a new base for expansion and diversification. During the late 960s 

the companies provided their services to the nearby petrochemical industries and 

engineering businesses in the houston area.thus, the space-oriented firms assisted 

in diversifying texas’s economy. however, a majority of these companies are no 

longer in business today as budgetary constraints in the space program forced them 

to close operations or consolidate with other aerospace firms.2 

aside from national research and development companies relocating to 

the clear lake area to compete for the agency’s contracts, new businesses were 

established and others were expanded to provide supplies, equipment, and services 

to the center.in January 962,Gulf aerospace corp.was one of the first companies 

to be organized as a result of the naSa facility.the firm received a contract from 

the agency to develop medical equipment designed to monitor an astronaut’s 

heart rate during spaceflights. another enterprise was the a-oK Business Service, 

which was established in houston to provide secretarial and telephone answering 

services for the institution. By 967, the firm expanded its operations by providing 

a placement service for temporary and permanent employees in adjacent harris 

and Galveston counties.other companies included test equipment corp.and Geo 

Space corp.,which provided electronics support for the space-oriented firms in the 

clear lake area. By the late 960s, the total amount of naSa contracts awarded to 

these companies, along with other houston-based businesses cooperating with the 

mSc, was more than $643 billion, which was poured directly into texas’s economy. 

thus, the federal funds encouraged and supported future growth and expansion in 

southeast texas.3 

more meaningful to the houston and clear lake area economy was that local 

firms obtained contracts and awards for space-related projects and construction 

work at the naSa center.4 among the first houston companies to receive a 

2. ibid.; “at the manned Spacecraft center: Six Years and Spin office,” The Houston Magazine 

(September 967): p. 62; The Houston Press, 5 September 962; The Houston Press, 7 September 

962; “liaison Branches,” The Houston Magazine (october 962): p. 28; “From cow pasture to 

moon: mSc Grows—Spreads its influence throughout area,” The Houston Magazine (September 

966): p. 22;“Working for industry,” The Houston Magazine (march 966): p. 74. 

3. The Houston Post, 6 June 964; “instrument Developers,” The Houston Magazine (may 

962): p. 24;“matching people to Jobs,” The Houston Magazine (December 967): p. 42;“lockheed 

liaison,” The Houston Magazine (September 962): p. 24; “From cow pasture to moon: mSc 

Grows—Spreads its influence throughout the area,” The Houston Magazine (September 966): p. 

22;“naSa’s prime contractors & prime contract awards as of December 3,967,”3 December 

967, robert c. eckhardt papers, Box 95-47/95, center for american history, University of 

texas at austin,austin,tX. 

4. letter,Fred Staacke to Kenneth S. pitzer,30 January 962; The Houston Press,2 october 963. 
456 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

naSa award was Brown & root inc. in February 962 the construction company 

was the recipient of a $,499,280 contract for architectural design work on the 

mSc.5 other local engineering firms to benefit from the agency’s awards was S.i.p. 

inc. of houston, which was awarded a contract for $272,522 to build and install a 

space environmental chamber at the naSa facility.6 Following the successful flight 

of apollo 8, naSa awarded the houston-based a-V corp. a contract to develop a 

documentary that utilized the first close-up motion pictures of the lunar surface.7 

in 966,Warrior constructors inc. of houston and the national electronics corp. 

of houston were the recipients of a naSa contract for $4.3 million to construct 

and equip the lunar receiving laboratory, which would house the returned lunar 

samples collected by the apollo astronauts.8 

While economic growth and progress was transpiring near the clear lake site, 

colleges and universities throughout the houston area witnessed these benefits and 

viewed the establishment of a permanent relationship with federal research complex 

as a way to enhance their academic prestige and prosperity.9 

rice University in houston was one of the initial educational facilities in the 

area to be influenced by the arrival of the naSa complex. on 4 January 963 Dr. 

Kenneth S. pitzer, who was president of the 70-year-old university, announced the 

establishment of the Space Science department at rice. prior to the announcement, 

several institutions around the United States, including the University of california at 

Berkeley,the University of california at losangeles,the University of michigan,and the 

University of maryland offered postgraduate work on the subject, but these programs 

were usually only part of a physics department or of a college-affiliated space research 

center.20 therefore, rice represented the only college or university in america to have 

a department devoted exclusively to space science. mSc Director robert r. Gilruth 

welcomed the establishment of the new department at rice University.“We expect it 

to be of great assistance in carrying out the mission of the manned Spacecraft center,” 

he said.2 the benefit of the Space Science department would result from being able to 

train highly specialized professional and technical naSa employees at rice University, 

5. “naSa Groundwork,” The Houston Magazine (February 962): p. 26.


6. naSa manned Spacecraft center news release, mSc 63-263, 28 December 963, public 


affairs office, naSa lyndon B. Johnson Space center, houston,tX. 

7. “editing lunar Film Footage,” The Houston Magazine (June 969): p. 26. 

8. naSa manned Spacecraft center news release, mSc 66-67, 9 august 966, public affairs 

office,naSa lyndon B.Johnson Space center,houston,tX. 

9. The Houston Post,  march 962; Wesley l. hjornevik, interview by robert B. merrifield, 9 

march 967,  July 967, and 9 September 967, transcript, center Series interviews, JSc history 

collection, University of houston-clear lake, University archives, houston,tX. 

20. The Houston Post, 5 January 963; “Space ph.D.’s at rice,” The Houston Magazine (September 

968): p. 56. 

2. The Houston Chronicle, 5 January 963; The Houston Post, 5 January 963. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 457 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

which was less than 40 miles away from the federal site, instead of sending them to 

institutions on the either the West or east coasts.22 

rice’s Space Science department provided research and graduate-level 

instruction in geomagnetism,Van allen radiation, aurora, atmospheric structures and 

dynamics, planetary structures, and meteorites.23 Dr. alexander J. Dessler, who was 

appointed chairman of the new department, stated that the establishment of a Space 

Science department had a large regional value because it expanded space research in 

the state oftexas and contributed to making rice University one of the top academic 

institutions in the nation.24 

the Space Science department grew remarkably during the 960s. For 

instance, the faculty expanded from 4 in the spring of 963 to 7 by December 

967.the graduate student enrollment increased from 9 in September 963 to 50 

in three years. many of the graduate students who enrolled in the Space Science 

department were mSc employees and local aerospace contractors who sought to 

broaden their understanding of sounding rockets,satellites,astronomy,planetary and 

meteoritic structures, quantum mathematics, and astrophysics.25 

aside from being the recipient of several naSa research grants, rice also 

cooperated with the mSc by providing research and teaching facilities for the 

scientist-astronauts, where they were able to maintain proficiency in their specific 

fields of study while they were involved in astronaut training at the naSa center. 

the close proximity of rice University and the mSc made the research facilities 

at the institution convenient to the scientist-astronauts so they could keep up with 

their scientific work without involving extending amounts of travel time.26 

22. “Summary,” n.d., the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box , Woodson research center, Fondren 

library, rice University, houston,tX. 

23. memo, K.S.	 pitzer to Deans and Department chairs, “instruction and research in Space 

Science,” 2 January 963,the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box ,Woodson research center, Fondren 

library, rice University, houston,tX. 

24. “Summary,” n.d., the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box , Woodson research center, Fondren 

library, rice University, houston,tX; Kenneth pitzer,“rice University and houston in the Space 

age,” 7 December 96,the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box 49,Woodson research center, Fondren 

library, rice University, houston,tX. 

25. memo, a. J. Dessler to Faculty, “academic program,” 8 December 967, the Kenneth pitzer 

papers, Box , Woodson research center, Fondren library, rice University, houston, tX; a. 

J. Dessler to president pitzer, “current State of Space Science Department,” 23 april 963, the 

F. curtis michel papers, Box 2, Woodson research center, Fondren library, rice University, 

houston, tX; “Summary,” n.d., the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box , Woodson research center, 

Fondren library, rice University, houston,tX; The Houston Chronicle, 26 may 968. 

26. letter, a. J. Dessler to Dr. harry hess, 9 June 	963, the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box , 

Woodson research center, Fondren library, rice University, houston,tX. 
458 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

one of the most notable outgrowths of rice’s Space Science Department was 

that naSa awarded the university a $.6 million grant to construct a Space Science 

andtechnology Building to house the institution’s rapidly expanding research activities. 

the building consisted of offices, conference rooms, a high-speed computer center, 

environmental testing facilities, materials research facilities, and a low-level radiation 

laboratory.27 During the late 960s, 8 faculty members, 3 graduate students, and 

0 postdoctoral students worked on 35 space-related projects, including meteorite 

experiments, cosmic rays measurements, solar wind investigations, and aurora studies 

in the Space Science andtechnology Building.28 the success of these projects enabled 

rice to become the first college or university in the United States to receive approval 

from theagency to design and development its own satellites under the new University 

explorers program sponsored by naSa.29 although rice University was ranked as 

one of the top 20 academic institutions in the nation prior to the arrival of the mSc, 

the close partnership that the university developed with the center enhanced the 

school’s national and international prestige.30 

the success of the Space Science department also contributed to houston 

developing a new image that never existed before the 960s.the city had always 

been viewed as the center of the oil and gas industry, but rice’s program and the 

mSc caused the nation to recognize southeast texas as a site for space-oriented 

research and development.3 

probably one of the greatest impacts that naSa had on rice University was 

that the national government passed a resolution in July 963 which stipulated that 

after 6 august 964, federal agencies were restricted from awarding contracts to 

colleges or universities that discriminated because of race, creed, color, or national 

origins in their admission process.32 at this time, rice University was the only 

27. The Houston Chronicle,  may 964; “Space Science Building,” 8 February 965, the Kenneth 

pitzer papers, Box , Woodson research center, Fondren library, rice University, houston, 

tX; “opening remarks by Dr. pitzer: Ground-Breaking ceremonies for the Space Science and 

technology Building, rice University,” 2 February 965, the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box , 

Woodson center, Fondren library, rice University, houston,tX. 

28.“address by James e.Webb—Delivered by Dr.thomas l. K. Smull, on the occasion of the GroundBreaking for the rice University Space Science and technology Building,” 2 February 965,the 

Kenneth pitzer papers,Box ,Woodson center,Fondren library,rice University,houston,tX; The 

Houston Chronicle, 24 march 966; The Houston Post, 4 June 965; The Houston Post, 8 may 965. 

29. Austin Statesman, 0 February 965; The Houston Post, 5 February 965. 

30. The Houston Post, 3 September 969; “First Year: Space-age impact on houston,” The Houston 

Magazine (September 962): p. 30. 

3. D.W. lang, interviewed by robert B. merrifield, 3 may 967 and 9 may 967, transcript, Box 3, center 

interviews,JSc history collection,University of houston-clear lake,University archives,houston,tX. 

32.Warren B. irons,“Selecting employees and Facilities for training,” 9 July 963,the Kenneth pitzer 

papers, Box 6, Woodson center, Fondren library, rice University, houston, tX; The Houston 

Press, 2 February 964; The Houston Press, 8 January 964. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 459 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

nonsectarian,private institution in the South that prohibited the admission of african 

american students.thus, president pitzer and the Board of Governors recognized 

that if they failed to remove racial restrictions on student admission, the university 

would suffer the consequences of losing naSa grants.33 the possibility that rice 

could have become ineligible to receive research funds from the agency represented 

an ironic twist because one of the main reasons why the naSa installation was 

centered in houston was the availability of rice’s scientists and research facilities.34 

in February 964 the rice trustees filed a petition asking for District court 

authority to disregard racial restrictions set out by the university’s founder,William 

marsh rice, in an 89 indenture.35 the trustees claimed that race discrimination 

prevented the institution from receiving federal research grants and hampered 

the recruitment of first-rate students and faculty members.36 a rice alumni 

group headed by congressman albert thomas, whose district encompassed rice 

University, also filed a petition in support of the trustees’ request. on  February 

964 District Judge William m. holland of the 27th District court heard rice’s 

case.37 During the suit,tom martin Davis, who was the attorney for the university’s 

trustees,argued in favor of integration by stating,“rice University today stands at the 

crossroads—it could go to the moon or it could return to the 9th century.”38 after 

the jury deliberated, they found that it would be impossible for rice University to 

develop as a first-class educational institute if african americans were barred from 

enrollment.39 a month later, District Judge holland ruled that rice University’s 

trustees had the authority to remove racial barriers prohibiting the admission of 

qualified students.With the desegregation of rice, the institution became eligible 

once again to receive naSa research grants.40 in the spring of 965, raymond 

Johnson became the first african american to be admitted to rice University.4 

the arrival of the mSc in houston also led to significant changes at the 

University of houston. During the early 960s the academic institution witnessed 

the close relationship that existed between rice University and the agency, so 

33.memo,K.S.pitzer to members of the Board of Governors,“new non-Discrimination requirements 

of Several Government agencies,” 6 october 963,the Kenneth pitzer papers, Box 6,Woodson 

center, Fondren library, rice University, houston,tX; The Houston Press,  February 964. 

34. The Houston Press, 8 January 964. 

35. The Houston Post, 22 February 963. 

36. The Houston Chronicle, 3 February 964. 

37. The Houston Chronicle, 9 February 964; The Houston Press, 0 February 964. 

38. The Houston Press, 20 February 964. 

39. ibid., and 9 march 964. 

40. The Houston Post, 0 march 964; The Houston Chronicle, 9 march 964. 

4. memo, K. S. pitzer to members of the Board of Governors, “annual report: 963–64,” the 

Kenneth pitzer papers, Box 7,Woodson center, Fondren library, rice University, houston,tX. 
460 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

the University of houston expanded its interests and needs to keep pace with the 

Space age. For instance, the university inaugurated doctoral programs in physics, 

mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering after recognizing the need 

for higher-trained personnel in these fields.42 Dr. clark Goodman, a professor of 

physics, developed a course entitled “aerospace Science and engineering,” which 

focused on space environments, temperature controls, heat protection, and launch 

vehicles. in the fall of 963 nearly 40 graduate students and seniors enrolled in the 

course.aside from Goodman’s daily lectures, students had an opportunity to discuss 

the current activities and operations at the naSa center with mSc officials, 

including maxime a. Faget, who served as assistant Director of engineering and 

Development; Bryan r. erb, who worked in the Structures and materials Branch; 

David m. hammick from the Space technology Division; and chief of the Space 

radiation and Space environment Division Jerry l. modisette. this new space 

engineering class at the University of houston represented one of the first courses 

of its type in the nation.43 

aside from this course, the university jointly sponsored a variety of 

educational and research programs with the naSa complex, such as the 

Summer Faculty Fellowship program, Sustaining University program, employee 

Graduate training program, and pre-doctoral traineeship program.44 Dr. F. m. 

tiller, who served as the dean of the college of engineering, stated, “[t]he 

establishment of naSa programs aided in the progress and development of the 

school by accelerating plans that were already underway.”thus, the cooperative 

efforts assisted the University of houston in improving its stature as an academic 

institution in the Southwest.45 

With the continued expansion of population and industry in the clear lake 

area, the community required additional opportunities for higher education. By 

964,the University of houston offered undergraduate and graduate courses ranging 

from elementary russian, mathematics, physics, political science, and business 

administration to mSc employees in temporary classrooms at the naSa center 

in houston. however, center Director robert Gilruth, seeking more educational 

opportunities, urged the university to expand its operations in an effort to more 

effectively serve the interests of naSa employees, residents of the clear lake area, 

42. The Houston Post, 8 September 963. 

43. The Houston Press, 23 october 963; The Houston Press, 24 September 963. 

44. “a	 Study of naSa University programs,” 968, the philip G. hoffman papers, Box 35, 

Special collections and archives, University of houston libraries, houston, tX; r. W. hough, 

“Some economic impacts of the national Space program,” (Washington Dc: naSa-cr-96809, 

naSa, 968), pp. 35–36; “material Given to Gov. connally Before his Speech to law college,” 

n.d.,the philip G.hoffman papers,Box 38,Special collections and archives,University of houston 

libraries, houston,tX. 

45. The Houston Post, 0 February 963. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 46 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

and workers at the various aerospace companies. additionally, he noted that the 

area’s large technical and scientific community made this need more imperative.46 

on 25 november 965 the humble oil and refining company donated 50 

acres of land west of the mSc to the University of houston to establish a branch 

campus.47 the president of the university, Dr. philip G. hoffman, who accepted the 

land gift for the board of regents, said,“[S]uch gifts would not only be acceptable, 

but welcome.”48 Following the announcement, paul e. purser, Gilruth’s executive 

assistant, stated that the establishment of a branch campus near the facility would 

provide a healthy and vigorous university climate in the area.49 after acquiring the 

necessary building funds from alumni gifts and private industries,construction began 

on the property in the early 970s. regular scheduled classes at the University of 

houston at clear lake city began in September 974 with a total enrollment of 

,069 students and a faculty comprised of 60 professors.thus, the establishment of 

the branch campus contributed to the proper development of the state’s scientific 

and industrial strength.50 

additional houston-area educational institutions benefited from specific 

naSa-related projects, such as the University of St.thomas, which received funds 

from the agency to conduct studies relating to the genetic effects of weightlessness; 

Baylor University college of medicine, which was awarded a $258,000 space 

medicine grant to monitor astronauts’ brain waves and blood volume during human 

spaceflights; the University of texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, 

which was awarded a $65,000 grant to collect the astronauts’ clinical history data 

for medical researchers; the texas institute for rehabilitation and research, which 

was awarded a $7,83 grant for the development of computer technology for 

a medical data study relating to the apollo program; and the Southwest research 

institute of houston, which was the recipient of a $04,850 grant to assist the 

agency in disseminating naSa technological developments to local businesses for 

46. The Houston Post, 27 november 965; The Houston Post, 24 november 965; The Houston 

Chronicle, 25 november 965; The Houston Post, 6 march 963; letter, robert r. Gilruth to Dr. 

philip G. hoffman, 0 September 965,the philip G. hoffman papers, Box 9, Special collections 

and archives, University of houston libraries, houston,tX. 

47. The Houston Post, 27 november 965; The Houston Post, 24 november 965; The Houston 

Chronicle, 25 november 965; The Houston Post, 6 march 963; robert r. Gilruth to Dr. philip 

G. hoffman, 0 September 965,the philip G. hoffman papers, Box 9, Special collections and 

archives, University of houston libraries, houston,tX. 

48. The Houston Post, 24 november 965. 

49. ibid. 

50. “University 	 history,” University of houston-clear lake, http://prtl.uhcl.edu/portal/page?_ 

pageid=353,409744&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTALP (accessed 4 august 2006).
462 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

commercial applications.5 By the late 960s, the total amount of agency funds 

awarded to these respective educational facilities and research institutions was 

more than $3.6 million.52 these naSa grants differed from other research and 

development funds because they required highly paid and educated workers who 

demanded higher levels of education and residential accommodations. houston 

and local officials responded to these demands by improving the area’s quality of 

education and infrastructure during the 960s, which resulted in benefits for all 

members of the community.53 

the elementary and public schools in the clear lake area were also affected by 

the naSa center because the children of mSc employees and contractors added 

to the schools’ population.54 During the 950s school growth in the clear lake area 

ranged from 90 to 00 additional students each year. however, school growth since 

the 960s represented an average increase of ,02 pupils a year.55 

During the early 960s the clear creek independent School District, which 

was a consolidation of four school districts from the neighboring communities of 

Webster, Seabrook, Kemah, and league city, also faced a boom in its enrollment 

resulting from an influx of naSa families to the region. in the fall of 96 the 

school district consisted of six schools and had a student population of ,777 pupils. 

Within two years the clear creek School Board reported a 77 percent rise in its 

student enrollment.With the school district forced to accommodate an additional 

,046 students, the school board approved the construction of additional buildings 

and facilities to alleviate the tremendous growth problems, including an immediate 

four-classroom addition to the Webster elementary School and a five-classroom 

addition to the clear creek Junior high School.56 

5. “added Grants,” The Houston Magazine (august 966): p. 24; “naSa research Funds,” The 

Houston Magazine (november 966);p.30;“naSa Grants,” The Houston Magazine (February 967): 

p. 32;“Space medicine,” The Houston Magazine (october 966); The Houston Post, 9 January 966. 

52. “naSa’s 	 prime contractors & prime contract awards as of December 3, 967,” 3 

December 967, robert c. eckhardt papers, Box 95-47/95, center for american history, 

University of texas at austin,austin,tX. 

53. “For the Benefit of all mankind,” 4 September 970, Box 95-47/95, robert c. eckhardt 

papers, center for american history,austin,tX. 

54. The Houston Press, 29 march 963; “pacemaker Schools,” The Houston Magazine (august 

966): p. 24;“Fantastic neighbor,” The Houston Magazine (march 964): p. 26;“Space For Schools,” 

The Houston Magazine (July 964); “naSa’s prime contractors & prime contract awards as of 

December 3, 967,” 3 December 967, robert c. eckhardt papers, Box 95-47/95, center for 

american history, University of texas at austin,austin,tX. 

55. “clear 	creek independent School District enrollment Figures,” clear creek independent 

School District, league city,tX; lang,“impact of mSc on the mSc area.” 

56. The Houston Press, 29 march 963; The Houston Press, 28 august 963; The Houston Press, 3 

July 963; The Houston Post, 7 march 963;“clear creek independent School District enrollment 

Figures,” clear creek independent School District, league city,tX. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 463 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

as children from families working at the naSa site and space-oriented 

industries in the area continued to overcrowd the clear creek independent School 

District, the school board applied for federal aid to build additional campuses and 

expand existing facilities.57 in January 965 the U.S. office of education awarded 

the school district a $85,000 grant to construct a new high school campus in 

league city.the funds were received under a law that grants aid to school districts 

affected by nearby government installations.58 During the next three years the school 

district used bond funds and federal grants to support the construction of three new 

elementary schools in el lago, clear lake city, and league city, and a junior high 

school in Seabrook.59 as the clear creek independent School District expanded to 

0 schools and 8,627 pupils in less than five years, the district received $203,079 in 

federal funds to prepare for additional growth during the late 960s.60 

From its inception, the mSc also developed a close relationship with the area’s 

school districts in an effort to heighten students’interests in science and mathematics 

by disseminating knowledge about the space program to the local elementary and 

secondary schools.6 in 964, houston independent School District teachers erine 

Baker and Grant morrison cooperated with public relations Specialist eugene e. 

horton,who served as the chief of the educational programs at the mSc,to develop 

materials designed to inform teachers and students about the agency’s current 

activities. By 966, the houston independent School District supplied elementary 

and secondary teachers throughout texas with educational aids, including film clips, 

workbooks, and pictures related to the space program.the houston independent 

School District-naSa program demonstrated that educators could effectively work 

with highly technical information and design materials for classroom instruction. 

additionally, the program established a permanent flow of information between 

texas schools and the mSc.62 

the location of the mSc in houston also changed texas’s image because 

of the increased space research conducted in the state. as a result, houstonians 

were accorded a worldwide identity as “Space city, U.S.a.” during the 960s. local 

company owners willingly accepted their new Space age image by changing the 

names of their establishments to demonstrate their pride in the space program. 

57. The Houston Chronicle, 7 november 964. 

58. The Houston Chronicle, 6 January 965. 

59. The Houston Chronicle,  november 964, 26 may 965, 3 January 965. 

60. The Houston Chronicle, 3 march 969, 3 march 968; The Houston Press, 29 march 963; “clear 

creek independent School District enrollment Figures,” clear creek independent School District, 

league city,tX. 

6. “Year of apollo,” The Houston Magazine (September 968): p. 2. 

62. “pacemaker Schools,” The Houston Magazine (august 966): p. 24; “Fantastic neighbor,” The Houston 

Magazine (march 964):p.26;“Space For Schools,”The Houston Magazine (July 964). 
464 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Businesses such as the Space city Bar-B-Q restaurant, apollo Broadcasting 

company, Space age laminating company, apollo paint company, astro nut 

company, Space city hearing aids company, astro Baby Sitters agency, and the 

apollo restaurant and lounge surrounded the naSa center in the clear lake 

area.and naturally the space burger, which most houstonians claimed “tasted outof-this-world,” was served at the apollo restaurant and lounge.63 

texas sports teams also adopted space-oriented names to pay tribute to the 

nation’s space pioneers. Despite the fact that many individuals believe the houston 

rockets basketball team was named after the launch vehicles that carried astronauts 

and satellites into space, the club was actually christened the rockets when the 

organization was founded in San Diego,california,in 967.64 however,the houston 

astros baseball team drew their club name from the astronauts.65 and in october 

965 houston’s new professional ice hockey team was named the apollos in honor 

of the lunar landing program.66 

local attractions in the houston area also had Space age names. For instance, 

tranquility park,which was a tribute to the apollo  mission,was constructed in the 

city’s central business district.the enclosed multipurpose stadium where the astros 

played was named the astrodome,and adjacent to the sports complex was astroworld, 

which was a recreational theme park that offered family entertainment.67 

With houston serving as the training center for america’s astronauts and as 

the control center for all human spaceflights, astronauts michael collins, edwin e. 

“Buzz” aldrin, Jr., and neil a. armstrong paid homage to the lone Star State by 

flying a texas flag aboard the command module during the apollo  mission.68this 

flight to the lunar surface was significant to houstonians in another way because 

the first word spoken publicly by astronaut neil armstrong on the moon was the 

name of their city:“houston . . .tranquility Base here.the eagle has landed.”69 in 

november 969 astronaut alan l. Bean, who was a Fort Worth native, also brought 

worldwide attention to the lone Star State by carrying a texas flag to the lunar 

63. The Houston Post, 2 July 969. 

64. handbook	 of texas online, “houston rockets,” http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/ 

HH/xoh3.html (accessed 7 august 2006). 

65. “countdown to Blast-off for 966 astros,” The Houston Magazine (april 966): p. 63. 

66. “apollos on ice,” The Houston Magazine (october 965): p. 72. 

67. “one Small Step . . . a Giant leap,” The Houston Magazine (September 969): p. 8; handbook 

of texas online, “astrodome,” http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/AA/xva1.html 

(accessed 7 august 2006);“the Beautiful clear lake area,” clear lake cityVertical File, center for 

american history, University oftexas at austin,austin,tX. 

68. “texas Flag Flown to the moon on apollo ,”the 9th century Shop, http://www.19thcenturyshop. 

com/apps/catalogitem?id=346 (accessed 4 June 2006). 

69. “one Small Step . . . a Giant leap,” The Houston Magazine (September 969): p. 8; The Houston 

Chronicle, 0 november 986; Austin American Statesman, 6 July 989. 
NASA Launches Houston into Orbit: The Economic and Social 465 

Impact of the Space Agency on Southeast Texas, 1961–1969 

surface on the apollo 2 mission.70 and although apollo 6 astronauts charles m. 

Duke, Jr., and John W.Young did not carry a texas flag to the moon, they did name 

one of the moon’s craters “lone Star” in honor of texas.7 

Conclusion 

although the agency did not utilize the mSc as a site to launch rockets 

into space, the installation did launch southeast texas into an orbit of growth and 

prosperity as the federal complex brought international attention to the region 

and made houston the focal point of the Space age fever that was spreading 

throughout the nation. the naSa facility also served as a catalyst to the state’s 

economy and stimulated enormous development projects in the clear lake area. 

thousands of new jobs were created in houston as a result of the relocation of 

national aerospace firms to the region. not only did these companies cause a 

new wave of industrialization in texas, they also assisted in the diversification of 

state’s economy. the center also enhanced the prestige and stature of the area’s 

academic institutions. more importantly, the federal complex contributed to the 

desegregation of rice University, which recognized that it was necessary for a 

nationally competitive school to be racially integrated.as naSa placed texas into 

orbit, the state entered a new era of technological, scientific, and economic progress 

during the late twentieth century.72 

70. Dallas Morning News,  February 970; Dallas Morning News, 5 november 969.


7. randy attwood and Keith t. Wilson, “Footprints on the moon—i can’t Believe it! an 


interview with apollo 6 astronaut charlie Duke,” Quest: The History of Spaceflight Magazine 

(Summer/Fall 994): p. 55. 

72. “the president’s 	promise for houston . . . ‘in this place are Going to be laid plans to 

explore Space,’” The Houston Magazine (october 962): p. 7; “Special to the houston post By 

Governor price Daniels,” n.d., papers of price Daniel as attorney General, U.S. Senator, and 

Governor,Box 359,Sam houston regional library and research center,liberty,tX; The Houston 

Post, 0 march 964; The Houston Chronicle, 9 march 964; The Houston Press, 2 october 963; 

“houston Spreads prosperity throughout eight-county houston-Gulf coast complex,” The 

Houston Magazine (December 962): p. 45. 
466 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 467

chapter 24 

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

and Southern California 

peter J.Westwick 

Southern california, as any of its inhabitants will attest, is a rather particular—if not 

unique—place. over the course of the twentieth century it evolved from irrigated 

agriculture, through an oil boom and the emergence of hollywood, to its present status 

as a sprawling, high-tech nexus on the pacific rim.the central factor in this evolution, 

especially in the last half-century,has been the aerospace industry. the aerospace complex 

startedwithafewaircraftbuildersaroundWorldWari,vastlyexpandedinthemobilization 

for World War ii, and then continued and broadened in the cold war to encompass 

a wide range of activities, including military and civilian aircraft, reconnaissance and 

communications satellites,and strategic missiles in addition to space exploration. By the 

980s about 40 percent of the american missiles and space business resided in southern 

california, as did about one-third of the aerospace engineers, and the industry as a 

whole there employed close to a half-million people. Southern california as we know 

it would not exist without aerospace, and, if one is looking for the societal impact 

of space exploration, one need look no further than the transformation of southern 

california in the twentieth century from sunbelt orange groves to high-tech metropolis. 

. See Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850–1915 (new York: oxford University 

press, 2002); Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream: CaliforniaThrough the Progressive Era (newYork: oxford 

University press, 986); Kevin Starr, Material Dreams: Southern CaliforniaThrough the 1920s (newYork: 

oxford University press, 99); Kevin Starr, Endangered Dreams: The Great Depression in California 

(newYork:oxford University press,997);Kevin Starr,The Dream Endures:California Enters the 1940s 

(newYork: oxford University press, 2002); Kevin Starr, Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 

1940–1950 (new York: oxford University press, 2003); mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the 

Future in Los Angeles (newYork:Verso, 990), pp. 20–2;ann markusen et al., Rise of the Gunbelt: 

The Military Remapping of Industrial America (newYork: oxford University press, 99). Statistics from 

allen J. Scott, Technopolis: High-Technology Industry and Regional Development in Southern California 

(Berkeley, ca: University of california press, 993), p. 29. the total employment figure includes 

aircraft, electronics components, search and navigation equipment, and other aerospace-related 

categories. Scott, Technopolis, pp. 2–6.the author is helping launch an initiative to document the 

history of the regional aerospace industry in a project under the institute for california and the West 

at USc and the huntington library;see the institute’sWeb site at http://www.usc.edu/icw (accessed 28 

march 2007).throughout the notes, citations to material from the Jpl archives follow the form: Jpl 

collection number, box/folder.all interviews by author unless otherwise noted. 
468 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

Several thousand of these aerospace engineers worked at the Jet propulsion 

laboratory (Jpl) in pasadena. Jpl worked with and spun off local aerospace firms, 

and experienced with them the ups and downs of federal support,but also competed 

with them in the local labor pool; it attracted publicity to the local community 

but also a backlash because of environmental pollution; and it intersected the 

hollywood movie business in surprising ways.this paper examines a few of these 

evolving interactions to demonstrate how space programs both reflected and shaped 

southern california. 

Origins and the Aerospace Industry 

it was no accident that Jpl sat at the geographic epicenter of the aerospace 

industry. caltech’s aeronautics programs had close ties from the 920s to nearby 

aircraft firms,and its research and graduates helped fuel the pre-World War ii growth 

of the local aircraft industry.at the time,caltech was already a center for science and 

engineering in the United States, fostered by philanthropic funding. this included 

money from the Guggenheim family for an aeronautics program, which in 930 

helped caltech lure theodore von Kármán, a leading authority on aerodynamics 

in Germany, to become director of the Guggenheim aeronautical laboratory at 

caltech (Galcit). in addition to promoting Galcit’s collaboration with local 

aircraft firms on wind tunnel and other research programs, von Kármán supported 

research on rockets, which eventually led to army support and, during World War 

ii, the formal creation of Jpl.2 

the symbiosis continued in the cold war, and Jpl’s evolution from rockets 

to spacecraft resonated with the diversification of local industry from aircraft to 

aerospace. caltech continued to manage Jpl, first under an army contract and 

then under naSa. Jpl differs from the other naSa centers in its association 

with a university—one well-connected with local aerospace industry. caltech 

(through Galcit and Jpl) provided to the industry both research underpinning 

technological advances and also a steady supply of science and engineering 

graduates, such as Simon ramo and Dean Wooldridge—the r and W in trW. 

these links may be measured by the many aerospace executives on caltech’s board 

of trustees, several of whom also served on a special committee overseeing Jpl and 

hence injected industrial perspectives.although caltech and Jpl had exceptionally 

well-developed connections, they were by no means unique in southern california: 

convair engineers helped establish the science and engineering departments at the 

University of california at San Diego; Boeing similarly cultivated cal-State long 

2. Judith r. Goodstein, Millikan’s School:A History of the California Institute of Technology (new York:W. 

W.norton & company,99),pp.56–77;clayton r.Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program: 

A History of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (new haven, ct:Yale University press, 982), pp. –7.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 469 

Beach as a labor source; and hughes supported the engineering program at the 

University of Southern california.3 

Jpl also intersected local industry as a competitor in the labor market. Jpl 

managers viewed southern california as a more competitive labor market than that 

of other naSa centers, since Jpl engineers could jump to any number of industry 

firms without the hassle of relocating; lab managers consistently worried about 

losing top talent. as Jpl grew to be the largest employer in pasadena, its evolving 

mission shaped its ability to recruit and retain staff.after the lab shifted to naSa it 

gradually relinquished secret defense work, which made it particularly attractive to 

aerospace engineers who did not want to work in a classified environment. Since 

many (if not most) local aerospace jobs required a security clearance, this could 

provide a substantial recruiting inducement, not only for those morally opposed 

to military work but also those—such as homosexuals—who feared an intrusive 

clearance process.this became an issue when Jpl resumed substantial military work 

in the 980s, amid a general remilitarization of the space program.4 

Jpl more generally capitalized (with the rest of local industry) on the southern 

california climate as a recruiting tool. a number of Jpl staff went job hunting in 

southern california at least in part because of the weather, especially those who 

started in the early years of the 950s and 960s, and even more especially those 

from colder climes.as one engineer put it,“the chamber of commerce sent me 

this booklet that showed beautiful mountains,no smog,snow on the top,and orange 

trees,” and that was all the inducement necessary to head west.5 

Jpl also reflected the ethnic composition of the local labor pool. like the 

rest of naSa, lab staff was very largely white and male, following the national 

demographic of science and engineering disciplines, but Jpl generally had almost 

twice the proportion of minorities on the staff than did naSa, and asian ethnic 

groups made up the largest fraction of minorities,followed by hispanics and african 

3. on convair engineers and San Diego colleges: marvin Stern, interview by Finn aaserud,  may 

987,american institute of physics. 

4. pete lyman interview,  april 2004; U.S. Government accountability office, “Security clearances: 

consideration of Sexual orientation in the clearance process,”24 march 995 (Washington,Dc:Gao, 

Gao/nSiaD-95-2, 995); Barbara Spector,“Security clearance Delays hamper Gays’ careers,” The 

Scientist 6/5 (2 march 992); High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, U.S. court of 

appeals,ninth circuit,895 F.2d 563,2 February 990;Gary libman,“Scientists confront homophobia 

in their ranks,” LosAngelesTimes,2 February 990;peter J.Westwick,Into the Black:JPL and theAmerican 

Space Program, 1976–2004 (new haven, ct:Yale University press, 2006), p. 00. See also m. G. lord, 

Astro-Turf:The Private Life of Rocket Science (newYork:Walker and co.,2005),pp. 88–95. 

5. charles Kohlhase interview, 2 July 2002; see also John casani interview, 2 november 2003, and 

pete lyman interview, 26 march 2004. 
470 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

americans.6 affirmative action policies and the increasing number of minority 

scientists and engineers nationwide almost doubled minority representation from 

the 970s to the 990s (from 3 percent in 976 to 25 percent in 994), although 

upper management remained a mostly white male province.hispanics and especially 

asian americans continued to constitute most of the minorities (8 percent and 

 percent, respectively), in particular among scientists and engineers (4 percent 

asian), so that whites,asians, and hispanics held better views of Jpl’s diversity than 

did african americans.7 

Jpl’s connections to local industry extended to spinoffs—from major defense 

contractor aerojet, spun off duringWorldWar ii, to more recent smaller startups such 

asViaSpace and photobit—and of course to local contractors. many local firms made 

their living in part off Jpl contracts,in what economists would explain as a high-tech, 

post-Fordist example of earlier concentrations of craft industry (such as lyon silks 

or alsatian calico), where mutually independent producers capitalize on a common 

labor market and on a network of suppliers and services.8 about one-third of Jpl’s 

subcontracting currently goes to southern california firms,and even for contracts that 

went to other aerospace hotbeds, such as to lockheed martin in colorado, some of 

the subcontracts for those programs ended up in southern california as well.9 

on the other hand,big aerospace firms could view Jpl projects as contributing 

a mere pittance to company balance sheets. For groups such as the hughes Space 

Division, which might have sales of several hundred million dollars a year, a Jpl 

contract for $50 million or $00 million spread out over several years provided 

a very small fraction of business.0 that did not keep them from competing for 

contracts or from complaining that Jpl kept work in-house instead of contracting 

it to industry. as firms such as trW and hughes developed extensive satellite 

expertise (most of it through spacecraft for military reconnaissance and commercial 

communications),Jpl faced competition from aerospace firms both near and distant, 

and naSa and congress consistently pressured the lab to farm out more work. 

periodic downturns in civil and military space spending increased the competition 

from aerospace firms.the end of the cold war, in particular, marked a turning point 

for Jpl, the aerospace industry, and southern california itself. Jpl contemplated 

6. t. G. meikle, “ethnic Staffing by Job categories, 28 october 976 (Jpl 42, 6/265); “advisory 

council on minority affairs minutes,”5 october 977 (Jpl 42,6/258);employment comparison 

in advisory council material,” February 979 (Jpl 8, 5/79). 

7. Jpl,“response to the naSa Federal laboratory task Force Subcommittee Questions,”3 october 

994 (Jpl 259, 20/23), and Kirk Dawson,“Jpl institutional overview,” 7 november 994 (Jpl 

259, 20/229); Jpl employee Survey, June 995 (Jpl 259, 89/296). 

8. Scott, Technopolis, pp. 25–26. 

9. Data courtesy of martin ramirez in the Jpl legislative affairs office. 

0. albert Wheelon interview, 3 June 2002. 

. Westwick, Into the Black. 
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 47 

the grim prospect that the lab itself might shut down and, as the aerospace industry 

hemorrhaged jobs, caltech’s president declared that “this is a time of triage—[the] 

only question is what is going to die.”2 Jpl’s response, known as the “employee 

displacement strategy” or “right-sizing”—or, more bluntly, downsizing—produced 

staff cuts of 30 percent over the next several years.though not as deep as the cuts 

suffered by the aerospace business in general, they represented and contributed to 

the general malaise of the early 990s in southern california.3 

Jpl survived because it found new justifications (besides the pork-barrel 

political support it received as a large local enterprise.) one response to the end of 

the cold war was to celebrate the triumph of the private sector and,as military threats 

receded, the federal government shifted emphasis to economic concerns. clinton’s 

presidential campaign catchphrase of 992—“it’s the economy, stupid”—infected 

naSa and Jpl, which channeled the entrepreneurial buzz into efforts to transfer 

space technologies to the civilian economy.the usual approach involved licensing 

and patents, but Jpl also spun off people and their ideas in small startup companies. 

caltech encouraged the spinoffs by providing startup capital through a “grubstake” 

grant program, with an equity stake retained by the university. the startups also 

capitalized, literally, on the thriving venture capital business in california in the 

990s, which quickly learned to target the people and ideas emerging from Jpl. 

these spinoff companies supported new justifications for the space program 

based on high technology for economic growth.the clustering of offshoots such 

as photobit and ViaSpace around the lab helped the local economy rebound from 

aerospace cutbacks, but they also demonstrated some resistance to the commercial 

spirit at Jpl. lab managers worried that engineers constantly on the lookout for 

business opportunities might not stay focused on the job of building spacecraft. lab 

managers also feared the loss of key staff. in 998, for example, carl Kukkonen, the 

architect of Jpl’s microelectronics program, left to start ViaSpace, and he sought 

to bring a number of Jpl staff with him. caltech agreed but asked that he keep 

his recruiting within reasonable bounds—as Kukkonen put it, “retail rather than 

wholesale.”4 lab managers also anticipated that naSa auditors, despite the BayhDole act promoting technology transfer,would charge that individuals were profiting 

from government-funded research. in some cases the caltech president and trustees 

had to intervene to overcome Jpl’s and naSa’s concern about the private–public 

divide, which continued to dampen the embrace of entrepreneurialism.5 

2. Stone,“notes on trustees’ committee on Jpl,” 0 march 992 (Jpl 259, 32/323).


3.“Jpl’s institutional Strategy,” ca. January 993, and “executive council meeting agenda,”  march 


993 (Jpl 65, 2/); Stone presentation to trustees committee on Jpl, 30 october 998 (Jpl 

259, 35/343); Stone to edward Weiler, 7 march 2000 (Jpl 259, 7/0). 

4. carl Kukkonen interview, 3 June 2003. 

5. lawrence Gilbert telephone interview, 5 march 2005. 
472 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

The Environment and the Local Community 

Jpl has always interacted with the local geography and environment.the lab 

itself sits in the arroyo Seco,a dry wash three miles above the rose Bowl in pasadena. 

the isolated spot was chosen for initial rocket tests in the 930s, not so much for 

safety as because no campus facilities were available.the wisdom of using a remote 

site was confirmed, however, when subsequent tests on the caltech campus misfired, 

one explosively. When the army air corps then stepped up wartime funding, the 

rocketeers returned to the arroyo, but only after the city of pasadena, protecting the 

interests of nearby high-end homeowners, insisted that the site would serve only for 

the duration of the war. By war’s end, the growth of apparently permanent structures 

alarmed city managers, but when the army threatened to invoke eminent domain the 

city gave in and signed a long-term lease.6 Jpl remains in the arroyo today, although 

it had to seek a more remote site for rocket tests in the mojave desert near edwards 

air Force Base. the california high desert provided isolation of a different sort 

necessary for deep-space tracking and communication, removed from radio noise, 

and the cornerstone of what would become the Deep Space network was laid in 

the late 950s on a dry lake bed at Goldstone in the mojave.7 

Despite the rocky start with the city of pasadena, for the local community Jpl 

largely represented a boon.the lab and caltech came to enjoy substantial influence 

with local media and city government, by virtue of their size and prestige—enough to 

squash the occasional protest from neighbors over the construction of new buildings. 

With more than 4,000 staff by the mid-970s,Jpl at that time was the largest employer 

in pasadena.8 this statistic relied on the fact that Jpl staff were caltech employees;Jpl 

itself was not located in pasadena. it lay outside the city limits on land annexed by the 

neighboring town of la cañada-Flintridge when it incorporated in 976.after much 

squabbling between rival city boosters,including the pasadena city manager’s declaration 

that “to see it end up in some other corporate limits would be like losing the rose 

Bowl,”the U.S.postal Service left the decision up to the lab and Jpl chose pasadena.la 

cañada-Flintridge residents were still stewing about the episode 20 years later.9 

6. Koppes, JPL and the American Space Program, pp. , 2.


7. ibid., p. 95; Douglas J. mudgway, Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network, 1957–


1997 (Washington, Dc: naSa-Sp-200-4227, 200), pp. 2–2. 

8. Jpl institutional Background and overview, 3 october 975 (Jpl 42, 27/483). 

9. “Jpl is in pasadena” [quote, editorial], Pasadena Star News, 9 march 976; harold Brown 

to mortimer mathews, 2 December 975, and D. r. Fowler to a.t. Burke, 2 January 976 (Jpl 

42, 24/420);“pasadena to ask Jpl land annexation,” Pasadena Star News,  January 976; Jackie 

Knowles,“pasadena Fails in Jpl annex” Pasadena Star News,  march 976;“the Great Battle for 

Jpl,” [editorial] La Canada Valley Sun, 8 march 976; Dick lloyd, “Jpl Faces an identity crisis 

Following incorporation Vote,” Pasadena Star News, 5 november 976; see additional clippings in 

Jpl files, folder 4649, naSa history office. 
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 473 

pasadena city leaders soon had cause to regret Jpl’s proximity.increasing public 

sensitivity in the United States to environmental pollution resulted, among other 

things,in the Safe Drinking Water act of 976 and testing of water supplies.in 980 

state health authorities began testing water wells in pasadena and found a number 

of them contaminated with toxic carcinogens, including four wells in the arroyo 

Seco east of Jpl.the lab had developed formal control of hazardous waste in the 

early 960s; before that, Jpl had used cesspools, dumping pits, and an incinerator to 

dispose of wastes at the east end of the lab.20 

pasadena officials assumed the contamination came from Jpl’s early 

rocket research. the lab initially denied blame, noting that the contaminants— 

trichloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, and tetrachlorethylene—were common 

industrial solvents; 30 other wells throughout the San Gabriel Valley had also turned 

up excessive traces.Jpl nevertheless agreed in 985 to fund jointly with pasadena an 

engineering study, in the spirit of a “good neighbor” and without admitting liability. 

an outside consultant subsequently concluded that Jpl was the “most probable 

source” and recommended construction of a water treatment plant.2 naSa agreed 

to pay for the plant, built in 990 at a cost of $.3 million, and Jpl planned to 

commit about $ million a year for several years for cleaning up the contamination. 

in 992 Jpl was named a “Superfund” site, one of more than ,000 polluted places 

identified by the federal government for environmental remediation.22 

in this respect Jpl differed little from many other aerospace sites, not to 

mention nuclear labs and other enterprises, that had raced to beat the Soviets in 

the cold war—at a time of more cavalier attitudes toward waste disposal and the 

environment—and then faced the consequences decades later. the concentration 

of aerospace business in southern california, however, has made the cold war 

environmental legacy more acute there.this, too, is one of the societal impacts of 

space exploration. 

environmental liability would be a major issue in contract negotiations with 

naSa. caltech feared exposing its endowment to lawsuits, while naSa found 

itself paying for damage likely incurred under the previous army contract.23 this 

was not just splitting hairs: Jpl was shortly slapped with a lawsuit alleging that 

pollution caused the death of one local woman and hodgkin’s disease in two others; 

20. Beverly place, “Foothill Water Wells checked for chemicals,” Montrose Ledger, 9 January 980; 

Fred Felberg to speakers’ bureau, with attached fact sheet, 26 november 986 (Jpl 230, 26/246). 

2. Felberg to speakers’ bureau, 986; W. e. rains, memo to the record, 20 august 986 (Jpl 230, 

26/24).the “good neighbor” phrase appears in both documents. 

22. management plan for 	remedial investigation/feasibility study, January 992 (Jpl 239, 3/8); 

“environmental cleanup review,” Jpl fact sheet,april 99 (Jpl 239, /5); e. c. Stone to senior 

staff, 22 october 99 (Jpl 239, 2/); marla cone,“Jet propulsion lab added to Superfund list,” 

Los Angeles Times, 5 october 992. 

23. tom Sauret interview, 25 april 200. 
474 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

3 other local residents petitioned to join the case. a groundwater study by the 

federal health and human Services Department in 998 found no current threat 

and judged past hazards “unlikely,” but Jpl continued to grapple with lawsuits into 

the new century.24 

Jpl’s response to the groundwater problem is instructive. Despite the lawsuits, 

Jpl avoided the much more active environmental controversies that plagued some 

other government labs.Brookhaven national lab,to take one example,encountered 

an uproar after revelations in the 990s that a plume of groundwater near a nuclear 

reactor contained tritium. hundreds of community activists packed public hearings 

and vented their anger. Brookhaven scientists could not understand the fuss over 

what they saw as a negligible hazard, but local residents resented what they viewed 

as evasions and patronizing reassurances based on statistical risk analysis.Brookhaven 

learned a hard lesson in community relations: the lab director was effectively 

pressured out of his job and the contractor, which had run Brookhaven for 50 years, 

saw its contract summarily terminated by the Department of energy in 997.25 

the Jpl case differed in that it dealt with common industrial chemicals,whereas 

Brookhaven and other nuclear labs involved radioactivity,with its popular associations 

of danger and secrecy.26 another prime difference from labs such as Brookhaven was 

that Jpl, like naSa as a whole, had a finely tuned public relations organization and 

decades of experience with operating in the media glare, including highly exposed 

failures. Brookhaven scientists, by contrast, admitted their lack of public relations 

expertise.at the outset of the controversy at Jpl, lab managers emphasized to staff 

that any public comments “will not underestimate the important nature of the 

problem. For example, we will not cite statistics in an effort to demonstrate that 

chances of getting cancer from pasadena drinking water are low.”27 another internal 

memo stressed that Jpl and naSa should “maintain a positive, cooperative attitude 

in dealing with the city.the contribution of a substantial part of the construction 

cost of a treatment plant is preferable to the consequences of sensational adverse 

24. robin lloyd, “ to Join toxic Suit against Jpl,” Pasadena Star-News, 8 June 997; “Study 

clears naSa lab of alleged threat to public health,” San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 august 998; 

patti paniccia,“the Devil’s advocate,” Los Angeles Times Magazine (25 July 2004): p. 6. 

25. colin macilwain, “Brookhaven contractor is Sacked over tritium leak,” Nature 387 (8 may 

997): p. 4; andrew lawler, “meltdown on long island,” Science 287 (25 February 2000): pp. 

382–388; robert p. crease, “anxious history:the high Flux Beam reactor and Brookhaven 

national laboratory,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences, 32/ (200): pp. 4–56; 

Jack m. holl, Argonne National Laboratory, 1946–96 (Urbana, il: University of illinois press, 997), 

pp. 485–488; leland Johnson and Daniel Schaffer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory:The First Fifty Years 

(Knoxville,tn: University of tennessee press, 994), pp. 225–229. 

26. SpencerWeart, Nuclear Fear:A History of Images (cambridge,ma:harvard University press,988). 

27. lawler,“meltdown”; Felberg to speakers’ bureau, 986. 
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 475 

press coverage of the situation.”28 Jpl’s public relations experience, well-honed by 

the civil space program, helped it largely avoid the antagonistic community reaction 

that could characterize environmental cleanup at other cold war labs. 

Hooray for Hollywood 

the lab also forged links with another prominent local industry, namely, show 

business. hollywood knows a spectacle when it sees one, and celebrities often 

descended on Jpl for planetary encounters. this included not only actors and 

actresses, but also writers with studio connections—especially local science-fiction 

writers, who had a natural interest in Jpl’s work. in the lab’s earliest days, two of 

its founders, Frank malina and Jack parsons, tried to sell a story about their rocket 

group to metro-Goldwyn-mayer to raise money for their research; parsons later 

hobnobbed with l. ron hubbard and robert heinlein and lost his life in an 

explosion while working on pyrotechnic special effects for hollywood.29 By the 

970s sci-fi writers were a strong presence around Jpl for planetary encounters, 

including such luminaries as arthur c. clarke, ray Bradbury, and heinlein. as 

with aerospace, caltech helped nourish Jpl’s hollywood ties with its own elite 

connections, including trustees (and Jpl overseers) such as mogul lew Wasserman. 

movie trends revealed hollywood’s periodic fascination with space exploration, 

such as in the late 970s, when the first Star Trek movie featured a mysterious, nearly 

sentient object known as V-Ger. the trend revived in the late 990s, when the 

discovery of a martian meteorite with possible life-forms, the Shoemaker-levy 

comet impact on Jupiter, and mars pathfinder were followed by blockbuster movies 

including Deep Impact and Armageddon, about meteor impacts on earth, and Mission 

to Mars and Red Planet, about mysterious life-forms on mars, not to mention several 

new installments of the Star Wars saga. Jpl’s executive council in 999 noted the 

surprising interest in “space movies and the merging of entertainment and realities.” 

the merging included a new mission, approved that year, which planned to fire a 

,000-lb (500-kg) projectile into the comet p/tempel- and observe the resultant 

crater; Jpl’s project manager had to insist that the mission’s name, Deep impact, was 

in fact selected prior to the movie.30 

there are more substantial connections between Jpl and the movie business 

in the lab’s technical program. in the early 960s Jpl engineers had pioneered 

28. rains memo, 20 august 986. 

29. George pendle,	 Strange Angel: The Otherworldly Life of Rocket Scientist John Whiteside Parsons 

(new York: harcourt, 2005), and Davis, City of Quartz, pp. 54–62. 

30. Gael Squibb notes on ec retreat,  march 999 (Jpl 259, 64/758); James Graf quoted in 

matthew Fordahl, “Deep impact,” ap newswire, 9 July 999; andrew murr and Jeff Giles, “the 

red planet takes a Bow,” Newsweek (6 December 999). 
476 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

the use of digital image processing, first to clean up pictures returned from the 

ranger missions to the moon, and later on other planetary spacecraft images. 

the first techniques corrected distortions and removed signal noise, such as a 

particular frequency superimposed on an image by vibration of the camera, and 

grew to encompass algorithms for contrast enhancement, cartographic projection, 

motion compensation, and so on (in short, many of the techniques now available 

through such software packages as photoshop).3 By the mid-970s, what was 

known as the image processing laboratory at Jpl had perhaps the most advanced 

capability in the country. 

meanwhile, Jpl had also supported important early work on computer 

animation. in the late 970s Jpl hired a young programmer from Utah named 

James Blinn, a student of ivan Sutherland (who was now at caltech). Blinn was 

making a name as a guru of computer graphics; Sutherland, himself no slouch, 

would say, “there are only a dozen great people in computer graphics, and Jim 

Blinn is six of them.” Blinn went to work with charles Kohlhase on the Voyager 

project, generating three-dimensional animations simulating Voyager’s flight past 

Saturn, at each point calculating the relative appearance of planets and stars. the 

three-dimensional (3-D) movies—in which the viewer rode along with Voyager 

as the spacecraft swooped over Saturn’s rings and satellites—proved a hit with tV 

news editors and viewers. Similar graphics sequences from Blinn enlivened the 

Cosmos television series of carl Sagan.32 

although Blinn was not a part of the image processing lab, his computer 

animations for Voyager and Cosmos used similar techniques, such as reconstructing 

viewing geometries and surface reflectance.33 the image processing lab had also 

produced its own motion pictures by combining still photos, such as those from the 

ranger and mariner spacecraft.around the time of Blinn’s work on Voyager, Kevin 

hussey was doing some crude 3-D animation for atmospheric scientists, including 

modeling the smog distribution in the los angeles basin. hussey heard about 

Blinn’s work and approached him for help, but lacked the budget to hire him. So 

hussey used in-house code written by mike Kobrick in the image processing lab 

and, with the help of a young programmer named Bob mortensen, tweaked it for 

his purposes.the result, in 987, was L.A. the Movie, which projected topographic 

data from landsat to simulate the 3-D view from an aircraft swooping through 

the los angeles basin. By that time hussey’s group had grown from 2 to 4 and 

3. caltech/Jpl conference on image processing technology, Proceedings, 3–5 november 976 (Jpl 

report Sp-43-30). 

32. natalie angier, “it Was love at First Byte,” Discover (march 98); David Salisbury, “computer 

art takes off into Space,” Christian Science Monitor, 20 July 979; Frank colella interview, 26 

February 2002; charles Kohlhase interview, 20 July 2002. 

33. William B. Green interview, 2 February 2002. on shared techniques, see Kenneth r. castleman, 

Digital Image Processing (englewood cliffs,nJ:JohnWiley & Sons, 979),pp.37–377. 
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 477 

had formally organized as the Digital image animation lab (Dial), alongside and 

overlapping the original image processing lab.34 

Blinn had meanwhile gotten several offers from the movie business and in 98 

accepted one from George lucas to establish a special effects studio for The Empire 

Strikes Back, the first StarWars sequel.at the lucas studio Blinn teamed up with alvy 

ray Smith, who had himself worked briefly with Blinn at Jpl. Blinn’s work at Jpl 

had already had some influence:the sequence that persuaded lucas of the potential of 

computer graphics was developed by Smith’s team for StartTrek II:TheWrath of Khan, 

which showed the view from a spacecraft flying past a dead, moon-like planet which 

then is transformed by a fiery cataclysm into an earth-like environment. in creating 

this“Genesis” shot,Smith declared,he “was still under the influence of Blinn’sVoyager 

flybys of the planets at the Jet propulsion laboratory.”after joining Smith for a stint at 

lucasfilm,Blinn returned to the caltech campus and later became a “graphics fellow” 

at microsoft; Smith would go on to help found pixar.35 

hussey had also intersected hollywood through work on digital color 

correcting, starting with a cBS television special on the Mona Lisa and then on 

color correction of old Star Trek backgrounds. he had then helped William Shatner 

with a zoom shot from the galaxy down to Yosemite Valley for another of the Star 

Trek movies and digitally erased telephone wires from the egyptian skyline for 

Raiders of the Lost Ark. he had also developed a technique to interpolate between 

still images, from work for ocean scientists creating continuous animation of ocean 

circulation from satellite images taken 2 hours apart; he applied this on work for 

Whitney/Demos productions,one of the leading graphics studios,to morph images 

into one another—an early example of the technique popularized by Terminator 2 

and michael Jackson’s Black and White video in 992. hussey soon had a stream of 

movie producers coming through his door for what he called “demo after demo” 

of Vicar (Video image communication and retrieval) and other Jpl digital 

processing software.36 

hollywood was hooked, and in the mid to late 980s began to pour money 

into digital techniques, aided by the emergence of commercial software packages 

such as photoshop.Disney soon hired away hussey and several others from the Dial 

to help build its own digital animation studio, including work with pixar’s movies. 

By the mid-990s hollywood’s vastly greater resources allowed it to outstrip the 

34. Kevin hussey phone interview, 	 September 2006; Green interview, 2 February 2002; 

Kevin hussey, Bob mortensen, and Jeff hall, L.A. the Movie, 987 (Jpl audiovisual collection). 

35. natalie angier, “it Was love at First Byte”; David Salisbury, “computer art takes off into 

Space”;alvy ray Smith,“George lucas Discovers computer Graphics,” IEEE Annals of the History 

of Computing 20/2 (998): pp. 48–49. 

36. hussey 	interview,  September 2006. For history of Whitney/Demos, see Gary Demos, 

“my personal history in the early explorations of computer Graphics,” Visual Computer 2/2 

(2005): pp. 96–978. 
478 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht 

capabilities at Jpl—even though most of Dial’s funding came from outside naSa, 

with imaX as the largest sponsor.37 as a result, the influence began to run mostly 

in the opposite direction, from hollywood to Jpl. hussey himself returned to Jpl 

after several years at Disney, bringing with him the latest from hollywood studios. 

these included 3-D gaming techniques, which Jpl applied not only for outreach 

efforts (allowing kids to play online games of planetary exploration),but also to help 

mission managers visualize what their spacecraft are doing in space, by transforming 

raw telemetry into real-time animations.38 Such techniques have closed the loop 

from Jpl to hollywood, and from popular interest to technical capability. 

Conclusion 

Jpl’s impact on southern california has ranged from the local aerospace 

industry and labor pool, to its environmental legacy, to hollywood studios. But the 

influence throughout has run both ways.We might ask not only about the societal 

impact of space programs, but also whether southern california left a particular 

stamp on the enterprise of space exploration. What were the consequences of 

the concentration of aerospace for the space program? california historian Kevin 

Starr has long described the state as a land of dreamers; did the blue-sky california 

environment encourage dreams of soaring beyond the sky, in the attitude captured 

by a california-ism from that other local industry, “imagineering”?39 or did 

california’s recreation and leisure culture—all that sun and sand and surf—instead 

distract space engineers from their work, as it can also distract space historians? 

or could one go even further and ask whether there is a distinctive southern 

california type of spacecraft. perhaps not, although those mars rover airbags look 

suspiciously like beach balls bouncing across the sand. But one could speculate that 

southern california attracted or nurtured a particular mindset or sensibility, one 

attuned to the imaginative possibilities and the public appeal of spaceflight. Jpl 

managers identified two general categories of staff: the benchtop engineers building 

hardware (or software), and the mission designers.40 it was the mission designers 

who were perhaps more susceptible to the context. consider Bruce murray, for 

example, who as Jpl director would emphasize missions with popular appeal over 

strictly scientific goals. in the 970s murray released the “purple pigeons,” a group 

of proposed missions with razzle-dazzle for the public (such as a solar sail to halley’s 

37. James a. evans,“the reimbursable program,” 28 February 995 (Jpl 259, 50/553). 

38. hussey interview,  September 2006. 

39. See the 	several volumes in the series by Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream. 

See also David Beers, Blue Sky Dream: A Memoir of America’s Fall From Grace (Garden city, nY: 

Doubleday and co., 996). 

40. Felberg et al.,“Jpl Futures Study,” July 980 (Jpl 42, 20/325). 
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Southern California 479 

comet); he would continue to push such flights of fancy as an interstellar probe, 

mars airplanes,and Venus submarines in the planetary program and in the civil space 

program in general.Such attitudes were not confined to southern california—but it 

might be no accident that murray had grown up just across town in Santa monica. 

(it might also be no accident that he has been the only one to wear shorts and 

sandals behind the Jpl Director’s desk.)4 

one might speculate further that Jpl, by virtue of its location, attracted more 

than the usual share of Bruce murrays. and an attitude like murray’s did in fact 

influence spacecraft design. emphasizing popular appeal often meant imaging— 

that is, spacecraft that returned pictures instead of just reams of numerical data. 

and imaging cameras in turn meant three-axis-stabilized spacecraft instead of 

the spin-stabilized spacecraft preferred for particles-and-field experiments. this 

preference shows up in Jpl’s long tradition of three-axis-stabilized craft. (For the 

Galileo spacecraft, Jpl review boards and murray himself recommended dumping 

a complicated spun/despun design, which combined a spin-stabilized section with 

a three-axis-stabilized platform, for a straight three-axis spacecraft.) a 987 proposal 

from the nearby planetary Society for a robotic mars spacecraft captured the peoplepleasing sensibility and the sense that planetary missions were all about entertaining 

the public.the proposal stressed that “Science should be given a low priority on 

this mission, if it is given any direct participation at all . . . . imaging, imaging, and 

more imaging is the name of the game . . . .the aim here is to obtain images that 

are shameless crowd-pleasers and show mars from a human perspective. if that’s 

not good science, well then tough.”42 a hollywood flack couldn’t have said it any 

better. if one considers that the entertainment industry passed aerospace in 995 as 

the main employer in california, it may indeed be appropriate to view Jpl itself as 

a subset of the entertainment business. 

4. Westwick, Into the Black; Bruce murray, Journey into Space: The First Three Decades of Space 

Exploration (new York:W.W. norton & co., 989). 

42. e. J. Gaidos,“project precedent,” 3 July 987 (Jpl 98, 36/528). 
480 Societal impact oF SpaceFliGht
Section VI 

Spaceflight, culture and 

ideology 

~


Satellites and Security: Space in Service to Humanity 483

chapter 25 

Overview: Ideology, Advocacy, 

and Spaceflight—Evolution of a 

Cultural Narrative 

linda Billings 

the ideas of frontier pioneering, continual progress, manifest destiny, free 

enterprise, and rugged individualism have been prominent in the american 

national narrative, which has constructed and maintained an ideology of 

“americanism”—what it means to be american, and what america is meant to be 

and do. in exploring the history of u.S. spaceflight, it is useful to consider how u.S. 

space advocacy movements and initiatives have interpreted and deployed the values 

and beliefs sustained by this national narrative.the aim here is to illuminate the role 

and function of ideology and advocacy in the history of spaceflight by examining 

the rhetoric of spaceflight advocacy. Starting from the premise that spaceflight has 

played a role in the american national narrative and that this national narrative 

has played a role in the history of spaceflight, this paper examines the relationship 

between spaceflight and this narrative. 

examining the history of spaceflight advocacy reveals an ideology of 

spaceflight that draws deeply on a durable american cultural narrative—a national 

mythology—of frontier pioneering, continual progress, manifest destiny, free 

enterprise, rugged individualism, and a right to life without limits. this ideology 

rests on a number of assumptions, or beliefs, about the role of the united States 

in the global community, the american national character, and the “right” form of 

political economy.according to this ideology, the united States is and must remain 

“number one” in the world community, playing the role of political, economic, 

scientific, technological, and moral leader. that is, the united States is and must 

. in this paper, “spaceflight” generally refers to human spaceflight but does not exclude robotic 

spaceflight.the terms “spaceflight” and “space exploration” are interchangeable in this paper, even 

though they can convey different meanings in different contexts. general overviews of the history 

of space advocacy may be found in tom d. crouch, Aiming for the Stars:The Dreamers and Doers of 

the Space Age (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 999); howard e. Mccurdy, Space 

and the American Imagination (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 997). 
484 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

be exceptional. this ideology constructs americans as independent, pioneering, 

resourceful, inventive, and exceptional, and it establishes that liberal democracy and 

free-market capitalism (or capitalist democracy) constitute the only viable form of 

political economy.2 the rhetoric of space advocacy exalts those enduring american 

values of pioneering, progress, enterprise, freedom, and rugged individualism, and it 

advances the cause of capitalist democracy. 

delving into the language or rhetoric of spaceflight is a productive way of 

exploring the meanings and motives that are embedded in and conveyed by the 

ideology and advocacy of spaceflight—the cultural narrative of pioneering the 

space frontier. according to rhetorical critic thomas lessl, rhetorical analysis can 

shed some light on 

. . . [t]he processes of communication that underpin decision 

making in free societies . . . . Judgments on matters of public 

policy take their cues from rhetoric, and so an understanding 

of any society’s rhetoric will tell us a lot about its ideas, beliefs, 

laws, customs and assumptions—especially how and why such 

social features came into being.3 

to begin this analysis, some definition of key concepts is warranted, starting 

with culture and communication. anthropologist clifford geertz’s definition of 

culture is operative in this analysis: 

[culture is an] historically transmitted pattern of meanings 

embedded in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions 

expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men 

communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about 

and attitudes toward life. [it is a context within which social 

action can be] intelligibly—that is, thickly—described.4 

Building on geertz’s conception, communication theorist James carey has 

characterized culture as a predominantly rhetorical construction,“a set of practices, 

a mode of human activity, a process whereby reality is created, maintained and 

transformed,” primarily by means of communication.5 Social norms can be 

constructed,perpetuated,and resisted—and ideologies can be propagated—“through 

2. for an exposition of this idea, see, for example, francis fukuyama, The End of History and the Last 

Man (new york: free press, 992). 

3. paul newall,“thomas lessl: Science and rhetoric” [interview]. Galilean Library [electronic], 2005, 

http://www.galilean-library.org/lessl.html (accessed 28 March 2007). 

4. clifford geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (new york: Basic Books, 973), pp. 4, 34. 

5. James carey, Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society (new york: routledge, 992 

version, 988), p. 65. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 485 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

ritualized communication practices.”6When advocates speak of advancing scientific 

and technological progress by exploring and exploiting the space frontier, they are 

performing ritual incantations of a national myth, repeating a cultural narrative 

that affirms what america and americans are like and are meant to do. for the 

purposes of this analysis, communication is a ritual, culture is communication, and 

communication is culture. 

Standard definitions of ideology and advocacy are operational here.an ideology 

is a belief system (personal, political, social, cultural).advocacy is the act of arguing 

in favor of a cause, idea, or policy. 

Ideological Bedrock 

the concepts of “progress” and the “frontier” require more extensive 

explication, as they are bedrock elements of the ideology of spaceflight.the root 

of “progress” is the latin word meaning “to go forward.” J. B. Bury said progress is 

movement “in a desirable direction”—but he also noted that “it cannot be proved 

that the unknown destination towards which man is advancing is desirable.”7 in 

their histories of the idea of progress, both Bury and robert nisbet called progress 

a dogma. christopher lasch contrasted the premodern, christian idea of progress— 

“the promise of a secular utopia that would bring history to a happy ending”— 

with the modern idea representing “the promise of steady improvement with no 

foreseeable ending.”8 Bury identified progress as an idea originating in the modern 

era, whereas nisbet traced its roots to ancient greek and roman philosophy, and 

he documented how it evolved to take on the qualities of destiny and “historical 

necessity.”9 nisbet declared progress the most important idea in modern Western 

history.this modern idea of necessary and inevitable forward movement is deeply 

embedded in the cultural narrative of u.S. spaceflight. 

the idea of progress became the dominant idea in Western thinking in the 

period 850–900, according to nisbet, serving as “the developmental context for 

other [key] ideas” such as freedom.0 nisbet credited nineteenth-century natural 

philosopher herbert Spencer with melding the ideas of progress and freedom, in 

6. Michele M. Strano, “ritualized transmission of Social norms through Wedding photography,” 

Communication Theory 6/ (2006): pp. 3–46, esp. 3. 

7. J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress:An Inquiry into Its Origin and Growth (new york: dover publications, 

932), p. 2. 

8. christopher lasch, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics (new york:W.W. norton & 

co., 99), p. 47. See also robert Wuthnow, American Mythos:Why Our Best Efforts to Be a Better 

Nation Fall Short (princeton, nJ: princeton university press, 2006); Susan richards Shreve and 

porter Shreve, How We Want to Live: Narratives on Progress (Boston: Beacon press, 998). 

9. robert nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (new york: Basic Books, 980), p. 47. 

0. ibid., p. 79. 
486 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

declarations of “the rights of life and personal liberty,”“the right to use the earth,” 

“the right of property,”and “the right to ignore the state.” Spencer’s classical liberal 

thinking is noticeable in the rhetoric of space advocacy. 

from the seventeenth through the twentieth century, as Walter Mcdougall 

wrote, the Western scientific worldview—itself a cultural narrative of sorts— 

“elevated technological progress . . . to the level of moral imperative.”2 Science and 

technology became the means of american progress, and conquest and exploitation 

became the morally imperative method. ultimately, progress came to be thought 

of as the accumulation of material wealth. robert Wright has said the idea of 

progress is “a Victorian ideal” of moral advancement that has evolved into an ideal 

of material improvement.3 this belief in progress performs the mythic function 

of providing moral justification for material accumulation.along those same lines, 

Kirkpatrick Sale has asserted that the contemporary “myth” of progress advances 

“the propaganda of capitalism,”the idea of continual human improvement by means 

of resource exploitation and material accumulation.4 

author ishmael reed has made the link between progress and spaceflight in 

an essay called “progress:a faustian Bargain”: 

in order to justify its programs,naSa,in its brochures,describes 

the earth as a dying planet, a fact which for them justifies 

colonizing the universe . . . .you can understand why, in many 

science fiction movies, the goal of the invaders is to destroy this 

planet, lest this progress be extended to their neighborhoods.5 

historically and presently,the rhetoric of space advocacy advances a conception 

of outer space as a place of wide-open spaces and limitless resources—a space frontier. 

the metaphor of the frontier,with its associated images of pioneering,homesteading, 

claim-staking, and taming, has been persistent in american history. in the rhetoric 

of spaceflight advocacy, the idea of the frontier is a dominant metaphor. it is worth 

noting that the root of the word “frontier” is the old french word for “front.” in 

the english language, that word “front” conveys a complex of meanings, ranging 

from the most common definition—the part of anything that faces forward—to the 

definition that probably comes closest to the meaning of “front”in “frontier”:an area 

of activity, conflict, or competition.a common military definition of “front” is also 

tied up in the meaning of “frontier,” that is, the area of contact between opposing 

. ibid., p. 229.


2. Walter a. Mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age (new 


york: Basic Books, 985), p. . 

3. robert Wright, A Short History of Progress (new york: carroll & graf, 2004), p. 3. 

4. Kirkpatrick Sale, “five facets of a Myth,” in How We Want to Live: Narratives on Progress, ed. 

Susan richards Shreve and porter Shreve (Boston: Beacon press, 998), p. 08. 

5. ishmael reed,“progress:a faustian Bargain,” in ibid., quote from p. 02. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 487 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

combat forces. other meanings of “front” that should be considered in assessing the 

meaning of the frontier metaphor are: a façade; a position of leadership or authority; 

and a person or thing that serves as a cover for secret, disreputable, or illegal activity. 

What meanings are advocates intending to convey, and what meanings are they in 

fact conveying, when they talk about the space frontier?6 

historian frederick Jackson turner’s century-old essay, “the Significance of 

the frontier in american history,” is perhaps the best-known articulation of the 

frontier metaphor.7 it is a powerful and evocative piece of writing. in making the 

case for spaceflight,advocates continue to cite,directly or indirectly,turner’s frontier 

thesis and the related, potentially dangerous, idea of manifest destiny, seemingly 

oblivious to a changed cultural context and critiques of turner’s thinking. 

as Wright and Sale did with progress, richard Slotkin, in his trilogy of books 

about the history of the american West, has deemed the idea of the frontier a 

myth—a myth in which the united States is “a wide-open land of unlimited 

opportunity for the strong, ambitious self-reliant individual to thrust his way to 

the top.”8 patricia nelson limerick has pointed out that space advocates cling to 

the frontier metaphor, conceiving “american history [as] a straight line, a vector 

of inevitability and manifest destiny linking the westward expansion of angloamericans directly to the exploration and colonization of space.” limerick has 

warned that in abusing this metaphor,“[S]pace advocates have built their plans for 

the future on the foundation of a deeply flawed understanding of the past, [and] the 

blinders worn to screen the past have proven to be just as effective at distorting the 

view of the future.”9 

The Cultural Narrative of Spaceflight 

according to rhetorical critic Janice hocker rushing,“rhetorical narratives 

are discourses which explicitly or implicitly advocate moral choices.” rushing 

has said that the meanings of “definitional [american] cultural myths,” such as the 

myths of the Western frontier and the space frontier, are a source of identity and 

“moral vision.” rushing noted that the united States “has drawn upon the frontier 

6. all definitions were obtained from http://www.dictionary.com (accessed June–July 2006). 

7. frederick Jackson turner, Rereading Frederick Jackson Turner: The Significance of the Frontier in 

American History and Other Essays, with commentary by John Mack faragher (new york: henry 

holt, 994, 947, 920). 

8. richard Slotkin, Regeneration through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600– 

1860 (Middletown, ct:Wesleyan university press. 973), p. 5. 

9. patricia nelson limerick, remarks, What is the Value of Space Exploration? A Symposium, sponsored 

by the Mission from planet earth Study office,office of Space Science,naSa headquarters and the 

university of Maryland at college park,Washington, dc, 8–9 July 994; p. 3. 
488 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

for its mythic identity,”20 or moral imperative, as Mcdougall called it. in this mythic 

universe, the cultural role of the explorer—the frontier conqueror, as it were—is, 

as Stephen pyne has said, to serve as “a moral missionary, telling others and his 

sustaining civilization who they are and how they ought to behave.”2 

from the start, advocates constructed a narrative of spaceflight that made 

it a necessary, even biologically driven, enterprise. But, as pyne has pointed out, 

spaceflight and other modes of exploration are not in our genes but in our culture. 

“exploration cannot be extracted from the historical and cultural context within 

which it occurs.” it is “a specific invention of specific civilizations conducted at 

specific historical times.” advocates of u.S. spaceflight have created their own 

frontier mythology,as limerick has noted,expanding the story of Western american 

settlement to encompass space exploration. and problems have ensued because, 

as pyne has said, “discovery among the planets is qualitatively different from the 

discovery of continents and seas.”22 

The History of Rocket-Men: 


Spaceflight as a Belief System


the u.S.and european rocket societies of the 920s,930s,and 940s were the 

world’s first spaceflight advocacy groups. german advocate Willy ley documented 

the exploits of these groups, the titles of his books articulating the ideology of 

spaceflight: Engineers’ Dreams (954), Across the Space Frontier (952, with Wernher 

von Braun, fred Whipple, and others), The Conquest of Space (949), Harnessing 

Space (963), and others.23 frank Winter called these early advocates—including 

Konstantin tsiolkovskiy, robert goddard, and Wernher von Braun—“pioneers.”24 

according to William e. Burrows, the russian tsiolkovskiy advocated “controlling 

all of nature—the entire universe,”toward enabling human colonization.tsiolkovskiy 

was greatly influenced by the late nineteenth-century russian mystic philosopher 

nikolai fyodorov, who “believed that earth is not humanity’s natural home” and 

that humanity was intended to live in the cosmos. u.S. rocket developer goddard 

20. Janice hocker rushing,“Mythic evolution of ‘the new frontier’ in Mediated rhetoric,” Critical 

Studies in Mass Communication 3/3 (986): pp. 265–296, quotes from 265, 267. 

2. Stephen J. pyne,“a third great age of discovery,” in carl Sagan and Stephen J. pyne, The Scientific 

and Historical Rationales for Solar System Exploration, Spi 88- (Washington, dc: Space policy 

institute, george Washington university, July 988), p. 37. 

22. ibid., pp. 4, 8. 

23. his classic statement is Willy ley, Rockets, Missiles and Space Travel (new york:Viking, 95–968, 

multiple editions). 

24.frank Winter, Prelude to the Space Age:the Rocket Societies,1924–1940 (Washington,dc:Smithsonian 

institution press, 983), p. 7. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 489 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

reportedly shared this belief.25 an inheritor of this legacy,Wernher von Braun said 

the aim of the german rocketeers was “to open the planetary world to mankind.”26 

in 930, u.S. science-fiction writers and fans formed the american interplanetary 

Society to advocate spaceflight,and in 934 this group became the american rocket 

Society.these early american advocates engaged in “relentless . . . publicizing . . . 

via newspapers, magazine articles, lectures, demonstrations, exhibits, radio talks, and 

films” to proselytize for spaceflight.27 

in July 958, physicist freeman dyson made his contribution to the advocacy 

campaign for spaceflight with “a Space traveler’s Manifesto”: 

from my childhood it has been my conviction that men would 

reach the planets in my lifetime . . . [t]his conviction . . . rests on 

two beliefs, one scientific and one political: () there are more 

things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our presentday science.and we shall only find out what they are if we go out 

and look for them.(2) it is in the long run essential to the growth 

of any new and high civilization that small groups of people can 

escape from their neighbors and from their governments, to go 

and live as they please in the wilderness.28 

as visions of spaceflight advanced toward reality, the rhetoric of spaceflight 

advocacy continued to promote conquest of the space frontier. Science-fiction 

author olaf Stapledon wrote in 948 for the Journal of the British Interplanetary 

Society that humankind should colonize other planets to exploit their resources for 

earth’s benefit and to “increase man’s power over the environment . . . .the itch to 

leave a mark is quite wholesome, on condition that, even if it does not actually serve 

some higher aim, at least it does not positively hinder proper development.”29 pope 

pius Xii reportedly told the international astronautical federation in 957, “god 

who has planted within the heart of man the insatiable desire for knowledge . . . did 

25.William e. Burrows, This New Ocean:The Story of the First Space Age (new york: random house, 

998), pp. 37, 42. 

26.Wernher von Braun,“german rocketry,”in The Coming of the Space Age, ed.arthur c.clarke (new 

york: Meredith press, 967), pp. 33–55, quote from p. 55. “there was much regret among us” at 

peenemünde, von Braun wrote in this essay,“that the a-4 [a.k.a. the V-2], conceived as it was as a 

first step to interplanetary rocketry, had joined in the bloody business of war.” (p. 54) 

27.Winter,Prelude to the SpaceAge,p.4.Successors to theamerican rocket Society include theamerican 

astronautical Society and the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics, now representing 

professionals rather than amateurs and fans, and more prone to tend to matters of government policy 

and spending while less prone (though not averse) to proselytizing for spaceflight. 

28. freeman dyson, Disturbing the Universe (new york; harper & row, 979), p. . 

29. olaf Stapledon, “interplanetary Man,” in The Coming of the Space Age, clarke, ed., pp. 244–26, 

quote from p. 255. 
490 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

not intend to put a limit to man’s endeavor.”30also in 957,rocketeer Krafft ehricke 

asserted that “the entire solar system, and as much of the universe as he can reach” 

are humankind’s rightful domain:“[B]y expanding through the universe,man fulfills 

his destiny as an element of life, endowed with the power of reason and the wisdom 

of . . . moral law.”3 in 964, space advocate charles Sheldon wrote that “[M]ankind 

is destined to step beyond his earthly bonds just as his ancestors once crawled out 

of the seas.” By “colonizing new worlds . . . spread[ing] into new places,” Sheldon 

wrote,“the race will survive.”32 

the rocket-men of earlier decades and the geopolitics of the cold war propelled 

the u.S. space program into being and kept it going through the apollo era. in that 

era, spaceflight advocacy came from two sources, according to William Burrows: 

political pragmatists and a “hard core of implacable dreamers; the unabashed zealots 

who shared a religious conviction that it was their race’s destiny to explore other 

worlds and then start colonies on them.”33 

from the end of the apollo era to the present, the ideology of spaceflight and 

the rhetoric of spaceflight advocacy have been sustained in public discourse in large 

part by the so-called grassroots space advocacy groups, such as the national Space 

institute and the l5 Society and its successor, the national Space Society; the Space 

Studies institute; and the Space frontier foundation.Wernher von Braun founded 

the national Space institute (nSi) in 974 to help cultivate public support for the 

u.S. space program in the post-apollo era.the l5 Society was founded in 975 by 

advocates carolyn and Keith henson to promote space colonization, as espoused 

by princeton university physics professor gerard K. o’neill, who published his 

first paper on the subject, “the colonization of Space,” in the September 974 

issue of Physics Today. today’s national Space Society (nSS) is the product of a 

merger of the l5 Society and the national Space institute in 987. (the nSi was 

originally named the national Space association but renamed nSi in 975.) the 

30. Quoted in eugen Sänger,“Beyond the Solar System,” in ibid., p. 26.


3. Krafft ehricke,“the anthropology of Spaceflight,” in ibid., p. 263.


32.charles Sheldon,“national goals in Space,”in ibid.,pp.7–93,quote from p.74.Sheldon’s rationale for 


spaceflight also cited its contributions to national security, technological spinoffs, economic benefits, 

the advancement of science, and national prestige—values that continue to be cited by advocates of 

spaceflight and in u.S. space policy. 

33. Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 332. it should be noted that the frontier metaphor is noticeably absent from 

other national cultural narratives of spaceflight.although the word“frontier”does appear from time to time 

in european space policy discourse, in those contexts it does not appear to mean the same thing as it does 

inamerican contexts.See,for example,the european Spaceagency (eSa)’s use of the tag line“expanding 

frontiers”in public documents (http://www.esa.int) and the european commission’s reference to space as“a 

new european frontier.”See european commission,Space:a New European Frontier for an Expanding Union: 

AnAction Plan for Implementing the European Space Policy (luxembourg:european communities,2000). 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 49 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

nSi changed its name to the national Space Society shortly before its 987 merger 

with the l5 Society.34 

the nSS says its rationale for promoting space settlement is “survival of the 

human species.” among the values and beliefs articulated in the Society’s “vision” 

for space exploration and development are “prosperity-unlimited resources,” 

“growth-unlimited room for expansion,” individual rights, unrestricted access to 

space,personal property rights,free-market economics,democratic values—and also 

enhancement of earth’s ecology and protection of new environments.35 

gerard K.o’neill formed his own advocacy group,the Space Studies institute (SSi), 

in 977 to promote his colonization agenda.the SSi’s stated mission is“opening the energy 

and material resources of space for human benefit ...to make possible the productive use 

of the abundant resources in space.”36 Meanwhile,freeman dyson updated his spaceflight 

rationale for the 970s, writing:“there are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific 

considerations,”human spaceflight is necessary:first,“garbage disposal;we need to transfer 

industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place”; 

second,“to escape material impoverishment”; and third,“our spiritual need for an open 

frontier.the ultimate purpose is to bring humanity ...a real expansion of our spirit.”37 

in the 980s, the era of naSa’s Space Shuttle and space station programs, the 

space community, as Burrows has noted, heavily promoted human spaceflight:“at 

the heart of it all, as usual, [were] the core of dreamers . . . who steadfastly believed 

it was their race’s manifest destiny to leave earth for both adventure and survival.”38 

in 988, some of those believers created the Space frontier foundation (Sff) to 

promote “opening the space frontier to human settlement as rapidly as possible.”this 

group says its “purpose is to unleash the power of free enterprise and lead a united 

humanity permanently into the Solar System.” like the nSS, the Sff espouses 

34. richard godwin, “the history of the national Space Society,” Ad Astra (6 november 2005), 

http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_nss_history_051116.html (accessed July 4, 2006). interestingly, 

the combined membership of nSS and l5 voted after the merger of their groups to continue to 

use the nSS name instead of renaming their combined group the Space frontier Society.aerospace 

industry groups such as the aerospace industries association, the american institute of aeronautics 

and astronautics, the american astronautical Society, and the Space foundation play an important 

role in u.S. spaceflight advocacy, but they do so more by pragmatic actions, such as influencing 

legislation and policy-making, than by sustaining an ideology of spaceflight in public discourse. 

35.See the national Space Society Web site for information on this subject, http://www.nss.org (accessed 

0 June 2006). interestingly, some of these beliefs appear to be in conflict with others. 

36.this statement is available online at http://www.ssi.org/ (accessed 4 July 2006).for more information 

on the history of the SSi, see lee Valentine,“a Space roadmap: Mine the Sky, defend the earth, 

Settle the universe,” available online at Http://ssi.org/?page_id=2 (accessed august 2007); roger d. 

launius, “perfect Worlds, perfect Societies:the persistent goal of utopia in human Spaceflight,” 

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 56 (September/october 2003): pp. 338–349. 

37. dyson, Disturbing the Universe, pp. 6–7. 

38. Burrows, This New Ocean, p. 507. 
492 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

a conflicting set of goals, including “protecting the earth’s fragile biosphere and 

creating a freer and more prosperous life for each generation by using the unlimited 

energy and material resources of space.” its stated strategy for achieving these goals 

is “to wage a war of ideas in the popular culture” and transform u.S. spaceflight 

“from a government program for the few to an open frontier for everyone.”39 

in a series of essays called “the frontier files,” Sff founder and director rick 

tumlinson offers his version of the space frontier narrative: 

We . . . see our civilization at a crossroads . . . . down one 

path is a future of limits to growth, environmental degradation 

and ultimately extinction. down the other path lie limitless 

growth, an environmentally pristine earth and an open and 

free frontier in space.40 

regarding the purpose of spaceflight, he asserts: 

the one necessary and sufficient reason we are called to the Space 

frontier is buried deep within us.it is a feeling ...[a] calling to go, 

to see, to do, to be “there.”We believe homo Sapiens is a frontier 

creature. it is what we do, it defines what we are.4 

in 987, writer Marshall Savage founded the first Millennial foundation and 

joined the chorus of advocates claiming humans are destined to colonize the universe: 

now is the watershed of cosmic history. We stand at the 

threshold of the new Millennium. Behind us yawn the chasms 

of the primordial past . . . before us rise the broad sunlit uplands 

of a living cosmos . . . . the future of the universe hinges on 

what we do next. if we . . . stride into space as the torchbearers 

of life, this universe will be aborning. 

earth is slipping “into a pit of our own digging,” according to Savage, and in 

order to save itself, humankind must expand into the cosmos:“[i]t is our policy to 

enliven this sterile universe ....if we . . .forsake our cosmic destiny,we will commit 

a crime of unutterable magnitude.”42 

39. “history of the Space frontier foundation,” http://www.space-frontier.org/History/ (accessed 4 July 2006). 

among the Sff’s goals is to keep gerard K. o’neill’s space colonization manifesto, The High Frontier,“in 

print and available forever.”the Sff liberally employs the rhetoric of war in urging people to“join the fight” 

for its agenda, locating itself on the space “front,” characterizing itself as evolving from “a guerrilla band to 

a professional fighting force,” and claiming it has “come down from the hills [to] invade the [u.S.] capital” 

(“history of the Space frontier foundation,”subheading“taking the fight to the nation’s capital”). 

40. rick tumlinson, “preface—Welcome to the revolution (Message  of the frontier files),” 995, 

http://www.space-frontier.org/History/frontierfiles.html (accessed 7 July 2006). 

4. rick tumlinson,“introduction—Who We are (Message 2 of the frontier files),” 995, http://www. 

space-frontier.org/History/frontierfiles.html (accessed 7 July 2006). 

42. Marshall t. Savage, The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps (Boston: little, 

Brown & co., 992, 994), pp. 7–8, 230. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 493 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

the Mars Society, founded in 998, advocates pioneering the space frontier 

by the human settlement of Mars. Mars Society founder robert Zubrin has said he 

embraces “turner’s belief that the frontier is a crucial part of the american character 

. . . i would like to see our traditions carried forward.”43 according to the Mars 

Society’s “founding declaration,” 

civilizations,like people,thrive on challenge and decay without 

it . . . .as the world moves towards unity, we must join together 

. . .facing outward to embrace a greater and nobler challenge . . . 

. pioneering Mars will provide such a challenge . . . .a humansto-Mars program would challenge young people everywhere 

to develop their minds to participate in the pioneering of a 

new world . . . . the settling of the Martian new World is an 

opportunity for a noble experiment in which humanity has 

another chance to shed old baggage and begin the world anew; 

carrying forward as much of the best of our heritage as possible 

and leaving the worst behind . . . . [e]xploration and settlement 

of Mars is one of the greatest human endeavors possible in our 

time . . . . no nobler cause has ever been.44 

Government Space Rhetoric 

the frontier metaphor, the ideology of progress and the belief in american 

exceptionalism have been prevalent in government space policy rhetoric as 

well as the rhetoric of advocacy groups. the national commission on Space, 

appointed by president reagan to develop long-term goals for u.S. civilian space 

exploration, entitled its final report “pioneering the Space frontier” and described 

in it “a pioneering mission for 2st-century america: to lead the exploration and 

development of the space frontier.” humankind is “destined to expand to other 

worlds,” the commission said in its report, and “our purpose” is to establish “free 

societies on new worlds.”toward achieving those goals,“we must stimulate individual 

initiative and free enterprise in space.”45 

the rhetoric of american exceptionalism remained apparent in space policy 

documents of the george h. W. Bush administration: “america’s space program 

is what civilization needs . . . america, with its tremendous resources, is uniquely 

qualified for leadership in space . . . our success will be guaranteed by the american 

spirit—that same spirit that tamed the north american continent and built enduring 

43. Bart leahy, “Save our planet: Space advocates see the Bigger picture,” Ad Astra (8 May 2006), 

available online at http://space.com/adastra/adastra_save_earth_060518.html (accessed 9 May 2006). 

44. Mars Society founding declaration, 988, http://www.marssociety.org/about/founding_declaration.asp 

(accessed 20 July 2006). 

45.national commission on Space, Pioneering the Space Frontier (newyork: Bantam Books, 986), pp. 2–3. 
494 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

democracy.”the “prime objective” of the u.S. space program is “to open the space 

frontier.”46 naSa declared in its 90-day study of this Space exploration initiative, 

“the imperative to explore” is embedded in our history . . . traditions, and national 

character,” and space is “the frontier” to be explored.47 “Space is the new frontier,” 

said another space study group of that time, where the united States will find “a 

future of peace, strength, and prosperity.”48 

in keeping with rhetorical tradition, the clinton administration declared, 

“Space exploration has become an integral part of our national character, capturing 

the spirit of optimism and adventure that has defined this country from its beginnings 

. . . . its lineage is part of an ancient heritage of the human race . . . deep in the 

human psyche and perhaps in our genes.”49 

in the george W. Bush administration, White house office of Science and 

technology policy director John Marburger has said the point of the president’s socalled vision for space exploration “is to begin preparing now for a future in which 

the material trapped in the Sun’s vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of 

life.”50 naSa administrator Michael griffin has said that the aim of space exploration 

is“to make the expansion and development of the space frontier an integral part of what 

it is that human societies do.”5 griffin has said that when human civilization reaches 

the point where more people are living off earth than on it,“we want their culture to 

be Western.” he has asserted that Western civilization is “the best we’ve seen so far in 

human history,” and that the values space-faring people should take with them into 

space should beWestern values.52 “We want to be the world’s preeminent space-faring 

nation for all future time,” he said on another occasion, “second to none.”53 griffin 

has said that space exploration has something to do with “core beliefs” about what 

societies and civilizations should be doing “on the frontiers of their time . . . north 

americans are the way we are because of the challenges of the frontier . . . i believe 

thatWestern thought, civilization, and ideals represent a superior set of values,” better 

46. national Space council, Report to the President (Washington, dc: office of the president, 990), p. 

7. 

47. Report of the 90-day Study on the Human Exploration of the Moon and Mars (houston, tX: naSa 

Johnson Space center, november 989), pp. -, -4. 

48. Synthesis group, America at the Threshold:America’s Space Exploration Initiative (Washington, dc: u.S. 

government printing office, 99), pp. iv, 9, 4. 

49.“national apollo anniversary observance,a proclamation by the president of the united States of 

america, July 9, 994” (Washington, dc: office of the president, 994). 

50. John Marburger, keynote address, 44th robert h. goddard Memorial Symposium, american 

astronautical Society, greenbelt, Md, 5 March 2006. 

5. griffin made these remarks at a conference sponsored by the center for Strategic and international 

Studies,  november 2005,Washington, dc.the author attended this event. 

52. griffin made these remarks at a meeting sponsored by Women in aerospace in Washington, dc, on 

2 May 2005.the author attended this event. 

53. griffin made these remarks at a meeting sponsored by Women in aerospace in Washington, dc, on 

5 May 2006.the author attended this event. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 495 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

than those of civilizations that came before.these values are “irretrievably linked to” 

expansion, he has said, and now this expansion will continue into the human frontier 

of space.54 Most recently, griffin has said: 

it is in the nature of humans to find, to define, to explore and to 

push back the frontier.and in our time, the frontier is space and 

will be for a very long time . . . .the nations that are preeminent 

in their time are those nations that dominate the frontiers of 

their time.the failed societies are the ones that pull back from 

the frontier. i want our society, america, [W]estern society, to 

be preeminent in the world of the future and i want us not to 

be a failed society. and the way to do that, universally so, is to 

push the frontier.55 

Conclusions 

this brief historical review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy 

has sustained an ideology of american exceptionalism and reinforced longstanding beliefs in progress, growth, and capitalist democracy.this rhetoric conveys 

an ideology of spaceflight that could be described, at its worst, as a sort of space 

fundamentalism: an exclusive belief system that rejects as unenlightened those who 

do not advocate the colonization, exploitation, and development of space.56 the 

rhetorical strategy of space advocates has tended to rest on the assumption that the 

values of “believers” are (or should be) shared by others as well. 

although the social, political, economic, and cultural context for space 

exploration has changed radically since the 960s, the rhetoric of space advocacy 

has not. in the twenty-first century, advocates continue to promote spaceflight as a 

biological imperative and a means of extending u.S. free enterprise, with its private 

property claims, resource exploitation, and commercial development, into the solar 

system and beyond.pyne,among others,has addressed the problematic nature of these 

arguments: “the theses advanced to promote [solar system] settlement,” he noted, 

54. griffin made these remarks at a meeting of the naSa advisory council’s science subcommittees 

in Washington, dc, on 6 July 2006.the author attended this event. 

55. Quoted in William harwood, “interview with naSa’s chief: griffin defends Budget, Shuttle 

plans,” Space Place, cBS news, 5 august 2006, http://www.spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts115/ 

060815griffin/ (accessed 6 august 2006). 

56. in their rhetorical analysis of public statements on foreign policy by presidents ronald reagan 

and george W. Bush, Kevin coe and richard domke [“petitioners or prophets? presidential 

discourse, god, and the ascendancy of religious conservatives,” Journal of Communication (2006): 

pp. 309–330] found a common strategy “treading closely to claims regarding a divine vision for 

u.S. foreign policy, a theological sort of doctrine of Manifest destiny, which runs the risk of doing 

what the doctrine of Manifest destiny has done in the past” (p. 324). See this language in national 

aeronautics and Space administration, The Vision for Space Exploration (Washington, dc: naSa 

np-2004-00334-hQ, 2004). 
496 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

“are historical, culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to pioneer 

to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of renewing civilization.”57 

Spaceflight advocacy can be examined as a cultural ritual, performed by means 

of communication (rhetoric), for the purpose of maintaining the current social 

order, with its lopsided distribution of power and resources, and perpetuating the 

values of those in control of that order (materialism, consumerism, technological 

progress,private property rights,capitalist democracy).communication research has 

shown how public discourses—those cultural narratives or national myths—“often 

function covertly to legitimate the power of elite social classes.”58 and this review 

has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy reflects an assumption that these 

values are worth extending into the solar system. 

“everything now suggests,” nisbet wrote 25 years ago,“that Western faith in 

the dogma of progress is waning rapidly.”59this faith appears to have remained alive 

and well, however, in the ideology of spaceflight. christopher lasch wrote 5 years 

ago,“almost everyone now agrees that [the idea of] progress—in its utopian form at 

least,” no longer has the power “to explain events or inspire [people] to constructive 

action.”60 But in the current cultural environment, perhaps it does—at least among 

space advocates. progress is, indeed, modern american dogma and a key element of 

pro-space dogma.But it does not resonate well—as pyne and others have noted—in 

the current postmodern (or even post-postmodern) cultural environment, where 

public discourse is rife with critiques of science,technology,the aims of the militaryindustrial complex, and the corporate drive for profit. 

pyne observed almost 20 years ago that space exploration was “not yet fully in 

sync” with its cultural environment.6 Modern (seventeenth- to twentieth-century) 

Western (european-american) exploration functioned as “a means of knowing, of 

creating commercial empires, of outmaneuvering political economic, religious, and 

military competitors—it was war, diplomacy, proselytizing, scholarship, and trade by 

other means.”62 But the postmodern exploration of space is different. outer space is 

not simply an extension of earth and the era of space exploration is not simply an 

extension of the modern era of transoceanic and transcontinental exploration. its 

cultural context is different.the modern phenomenon of spaceflight has outlived the 

57. Stephen J. pyne, “Seeking newer Worlds:the future of exploration,” Sarton lecture, american 

association for the advancement of Science, denver, colorado, february 2003, http://www.public. 

asu.edu/~spyne/FUTURE.pdf (accessed 0 June 2006), p. 8. See also gregg Klerkx, Lost in Space:The 

Fall of NASA and the Dream of a New Space Age (new york: random house, 2004). 

58. Janice hocker rushing and thomas S. frentz,“integrating ideology and archetype in rhetorical 

criticism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 77(4) (99): pp. 385–406, quote from p. 385. 

59. robert nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (new york: Basic Books, 980), p. 9. 

60.christopher lasch, The True and Only Heaven:Progress and Its Critics (new york:W.W.norton & co., 

99), pp. 4, 2. 

6. pyne,“a third great age of discovery,” p. 32. 

62. pyne,“Seeking newer Worlds,” p. 3. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 497 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

modern era and its purpose is not clear in a postmodern or even post-postmodern 

world, characterized by uncertainty, subjectivity, deconstruction, and a rejection 

of so-called master narratives such as the story of frontier conquest. the moral 

imperative of the myth of pioneering the space frontier could be interpreted as a 

narrative that is in tune with its postmodern cultural environment in the sense that 

it conveys the values of the dominant social order—that is, what communication 

scholar herb Schiller has called “the transnational corporate business order” and its 

ideology of private property ownership, resource exploitation and profit building.63 

of course, the idea of the human colonization of space is not publicly 

compelling in the current cultural environment. poet Wendell Berry has addressed 

this dilemma: 

the [space colonization] project is an ideal solution to the moral 

dilemma of all those in this society who cannot face the necessities 

of meaningful change. it is superbly attuned to the wishes of the 

corporation executives,bureaucrats,militarists,political operators, 

and scientific experts who are the chief beneficiaries of the forces 

that have produced our crisis . . . . 

if it should be implemented, it will be the rebirth of the idea 

of progress with all its old lust for unrestrained expansion, its 

totalitarian concentrations of energy and wealth, its obliviousness 

to the concerns of character and community,its exclusive reliance 

on technical and economic criteria,its disinterest in consequence, 

its contempt for human value, its compulsive salesmanship. 

the sales pitch for space colonization goes this way, according to Berry: 

if we will just have the good sense to spend one hundred 

billion dollars on a space colony, we will thereby produce more 

money and more jobs, raise the standard of living, help the 

underdeveloped, increase freedom and opportunity, fulfill the 

deeper needs of the human spirit etc. etc. . . . anyone who has 

listened to the arguments of the army corps of engineers, the 

strip miners, the defense department or any club of boosters 

will find all this dishearteningly familiar.64 

63. herbert Schiller, “not yet the post-imperialist era,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Key Works, rev. 

edition, M. g. durham and d. M. Kellner, eds. (Malden, Ma: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 295–30, quote 

from p. 303. retired congressional research Service analyst eilene galloway, arguably the oldest 

living expert on space law and policy at age 00 in 2006,has often said that problems in space policy 

are due at least in part to the fact that there are too many people in the space community who think 

that outer space is just like earth. 

64. Wendell Berry, “Mr. gerard o’neill’s Space colony project is offered in the fall 975 CoEvolution 

Quarterly ...”,in Space Colonies:a CoEvolution Book, Stewart Brand,ed.(newyork:penguin,977),p.36 
498 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Visions of the human colonization of space present a “moral law of the 

frontier” that is disturbing, Berry concludes: this law is that “humans are destructive 

in proportion to their supposition of abundance; if they are faced with an infinite 

abundance, then they will become infinitely destructive.”65 

Berry wrote his essay about the downside of space colonization in the 970s. 

But his views are not necessarily out of date. environmentalists might argue today 

that the case Berry made against space colonization is even more relevant today 

than it was in the 970s. 

in order to survive as a cultural institution, spaceflight needs an ideology. it 

needs to have some connection to widely held beliefs. it needs a role in a cultural 

narrative. But as pyne has noted,“locating exploration in the human gene or in the 

human spirit” and not in specific cultures is not viable. continued reliance on this 

narrative “only absolves us from making those vital,deliberate choices”we inevitably 

have to make—about how we should proceed into space, and what values space 

exploration should embody.“these choices,” pyne has said,“are not intuitive.”66 as 

a cultural institution, space exploration “has to speak to deeper longings and fears 

and folk identities.” it “is not merely an expression of curiosity but involves the 

encounter with a world beyond our ken that challenges our sense of who we are. 

it is a moral act . . . more than adventuring, more than entertainment, more than 

inquisitiveness.” it has to explain “who a people are and how they should behave.”67 

and in the current cultural environment, as pyne has observed, space exploration 

“will have to base its claim to legitimacy on transnational or ecumenical values.”68 

unlike theWestern american frontier,as Janice hocker rushing has pointed out, 

space is too big to be conquered.the recent focus of space exploration on the search for 

evidence of extraterrestrial life is a product, she has said, of a widespread understanding 

that humankind exists in a universe, not only on planet earth.the narrative of space 

exploration today might better reflect this understanding by telling a story of“a spiritual 

humbling of self” rather than “an imperialistic grabbing of territory.”69 

although she has noted that “the WaSp space cowboy version of spaceflight” 

has persisted from the apollo era into the present,constance penley also has observed 

that naSa “is still the most popular point of reference for utopian ideas of collective 

progress.”in the popular imagination,“naSa continues to represent . . .perseverance, 

cooperation, creativity and vision,” and these meanings embedded in the narrative of 

spaceflight “can still be mobilized to rejuvenate the near-moribund idea of a future 

toward which dedicated people . . . could work together for the common good.”70 

65. ibid. 

66. pyne,“a third great age of discovery,” p. 54. 

67. pyne,“Seeking newer Worlds,” p. 7. 

68. pyne,“a third great age of discovery,” p. 20. 

69. Janice hocker rushing,“Mythic evolution.” p. 284. 

70. constance penley, “Spaced out: remembering christa Mcauliffe,” Camera Obscura 29 (January 

992): pp. 79–23, especially pp. 207–208. 
Space History from the Bottom Up: Using Social 499 

History to Interpret the Societal Impact of Spaceflight 

this historical review of the rhetoric of space advocacy reveals competing 

american cultural narratives, then.the dominant narrative—advancing the values 

of the dominant culture—upon which the narrative of u.S. spaceflight piggybacks, 

is a story of american exceptionalism that justifies unilateral action and the 

globalization of american capitalist democracy and material progress.the story of 

spaceflight is embedded in this broader narrative. that story is also woven into a 

competing narrative,a vision of “utopian ideas of collective progress”and “a spiritual 

humbling of self.”this competing narrative may be a site within which the ideology 

of spaceflight might rejuvenate itself—where the vision of a human future in space 

becomes a vision of humanity’s collective peaceful existence on Spaceship earth 

and the need to work together to preserve life here and look for life out there. 
500 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 50

chapter 26 

Spaceflight and Popular Culture 

ron Miller 

Spaceflight in popular culture has served two important functions—apart from 

its entertainment value, that is. first, it served to inspire at a time when the 

entire notion of traveling into space or to other worlds was an idea beneath the 

contempt of most scientists and engineers. it not only inspired, it carried the torch 

for the centuries it took for technology to finally make space travel a reality. Second, 

it acted—and still acts—as a mirror or gauge of both public interest in spaceflight 

and the state of contemporary astronautical science. for instance, Jules Verne shot 

his fictional projectile into space by means of a giant cannon simply because his 

readers would have never believed that contemporary rockets would have been 

capable of such a feat,while only 50 years later arthur train and robert Wood were 

able to describe a spaceship propelled by a beam of alpha particles produced by the 

disintegration of uranium in their remarkable novel, The Moon-Maker (97).2 

The Dreamers 

astronautics is unique among all the sciences in that it owes its origins to an art 

form. long before engineers and scientists took the possibility of spaceflight seriously, 

virtually all of its aspects were first explored in art and literature, and long before the 

scientists themselves were taken seriously, the arts kept the torch of interest burning. 

although there had been numerous early fantasies about trips to the Moon, 

no one really considered the genuine possibility of spaceflight until two important 

events occurred: first, the discovery that there were places in the universe other than 

earth, and second, that there might exist the technology for getting there. these 

events took place about 250 years apart.the first occurred in 60 when galileo 

first turned his telescope toward the heavens and discovered that the planets were 

not just a special class of wandering stars but real worlds in their own right.Venus 

. Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (new york:thomas y. crowell, 978). 

2. arthur train and robert Wood, The Moon-Maker (King george,Va: Black cat press, 2006). 
502 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

showed phases just like the Moon; Mars had dusky markings; and Jupiter possessed 

four tiny moons of its own, like a miniature solar system. 

at about the same time that galileo and the astronomers who followed him 

were discovering new worlds in our solar system,so were other explorers finding new 

worlds on the other side of the atlantic ocean.that the Moon was now included in 

geographies such as peter heylyn’s Cosmographie of 682 is indicative of its new status 

as an equal among other new worlds such as north and South america.3 

By the time galileo had observed the craters of the Moon and Jupiter’s satellites, 

hundreds of ships and thousands of explorers, colonists, soldiers, and adventurers had 

made the journey to the amazingly rich and fertile lands of the newWorld. now that 

human beings had learned that were there not only new worlds here upon earth, but 

unknown lands in the sky as well,it’s not very surprising that the discoveries being made 

by astronomers were quickly followed by a yearning expressed by an unprecedented 

spate of space travel stories. if these new lands could not be reached in reality, then they 

would be explored by proxy.although most of these authors had little or no interest in 

the realistic depiction of science,their books were nevertheless an accurate barometer of 

the ever-increasing interest in the possibility of exploring the planets. 

Many authors wrote of trips to the Moon in the decades following galileo’s 

discovery. in 622, charles Sorel wrote of “great engins” that might carry people 

to the Moon, or that they might get there by means of “all manner of structures, 

and ladders.”4 in 638, francis godwin published The Man in the Moone, in which 

his hero is carried to that world by a flock of geese who regularly migrate between 

earth and the Moon.5 the great scientist Johannes Kepler—who established the 

laws of orbiting bodies—wrote a novel called Somnium in 634.6 its hero is carried 

to our satellite by demons along the bridge of darkness that occurs during an eclipse 

of the Moon.although his method of getting to the Moon was highly unscientific, 

Kepler’s descriptions of the conditions there were very accurate in light of what was 

known about the Moon at that time (for instance, Kepler was aware of the fact that 

most of the journey would have to be made in a vacuum and that the surface of the 

Moon would be desolate, alternating between extremes of heat and cold). 

cyrano de Bergerac made fun of such fanciful voyages in his Comic History (657), 

in which he tried to come up with as many utterly ridiculous methods of space travel 

as he could think of. ironically, one he thought was funniest was the use of rockets! 

although he was probably the first person in history to suggest the use of rockets for 

launching a spacecraft, he only gets half a point for thinking it was a silly idea.7 

3. peter heylyn, Cosmographie (london:thoemmes press, 2003). 

4. ron Miller, The Dream Machines (Malabar, fl: Krieger publishing co.,993), p. 9. 

5. ibid., p.. 

6. ibid., p.0. 

7. ibid., pp. 2–4. 
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 503 

the second great event in the history of the popular conception of space travel 

occurred in 783 when two frenchmen, brothers Étienne and Joseph Montgolfier, 

invented the balloon. for the first time, human beings were able to ascend above 

earth farther than they could jump. these two events launched avalanches of 

speculative literature about the possibility of traveling beyond earth and what might 

be found on these new worlds. here at last seemed to be an answer to all those 

who had been looking at the starry sky with longing. if human inventiveness could 

devise a way of rising a few thousand feet above the surface of earth, what was 

a mere quarter-million miles to the Moon but a matter of degree? Science and 

technology had conquered the sky—it had to be only a matter of time before they 

conquered space as well. 

needless to say, writers quickly abandoned their swans and dream-demons 

and turned to balloons to carry their heroes to the Moon and all over the solar 

system. But if science was marching ahead, so were the ever-more-knowledgeable 

readers of these books. the widespread fascination with science that occurred at 

the end of the eighteenth century also meant that most readers were becoming 

too knowledgeable about the subject to accept even balloons as a realistic method 

of getting to the Moon, let alone anything less scientific or technological.authors 

were forced to come up with more realistic, believable methods of space travel. 

one of the first to do so was the american author george tucker. although 

the spaceship in his 827 novel, A Voyage to the Moon, employed an imaginary 

antigravitational material, tucker gave great thought to the actual conditions that 

might exist beyond earth’s atmosphere and how his vehicle would have to deal with 

them.8 What he ended up with might be the very first description of a spaceship that 

took into account the conditions of outer space as they were known at the time. for 

instance, the spacecraft—a 6-foot (2-meter), copper-clad cube—is carefully tested to 

make sure that it is perfectly airtight, while compressed air for breathing is carried in 

tanks.the walls are even insulated to protect the astronauts from the cold of space. 

tucker was one of edgar allan poe’s instructors at the university ofVirginia and 

his novel may have inspired poe to write his own Moon travel story, “the unparalleled 

adventures of one hans pfaal” (835).9 although poe used a balloon, he still paid 

more careful attention to science and technology than had any other author before 

him. for instance, the sealed, spherical gondola of his hero’s balloon closely resembles 

those used by stratosphere balloonists and his descriptions of high-altitude flight and 

earth as seen from space might have been written by a present-day astronaut. 

poe rationalized the use of a balloon by assuming that earth’s atmosphere 

extends as far as the Moon, albeit very tenuously: 

8. george tucker, A Voyage to the Moon (King george,Va: Black cat press, 2006). 

9. edgar allen poe,“the unparalleled adventures of one hans pfaal,” in richard adams locke and 

edgar allan poe, Journeys to the Moon (King george,Va: Black cat press, 2006). 
504 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

i . . . considered that, provided in my passage i found the medium 

i had imagined, and provided that it should prove to be essentially 

what we denominate atmospheric air,it could make comparatively 

little difference at what extreme state of rarefaction i should 

discover it—that is to say, in regard to my power of ascending— 

for the gas in the balloon would not only be itself subject to 

similar rarefaction . . . but, being what it was, would, at all events, 

continue specifically lighter than any compound of whatever 

mere nitrogen and oxygen. thus, there was a chance—in fact, 

there was a strong probability—that, at no epoch of my ascent, I 

should reach a point where the united weights of my immense balloon, 

the inconceivably rare gas within it, the car, its contents, should equal the 

weight of the mass of the surrounding atmosphere displaced.0 

to rise into this infinitely thin atmosphere, poe’s balloon is filled with a new 

gas “37.4 times lighter than hydrogen”—and he also had his hero take advantage 

of the diminishing gravitational pull of earth as the balloon traveled farther and 

farther from it. 

almost all of this was sheer pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, of course, but 

poe’s readers did not know this. no one had ever spoken about a trip to the Moon 

in such detailed, scientific-sounding terms before. What is important is that for 

the first time it had become necessary to provide an interplanetary story with the 

trappings of real science.this is what makes poe’s story so significant. he realized 

that it was no longer sufficient to simply enable a character to reach the planets by 

fiat. By the time poe was writing, the conditions at high altitudes were becoming 

well known and astronomers were becoming more assured about the nature of 

outer space and the prevailing conditions on our own satellite.an author writing a 

story set in these places could no longer blithely ignore this knowledge. 

poe himself was perfectly aware of the uniqueness of what he had done. in his 

postscript to “hans pfaal,” he reminded his readers that the intent of earlier Moon 

journeys had been 

satirical; the theme being a description of lunarian customs as 

compared with ours. in none, is there any effort at plausibility 

in the details of the voyage itself. the writers seem, in each 

instance, to be utterly uninformed in respect to astronomy. in 

Hans Pfaal the design is original, inasmuch as regards an attempt 

at verisimilitude, in the application of scientific principles (so far 

as the whimsical nature of the subject would permit), to the 

actual passage between the earth and the moon.2 

0. poe,“the unparalleled adventures of hans pfaal,” p. 82.


. ibid., p. 08.


2. ibid., p. 2.

Spaceflight and Popular Culture 505 

By the time poe was writing, the world had been undergoing an industrial, 

technological,and scientific revolution.By the time the Montgolfiers had flown their 

first balloon, the steam engine had already been invented, as had the spinning jenny, 

the circular saw, and electric generators. only two years earlier uranus, a brandnew planet, had been discovered, revealing that the classical solar system known since 

ancient times was not the limit to the new frontier in the sky. in the half-century 

following the balloon came the iron plow, the power loom, the first crossing of the 

atlantic by a steamship, the first railways, the electric storage battery and motor, the 

telegraph, cameras, and the revolver. people living in the nineteenth century had 

good reason for thinking that science could do anything.there seemed to be nothing 

that scientists or engineers could not understand or conquer.the worlds of the solar 

system differed only in a matter of scale from africa or the poles. Surely, if humans 

were going to leave earth and travel to these other planets, then it would be science 

and technology that would provide the means. By the middle of the century, generals, 

admirals, and explorers had been replaced by a new hero: the engineer. 

Still, no one seriously considered the actual technological problems of 

spaceflight until 865, when french author Jules Verne wrote his classic novel From 

the Earth to the Moon (its sequel, Round the Moon, was published in 870).3 Before 

then,all space travel stories had been fantasies to a greater or lesser degree.But Verne 

had been a great fan of edgar allan poe and took his lead from poe’s invention of 

scientific verisimilitude—developing it to a degree poe never imagined. 

in Verne’s story, a group of american 

arms manufacturers find themselves with 

nothing to do after the close of the civil 

War. as an outlet for their energies and 

creative genius, they propose building an 

enormous cannon—actually a 900-foot 

(275-meter) deep, cast iron–lined well with 

400,000 lbs (8,000 kg) of explosives at 

the bottom—and launching a projectile to 

Figure 26.1—This illustration of the launch of Jules Verne’s 

projectile accompanied the original edition of From the Earth 

to the Moon. Although Verne’s giant cannon was impossible 

(at least so far as launching passenger-carrying spacecraft 

is concerned), he was well aware of this and took great care 

in making the device at least appear plausible. The result 

was a novel that inspired generations to take the idea of 

spaceflight seriously, including many of the seminal founders 

of astronautics. (Author’s collection.) 

3. Verne, From the Earth to the Moon. 
506 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

the Moon. it eventually dawns on them that it would be much more interesting 

to not just launch an ordinary projectile but one carrying passengers. of course, 

this would never really work—the shock of going from a standing start to 7 miles 

( km) a second in 900 feet (275 meters) would have been instantly fatal to his 

heroes—but there is compelling internal evidence that Verne realized this and 

consequently filled his book with so much science and math and engineering that 

his nineteenth-century readers accepted his story without question. So much so, in 

fact, that when the novel was originally serialized in france, people wrote to the 

author volunteering to be passengers in the projectile! 

each chapter of the book is devoted to a different problem facing the space 

explorers: the method for leaving earth, the design and construction of the giant 

cannon, what its explosive charge would consist of, where the cannon would be 

located, what the projectile would be made of, what its speed and trajectory would 

need to be, the best time and date for the launch, safety precautions, experimental 

tests, provisions for life support, methods for tracking the projectile, and how all 

of this was going to be paid for. all of these questions and more Verne answers in 

precise detail, even to the point of quoting the actual math used in his calculations 

(actually performed by his cousin, henri garcet of the lycée henri-iV).4 

With the publication of Verne’s novel, the possibility of spaceflight was 

instantly transformed from the realm of the fantastic to a mere exercise in Victorian 

engineering. for the first time, the problem of space travel had been put on a 

firm mathematical and technological basis. indeed, there is some reason to argue 

for Verne having literally invented the science of astronautics.Verne’s method for 

getting his astronauts into space would not work in reality, but what was important 

was that he suggested a method that employed nothing but known materials and 

contemporary technologies. his astronauts did not need to rely upon impossible 

balloons or imaginary antigravity metals. he demonstrated to his readers one 

monumentally important fact: the conquest of space was to be a matter of applied 

mathematics and engineering and nothing else. 

although Verne used a giant cannon instead of rockets to launch his heroes 

into space, he was perfectly aware of the potential rockets had. But he was also 

aware that the state of the art of rocketry in the mid-800s was such that his readers 

would have never believed that the unreliable, inefficient, and not very powerful 

rockets then available would ever be capable of speeding a spaceship to the Moon. 

Still,Verne did have his astronauts carry rockets on board for their eventual (albeit 

aborted) landing on the Moon and for steering the projectile. in this,Verne was one 

of the very first to realize that rockets would work in a vacuum and would be the 

ideal source of propulsion in space—a fact that eluded all but a very few writers and 

scientists until the early years of the twentieth century. 

4. Miller, The Dream Machines, pp. 47–54. 
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 507 

Verne’s novel was a great success and was translated and published all over 

the world. it had readers and admirers in almost every nation, and some of these 

readers were not just admirers—they were inspired to actually do what Verne had 

only written about. Konstantin tsiolkovskiy, hermann oberth, robert goddard, 

and many other early pioneers of rocketry and astronautics were directly inspired 

by the space novels of Jules Verne and others. 

By the time the first spacecraft was launched in 957, most of the problems 

facing engineers had been solved—or at least dealt with—by the writers of space 

fiction.this is not because science-fiction writers were more prescient; it’s simply 

because they were forced to solve many of the same problems long before engineers 

had to, and there are only so many different plausible answers. 

The Rocketeers 

the period between World War i and World War ii was a mixed bag as far as 

popular interest in space travel was concerned.aviation was the great technological 

craze of the time (rivaled only by radio) and rockets seemed something of a trivial 

side-issue. robert goddard had, of course, launched the world’s first liquid-fuel 

rocket in 926, but the news of this was barely known within scientific circles, let 

alone the general public.goddard was much better known as the man who was going 

to send a rocket to the Moon. in april 920 he had written an article for Popular 

Science magazine in which he described the possibility of hitting the Moon with a 

rocket carrying 4 lbs (6 kg) of flash powder—enough,he had calculated,to create a 

flash visible from earth.5 this article immediately made goddard something he had 

never had any wish to be:a media celebrity.Scientists and popular-science writers in 

publications ranging from the London Graphic and Scientific American to The New York 

Times took goddard to task for what they considered his utter lack of rudimentary 

scientific knowledge, while at the same time popular magazines took goddard dead 

seriously and published scores of articles on the possibility of spaceflight, often 

comparing it, rightly, to the advances then occurring in aviation. Many of these 

were translated reprints of articles originally written by austrian Max Valier, one of 

the most enthusiastic and colorful of the rocketry and space travel enthusiasts who 

were just then beginning to organize in europe. Valier’s ubiquitous writing and 

spaceship designs (beautifully illustrated by the römer brothers) influenced science 

and science-fiction writers, and even appeared in some of the first space movies 

ever produced, in much the same way that Wernher von Braun’s widely distributed 

designs influenced the public perception of spacecraft in the 950s and 960s.6 

5. ibid., pp. 23–24. 

6. ibid., pp.44–46. 
508 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

on the whole, however, the era of the 920s and 930s was not a bright one 

for the depiction of space travel in the media or for its impression on the public 

at large. Most work on liquid-fuel rockets was being done either in secrecy (by a 

humiliated and bitter goddard, who now wanted more than anything else to avoid 

publicity) or by small groups of amateurs in europe.“rocket” to the general public 

still meant the gunpowder variety familiar to fourth of July celebrants and civil 

War veterans. although Valier and others had shown that rockets could efficiently 

propel every sort of vehicle, from cars to sleds to aircraft, these were for the most 

part seen for the publicity stunts they were and, since almost all of these employed 

powder rockets, they really did not go very far in educating the public on the 

possibilities of the liquid-fuel rocket. 

the ideas published by goddard—and the reporting and misreporting of them in 

the media—combined with the popular writings ofValier and the publicity generated 

by his experiments, impacted popular culture in only one major way, and it was in 

a form that was actually a setback for the acceptance of astronautics. this was the 

introduction of,first, Buck rogers and then flash gordon,two wildly popular comic 

strip characters whose improbable adventures in space quickly made the transition 

from the newspaper comic pages to motion picture serials that are still shown today. 

inspired by the success of his 929 novel, Armageddon 2419AD,author philip nowlan 

adapted his hero for a newspaper comic strip, drawn by dick calkins.although Buck 

rogers’s name has become synonymous with space travel, spaceships did not make 

an appearance until 930, after nearly 400 daily strips had been published (although 

rocket-powered aircraft were introduced in strip 90 in 929).7 

although the early space travel strips had a relatively high standard of scientific 

accuracy, this was not maintained. By the 940s, Buck rogers had descended into 

utter fantasy.the believable spacecraft of the early 930s had degenerated into art 

nouveau monstrosities that would have done credit to dr. Seuss.this left a lasting 

impression on a prewar generation who came to derogatorily refer to space travel 

as “that Buck rogers thing.” 

The Golden Age of Spaceflight 

it may seem odd to say so, but the golden age of space travel occurred before 

space travel became a reality. it was a period between the end of World War ii and 

96 that is analogous to, say, the 920s and 930s in aviation—a time when the 

public had gone aviation-mad. 

Much the same thing occurred in the two decades following World War ii. 

fueled in large part by postwar optimism combined with a faith in technology 

and engineering like that of the nineteenth century, the possibility of spaceflight 

7. ibid., pp. 82–83. 
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 509 

took a firm hold on the public imagination.there were references to rockets and 

space travel everywhere one looked, from television and movies to the pages of the 

Sunday comics to the hood ornaments of the latest-model oldsmobile rocket 88. 

there were rocket toys and space games, bubblegum cards and gumball machines, 

cigarette lighters and bedside lamps, breakfast cereal premiums and Buck rogers 

popsicles, and comic books and television serials.8 a recent collectibles catalog lists 

more than 300 toys inspired by the most popular children’s television space shows 

of the 950s: Space Patrol, Captain Video, Tom Corbett, and Rocky Jones.

9 

hardly a week went by without an article in at least one national magazine 

about the coming age of spaceflight. all of this—bad science and good—helped 

counteract some of the negative effects the depiction of spaceflight in popular culture 

had created. the popularity of Buck rogers and flash gordon in the 930s and 

940s—abetted by the series of movie serials they inspired—did little to help the 

cause.their emphasis on swashbuckling romance and utter disregard for anything 

resembling science led too many people—layman and scientist alike—to dismiss the 

entire concept of space travel as “that crazy Buck rogers idea.” 

there has been nothing since the golden age that remotely parallels its frenzy 

about spaceflight,perhaps for the same reason the goldenage of aviation finally ended: 

spaceflight became a reality.Just as transatlantic flights stopped making headlines when 

anyone could get a seat on a regularly scheduled airliner,much of the hold space travel 

had on the popular imagination faded as flights into space became commonplace. 

Why this sudden postwar enthusiasm for space travel, especially since a decade 

earlier it had been considered a subject fit only for comic strips? a lot of it had to 

do with advancements in science and technology generally that occurred during 

the war. Jets and rocket-powered aircraft had shown their mettle as being more 

than hare-brained publicity stunts. american bomber crews and fighter pilots had 

brought back stories of incredible german aircraft such as the Messerschmitt Me­

09 Komet and Me-262 rocket and jet fighters. then, of course, there were the 

giant V-2 rockets that had fallen on england. it was obvious to more than just 

scientists and space travel enthusiasts that if the V-2 was not a real spaceship, it was 

mighty close to the real thing. 

given the history of astronautics’ close relationship with the arts, perhaps it is 

only natural that the prime instigators of the golden age were a rocket scientist and 

an artist.the team of Wernher von Braun and chesley Bonestell were as responsible 

for the almost universal public enthusiasm for spaceflight as anyone. Bonestell’s first 

book, The Conquest of Space (949), had galvanized its readers. the reaction was 

much the same as to galileo’s revelations more than 300 years earlier. although 

8. Marek S. young, Steve duin, and Mike richardson, Blast Off! (Milwaukie, or: dark horse 

Books, 200). 

9. t. n.tumbusch, Space Adventure (radnor, pa:Wallace-homestead Book co., 990). 
50	 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

most people were aware of the planets in a kind of abstract sense, few had thought 

of them as real worlds like earth, with landscapes and scenery as fascinating as 

anything that existed on our own planet. Bonestell’s depictions of Mars and the 

moons of Jupiter and Saturn did not bear the stigma of “artist’s impression”— 

they looked instead like postcards from the future.there was no sensationalism or 

exaggeration, just a cold-blooded, matter-of-fact representation of places that really 

existed, presented with no more fanfare than your neighbor’s snapshots from their 

summer vacation in yosemite.20 

it was pretty much a given that Bonestell would be invited to illustrate a series 

of magazine articles being created by von Braun about the near future of spaceflight. 

the series, written by von Braun and a number of other space experts, repeated Jules 

Verne’s accomplishment by demonstrating that spaceflight could be achieved using only 

contemporary technology and materials available at the time. it is true that von Braun’s 

giant ferry rockets (the first stage of which would have had 5 separate rocket engines!), 

lunar landers, and space station might not have been the most practical possible designs, 

but that was not his point. anything else would have required speculating on future 

developments; he wanted to show that spaceflight was possible in 952, not 2002.2 

it is difficult to gauge the full effect the subsequent Collier’s magazine series had 

on both the public imagination and the contemporary development of america’s 

fledgling space program. perhaps one way to judge this is by looking at the 

artifacts of the time. Collier’s spaceships were literally everywhere.When Bonestell’s 

paintings were not being legally reprinted, they were plagiarized. and where they 

were not being copied outright, 

they were being inspirational. one 

can find Collier’s-inspired spacecraft 

Figure 26.2—This painting by Chesley Bonestell was 

created for the Wernher von Braun book, The Exploration 

of Mars (1954). von Braun had developed a detailed, 

consistent, incremental plan for the exploration of 

space. In much the same way that Jules Verne had, a 

century earlier, shown that spaceflight was merely a 

matter of applied mathematics and engineering, von 

Braun’s magazine series and books helped to not only 

convince a skeptical public that spaceflight was possible 

using contemporary techniques and materials, but to 

alsomaketheideaofspaceflightwildlypopular. (Artwork 

copyright © Bonestell Space Art, used with permission.) 

20. ron Miller, The Art of Chesley Bonestell (london: paper tiger, 2000). 

2. frederick 	i. ordway and randy liebermann, eds., Blueprint for Space (Washington, dc: 

Smithsonian institution press, 992), p. 35. 
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 5 

throughout those decades, from plastic model kits to coloring books, from sciencefiction movies to sterling silver money clips! a number of years ago i started a file of 

Bonestell-inspired artwork and had to quit when it grew to more than two inches 

in thickness. 

in the movie theaters, space travel films had not yet begun to descend into the 

abyss of alien-ridden space opera. films such as Destination Moon (950), Conquest 

of Space (955), and even Forbidden Planet (956) were filled with good science and 

positive images about the future of spaceflight.on television,series such as Tom Corbett 

employed the advice of experts such asWilly ley to lend their programs authenticity, 

while the arrival of a full-size Space Patrol “rocket ship” in a town or city was a fullscale media event.22 Meanwhile, more nonfiction books about rocketry and space 

travel were being published for young readers than at any time before or since. 

one of the most important of the legitimate spinoffs of the Collier’s articles 

was a series of programs broadcast as part of Walt disney’s Disneyland television 

show, which had begun airing in 954. inspired by the popularity of the recently 

published magazine series as well as by the increasing public interest in space travel, 

disney produced three short films about the future of space exploration: Man In 

Space,Man and the Moon and Mars and Beyond. employing state-of-the-art animation 

and special effects, combined with the expertise of von Braun, heinz haber, ernst 

Stuhlinger, and Willy ley, the shows outlined the history of rocketry and a von 

Braun-inspired, step-by-step program for the exploration of space—upgraded 

from the scheme he had earlier proposed in Collier’s. the series also introduced the 

american public to the concept of the electric space ship,as proposed by Stuhlinger. 

the first show was broadcast on 9 March 955 to an audience of nearly 00 million 

people—more than half the total population of the united States.23 

one of these viewers was president dwight eisenhower, who borrowed a copy 

for two weeks to show to officials at the pentagon.on 29 July,eisenhower announced 

that the united States would include the launch of an artificial earth satellite as part 

of its role in the coming 957–958 international geophysicalyear.24 

the Collier’s series and its endless permutations is a perfect example of an 

event that incorporated the two basic qualities of spaceflight in culture: it not only 

reflected contemporary fascination with space travel (one that had been gradually 

growing since the 930s); it helped fan it into a blaze. like Verne’s stories, the 

Collier’s series also served as a self-fulfilling prediction of the future of spaceflight. it 

was instrumental in raising public awareness of the reality of imminent spaceflight, 

and it also informed a government that was about to spend many billions of dollars 

on a space program that it had the enthusiastic support of its taxpayers. 

22. Miller, The Dream Machines, p. 36. 

23. ordway and liebermann, Blueprint for Space, pp. 45–46. 

24. ibid. 
52 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Today 

in spite of the fact that today we are nearly 50 years into the Space age (if one 

counts from the launch of Sputnik ), there appears to be less interest in space travel 

than there was in 957, or even 947, for that matter. in fact, public enthusiasm is 

virtually nil—at least compared to the frenzy of the 950s and 960s.i believe this is 

largely due to the fact that we are in the midst of the Space age and no longer at its 

threshold.there are few great “firsts” any more to claim newspaper headlines.there 

is no race upon which to base national pride.even an extraordinary accomplishment 

such as that of SpaceShipOne does not result in ticker-tape parades or even children’s 

books and toys.Where are the SpaceShipOne table lamps, pillow cases, and cocktail 

coasters? it took only a few days before the story was moved to the back pages of 

the newspapers and probably not one person in a thousand today could tell you 

what the event was all about, what it accomplished, or who accomplished it. 

in some ways this is good; it means that spaceflight has been accepted as a 

commonplace, just as flying nonstop across the atlantic was eventually accepted.an 

event does not create headlines when tens of thousands of people routinely do it every 

day. Making spaceflight an ordinary, everyday occurrence had once been the dream 

of people like von Braun, but few of them thought about the price that would have 

to be paid. one cannot have that kind of public acceptance while at the same time 

maintaining enthusiasm at a high pressure.We have regular transatlantic airline flights 

but at the expense of not having transatlantic pilots as heroes any longer. 

Will space travel ever regain the popularity it had in the 950s and 960s? 

What will it take to regain that kind of support and enthusiasm? What will capture 

the public imagination in the way that Wernher von Braun and the first astronauts 

did? perhaps space travel needs someone as charismatic as von Braun or carl Sagan 

had been—an individual upon whom the public can focus and who has the talent 

and knowledge to maintain and heighten that focus, to say nothing of the traits of 

leadership and persuasiveness. But such people are vanishingly rare. 

perhaps we need a focused space program, some specific goal that is as exciting 

conceptually to the general public as it is scientifically important to the scientist.there 

was a hint that an ember of enthusiasm for space exploration is still alive in the public 

breast when the pathfinder Mars rover became one of the media heroes of 997. for 

weeks, the official naSa pathfinderWeb site was receiving more hits than any other 

site in the world. it is no small feat for pathfinder to have inspired some of the first 

space-related toys in nearly 40 years; even SpaceShipOne did not get a hot Wheels 

replica.What was it about that tiny machine that so captured imaginations? perhaps 

it was the image of a lone explorer—even if it was only a robot the size of a large 

toaster—having to fend for itself 30 million miles from home. 
“Racism, Sexism, and Space Ventures”: Civil Rights 53

at NASA in the Nixon Era and Beyond

chapter 27 

Making Spaceflight Modern: 

A Cultural History of the World’s 

First Space Advocacy Group 

asif a. Siddiqi 

Since the opening of the Spaceage in 957,space exploration has become a powerful 

embodiment of modernity.this connection between spaceflight and modernity is 

so fundamental to our vision of space exploration that it no longer requires articulation 

or elaboration. like many other technological legacies of the twentieth century, such 

as aviation, microelectronics, communications, and the internet, space exploration 

represents one effective way for nations to assert their arrival on the international stage, 

i.e., to underscore a nation’s commitment to modernity, modernization (especially for 

developing nations), and ultimately, the future. in the early twenty-first century, this 

link between spaceflight and modernity is reinforced through cultural imagery and 

iconography that makes space exploration synonymous with “progress”—through 

exploration of new frontiers, via accumulation of new knowledge, and by bringing 

benefits to society.all of these associations are predicated on the fundamental relationship 

between spaceflight and science and technology. the scientific and technological 

dimensions of spaceflight—for example, the science of space trajectories and the 

technology of launch vehicles and spacecraft—have identified spaceflight firmly with a 

post-enlightenment view of mastery over nature and “progress” in general. 

how did space exploration come to be linked to modernity and, more 

specifically, with the discourse of science and technology? in other words, how 

did our collective perceptions of space exploration, as represented through popular 

culture, become grounded in scientific and technological concerns? this is the 

question i explore in this paper, focusing particularly on the russian case. 

in russia, as in other major european nations, space travel was associated for 

centuries with mythology and mysticism—often in the form of dreams, parables, folk 

tales, superstition, or mythical tales. a fundamental shift occurred beginning only in 

the last decades of the nineteenth century, a transformation that culminated in the 

920s. the beginning of this change is rooted in the dissemination of the works of 

JulesVerne in russia in the 860s and 870s and the general rise in interest of science 

fiction, in particular the genre of the astronomicheskii roman (or the astronomical 
54 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

novel). partly inspired by such fictional works, the self-educated village school teacher 

Konstantin eduardovichtsiolkovskii (857–935) published his first meditations on the 

mathematics of spaceflight in 903. popular interest in space exploration first peaked 

around the time of the great War but it was not until the 920s—after the russian 

revolution—that mass interest in cosmic travel became a cultural phenomenon in 

Soviet russia, embodied in the so-called Soviet space fad. it was also at this time that 

the idea of space travel weakened its link to mythology and superstition;helped by a vast 

network of scientifically minded amateur space enthusiasts, the language of spaceflight 

shifted into the domain of science and technology. 

during the 920s Soviet space fad,amateur and technically minded enthusiasts 

formed short-lived societies to discuss their interests and exchange information on 

space travel. these societies—the first in the world that were dedicated to space 

travel—operated largely without material support or encouragement from the state. 

the men and women who organized the cosmic societies did, of course, absorb 

official Marxist discourses on the role of technology as a panacea for all social ills. 

But the record of their actions underscores their own agency in infusing the idea 

of space travel (and its corollary, rocketry) with the cold, hard power of rationality, 

science, and mathematics. Moving from fantasy, mysticism, mythology, and lunacy, 

these enthusiasts appropriated the language of modernity for their case. 

in this article, i revisit one specific episode in the cultural history of Soviet 

space exploration: the formation of the world’s first active society dedicated to the 

cause of space travel. in 924, university students in Moscow formed the Society for 

the Study of interplanetary communications—“interplanetary communications” 

being a then-common euphemism for “interplanetary travel.”the Society sponsored 

lectures,established networks of enthusiasts,and wrote articles on the value of cosmic 

flight at a time when few had considered the possibility. historians in both russia 

and the West have described the activities of the Society in very general terms, 

but a lack of primary sources has prevented a fuller exploration of its significance 

in the early history of spaceflight.2 using archival documents, my goal is not only 

to reconstruct the Society’s activities but also to explore the ways in which the 

rhetoric and activities of 920s space enthusiasts showed a distinct appreciation for 

the language of science and technology. ultimately, i hope to underscore that the 

relationship between the culture of space exploration and discourse of modernity 

was not always a given, but was grounded in historically contingent forces. 

. for a detailed description of the Soviet “space fad” of the 920s, including an analysis of art 

(literature, painting, poetry, architecture, etc.) as a site for contesting visions of space exploration, see 

asif a. Siddiqi,“imagining the cosmos: utopians, Mystics, and the popular culture of Spaceflight 

in revolutionary russia,” Osiris, forthcoming. 

2. See for example, frank h. Winter, Prelude to the Space Age: The Rocket Societies: 1924–1940 

(Washington,dc:Smithsonian institution press,983),pp.27–30;g.Kramarov,Na zare kosmonavtiki: 

k 40-letiiu osnovaniia pervogo v mire obshchestva mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii (Moscow: Znanie, 965). 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 55 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

Fridrikh Tsander 

historians typically trace the history of the Soviet space program totsiolkovskii, 

who in 903 published the first mathematical substantiations that spaceflight was 

possible.inthe920sandearly930s,tsiolkovskii’soriginalideasonspaceexploration— 

which he republished once he discovered that others such as the romanian-german 

hermann oberth and the american robert goddard had also come to the same 

conclusions—fed enormous popular interest in the Soviet union in the cause of 

cosmic travel. Several technology-enraptured (and short-lived) societies coalesced 

during the period of the space fad. of these, the most important and influential was 

the Moscow-based Society for the Study of interplanetary communications, formed 

in 924. it was not only the first in the world to effectively organize for the cause of 

space exploration, but was also the first to build a domestic and international network 

around the idea. the history of the organization—a combination of serendipity, 

willful devotion,and eventual loss of momentum due to indifference from the state— 

illustrates the ways in which the technological fascinations of the day inspired a few 

to bring an esoteric idea to many. 

no one played a more important role in spearheading the Society than fridrikh 

arturovichtsander,who,although not a founding member,gave the Society its heart 

and soul. raised in the latvian capital of riga,tsander was an early devotee of the 

many science fiction novels of the era,and was a convert to the cause of spaceflight by 

the time he was 20.unliketsiolkovskii,who was concerned only with the theoretical 

aspects of space travel,tsander engaged in rudimentary experimentation at an early 

age.as early as January 96 he built a lightweight greenhouse that would supply fresh 

vegetables and absorb excess carbon dioxide for travelers in space. after graduation 

from the polytechnic institute, in 95 he started work at the provodnik factory, a 

rubber-producing facility, evidently because he believed that rubber could be used 

as insulating material for spaceships. Soon after the revolution, in february 99 he 

moved to the aviation factory no. 4 (the “Motor” factory) where he spent his free 

time working on designing a new kind of aircraft equipped with an engine that could 

breach the atmosphere and fly into space.3 

tsander later claimed that soon after the revolution he had personally met 

lenin at a regional conference for inventors,and had told the Soviet leader about his 

cosmic airplane.tsander reminisced that “lenin made a tremendous impression on 

me:that night i could not sleep.pacing up and down in my small room,i thought of 

the greatness of this man—our country is ravaged by war, there is a lack of bread, of 

coal, and the factories are at a standstill, but this man who controls this huge country 

3. for a biography, see l. K. Korneev, “Zhizn’, tvorchestvo i deiatel’nost’ f. a. tsandera,” in F. A. 

Tsander: Problema poleta pri pomoshchi reaktivnykh apparatov. Mezhplanetnyye polety. Sbornik statei, l. K. 

Korneev, ed. (Moscow: gnti oborongiz, 96), pp. 5–73. 
56	 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

finds time to listen to interplanetary flights.”4 like many other stories of the early 

space years, the veracity of the meeting (which most certainly never happened) is less 

important than the mythic quality it conveyed.post-Sputnik Soviet writers repeatedly 

alluded to the meeting to illustrate the Bol’sheviks’ interest in forward-thinking ideas 

at a time when the very survival of the Soviet state was in doubt.5 

Within six months of the alleged meeting with lenin, in June 922 tsander 

quit his job at the Motor factory to devote all his time to developing a working 

design of the spaceplane.he survived by the generosity of his former factory workers, 

who formed a pool of donations to help feed the scientist.although they might not 

have shared tsander’s unyielding belief in the possibility of space travel, they were 

extremely fond of tsander; in July 922 the chief of the production section and the 

chief engineer of the factory jointly wrote a formal review of his interplanetary 

spaceship.6 tsander received a certificate from the association of inventors for his 

“invention”the following month.7 during this period of self-willed unemployment, 

tsander also initiated contact with tsiolkovskii.8 

in april 923, after he quit his factory job to devote his full energy to his 

interplanetary spaceship, he thanked his coworkers for paying for his living expenses 

and claimed, “i hope . . . that the money which you have given me will not be in 

vain, but will make it possible for me to present something of value to your factory.” 

going beyond pure technical considerations, tsander genuinely believed that 

interplanetary flight would be for the benefit of all of humanity, thus underscoring 

one of the major rationales behind the popular discussions of space travel among 

4. tsander mentioned this meeting in a short autobiography he wrote in 927 for publication in 

volume 4 of nikolai rynin’s famous Mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii (Interplanetary Communications) 

encyclopedia published in 929.he also gave the same account to a future coworker,l.K.Korneev, 

in 932. Korneev,“Zhizn’,” pp. 23–24. 

5. the leading Soviet rocket engine designer of the postwar era, academician Valentin glushko, 

requested that the institute of Marxism-leninism of the central committee of the communist 

party conduct a special investigation into whether lenin ever met tsander. the institute found 

no evidence. g. S. Vetrov, “K voprosu o nauchnom istolkovanii istoricheskikh dokumentov,” in 

Issledovaniia po istorii i teorii razvitiia aviatsionnoi i raketno-kosmicheskoi nauki i tekhniki: vypusk 7, B.V. 

raushenbakh, ed. (Moscow: nauka, 989), p. 9. 

6. the	 review is mentioned in tsander’s letter to glavnauka (the science agency of the 

Bol’shevik government) dated 8 october 926. f. a. tsander, “Zaiavlenie v nauchnyi otdel 

glavnauki ot 8.X.926 g.,” in F.A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediya, f.a.tsander, ed. (Moscow: 

nauka, 967), p. 82. 

7. the certificate is mentioned in glavnauka’s letter to V. p. Vetchinkin dated 5 october 926. 

See “pis’mo nauchnogo otdela glavnauki V. p.Vetchinkinu ot 5.X.926 g.,” in F. A.Tsander: iz 

nauchnogo naslediia, p. 85. 

8. tsander first wrote to tsiolkovskii on 5 March 923.archive of the russian academy of Sciences 

(aran), f. [collection] 555, op. [unit] 4, d. [file] 670, ll. [pages] –8. for a summary of the 

correspondence between tsander and tsiolkovskii, see K. Belyi,“tsiolkovskii-tsanderu,” Nauka i 

zhizn’ no. 0 (962): pp. 20–2. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 57 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

Soviet enthusiasts in the early 920s. as an incurable utopian, he noted, “a flight 

around the earth would have tremendous significance; flying like the Moon, we 

could use telescopes to observe the other planets much better, and could probably 

construct a habitation in which living conditions would be much better than on 

the earth . . . .”to the factory workers, he spoke of “senior citizens [who] will find 

it much easier to maintain health in [space],” of the “inhabitants of Mars . . . [whose] 

inventions could help us to a great extent to become happy and well off,” and of 

“[a]stronomy, [which] more than the other sciences, calls upon man to unite for a 

longer and happier life . . . .”9 

tsander was not a scientific dilettante; in fact, he had a masterful grasp of 

complex mathematics and was full of ground-breaking ideas. in his research (and in 

his public talks),he compared the properties of various propellant combinations and 

considered the heat processes,aerodynamics,and engineering behind building rocket 

engines.to his rapt audience,tsander also provided details of his new spaceship, a 

metallic airplane that would literally devour itself as it took to the heavens. the 

plane would take off from land using a conventional piston engine, use its wings for 

additional lift until it reached a height of about 7 miles (28 km), at which point 

the pilot would turn on a powerful rocket engine that would accelerate the vehicle 

into outer space.tsander had found that one of the most important weight penalties 

in designing such a spaceship would be the huge mass of fuels it would have to 

carry. in order to circumvent this problem, he proposed an idea, radical even today, 

wherein the space rocket engine would use the melted aluminum parts of its own 

fuselage as fuel for the engine, in combination with either liquid hydrogen or liquid 

oxygen.the remaining unused portion of the spaceship would then either go into 

orbit around earth or fly to the other planets. he also analyzed the problems of 

guided reentry into earth’s atmosphere using special wings, and various techniques 

of landing such a vehicle back on earth.0 

The Section on Reactive Motion 

tsander had frequently spoken of trying to organize a group to study space 

travel.luckily for him,public discourse on the idea of spaceflight reached a crescendo 

in early 924, just as he was looking for a forum to organize. the first intense 

wave of public fascination with spaceflight was set off by a story “is utopia really 

possible?” in the newspaper Izvestiia in october 923, about the recently published 

meditations on spaceflight by the foreigners oberth and goddard. Spurred to 

9. f. a.tsander, “doklad inzhenera f. a.tsandera o svoem izobretenii,” in F.A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo 

naslediia, pp. 0–3. 

0. ibid., pp. 0–4.


. “novosti nauki i tekhniki: neuzheli ne utopiia?,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 2 october 923.

58 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

promote a russian source for such ideas, the 66-year-old tsiolkovskii, ensconced in 

the provincial town of Kaluga, immediately republished his own pre-revolutionary 

works under the title Raketa v kosmicheskoe prostranstvo (The Rocket into Cosmic Space), 

and had them distributed to bookstores and “editors and scientists” in Moscow in 

april of the following year, thus bringing his strange ideas about space exploration 

to a huge and new audience.2 almost simultaneously, the Soviet media began to 

devote considerable attention to the cosmos. news and rumor of oberth’s and 

goddard’s exploits,the publication of aleksei tolstoi’s new space fiction novel Aelita, 

and the “great Mars opposition” of august 924—when Mars and earth were 

closer to each other than in hundreds of years—fed an unprecedented explosion 

public interest in space. on april 5, the newspaper Pravda published a long article, 

“Voyage into cosmic Space,” in which the author provided a complete history 

of the idea of space exploration, reaching back to leonardo da Vinci, cyrano de 

Bergerac, Jules Verne, and h. g.Wells, and bringing the story up to date with the 

works of tsiolkovskii, oberth, goddard, and popular Soviet science writer iakov 

perel’man. infected by the optimism of the times, the author, Mikhail lapirovSkoblo,concluded that “[W]ithin a few years hundreds of heavenly ships will furrow 

into the starry cosmos.”3 three days later, Izvestiia published yet another article on 

tsiolkovskii and oberth, noting that goddard had a sensational plan to launch a 

rocket to the Moon in the near future.4 

the renewed interest in space in early 924 might have remained little more 

than a passing media fad had it not been for the efforts of a few dedicated individuals. 

inspired by the recent publications on space travel, in mid-april 924 students at 

the prestigious Zhukovskii academy of the air fleet (now the Zhukovskii Military 

air engineering academy) took action; about a dozen students from the academy’s 

Military-Science Society (Vno) set up a Section on reactive Motion to exchange 

2. chizhevskii to tsiolkovskii, 6 april 924, aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 689, l. 9. See also chizhevskii 

to tsiolkovskii, 7 november 925,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 689, l. 23. 

3. M. ia. lapirov-Skoblo, “puteshestviia v mezhplanetnye prostranstva,” Pravda, 5 april 924: 

pp. 5–6. 

4. f. davydov, “raketa v kosmicheskoe prostranstvo,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 8 april 924: p. 7. for 

goddard’s prominent role in the space fad, see asif a. Siddiqi,“deep impact: robert goddard and 

the Soviet ‘Space fad’ of the 920s,” History and Technology 20, no. 2 (2004): pp. 97–3. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 59 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

ideas about rockets.5 the members of the Section wrote up a short list of objectives 

that included the following: “() to unite all persons, working in the uSSr on the 

given problem;(2) to obtain all possible information on work carried out in theWest; 

(3) to disseminate correct information on the condition of problems on interplanetary 

communications, and in connection with that, publish on [such] activities; [and] (4) 

to [conduct] independent scientific-research work and in particular, study questions 

on the military application of the rocket.” additional goals included scheduling a 

competition to design a small rocket capable of reaching approximately 60 miles (00 

km) up into space; creating a group (kruzhok) for more in-depth theoretical study of 

important problems; organizing a laboratory; opening a book kiosk to “satisfy . . . the 

wide demand for literature”; and establishing a separate “film group” which would 

work on sets for films.6 in other words, the Section touched on all the primary 

dimensions that would characterize the ensuing space fad, from its technical side 

(building rockets) to outreach (lectures, publications, and bookstores), to building a 

community (by involving others interested in the same topics), to opening a channel 

to theWest (by collecting information from overseas), and acknowledging the artistic 

medium as a possible way to educate and popularize (by branching into film).this 

Section, although only a student organization, was probably the first organized group 

in the world dedicated to the cause of space exploration.7 

the Section may have been small and without any resources, but such 

considerations did not limit its ambition. in enumerating a list of supplementary 

goals, it sought to host public reports on astronautics from serious scholars such as 

Vladimir Vetchinkin and fridrikh tsander.at the time, the 35-year-old Vetchinkin 

was a deputy director at the central aerohydrodynamics institute (tsagi), the 

leading aeronautics institution in the country.Well known nationally as a theorist of 

aeronautics, he also held a dual position as a professor at the Zhukovskii academy 

whose students had formed the space group. Vetchinkin’s most notable research 

work had been on the theory of propellers but, after the revolution, like a few 

5. the leading Vno student members included V. p. Kaperskii, M. g. leiteizen, a. i. Makarevskii,

M.a. rezunov, and n.a. Sokolov-Sokolenok.aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 97, ll. 32–33.the Vno was

established in 923 with seven subsections devoted to aviation and gliding, engines, aerodynamics,

scientific organization of labor, tactics, photography, and popularization. in the technical vernacular

of the 920s, russians considered the word “reactive” or “reaction” (reaktivnyi) to represent any

mode of propulsion that depended on the force of exhausted particles. forms of reactive motion

included rockets (where the vehicle carries both its fuel and oxidizer) and jets (where the vehicle

carries only the fuel and uses natural air as an oxidizer). rockets were thus capable of working in

vacuum whereas use of jets was limited to inside the atmosphere. 

6. “organizatsiia v S.S.S.r. o-va mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii,” Tekhnika i zhizn’ no. 2 (6 

July 924): p. . 

7. Winter 	refers to an earlier organization, the rocket Society of the american academy of 

Sciences formed in Savannah, ga, in 98. little is known about the organization, which focused 

on rocketry rather than space exploration. Prelude to the Space Age, p. 27. 
520 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

other prominent aeronautics specialists, he had begun to dabble in prognostications 

on space travel.8 Vetchinkin’s support of the Section added a critical ingredient to 

the Section: a patina of legitimacy. 

unlike Vetchinkin,tsander did not enjoy a high governmental position, but 

there were few individuals in the Soviet union who were more qualified to speak on 

the scientific and technological aspects of space travel than this 37-year-old latvian 

savant.tsander heard of the new student group on space through Vetchinkin and, 

although discouraged that they were not planning to immediately build rockets, 

quickly joined forces with them. 

having established a mandate, the Section’s first order of business was to 

establish contact with one man who, because of Soviet media’s search for a domestic 

counterpart to oberth and goddard, had assumed the wizened role of patron saint 

of the cause of spaceflight—Konstantin tsiolkovskii. on 22 april, Moris leiteizen, 

the de facto leader of the Section, composed a letter informing the old man of 

its recent formation, noting that 23 of its 25 members were academy students. if 

tsiolkovskii could not move to Moscow to take up leadership of the Section, then 

leiteizen invited him to at least give a public talk on space travel, which they would 

organize at the polytechnic Museum.9 in a couple of letters,tsiolkovskii responded 

that he was “joyous” to hear of the creation of the Section, having already heard of 

its existence via newspaper reports. in poor health and terrified of leaving Kaluga, 

tsiolkovskii declined the offer to visit Moscow but suggested that the Section might 

read excerpts to students from his recent science-fiction novel, Beyond the Earth,two 

copies of which he sent to leiteizen.20 less a work of literature than a dryly written 

polemic describing such fantastic conceptions as space suits, multistage rockets, and 

mooring ships in space,the novel was not known widely beyond Kaluga.inspired by 

receiving the initial two copies, the Section requested the academy administration 

to purchase copies of tsiolkovskii’s books for the school library since the “demand 

for them was [so] great.”2 

through May, the Section continued to correspond with tsiolkovskii on 

various topics, although the latter’s responses often evinced a certain irritation when 

the young enthusiasts took action that the pioneer did not agree with. in one letter 

dated May 4,leiteizen informed tsiolkovskii that one of the immediate goals of the 

Section was to “study reactive engines, independent of their application . . . [and] in 

8. for background to Vetchinkin, see a. M. tarasenkov, “29 iunia—00 let so dnia rozhdeniia V. p. 

Vetchinkina (888 g.),” Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki 59 (989): pp. 59–64. one of the initial organizers 

of the Section, georgii Kramarov, notes that Vetchinkin was “one of the first” to support the group. 

Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki,p.2. 

9. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 22 april 924,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. -ob. 

20. for tsiolkovskii’s four letters to the Section in 924, all addressed to leiteizen, see aran, f. 

444, op. 3, d. 02a, ll. –2 (april 29), ll. 3–4 (May 4), l. 5 (May 3), and l. 6 (June 4). 

2. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 4. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 52 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

order not to complicate [matters] . . . use them in the most simple form of motion 

on the earth’s surface: in a reactive automobile.”22 tsiolkovskii tersely replied that 

“[i]t’s known that reactive automobiles . . . are playthings and won’t provide any 

nothing new to you.”23 despite the often strained communications, members of the 

Section clearly considered tsiolkovskii some sort of spiritual guide whose works 

could convert the uninitiated, not just in the Soviet union but everywhere, to the 

cause of space exploration. on behalf of the Section,tsander wrote to tsiolkovskii 

on 6 May, asking for permission to translate tsiolkovskii’s classic works from 903, 

9, and 94 into german. amazingly, the old pioneer replied that although he 

was “grateful,” he could not provide original copies of the said publications since 

he had no copies left.24 tsander, unable to find the originals, did not translate them, 

significantly limiting tsiolkovskii’s reach beyond the Soviet union. 

“How Modern Science and Technology 

Solves This Question” 

the Section’s first public task was to organize a lecture. in picking a first 

speaker, the members of the Section not only looked for someone with authority 

but also an individual who would dispel the notion that space travel was a fantasy. 

the Section students invited one Mikhail lapirov-Skoblo, a propitious choice 

since he was personally acquainted with lenin.an engineer by education, lapirovSkoblo had been part of the pre-revolutionary technical intelligentsia but was 

also one of the first of that demographic to wholeheartedly put his faith behind 

lenin’s vision of a modern russia. in the early 920s, lapirov-Skoblo was the 

deputy chairman of the Scientific-technical department of the Supreme council 

of the people’s economy (VSnKh or Vesenkha), a job that put him in charge of 

intellectuals who were engaged in introducing modern technology to the russian 

economy. When lenin supervised the formation of the State commission for 

electrification of russia (geolro) in 920, lapirov-Skoblo was tapped to 

represent the Vesenkha on goelro. his many other ad hoc duties included 

service as head of the department of Science and technology of the newspaper 

Pravda.

25 having read tsiolkovskii’s recently published works,lapirov-Skoblo wrote 

the first comprehensive expositions on the topic in the post-revolutionary era in 

22. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 4 May 924,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. 2–3. 

23. tsiolkovskii to leiteizen, 4 May 924,aran, f. 555, op. 3, d. 02a, ll. 3–4. 

24. tsander to tsiolkovskii, 6 May 924,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 670, ll. 4–5. 

25. lapirov-Skoblo was also a member of the collegium of the electrical industry association, an 

academic,a member of the State council,and member of the collegium of the people’s commissariat 

of communications. for biographies, see aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 97, ll. 30–30b; Kramarov, Na zare 

kosmonavtiki, pp. 22–23.
522 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Pravda and other publications in 924.26 in the waning days of May 924, members 

of the Section put up posters at various key intersections in Moscow proclaiming 

that lapirov-Skoblo would give a talk on “interplanetary communications”(“how 

Modern Science and technology Solves this Question”); the paid lecture would 

begin at 8:00 in the evening on friday, 30 May at the main auditorium of the 

polytechnic Museum. all monetary contributions would go to fund a laboratory 

for the Section.27 

the event was successful beyond all expectations. tickets sold out two days 

before the event; on the day of the lecture, the Museum’s administrators were forced 

to call for the police to control the mass of people who had arrived to attend. all 

the literature on space travel that the students had on hand to sell—russian editions 

of h. g.Wells’s War of the Worlds, russian science fiction from aleksei tolstoi and 

aleksandr Beliaev, and books by the popular science writer iakov perel’man—had 

been sold out in minutes. in total, the group amassed 2,500 rubles—an astronomical 

amount for the time. lapirov-Skoblo’s lecture, quite possibly the first talk on space 

exploration in russia open to the general public, consisted of a short history of 

rocketry and space exploration. 

lapirov-Skoblo approached the idea of space travel much like one would treat 

an arcane discussion on any branch of science or technology. he considered the 

different technical options for reaching space,methods of propulsion,and the choice 

of propellants.at the same time he also linked the promise of space travel with the 

future modernization of the Soviet union, grounding his words into a narrative 

that privileged national development over universal significance. like many others 

of the period, he took pains to emphasize that the russian tsiolkovskii had done 

decades earlier what the foreigners oberth and goddard were only doing now. 

yet lapirov-Skoblo was also generous to the Westerners. using hand-built models, 

he explained to the rapt audience the characteristics of multistage rockets and 

spaceships proposed by oberth and goddard. on the latter, lapirov-Skoblo was less 

confident that the american would be able to launch a rocket to the Moon, given 

the vast technical difficulties of such a project. he ended his lecture by calling on 

Soviet populace to focus on a more immediate goal,to build rocket engines in order 

to “transform into reality the centuries-old dream of flight into space.”28 

26. “puteshestviia v mezhplanetnye prostranstva,” Pravda, 5 april 924: pp. 5–6; “o puteshestviiakh 

v mezhplanetnye prostranstva,” Molodaia gvardiia no. 5 (924); “o puteshestviiakh v mezhplanetnye 

prostranstva,” Khochu vse znat’ no. 3 (924): p. 40. 

27. for a reproduction of the poster, see Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 23. 

28. the complete text of lapirov-Skoblo’s lecture is stored in aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 94, ll. 49–62. 

for recollections of attendees,see aran,r.4,op.4,d.97,ll.35–38;Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, 

pp. 25–28. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 523 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

The Society for the Study of 


Interplanetary Communications


after the lecture Section members informed the audience that they were 

intent on expanding the Section into a larger Society for the Study of interplanetary 

communications (Obshchestva izucheniia mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii, or oiMS) not 

limited to academy students but open to the general public, and invited audience 

members to sign up.as a result, 79 people from the audience put their names on 

a list. of the 2 names preserved in the archives, 04 were men.the majority of 

the members (about 60 percent) were young, between the ages of 20 and 30; most 

of the rest were either teenagers or in their 30s.the signatories were also asked to 

list their professions.a total of 96 members (roughly 80 percent) were evenly split 

between being students and workers. a smaller number identified themselves as 

“scientific workers,”“writers,” and “scientists and inventors.”29 

We know some personal details of these young men and women. of the 

Zhukovskii academy students, the most active was 27-year-old Morris leiteizen, the 

son of the old Bol’shevik, g. d. lindov-leiteizen, who was killed in 99 on the 

eastern front.the leiteizen family lived with the exiled lenin in finland before the 

revolution.30 after the october revolution,leiteizen worked briefly in the people’s 

commissariat of foreign affairs in finland before opting to come back to russia 

to fight in the civil War. on the way back from helsinki, leiteizen was arrested by 

the White finnish imperial forces and thrown into prison in helsinki. lenin took 

a personal interest in the matter, and only after a series of diplomatic moves did the 

finnish free the near-dead prisoner. leiteizen, who was fluent in german, french, 

and english, had been interested in astronomy since his youth, and, according to a 

contemporary, believed that space travel was “a matter of the relatively near future.”3 

the rank-and-file members included V. S. Berdichevskii, only 7 years old;V. l. 

pul’ver, the son of a well-known musician-composer, anatolii Beliaev, who managed a 

local astronomical observatory;and nataliia Sysoeva,a young assistant who worked there. 

then there wasValentin chernov, a young musician apprentice so taken by reading the 

works oftsiolkovskii that he had visited the old man in Kaluga.unable to decide between 

a career in music or space travel,he had decided to do both.he enrolled in a university to 

get a degree in astronomy while working part-time as a violinist at the Bol’shoi theater.32 

29. “Spisok chlenov obshchestva mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii,” aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 96, ll. 6–2. 

See alsoV.M.Komarov and i.n.tarasenko,“20 iunia—50 let so vremeni sozdaniia v moskve obshchestva 

izucheniia mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii (924g.),” Iz istorii aviatsii i kosmonavtiki 22 (974): pp. 75–82; 

Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki,p.28. 

30. ia.a. Berzin, ed., Vospominaniia o Lenine: tom 3 (Moscow: gospolitizdat, 960), p. 76. 

3. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. . 

32. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, pp. 38–56. 
524 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Some Society members, including theorist tsander, popular science writer 

perel’man, and academy professor Vetchinkin, were part of the pre-revolutionary 

technical intelligentsia, i.e., they were older than the main body of members but 

still young enough to have been energized by the possibilities opened up by the 

revolution. Vetchinkin provided the necessary institutional backing; perel’man 

served as a conduit to the media, and tsander represented the spiritual nexus for 

the group’s activities. the de facto leader of the Society, however, was grigorii 

Kramarov, a 36-year-old comintern worker who had had a long history of active 

work on behalf of revolutionary causes. in January 905 he was arrested by the 

tsarist police for his illegal activities—the first of six times he was incarcerated for a 

variety of revolutionary activities on behalf of the russian Social democrats.after 

his last arrest in february 93, Kramarov fled russia and escaped to the united 

States. during the four years he lived in San francisco, he worked at a fabric factory 

and actively participated in the russian section of the american communist party, 

and was also a member of the committee to aid political prisoners and exiles in 

Siberia. hearing of the february 97 revolution, Kramarov immediately returned 

home to work with the Men’sheviks. following active duty with the fifth army 

on the eastern front during 99–920, Kramarov worked abroad for comintern 

before returning to the Soviet union.33 

the Soviet media were surprisingly attentive to the work of these men and 

women and, with a few exceptions, journalists favorably reported on their activities. 

Vecherniaia izvestiia (Evening News),a widely read evening newspaper,and the journal 

Iskra (Spark) gave prominent space to the Society’s structure, goals, and members. 

the former underscored that the Society’s activities were not divorced from the 

masses, whereas the latter emphasized that tsiolkovskii’s and goddard’s work gave, 

for the first time,hope to bridge the gap between aspiration and achievement.34the 

biweekly Tekhnika i zhizn’ (Technology and Life), one of the most popular science 

journals of the day, published a special issue in July 924 dedicated to interplanetary 

travel; its cover story on the oiMS included a picture of Kaperskii, rezunov, and 

leiteizen in academy uniforms, huddled over their documents.the author of one 

article,a.a.Mikhailov,the director of the pulkovo observatory,introduced his readers 

to the elementary concepts of rocketry and space exploration and tsiolkovskii’s 

various spaceship designs. he singled out tsander’s scientific contributions to 

the field. in another article, “the rockets of goddard and oberth,” ia. gol’berg 

provided illustrated summaries of various oberth projects, including a “passenger 

33. i. n. tarasenko, “ dekabria—90 let so dnia rozhdeniia g. M. Kramarova (887 g.),” Iz istorii aviatsii 

i kosmonavtiki 33 (978):pp.73–76. 

34. Vecherniaia izvestiia issues for 25 June and 7 July 924. these articles are preserved in aran, r. 4, 

op.4,d.94,ll.5–6. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 525 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

rocket,” a “station in space,” and goddard’s alleged Moon rocket.35 other articles in 

the issue dealt with the biology of high-altitude flight, long-distance aviation, and 

“superguns.”the issue was illustrated with detailed artists’impressions of rockets and 

spaceships taken without attribution from the popular american science magazine 

Science and Invention.

36 

The Society’s Work 

having formed the core of the Society, the members now set out to define 

precisely what they wanted to do. on 20 June 924 the oiMS held its first official 

organizational meeting in the auditorium of the astronomical observatory of the 

Moscow region’s department of national education (Mono).37 about 200 

people filed into the relatively small hall adorned with portraits of newton, Kepler, 

herschel, Bredikhin, and other renowned scientists.the three main organizers of 

the event, leiteizen, Kaperskii, and rezunov, sat at the main podium. as the first 

order of business,all assembled unanimously elected two men as honorary members 

of the Society:tsiolkovskii, the founding father of Soviet rocketry, and perel’man, 

the most important publicizer of the cause of spaceflight. 

the meeting then led into a spirited discussion over the future goals of the 

Society. using the blueprint of the smaller student Section of a few months earlier, 

the oiMS drew up a six-point charter (ustav), the first point of which was to 

“work on the accomplishment of extra-atmospheric flight with the aid of a reactive 

vehicle.” Knowing that such an ambitious goal was out of the immediate reach of 

the Society, members emphasized more immediate activities like its predecessor 

Section,such as establishing a network of people all over the Soviet union interested 

in the science of interplanetary travel, collecting data from the West, and most 

important, disseminating “reliable information” to the “broad masses” by way of 

“lectures, reports, organizing libraries, exhibitions, publishing scientific and popular 

literature,both original and translated.”38 outreach and publicity were central to the 

Society’s mandate and crossed over international barriers: the members decreed that 

one of their main goals would be to contact goddard and oberth and translate into 

russian their respective 99 and 923 monographs.39 at the end of the meeting, 

35. a.	 Mikhailov, “Mezhplanetnye puteshestviia” and ia. gol’berg, “rakety goddarda i oberta” 

in Tekhnika i zhizn’ no. 2 (6 July 924): pp. 0–2 and 2–3. 

36. compare the illustrations on p.  and the inside cover of Tekhnika i zhizn’ issue with those 

from don home,“can We Visit the planets?” and raymond francis yates,“picture of the earth,” 

both in Science and Invention  (february 924): pp. 962, 977. 

37. “otchet ob organizatsionnom sobranii oiMS,”aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 96, l. . 

38. “ustav obshchestva mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii,”aran, r. 4, d. 96, ll. 2–3. 

39. V. chernov,“obshchestvo izucheniia mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii,” Iskra no. 8 (924): p. 35. 
526 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

all the members voted to elect a central body of the oiMS, the “presidium,” that 

included tsander, leiteizen (secretary), Kaperskii, rezunov, chernov,Veigelen, and 

Kramarov. for the time being, the Society’s home base would be the Mono 

astronomical observatory. 

Kramarov, who was chosen to chair the presidium, recalled 40 years later that 

no one had any illusions that they would soon be sending men into space. he 

remembered that “[i]n the work of the Society [they] all saw one more possibility 

to aid the Motherland, to aid in the building of socialism.” they would do this 

not by actually building rockets, but by bringing science to the masses.they were 

“convinced that the Society’s work would contribute to the preparation of cadres, 

who in the future would create the economic and scientific and technical base for 

solving the greatest problems.”40 like many utopians of the day, they justified their 

actions by establishing the most tenuous of connections with the exigencies of the 

new Soviet state.the technological fascination of the era provided a perfect bridge 

to connect utopian dreaming with real problems. 

the oiMS was officially divided into three thematic sections, which loosely 

reflected its activities: a scientific-research section to do experimental work; a 

literature and propaganda section to publish the work of the Society;and a scientificpopularization section to organize lectures at various institutions.4 

Because of limited funds, the Society produced little in terms of technical 

achievement—the goal of their first section. during its lifetime, there was no 

unanimous agreement on the clear distribution between performing “real” science 

and doing outreach at the oiMS.tsander, one who frequently let his enthusiasm 

exceed his reach, most passionately believed that the members should immediately 

move to scientific and engineering work. no one in the Society, however, had 

the slightest idea of how to cultivate practical work. in this vacuum, tsander 

took control. in a report to the Society’s “board of directors” (pravleniia) on July 

5, he asked rhetorically “how can we perform our investigations, what should 

we undertake first . . . ?” he laid out a four-point plan that would begin with 

“laboratory work” and end with the “construction of a large vehicle to lift men 

into the higher layers of the atmosphere and interplanetary space itself; we hope we 

will be able to shake hands on other planets.” his detailed laboratory plan included 

considerations on testing small rockets, researching the various dimensions of rocket 

design; designing and cooling fuel tanks and engines; ideas on propellant selection 

and metal selection for the body of the rocket; exhaust gas dynamics; designing 

40. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 50. 

4. “protokol zasedaniia pravleniia o-va iz mezhplan. soobshch. ot 23 iunia 924 g.,” aran, r. 

4, op. 4, d. 96, l. 38.the scientific research section included f.a.tsander, M. g. leiteizen, and M. 

a. rezunov; the popular science section included M. g. Serebrennikov and g. M. Kramarov; and 

the literature and propaganda section was represented by V. p. Kaperskii and V. i. chernov. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 527 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

ground systems to test rocket elements; and developing life support and electrical 

systems. he seemed to believe that the Society’s announced contest to develop a 

rocket “would advance [their] work greatly.”42 unfortunately, despite talk of closely 

coordinating theoretical, design, and experimental work, there is no evidence that 

the oiMS actually established a laboratory for such tasks. 

the second section’s ambitions also outstripped its material limitations. in 

May, leading member leiteizen invitedtsiolkovskii in a letter to contribute an article 

for a new monthly journal which they would call Raketa (The Rocket).their plan was 

to publish serious works on interplanetary travel and related fields such as astronomy, 

physics, chemistry, and aeronautics. Since they were unable to find any publishers 

interested in issuing such a journal, the members had planned to use money collected 

from both the lapirov-Skoblo talk and from book sales.tsiolkovskii offered the first 

part of his “life in the cosmic ether” for Raketa.

43 others, including tsander (“on 

a flight over other earthly Spheres”) and Vetchinkin, as well as oiMS member 

rezunov (“the dream of humanity”) wrote additional articles. Society member 

Mozharovskii prepared an evocative cover of a rocket flying over a planet with a 

background of galaxies and stars.44 in the end, no journal was published. Kramarov 

remembers that they were unable to“overcome many difficulties,especially insufficient 

money.”45 Members collectively sent a letter to a major newspaper, asking to have an 

announcement published, free of charge, explaining that the Society had books and 

information on space travel for sale at their home location at Bol’shaia lubianka street. 

the newspaper declined to publish the letter.46 

the oiMS was more successful disseminating ideas about space travel via 

lectures. at a meeting on June 30, the scientific-popularization section rejected 

section head Serebrennikov’s suggestions for public presentation topics on 

specialized topics, and instead voted to have talks that would appeal to a very general 

42. f. a. tsander, “organizatsionnyi doklad inzhenera f. a. tsandera on predpolagaemykh rabotakh 

nauchno-issledovatel’skoi sektsii obshchestva izucheniia mezhplanetnykh soobshchenii o reaktivnom 

dvitatele,” in F.A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediia, pp. 30–3. 

43. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 2 May 924, aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. 6–7; tsiolkovskii to 

leiteizen, 4 June 924,aran, f. 555, op. 3, d. 02a, l. 6. 

44. for the draft of tsander’s manuscript for Raketa, see f. a. tsander, “o pereletakh na drugie zemnye 

shary,”in F.A.Tsander:iz nauchnogo naslediia,pp.44–47.for two other articles for the journal,seeV.chernov, 

“raketa na lunu”and M.rezunov,“Mechta chelovechestva”inaran,r.4,op.4,d.94,ll.–7.the first 

issue would have featured  articles by tsiolkovskii,tsander, Kramarov,Vetchinkin, Mikhailov, rezunov, 

chernov,perel’man,Sharonov,and Kaperskii.See aran,r.4,op.4,d.96,ll.34–35. 

45. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 60. 

46. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 34. 
528 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

audience,with a focus on history and forecast.47 however,few in the Society beyond 

tsander knew anything about rocket engine design. in late July,tsander gave a talk 

to the oiMS’s scientific-popularization section, the first part of which dealt with 

the history of visions of space travel, and the second part on the mathematics of 

rocket velocities, complete with differential equations. By teaching the Society’s 

own members something of both the past and the possibilities of space exploration, 

tsander not only helped to disseminate ideas about the “correct” way to space, i.e., 

with liquid-propellant rockets, but also inculcated his young audience with the 

idea that three men, one Soviet (tsiolkovskii), one german-romanian (oberth), 

and one american (goddard), were the true founding fathers of the theory of 

spaceflight. he helped to establish a pantheon—a holy trinity—for a new scientific 

era that has endured to the current day.48 

Mania Over Goddard 

the Society not only maintained regular contact with tsiolkovskii through its 

existence,but also communicated with the reclusiveamerican rocket scientist robert 

goddard. Society records reveal that in response to an inquiry from leiteizen, the 

american wrote to the Society on 6august 924,expressing pleasure at the formation 

of the Society and indicating that he would be interested in cooperating with them.49 

at one of the major talks in Moscow in early october,tsander read goddard’s letter 

to the audience.50 goddard had also sent the Society a copy of one of his recent 

articles published in the journal Monthly Weather Review wherein he conjectured on 

the velocity required to send a rocket to the Moon; the Society quickly translated the 

article into russian for its members,thus providing one of the most influential sources 

of information about goddard’s work in the Soviet union for many years.5 

garbled press reports alleging that goddard was planning to launch a rocket 

to the Moon fostered a mini-mania among space enthusiasts all over the Soviet 

47. “protokol zasdeaniia pravleniia o.i.M.S. ot 30/Vi-924 g.,” aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 96, l. 39. 

Serebrennikov had suggested talks with such titles as “the rocket, its instruments, production, and 

Military application,”“comparing Steam, internal combustion, and reactive engines,”“flying to 

great altitudes,”“the atom and its energy,”“radioactive Matter,”“observational and theoretical 

astronomy,”“celestial Mechanics,” and “aerodynamics.” 

48. f. a. tsander, “doklad v nauchno-populiarnoi sektsii obshchestva izucheniia mezhplanetnykh 

soobshchenii o reaktivnom dvigatele,” in F.A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediia, pp. 32–34. 

49. goddard to leiteigen [leiteizen], 6 august 924,aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 95, l. 6. 

50. for tsander’s note on the reading, see f. a. tsander, “nekotorye materially k vystupleniiu na 

dispute,sostoiavshemsia v  Mgu ,4,5 oktiabria 924 g.,”in F.A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediia,p.50. 

5. goddard to oiMS, 6 august 924, aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 95, l. 6. for the sent version of 

the goddard article and its russian translation,see aran,r.4,op.4,d.94,l.44–45ob.the article 

was “the high-altitude rocket,” Monthly Weather Review 52 (february 924): pp. 05–06. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 529 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

union. original reports had suggested that goddard would launch a rocket to 

hit the Moon on 4 July 924. But in mid-June, the science reporter for Izvestiia 

noted that according to The New York Herald, goddard had postponed his launch 

to august 924.52 as summer turned to fall and there was no news, goddard fever 

reached such proportions that the city police once had to be called out in Moscow. 

responding to the notoriety over the alleged goddard shot, the Society asked a 

prominent leningrad-based astronomer,V.V. Sharonov, to speak to the public on 

the goddard project at the Main hall of the physics institute of the Moscow State 

university. the Society printed up artful posters under the giant headline “polet 

na drugie Miry” (“flight to other Worlds”) which were put up at several major 

intersections in Moscow. Sharonov gave two separate lectures, both on the first day 

of october 924:“the truth on the dispatching of professor goddard’s projectile 

to the Moon on 4 august 924” and “debates in the West in connection with 

Sending a projectile to the Moon.”at 8:00 p.m. on the night of the talk, so many 

people showed up that the Moscow horse militia had to be called out to control 

the crowds who were unable to enter the auditorium.all the tickets, for 30 kopecks 

each, had been sold out. due to popular demand, the Society asked Sharonov to 

repeat the talks—this time followed by public debates—on 4 and 5 october.53 

Society-organized debates, such as the one on goddard, were quite common 

in the fall of 924. Some were limited to the membership, such as the one on 

“cosmogony hypotheses” by member V. S. Berdichevskii on September 24. 

others were open to the public for a small fee—about 30 kopecks. usually, these 

public lectures had two components, a first talk by a distinguished guest and then 

a second talk and open debate (disput) on a controversial topic. for example, the 

Society held highly publicized lectures at the russian polytechnical Museum on 

3 october and 2 november, this time by Vladimir Vetchinkin, the Zhukovskii 

academy professor and aeronautics expert who had helped to establish the Society. 

his two-part lecture, beginning each night at 8:00 p.m., covered both the popular 

and mathematical aspects of interplanetary travel. later, the Society’s own Vladimir 

chernov gave a talk on “construction of rockets,” followed by debate on the 

best way to do so. those who paid the 75 kopecks to 3 rubles (depending on 

the seat) were privy to see not only Vetchinkin and chernov but also to hear 

spirited discussion among representatives from the Moscow Society of amateur 

astronomers,glavvozdukhflot (the civil air fleet),the odVf (a voluntary society for 

aviation enthusiasts), dobrolet (Soviet airline), and the journals Vestnik vozdushnogo 

52.“preslovutaia ‘raketa’,” Izvestiia VTsIK, 3 June 924: p. 5. 

53. for a reproduction of the poster for 4 october as well as tsander’s comment about the “horse 

militia,” see Korneev, “Zhizn’,” pp. 29–30. See also Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, pp. 54–55. 

tsander also gave talks on all three days. 
530 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

flota (Air Fleet Bulletin) and Samolet (Aircraft).54 their attendance was critical because 

it gave these often-bizarre proceedings the implicit stamp of official sanction; 

odVf and dobrolet were important elements in the Soviet government’s drive 

to inculcate a young post-revolution generation with up-to-date technology by 

equating aviation with modernity. if some in the press and elsewhere were tempted 

to derisively speak of the “youth who believe in such fables,” others took pause and 

infused the talk on spaceflight with a certain sense of gravitas. lectures elsewhere in 

924—at a number of aviation factories, at the Bauman higher technical School, 

and at the Shternberg astronomical institute—also expanded the sites of discussion. 

Society representatives, including Sharonov, prianishnikov, and the indefatigable 

tsander, took their message outside of Moscow in 924–925 to give talks in 

such disparate locales as Khar’kov (on 7 october), leningrad (on 7 november), 

riazan’ (in november),tula (in december), and Saratov (in January 925).55 the 

Society archives contain letters from enthusiasts in places as far away as Zlatoust and 

Khar’kov, expressing their wish to engage in joint work on interplanetary travel.56 

The Society and the Arts 

the Society produced no work of art or literature but,during its brief existence, 

its members actively discussed and helped to popularize space-themed artistic works 

of others.57 for example, their interest in space travel was catalyzed by a number of 

famous science-fiction novels such as aleksandr Bogdanov’s Krasnaia zvezda (Red 

Star, 908) and aleksei tolstoi’s Aelita (923).the former, the first major russian 

work in the genre of science fiction to deal explicitly with spaceflight, was written 

before the revolution but was widely read and discussed afterward.58 Bogdanov 

(a pseudonym for aleksandr Malinovskii) had had a much-publicized split with 

lenin, but his popularity in the 920s, which rested on Red Star and his other 

science-fiction novel Inzhener Menni (Engineer Menni), did not suffer. reprinted 

in 98 and 929, Red Star was not, of course, about spaceflight, but about an 

54. the Moscow Society of amateur astronomers (Mola) was represented by its chairman 

a. a. Mikhailov, dobrolet by engineer Kh. i. Slavernov, and Samolet by pilot S. i. pokrovskii. See 

the poster for the talk in Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 53. Glavvozdukhoflot stood for Main 

administration of the Workers’ and peasants’ red Military air fleet, i.e., the Soviet “air force.” 

odVf stood for Society of friends of the air fleet. 

55. aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 94, l. 76; tsander, F. A. Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediia, p. 6. for the texts of 

many of Sharonov’s lectures,see aran,r.4,op. 4,d.94,ll.77–9. 

56. aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 95, ll. 4–5. 

57. for a detailed description of the artistic dimensions of the “space fad,” see Siddiqi, “imagining 

the cosmos.” 

58. a.	 Bogdanov, Krasnaia zvezda: roman-utopiia (St. petersburg: tvorchestvo khudozhestvennoi 

pechati, 908). 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 53 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

idealized communist utopia on the planet Mars; some have seen Bogdanov’s tale as 

a warning on how socialism would take on distinctly totalitarian tones if sufficiently 

militarized.59 in constructing a future administered by a “benevolent technocracy,” 

Bogdanov articulated an explicitly technologically utopian vision that seemed to 

coincide much more with the prevailing feeling of the 920s than the pre–World 

War i period when he wrote the novel. 

after the revolution,when Red Star was especially popular among the reading 

public,the novel resonated deeply with the space enthusiast community who shared 

Bogdanov’s utopian notion that modern technology, especially space technology, 

could remake society in unimaginable (and positive) ways.at the height of the space 

fad in 924, Society for the Study of interplanetary communications secretary 

Moris leiteizen wrote to tsiolkovskii,announcing that they were in communication 

with Bogdanov;among other things,they were particularly interested in Bogdanov’s 

rather unusual proposal to use atomic power to propel his apocryphal spaceship.60 

the novel’s lasting relevance for space enthusiasts is underscored by a review of the 

book published in 934 by spaceflight popularizer nikolai rynin, who gushed 

(incorrectly) that Bogdanov was the first to predict the use of nuclear power for 

spaceflight.6 in general, space enthusiasts were less likely to explore Bogdanov’s 

philosophical arguments than his technological vision; both parties shared a view of 

technology as autonomous, positive, and liberating. 

the space enthusiast community had a similar take on the most famous Soviet 

science-fiction novel of the 920s,aleksei tolstoi’s Aelita:Zakat Marsa (Aelita:Sunset 

of Mars), first published in serialized form in 922–923.62 Much has been written 

about the novel, which is about an engineer’s and a soldier’s trip to Mars, the latter 

of whom incites a proletarian revolution in a bourgeois social setting. aelita is the 

queen of Mars who falls in love with the red army solder. Superficially, Aelita 

has all the elements of post-revolutionary utopian science fiction: a bourgeois 

enemy, a Marxist revolution, the most modern science and technology of space 

travel,adventure and romance borrowed from edgar rice Burroughs,and a utopian 

theme.yet, as halina Stephan has pointed out, the novel is also characterized by 

mysticism and by “themes borrowed from the theosophic and anthrosophic 

59. loren r. graham, “Bogdanov’s inner Message,” in Alexander Bogdanov: Red Star:The First Bolshevik 

Utopia, loren r. graham and richard Stites, ed. (Bloomington, in: indiana university press, 979), pp. 

24–253; Mark B.adams,“red Star:another look at aleksandr Bogdanov,” Slavic Review 48 (Spring 

989):pp.3–5.roy Medvedev was perhaps the most well-known historian to make this argument;See 

his Let History Judge:The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism (newyork:alfred Knopf, 972), p. 374. 

60. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 4 May 924,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. 2–3. 

6. n.a. rynin,“tekhnika i fantaziia,” V boi za tekhniku no. 8 (934): p. 22. 

62. the	 novel was originally published in three serialized parts in the journal Krasnaia nov’. in 

923, it was published as a standalone novel as a.tolstoi, Aelita (Zakat Marsa) (Moscow: giZ, 923). 
532 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

mythology.”63 the immediate reaction to the novel was rather negative since 

many of the more ideologically active Bol’sheviks viewed Aelita as a novel with an 

ambiguous pro-Soviet message—the revolution on Mars had, after all, failed.yet, 

the technologically-minded spaceflight enthusiasts found it inspiring:tolstoi’s novel 

was the first major Soviet novel of the period that used a rocket for interplanetary 

travel—a key aspect that attracted the attention of many. for example, the Society 

for the Study of interplanetary communications was so taken by tolstoi’s use of the 

rocket that they considered using the story to develop a film script, a project that 

was brought to fruition by others.64 

in terms of film, the seminal Aelita (924) and the lesser-known Kosmicheskii 

reis (Space Voyage, 935)—the two movies which bookended the Soviet space 

fad—were the only film projects that reached fruition, but they were not the only 

attempts to bring cosmic voyages to the screen. in 924, the Society informed 

tsiolkovskii that they had contacted proletkino, the official Soviet movie-making 

authority,with the idea to develop an original film script.65tsiolkovskii insisted that 

the Society write a script for his novella Beyond the Earth, but Society representative 

Moris leiteizen responded that they would rather not use that pre-revolutionary 

story: “We have decided to give our film some lively character: the action should 

take place in our day in Soviet russia.”66 the Society produced two scripts, both 

extraordinary not for their artistic merit but because they astutely mirrored the 

concerns of the Society. 

Member M.g.rezunov’s four-part script closely followed tolstoi’s Aelita with 

a Martian character named le (tolstoi’s hero was named los’), but added an odd 

twist near the end.the action is initiated when Stepan,a factory worker,reads about 

goddard’s plan to launch a rocket to the Moon on 4 July. gripped by the idea of 

spaceflight, Stepan devises a plan for a spaceship which, after presentation to the 

odVf (the voluntary aviation society), the Society decides to build. the central 

intrigue of the story involves a “foreign” spy who disrupts the construction work. 

the obligatory voyage to Mars is embellished by scenes of life in space, the hazards 

of meteorites, befriending a Martian communist, and ultimately a return trip in 

which Stepan, unable to live without le, decides to commit suicide by exiting his 

ship and becoming an earth satellite. Stepan, it seems, would rather be dead in space 

than alive on earth.67 

63. halina Stephan, “aleksei tolstoi’s Aelita and the inauguration of Soviet Science fiction,” CanadianAmerican Slavic Studies 8 nos. –2 (984): pp. 63–75. 

64. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 4 May 924,aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. 2–3. 

65. ibid. 

66. tsiolkovskii to oiMS, 4 May 924, aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 95, ll. 3–5; leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 2 

May 924,f.555,op.4,d.356,ll.6–7. 

67. “Kinotsenarii,”aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 94, ll. 8–9. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 533 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

Society chief grigorii Kramarov’s script was a brilliant synopsis of many of the 

tropes of the space fad.the action begins in the late tsarist era when the imperial 

government forbids any talk of space exploration.a russian revolutionary inventor, 

modeled on the great martyred “spaceship inventor” nikolai Kibal’chich, produces 

a plan for a rocket ship.68 he is arrested and executed, but not before bequeathing 

his plan to his young son,Viktor, who like his father, links the struggle against the 

autocracy with the struggle against gravity. With his plans and dreams in hand, 

the young revolutionary moves to the united States to fulfill his father’s dream of 

spaceflight.With the help of likeminded others in america,Viktor begins building 

the rocket ship when a rich banker discovers the project. the banker decides to 

build his own ship and asks Viktor to join his company.angry with Viktor’s refusal, 

the banker seizes Viktor and his model and takes them to his villa, where he employs 

a team of engineers to finish the design.the banker’s daughter,of course,falls in love 

with Viktor and helps him escape the depths of the banker’s capitalist hell.Viktor’s 

industrious american friends convince him that he must return to russia, for there 

is a revolution underway at home. the young man, disguised as an “engineerexpert,” manages to free his vaulted ship and fly the rocket-machine to russia 

where, upon landing, he is greeted with much fanfare to “start the victory over the 

cosmos!”69 here we find the patron saint (the Kibal’chich archetype), the equation 

of gravity with oppression, america as a place where technological dreams come 

true (especially if capitalists get out of the way), and the all-encompassing myth of 

Bol’shevik recognition of the value of spaceflight—all in one film. although the 

Society approached several major studios to finance the project,including proletkino 

and Mezhrabpom-rus’, they found no one to produce the movie.70 

even though, in 924, Soviet filmgoers were deprived of the pleasures of 

watching Stepan and Viktor on screen, they might have seen the most famous 

Soviet science fiction in the prewar era, Aelita, the movie version of tolstoi’s book 

about a voyage to Mars, directed by the famed pre-revolutionary russian director 

iakov protazanov.7 the silent movie,which was released officially on 25 September 

68. Kibal’chich was a member of the people’s Will terrorist organization which assassinated tsar 

aleksandr ii.Before his execution in 88,Kibal’chich devised a plan for a rocket-propelled vehicle 

that later Soviet historians absurdly claimed was an early design for a spaceship. 

69. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, pp. 62–63. 

70. “Vospominaniia Kaperskogo,”aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 97, l. 4. 

7. for protazanov, see M. aleinnikov, Iakov Protazanov: o tvorcheskom puti rezhisera, 2nd ed. (Moscow: 

iskusstvo, 957); M. aleinnikov, Iakov Protazanov (Moscow: iskusstvo, 96); ian christie and Julian 

graffy,eds.,Protazanov and the Continuity of Russian Cinema (london:British film institute,993);denise 

J.youngblood, “the return of the native:yakov protazanov and Soviet cinema,” in Inside the Film 

Factory: New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema, richard taylor and ian christie, eds. (london: 

routledge:99),pp.03–23. Mezhrabpom-Rus’ combined Mezhrabpom (internationalWorkers’aid),a 

Berlin-based relief organization and Rus’, a russian production company formed in 98. 
534 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

924 at the peak of the space fad, contributed enormously to the popularization of 

spaceflight in Soviet culture in the 920s. it is no coincidence that space enthusiasts 

such as the oiMS enjoyed their highest attendance ratings at talks soon after the 

movie was released. 

protazanov’s goal to produce an“impartial”work was not rewarded in like.despite 

widespread criticism of the film—many complained about the fact that the revolution on 

Mars had failed—it was an incredibly popular film;it did,after all,feature dramatic acting, 

an exotic planet, a glamorous princess, and a romantic story arc. grigorii Kramarov, the 

head of the oiMS, effusively remembered years later that “[t]he book and film played 

a significant role in strengthening interest towards interplanetary communications and 

contributed to the development of activities of our Society.”72 the movie made a deep 

impression on many young people.Vladimir chelomei, who was only 0 years old 

when the film came out,45 years later named his dream project—a huge space complex 

to send the first Soviet cosmonauts to Mars—aelita.73 

The Society’s End 

in the end, lack of financial and governmental support proved to be the 

Society’s undoing. Most russian sources note vaguely that the Society existed 

for “approximately a year” and then disbanded.74 in reality, the Society probably 

dissolved long before a year was over. Society secretary leiteizen wrote to 

tsiolkovskii on 6 december that the Society was “currently in a period of 

liquidation.” as an explanation, he noted, “[i]t’s not so terrible that we hurried, 

but we ran ahead [of ourselves by] several years, only to come back to the present.” 

he added in resignation,“i’m also inclined to think that such a noisy Society was 

excessive: we can still work splendidly for now without a Society. and [perhaps] 

even work better.”75 

Why did the Society fall apart so soon after the successful lecture series in 

october and november? the most important factor was lack of official state 

recognition. although the Society was sponsored by the Moscow Society of 

amateur astronomers (Mola) and the Military-Scientific Society (Vno) of 

the Zhukovskii academy, it was never an officially recognized organization. in late 

924, when the Society petitioned the administrative department of the Moscow 

72. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, pp. 9–20. 

73. asif a. Siddiqi, Challenge to Apollo: The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974 (Washington, 

dc:naSa,2000),pp.745–754. 

74. See for example, Komarov and tarasenko,“20 iiunia–50 let,” p. 8. 

75. leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, 6 december 924, aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. –ob. the 

former wrote his last letter to tsiolkovskii on 7 January 925. for the complete (eight) letters from 

leiteizen to tsiolkovskii, see aran, f. 555, op. 4, d. 356, ll. –5. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 535 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

city council to officially register the organization, the city council rejected the 

application on grounds that the Society had “insufficient scientific strength among 

its members.”76 probably the most fatal blow for the Society was that its patron, 

academy professor Vetchinkin, declined to formally become a member, thus 

depriving the group of legitimacy in the eyes of both the academy and the Soviet 

security services who had to sign off on any formal social organization in the Soviet 

union.77the following year,tsander confirmed that the lack of “scientific workers” 

among members of the “board of directors,” i.e., tsander, leiteizen, Kaperskii, 

rezunov, chernov, Serebrennikov, and Kramarov, was a source of dissension that 

contributed to the Society’s dissolution.78the members unsuccessfully appealed the 

city council decision and were dealt a second blow when, upon hearing of the 

city council’s decision, the Military-Scientific Society withdrew its support of the 

Society.79 Soon after, the enthusiasts abandoned their efforts. 

the Society’s members also had deal with less-committed members who were 

unable to sustain interest in the face of both financial insecurity and the possibility 

that space exploration was decades away. Society head Kramarov remembers that 

the most common question from the audience after each lecture was “how quickly 

would flight to the planets be accomplished?”80 tsander’s naïve and unbounded 

optimism that interplanetary travel was imminent raised the hopes of many who 

had no idea of the incredible technical difficulties.When it became clear that travel 

into space was years (if not decades) away, the “accidental members” dispersed 

quickly, leaving only a handful of the truly dedicated to pursue the cause.8 and 

eventually even the faithful had to come down to the ground;most,such as tsander, 

had little time to devote to activities that did not provide money for living.chernov, 

for example, remembered later that his job as a musician forced him to abandon 

the Society.82 Because the group was never officially recognized or registered by 

76. rezunov to Korneev, 9 february 96,aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 97, l. 9. 

77. ibid. 

78. tsander noted in an unpublished manuscript from august 925 that “[t]he shortage of time 

which i had free and the comparatively small number of scientific workers in the board of directors 

is the reason why, after the Society had been approved by a number of others, one last person did 

not approve it . . .” See f.a.tsander,“Materialy k knige ‘polety na drugie planety i na lunu’,” in F. 

A.Tsander: iz nauchnogo naslediia, p. 58. 

79. “Vospominaniia Kaperskogo,”aran, r. 4, op. 4, d. 97, ll. 43–44. 

80. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, p. 56. 

8. russian historians raushenbakh and Sokol’skii note that “the Society absorbed many 

accidental members since most of those [who] joined the Society in 924 never contributed to 

the development of rocketry in any way.” B.V. rauschenbach and V. n. Sokolsky,“the first Soviet 

Space flight organisations,” 49th international astronautical congress, 28 September–2 october 

998, Melbourne,australia. 

82. Kramarov, Na zare kosmonavtiki, pp. 5–52. 
536 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

any state authority, it never received any funds from the state and maintained its 

activities by donations or from ticket imbursements. and once the members were 

unable to register the Society with official authorities, the two major institutions 

that sponsored the Society, the Mola and theVno, cut off their modest support. 

few members of the Society for the Study of interplanetary communications 

went on to participate in the practical development of rocketry funded by the Soviet 

government in the 930s.the notable exception was fridrikh tsander, who in 93 

founded the group for the Study of reactive Motion (gird), the semi-amateur 

team that launched the first Soviet liquid-propellant rockets in 933.tsander served 

as a crucial link between the Society and the most important personality of the early 

Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev.tsander’s unexpected death in 933 from poor 

health was a deep blow to Korolev. in the heady days after the launch of Sputnik in 

957, Korolev searched outtsander’s grave to set up a special memorial in his name. 

others from the 924 Society for the Study of interplanetary communications 

fared worse, especially the ones who fell at the height of the Stalinist great terror 

in the late 930s. on 6 april 939, the nKVd (the Soviet security services) shot 

former Society secretary Morris leiteizen—then 42 years old—because he was the 

son of an old Bol’shevik. Mikhail lapirov-Skoblo, one of the earliest advocates for 

spaceflight in the 920s and the man who gave the first rousing lecture to recruit 

members for the Society in 924, also fell to the purges.after a very distinguished 

career as a vocal spokesperson for the Soviet scientific and technical intelligentsia, 

he was arrested in 937, sentenced in 94, and died in confinement in 947 while 

working at a factory.83 

Conclusions 

the Society for the Study of interplanetary communications was the world’s 

first organization dedicated to the study of spaceflight. Besides its claim to priority in 

the history of space exploration, the organization left behind two important legacies. 

first,the Society—with the help of enthusiastic Soviet media—wrenched space 

travel from the discourse of fantasy and relocated it into the language of science 

and technology. prior to the 920s, in the public imagination space exploration 

was considered in the same breath as mythology, speculation, and mysticism. in the 

920s, by linking spaceflight with the sciences (mathematics, chemistry, metallurgy, 

etc.) and suggesting that space travel was possible by means familiar to most people 

(such as rockets), the spaceflight advocacy community brought such ideas into the 

realm of reasonable scientific prognostication. 

83. “rasstrely	 v Moskve-g,” http://mos.memo.ru/shot-13.htm (accessed 22 January 2007); Medvedev, 

Let History Judge, 444; “lapirov-Skoblo Mikhail iakovlevich,” in Repressirovannoe ostekhbiuro, e. n. 

Shoshkov,ed.(St. petersburg:nits Memorial,995),p.37. 
Making Spaceflight Modern: A Cultural History 537 

of the World’s First Space Advocacy Group 

Second,by underscoring the scientific and technological bases of cosmic travel, 

the community equated spaceflight with “being modern.” Space advocates fit their 

conception of space travel firmly within the Bol’shevik cause of remaking russia 

into a modern, technologically capable nation.after the 920s, spaceflight was, like 

aviation,a manifestation of the self-reflexive notion of twentieth-century modernity. 

the equation of spaceflight with science and modernity meant that space travel was 

now connected not only with the past—such as the russian cosmist philosophy 

which was committed to reanimating the dead by exploring space—but also with 

the future.84 Mystical ideas like cosmism were rare among space enthusiasts of the 

societies and exhibitions of the 920s,which favored a fetishistic view of technology 

in general and space travel in particular.this fetishism, bordering on messianism, is 

profoundly evident in the works of the Society—particularly in the language that 

they used, the goals that they set out to accomplish, and the way in which they saw 

technology as a panacea for many if not all social ills.Writing of the Soviet union 

in the 920s,anthony J.Vanchu notes that “[W]hile science and technology had the 

power to demystify religion and magic, they themselves came to be perceived as the 

locus of magical or occult powers that could transform the material world.”85 this 

kind of stance toward space travel is not so very different from the visions of space 

enthusiasts in entirely different social contexts, such as in the united States; many 

american activists also adopted an almost evangelical view of human migration from 

earth into outer space—one that was not only inevitable but essential for the survival 

of the species.86 the Society for the Study of interplanetary communication was 

perhaps the first organized attempt to articulate this singular vision of space travel 

which has continued to play an important role in those who believe—misguidedly 

or not—that through the power of science and technology, humankind will attain 

its rightful destiny in the deeper reaches of the cosmos. 

84. for cosmism, see Siddiqi,“imagining the cosmos.” 

85. anthony J. Vanchu, “technology	 as esoteric cosmology in early Soviet literature,” in The 

Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture, ed. Bernice glatzer rosenthal (ithaca, ny: cornell university 

press, 997), pp. 205–206. 

86. roger 	 d. launius, “perfect Worlds, perfect Societies: the persistent goal of utopia in 

human Spaceflight,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 56 (2003): pp. 338–349. 
538 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 539

chapter 28 

C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s 

The LisTeners 

de Witt douglas Kilgore 

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another. 

—Plato, The Republic, 529 

ver the past four decades the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti) has otaken a small but significant place in american culture.Walter Sullivan, frank 

drake, and david grinspoon, among many others, have written popular accounts of 

the science. Motion pictures such as Contact (997) and Species (995) have visualized 

the field with the tools available to filmmakers.the Seti institute’s radio program Are 

We Alone, hosted by astronomer Seth Shostak, makes the science a part of the heavily 

mediated environment of popular entertainment.there is also the small,robust field of 

historical and critical scholarship.it is in fiction,however,that Seti has found its most 

effective expression for general audiences.this medium provides literary arguments 

for why the science matters in contemporary life. i argue that it is fiction about Seti 

that helps us model the societal implications of extraterrestrial contact. 

fiction writers such as James gunn and writer-scientists such as carl Sagan have 

produced a literary subgenre that i call the ceti (communication with extraterrestrial 

intelligence) novel.2 these writers take the science seriously and share an interest in 

. plato, The Republic (new york:Vintage Books, 99), p. 274. 

2. for the purpose of distinguishing it from the science (Seti),i use for the fiction the original acronym 

for the project: ceti or communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. John Billingham recalls 

that the change in nomenclature was inspired by the establishment of the science as a naSa project 

in the early 970s. david W. Swift, SETI Pioneers: Scientists Talk about Their Search for Extraterrestrial 

Intelligence (tucson,aZ: university of arizona press, 990), pp. 258–259. 
540 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

both representing the project and its possible social and political effects.3they are also 

committed to dramatizing the early, founding goal of Seti—communication with 

extraterrestrial civilizations.this leads them to consider ideas that are always revisited 

in debate around the project. could we communicate with an intelligent species that 

is not human?What effect would such an exchange have on us? 

these questions create challenges of both form and content for the ceti 

novelist.how might these issues and the debates they inspire be presented to general 

readers, engaging the emotions as well as the intellect? one solution is the genre’s 

focus on the future that a Seti contact could produce; the ceti novel always takes 

place in a recognizable present and that future is always just around the corner. it 

is the closeness of that fictional present to our world that makes ceti narratives 

credible,and it is a futurism that helps the writer emphasize the science’s connection 

to contemporary life. it is through this link that the ceti novelist hopes to sustain 

the reader’s interest in Seti as necessary to any future we might create. 

the central premise of a ceti narrative is that the search for an artificial signal 

from another world is successful.What follows is a fruitful exchange of scientific and 

cultural ideas.Whatever arguments are used to sustain this presumption, it is liberal 

hope that inspires this hypothesis. discovering the knowledge we need to make 

manageable the social and political problems of our world is the foundation of that 

hope.it forecasts a terrestrial future in which humanity survives its internal divisions 

and its Malthusian consumption of earth’s resources.in other words,communication 

with extraterrestrial others would prompt us to communicate with each other.We 

could then work together to make the world more livable and sustainable. thus, 

human civilization would break out of the historical bind in which it finds itself. 

Steven dick argues that “perhaps the classic expression” of Seti in fiction is 

James gunn’s 972 novel, The Listeners.

4 this book is my test case for the futurist 

concerns i have outlined—my model for the ceti novel as a distinct literary genre. 

although other works in fiction and nonfiction preceded it, gunn’s achievement 

is to create a narrative that speaks to prevailing social concerns while introducing 

the reader to this new science. here Seti is not merely a convenient backdrop for 

the agony of middle-class lives; it is the raison d’être of those lives.this emotional 

as well as intellectual centrality helps clarify the feeling of social mission the writer 

finds in the science. 

3. Writers such as don delillo and Stanislaw lem have been interested in the science. however, 

they engage it both as a demonstration of the limits of science and of our ability to communicate 

through language.this is very different from the ideology and spirit encoded in the ceti novel as 

a narrative form of scientific representation. don delillo, Ratner’s Star (new york:Vintage Books, 

989 [976]) and Stanislaw lem, His Master’s Voice (evanston, il: northwestern university press, 

999 [983]). 

4. Steven J. dick, The Biological Universe:The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits 

of Science (cambridge, u.K.: cambridge university press, 996), p. 260. 
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 54 

in the following paragraphs i will explore gunn’s solution to the problem of 

introducing a new science to nonspecialist audiences. as i present it here, gunn 

follows two distinct but conjoined strategies: he creates a form that provides the 

historical and philosophical background against which to view Seti, and he tells a 

story in which difficult social debates are resolved by lessons learned from science. 

the novelist’s goal is to strike a balance between the didactic demands of his subject 

and familiar fictional conventions. thus, i argue, gunn makes a fiction in which 

Seti is part of our ordinary culture—the herald of an extraordinary future. 

On Form 

gunn’s The Listeners may be viewed as an experimental novel within the 

context of genre practice during its composition. it was written serially, as a series 

of short stories for Galaxy Magazine and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 

from 968 to 972.Marketed and published as general fiction,not science fiction,in 

972, the novel has been considered a “fix-up,” defined by clute and nicholls as “a 

book composed of previously written stories which have been cemented together.”5 

the cement, in this case, is what gunn calls “computer runs,” interchapters that 

provide a historical and philosophical overview of Seti and the future posited by 

the novel.the usual practice with fix-ups, such as ray Bradbury’s 95 collection 

The Illustrated Man, is to provide fictive interchapters linking together stories that 

otherwise have no compositional relation to one another. gunn’s strategy is more 

like that used by John Steinbeck in his 939 novel The Grapes of Wrath; it offers 

the reader a social and political context within which to understand the narrative 

portions of the work. 

The Listeners presents Seti as a humanistic science, a research agenda that 

boldly addresses our social and philosophical concerns through the question of 

whether sentient life exists elsewhere. gunn’s formal strategy is to create a narrative 

in which science-based exposition and debate are entangled with conflicts around 

the politics of race, between religion and science, between a middle-class status quo 

and a utopian future, and around the private misunderstandings of husbands and 

wives, fathers and sons. in this narrative context, gunn’s computer runs present 

three lines of argument:history and futurist speculation,inspirational epigraphs from 

literature, and statements from Seti pioneers. these arguments create a dialectic 

that defines the science as a movement that can change the course of individual and 

collective lives. 

through historical reconstruction and speculation, gunn gives us a select 

history of science. We learn that Seti was born when cocconi and Morrison 

discussed the feasibility of sending interstellar messages during work on “gamma 

5. John clute and peter nicholls, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (london: orbit, 993), p. xxxiii. 
542 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

ray production from the crab nebula.”6 the Big Bang and inflationary universe 

theories are presented, in free verse.7 the course of future progress in cryonics, 

genetics, psychiatry, and weather control is indicated.advances in technology such 

as a milk-making machine (heralded as a part of recycling waste and not as a way 

to eliminate hunger), computer-generated art, and the first Mars landing are cited. 

We are given snippets foretelling the future of media technology from holovision to 

the responsive environment (“respen”) to a full-spectrum sensorium (“V-a-f-S”),a 

scenario that anticipates the computer-based concept of virtual reality. lists of stars, 

galaxies, and great astronomers round out gunn’s sketch of knowledge acquisition 

and engineering prowess.the novel’s listening project is presented as a significant 

development in this hymn of science and invention. 

in mid-twentieth-century america, a common concern was that social and 

political progress did not keep pace with advances in science and technology. 

gunn’s computer runs offer a future in which society and politics keep pace with 

technoscience.Wealth is more equitably distributed,arabs and israelis work together, 

the prison–industrial complex fades into irrelevance, the 4-day week and 3-week 

vacations become standard, and an increase of leisure means that the amateur is 

reconstituted as a respected and productive social position. gunn anchors this 

speculation in a bulletin on the growth of national and global wealth: 

the [united States Bureau of economics] attributes the 

solution of many of the problems that troubled the world a half 

century ago to the dramatic growth in the gross World product 

through automation, fusion power, greater use of computers 

and cybernation, and new educational methods.8 

here the link between social and technological progress is completed by 

economic development.technoscientific progress sponsors wealth creation, which 

in turn empowers and sustains the resolution of social and political problems. given 

current conditions, this scenario may be optimistic, but is powerful nonetheless 

because of both the utopian desire it encodes and its resonance with familiar hopes 

in a culture resistant to socialist alternatives. it is the accumulation of wealth under 

an efficient,global capitalism guided by a social democratic liberalism that empowers 

and sustains gunn’s vision of social and technological progress.9 

6. James gunn, The Listeners (dallas,tX: BenBella Books, 2004 [972]), pp. 26–27. 

7. ibid., pp. 73–74. 

8. ibid., p. 4. 

9. david potter’s landmark study, People of Plenty, states this position in a more formal context. potter 

argues that a “culture of abundance” is the thing that explains american character and gives the 

nation’s people a unique place in history.the united States will survive if it can avoid the pitfalls 

of scarcity. david M. potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (chicago: 

university of chicago press, 958). 
0. Kim Stanley robinson, Red Mars (new york: Spectra/Bantam Books, 993), Green Mars


(new york: Spectra/Bantam Books, 994), Blue Mars (new york: Spectra/Bantam Books, 997).


C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 543 

the bottom line here is that the world is reformed, socially and politically. 

however, it is important to note that gunn’s future describes liberal reform within 

political and economic institutions that do not change. in the near term, the world 

does not become unrecognizable from a mid-twentieth-century capitalist perspective, 

as it does in Kim Stanley robinson’s post-Marxist Mars Trilogy.

0 the hope is that the 

united States of the twentieth century will inherit any extraterrestrial knowledge, 

surviving its own problems and serving as a model for the rest of the world. 

in gunn’s interchapters the mixture of history with futurist speculation 

deploys a historiographic vocabulary familiar in science fiction. By the mid­

960s the gesture is arguably a cliché. gunn’s desire to teach, however, leads him 

to directly include the results of his research into the early history of Seti. the 

computer runs are also an archive of the scientific commentary that inspires the 

narrative. it is here that we are introduced to first generation of c/Seti thought. 

extracts from the seminal paper by giuseppe cocconi and philip Morrison, 

cocconi’s letter to Bernard lovell, estimates of the likelihood of living planets and 

intelligent species by Sebastian Von hoerner, and carl Sagan’s, frank drake’s, and 

ronald Bracewell’s early statements on the kinds of searches possible and the time 

scales involved are imbricated with fictive explication and history. gunn combines 

scientific propositions with belletristic rumination from speculative essays by eiseley, 

Shapley, and dyson. here we have scientists functioning as writers—intellectuals 

who can speak authoritatively about why thinking about sentient extraterrestrials is 

important to our sense of self and destiny.their words are carefully dated, allowing 

us to locate utterances from the late 950s through the 960s. gunn’s strategy here 

is to support and authorize his future history with direct reference to the thought 

of those scientists responsible for both creating Seti and promoting the science in 

print for nonspecialist audiences. 

What gunn has made is a model for integrating fiction and science writing. 

coupled with the emotional resonances produced in the novel’s fictional chapters, 

science (particularly new science) is made compelling or, at least, interesting for 

general audiences. the goal here is to gain cultural credibility for Seti, building 

a case that makes it look like more than science fiction.2 in the computer runs, 

it is gunn’s references to literature that supply the cultural capital necessary for 

. isaac asimov’s foundation trilogy (942–950), a. e. van Vogt’s The Voyage of the Space Beagle (950),


and robert heinlein’s future history stories (939–94,945–950) are paradigmatic in this regard. 

2. for science, especially science that wrestles with pre-existing cultural tropes such as the idea 

of extraterrestrial life, science fiction is a problem as well as an invaluable resource. Sensitivity about 

the standing of science in relation to science fiction is indicated by giuseppe cocconi’s reluctant 

admission to Bernard lovell that the notion of life and intelligence on other planets might,“at first 

sight [look] like science fiction.” he goes on to argue that it is not (gunn, p. 28). 
544 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

that credibility. British and american authors Walt Whitman,alice Meynell, gerard 

Manley hopkins,and edward lear link the reader to the thread of fanciful or religious 

speculation that has always been a part of Western (english-language) literature. 

Within this tradition gunn also takes care to include h. g.Wells, Murray leinster, 

a. e. van Vogt, and theodore Sturgeon—authors who have helped formulate the 

modern conception of extraterrestrial sentients and have had powerful influence on 

how to present narratives of human–alien contact. 

for analytical purposes i have split apart these literary (and nonfictional) 

threads.gunn’s strategy,however,is to weave them together. he juxtaposes religious 

texts (the Judeo-christian Bible, the hindu rig Veda) with modern literature with 

history of science with science writing, speculative essays, futurist scenarios, and 

government reports. differences and historical context are indicated by changes in 

typography and dated attribution. the effect is a cultural babble that mirrors the 

cacophony of radio voices depicted in his fiction. in this orchestration no particular 

utterance is given prestige or priority above another;each saying builds on and offers 

support to the next.as gunn’s science heroes must decode the Message sent by the 

capellans, so the reader is to decipher the cultural puzzle of the interchapters. 

the book’s final chapter,“the computer,” integrates fiction, nonfiction, and 

literary and science history. having taught us how to read c/Seti as science and 

culture in the previous chapters and computer runs, gunn hopes that we are ready 

to interpret the Message of the novel and to integrate it into our own sense of how 

the world does and will work.the effect of his stylistic formula is to indicate that 

there is more at stake here than either disinterested curiosity or personal salvation. 

nothing less than the future of the human race is at issue. however melodramatic 

this might sound, gunn’s effort provides insight into the mid-twentieth-century 

anxieties and hopes that informed the creation and reception of Seti science. 

On CETI and Race 

during the composition of The Listeners in the late 960s and early 970s, a 

great deal of criticism was leveled at the u.S. space program, for example, cultural 

critic lewis Mumford’s contemporaneous judgment that spaceflight dreams are 

“infantile fantasies.”3 But as i have noted elsewhere,“[t]he political voice that served 

as the iconic focus of liberal/left dissent from the space vision and its economics 

came from the nation’s black community.”4 the Southern christian leadership 

conference, for example, organized a protest march during the apollo  launch 

(on 6 July 969) that questioned the expense and the societal importance of the 

3. Stewart Brand, ed., Space Colonies (San francisco:Waller press/penguin, 977), p. 34. 

4. deWitt douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism (philadelphia:university of pennsylvania press,2004),p.98.
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 545 

venture.5 astrofuturists, such as science fiction writer Ben Bova, felt it necessary to 

directly confront african american criticism, offering the exploration of space as a 

solution to the racial conflicts of the time.6 gerard o’neill notes in his 978 book, 

The High Frontier,that the ability of science to address contemporary social problems 

was also in question on university campuses.7 Working as a public relations officer 

at the university of Kansas at that time, James gunn was well aware of the problem. 

indeed, in his preface to the 2004 edition of the novel he tells us that it was his job 

“to explain student unrest to the various university publics.”8 

it is in The Listeners that gunn makes his most compelling contribution to 

that social and political debate. in the chapter “andrew White,” the author offers a 

description of how the discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization might affect the 

united States. however, how race is seen (as a social and political problem) must 

be resolved before the future that follows unfolds. in this novel the foundation 

of political hope is Seti’s potential for changing or eliminating race’s historical 

standing as an ineradicable mark of human difference. 

gunn draws our attention to race by filtering the reader’s view of c/Seti 

through the thoughts of andrew White, the african american president of gunn’s 

near-future united States.this is a critical and perhaps bold move inspired by the 

racial tensions of the 960s and early 970s. here gunn conducts a literary thought 

experiment that highlights problems while setting the stage for the solution. the 

hope that social and political advance will move in company with progress in 

science is fundamental here. political progress is signaled by the deliberations of an 

african american occupant of the oval office; scientific progress is represented 

by the listening project’s success in discovering an extraterrestrial message. gunn 

creates this character not to examine political racism in high office (as irving Wallace 

did in his near-contemporary novel, The Man [964]), but to raise at least three 

pertinent questions:What would it mean to speak for humanity to an extraterrestrial 

civilization? Who could authorize such a communication and to what end? and, is 

civilized communication truly possible between different races,cultures,civilizations 

5. courtney g. Brooks, James M. grimwood, and loyd S. Swenson, Chariots for Apollo: A 

History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft, naSa history Series, 979, http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4205/ 

ch14-2.html#source2 (accessed 4 august 2006). 

6. Ben Bova, The High Road (new york: pocket Books, 983). 

7. Kilgore, pp. 57–59. 

8. gunn, p. xvii. 
546 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

or generations? 9 What binds these issues together in The Listeners is the kind of 

social future we hope for and how the past informs it. 

gunn’s president White must decide whether the novel’s ceti project may 

share news that a message has arrived from a planet orbiting the double star capella 

and send a reply.this issue is complicated by an argument with his son over the 

meaning and relevance of race now and in the future.What is at stake is whether the 

president can accept the capellan Message as a furtherance of the political evolution 

that he represents. 

as he sets upWhite’s view of c/Seti,gunn is careful to establish the president’s 

authority as holder of the nation’s highest office.We first seeWhite in the oval office 

and our attention is drawn to its size: 

the office was big . . . . across the broad blue, deep-piled carpet 

with the woven seal in the middle to the carved white door by 

which visitors entered was a good twenty yards—that was bigger 

than the entire flat in which he had been born . . . .20 

this scene setting makes the oval office andrew White’s natural environment, 

a move underscored by the reference to humble beginnings. White’s log cabin 

story has him escaping from urban poverty, but otherwise cleaves to this familiar 

aspect of american political hope: that the small, the weak, and the disenfranchised 

can achieve greatness in this country. and, as befits a storybook president who is 

entrusted with national destiny, gunn makes his chief executive larger than life: 

he stretched his shoulders and felt the long, flat muscles rippling 

under the layer of fat too many chicken dinners had put there,and he 

knew he was a big man, an imposing president, six-feet-six from the 

soles of his feet to the top of his close-cropped hair, and the physical 

equal of any of them, of anyone who came through that door.2 

gunn’s goal here is to write a president whose authority we do not question. 

his race is important to the narrative but is not represented as a problem that 

undermines his effectiveness or longevity in office. 

president White’s race also signals that he represents a future in which social 

change is possible. the writer’s strategy of linking his decision-making to an 

9. andrew White, gunn’s african american president, is not a unique fictional invention; several 

other popular writers responded to the“race problem”of the 960s by mounting fictional speculations 

on a black presidency.irvingWallace’s early 960s best seller, The Man,predates gunn’s story by several 

years. a film based on book, starring James earl Jones as the first african american president, was 

released in 972.gunn’s short story,“andrewWhite,”was published that year in the January-february 

issue of Galaxy Magazine. gunn has stated, however, that he has not read the Wallace book. he is, 

however, familiar with the movie (private conversation with author, 7 July 2007).the connection, 

therefore, has more to do with contemporary social thinking rather than a specific influence. 

20. gunn, p. 0. 

2. ibid. 
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 547 

historical and iconic president, theodore roosevelt, underscores this. gunn has 

White remember roosevelt’s reputation for making up “his mind somewhere in 

the region of his hips.”22 Whatever we remember about roosevelt’s racial beliefs 

connecting White to this popular historical figure,and by association to the relatives 

who followed him as president and first lady, indicates how we are to view White 

as an author of progressive social reform.23 in this narrative he is authorized as a 

man, as a father, as president, and as the representative of an historically aggrieved 

population who can open the way for a radical change in human relations. 

the dynamic interchange gunn stages between Seti and the personal and 

political investments of his cast allow him to demonstrate how science might solve race 

as a social problem. for andrew White, who was “wound up in the ghetto” and who 

used the White house to “right the ancient wrongs,” race and racism are fundamental 

aspects of human character. as a career politician, he understands “that there were 

differences between men and these differences inevitably affected how they felt about 

each other,about themselves.”these differences,coupled with the human capacity for,as 

the president argues elsewhere,“malice and greed . ..the persistent search for advantage” 

make him pessimistic about the state of the future he is helping to create.24 

on the other hand, the president’s son, John White, is convinced that the past 

his father remembers “is irrelevant” to the world in which he lives. if his father 

argues that the battle for civil rights is not finished, John believes that it is. impatient 

with his father’s account of past troubles, John argues that “[B]eing human is 

being able to do something different.” it is at this point that gunn has his fictional 

president reflect, “The boy was an alien, but somehow he had to communicate.”25 here 

gunn emphasizes the metaphorical link between speculation about extraterrestrials 

and the “aliens” we live with here on earth. that connection illuminates Seti’s 

potential for changing how we see contemporary social problems. in The Listeners, 

resolving this generational conflict over race is a matter for science, not politics. 

in this novel there is no question that discovery of an extraterrestrial civilization 

will have tremendous impact on our world. considering the prospect, president 

White comes to the conclusion that it is “bad news.” he tells robert Macdonald, 

the humanist and engineer who directs the listening project, that an alien message 

could sow “the dragon’s teeth of dissension and strife which may well destroy this 

country.” his concern is that public knowledge of the capellan Message would 

disrupt the domestic tranquility necessary for reform:“We have solved many of the 

problems that threatened to tear this nation apart at the time the project was started 

and trouble will keep us from solving the others.We need, calm, serenity . . . ,” not 

22. ibid., p. 04. 

23. for 	more on theodore roosevelt’s complex understanding of race, see thomas g. dyer, 

Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton rouge, la: louisiana State university press, 980). 

24. gunn, pp. 0, 4, 26. 

25. ibid., pp. 05, 0. 
548 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

change that is “unmanageable.”26 director Macdonald’s answer to these concerns is 

that the act of communication, particularly scientific and cultural communication, 

is our guarantee that social progress would be fostered and not hindered should 

Seti achieve its aims. gunn has his scientific humanist visionary list at least three 

arguments in favor of this position: () if the president allows scientists to release 

the Message and their interpretation of it, then public understanding will follow; 

(2) communication is a civilized act that precludes violent intent by sender or 

receiver; and (3) once the public learns the facts, it will realize that the benefits 

of communication outweigh the risks.27 these arguments outline a science-based 

hope. it is a brief that embraces the changes that would follow the discovery of an 

advanced extraterrestrial civilization. 

The Listeners is a book written in praise of science as an activity that fosters 

communication between people who differ by reason of border or birth. Seti is 

presented as an inquiry that ennobles the human species and guarantees its future. 

this is a minority opinion in a popular culture in which thrilling horror-from-thestars stories function as an entertaining commonsense. Species (995), for example, is 

a film that directly mocks Seti (with what purports to be footage of astronomers 

sending the 974 arecibo message) as the folly of naïve scientists. the message 

received by the film’s protagonists produces a dangerous white-black-asian hybrid, 

a monstrous miscegenation that preys on “normal” humans. communication with 

an extraterrestrial civilization is dangerous and sets up an interspecies conflict 

(rendered in visual terms as traditionally racial) that could lead to the extinction 

of terrestrial intelligence. this is “the boogeyman from the stars” cliché at which 

gunn’s project director casts an indulgent smile.28 if popular narratives insist that 

communication between different races is impossible, then narratives inspired by 

science (Seti science, at least) argues that communication is possible and necessary 

for our survival. in american cultural discourse this position allows Seti to stand 

out as a science that seeks new discoveries; it does so in part because it runs counter 

to popular narratives around race and the fears they express. 

this takes us to the hope that gunn engages through the thematics of race 

and communication: the progress of human civilization and its long-term survival. 

if human beings can talk to one another, we may also engage in conversations with 

beings from other worlds; if human civilization can mature, it could join what 

ronald Bracewell calls the “galactic club.”29 if we accept these propositions, then 

we find ourselves considering a “universal” future—an era in which we create an 

ethical reality that transcends what edward Said calls “the easy certainties provided us 

26. ibid., pp. 5, 07, 22, 32. 

27. ibid., pp. 24, 25. 

28. ibid., p. 25. 

29. ronald n. Bracewell, The Galactic Club: Intelligent Life in Outer Space (Stanford, ca: Stanford 

alumni association, 974). 
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 549 

by our background, language, nationality, which so often shield us from the reality of 

others.”30 thus,the narrative resolution of conflict between races and generations in The 

Listeners provides a social and political justification for Seti: that through this science 

we may discover the material grounds for a universal language,an episteme that does not 

assume incommunicability of experience across differences of culture and biology. 

gunn underscores this goal by having his president perceive a truth and give up his 

son.the truth comes to him graphically in the reply that Macdonald would like to send 

to the capellans.it is a simple pictogram of dots and spaces,a message that contains some 

basic biological and astronomical information.presidentWhite laughs when he sees it: 

Figure 28.1—Listening Project Message (James Gunn, The Listeners [1972]). 

“i’m sorry . . . i wasn’t laughing at the answer. i don’t begin to 

understand half of what’s here. But that’s obviously a father and 

a mother and a son—a child—and the capellans would have no 

way of knowing whether they were white or black.”3 

if the president’s fear is that any dialogue with the capellans will only serve to 

exacerbate our parochialism, then Macdonald’s answer seems to set that aside.at this 

level of communication, human differences are trumped by the reproductive biology 

that sustains us.the biological insight that humanity is a single species shapes White’s 

decision to let the project go forward. from this point, the history foretold by The 

Listeners takes a hopeful turn. 

30. edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (new york: Vintage, 

996), p. xiv. 

3. gunn, p. 35. 
550 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Because andrew White is an african american president, his decision is doubly 

authoritative in answering 960s questions about science’s relevance to social problems. 

What is at stake here is not only the acceptance of Seti by a politically active and critical 

african american community, but also whether the project is open to participation by 

its members. gunn answers this last question by having JohnWhite, the president’s son, 

become a contributing member of the listening project.after John makes an important 

breakthrough toward deciphering the capellan Message, the president allows him to 

join the project. John eventually succeeds Macdonald as listening project director.32 

in the spare, economical world of gunn’s fiction, the symbolic import of this 

is obvious. it underscores the message that c/Seti is (or should be) the work of a 

scientific community that represents all of humanity. it is through this openness that 

gunn makes his most direct plea for science as a social as well as an intellectual good. 

gunn has Macdonald state,“the fraternity of science is closer than the fraternity of 

birthplace or of language.”33 By becoming part of this fraternity,JohnWhite represents 

the hope for the future that gunn sees in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. 

it is possible to dismiss the position that gunn articulates, in championing 

Seti as “nothing more . . . than salvation from the stars,” following george Basalla’s 

critique in Civilized Life in the Universe (2006).34 What Basalla fears, perhaps, is 

that Seti, as an ongoing public discourse, amounts to a ceding of scientific and 

political ground to unreasoning popular culture.the literary experiment that gunn 

conducts, however, allows us to mount a more subtle analysis. the novel’s hopes 

for social and political progress notwithstanding, good news from the stars is not a 

panacea, a deus ex machina that resolves all the difficulties we face. having received 

the capellan Message, humanity is given neither final answers nor a perfect social 

order, but simple confirmation of a way forward. history continues, in a different 

register, with plenty for the human race to learn and accomplish: 

the project set up nearly one hundred fifty years before to listen 

for messages from the stars and the Message from capella that it 

had received and deciphered had given earth and its people ninety 

years of peace in which to explore the other aspects of humanity 

besides aggression. the problems that had seemed so difficult, 

virtually unsolvable,one hundred and fifty,even ninety,years before 

had seemed to solve themselves once the world relaxed.35 

32. ibid., pp. 36–38, 55–57. 

33. ibid., p. 30. 

34. george Basalla, Civilized Life in the Universe: Scientists on Intelligence Extraterrestrials (oxford, u.K.: 

oxford university press, 2006), p. 2. 

35. gunn, pp. 77–78 
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 55 

the lesson drawn here presents two effects of the capellan Message: it helps 

humanity take stock, improving its situation; and the answer to our reply will help 

spark a change, the “something different” for which John White argues.36 

the final chapter of the book, “the computer,” clarifies what is new about 

this emerging difference. throughout the novel, the listening project computer 

is used by astronomers as an instrument and archive. Macdonald tells White that 

“[V]irtually the entire written history and literature of mankind—in all his written 

languages—is stored in there.” it is a “research tool” that contains the sum of human 

cultural achievement in art and science: the universal knowledge necessary for a 

universal future.the machine represents the human race in the project of decoding 

any message we might receive. in the novel’s closing lines we are told that when 

a call from a second extraterrestrial civilization arrives, the computer is “at least 

half capellan.”37 in other hands, this would be prelude to xenophobic machinebreaking.38 in the context of gunn’s narrative, however, it represents change for the 

better. gunn has Macdonald’s grandson,William, make the point: 

We have received a legacy more valuable than the physical 

possession of another world, with all its natural treasures, and 

the world’s scientists and scholars and everyone else who wishes 

to explore it may spend their lifetimes studying it, interpreting 

it, and adding bits and pieces of it to our civilization, enriching 

us by a whole new world and everything it has.39 

We are presented with a new dispensation, one in which the impact of a wiser, 

more advanced extraterrestrial culture produces radical change here on earth. 

thus, The Listeners is a novel that fuels our expectation that, given the right 

pressure, the human species can change for the better. gunn’s universal computer 

heralds the postbiological universe that Steven dick has theorized elsewhere.40 hope 

resides in the cultural and political evolution fostered by our technology. however, 

36. ibid., pp. 0. 

37. ibid., pp. 20, 92. 

38. indeed, hoyle teases us with this possibility in an early novel, using Seti as a jumping-off 

point for a narrative of uncertainty about extraterrestrial motives. fred hoyle and John elliott, A is 

for Andromeda (new york: harper, 962). 

39. gunn, pp. 9–92. 

40. Steven J. dick, “cultural evolution, the postbiological universe and Seti,” International Journal of 

Astrobiology 2/ (2003): pp. 65–74.this is a common idea among intellectuals who have considered the 

possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence.Williams Sims Bainbridge notes that in the mid-960s roger 

Macgowan and frederick i.ordway“argued that civilizations quickly evolve out of the biological stage 

and become entirely mechanistic, artificial intelligence replacing the natural intelligence that originally 

created the machines.” William Sims Bainbridge, “extraterrestrial intelligence: communication,” The 

Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics,r.e.asher,ed.(oxford,u.K.:pergamon,994),p.20. 
552 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

discussion of artificial intelligence, Bracewell probes, and the like is beyond the 

brief of this narrative. More important is gunn’s presentation of a technoscientific 

trajectory in which the politics of race are rendered irrelevant, leading to a specieswide transformation that fulfills the promise of scientific humanist values. 

the amelioration of race is prologue to the reconfiguration of women’s roles as 

the new (post)human reality emerges.heretofore,women are supernumerary to the 

creation of the future.their principal function is to secure the succession of great men 

and their ideas. however, prior to the arrival of the capellans’ final message,William 

Macdonald tells a waiting world that while he has “no son . . . i do have a daughter 

who is now a member of the project staff.”4 thus, the father-son succession that 

sustains the project directorship in the novel’s history is broken.the future created by 

the novel’s c/Seti project lays the groundwork for both racial and gender equality. 

on the eve of the women’s movement,gunn imagines that the institutions of science 

represented by Seti are the vanguard of progressive social and political change. 

Whatever we make of these positions, it is important to note the power of the 

technoscientific speculation that authorizes them. here scientific and technological 

invention are the vanguard of social and political change.this sentiment is driven by the 

hope that progressive,evolutionary trends in science and technology,history,and society 

will allow our civilization to transcend human frailty, poor judgment, and bad luck. 

gunn’s contribution is to connect formal invention and his reading of race with 

the scientific and social debates current during Seti’s first decade.thus, The Listeners 

has the complexity and depth it needs to serve as a dress rehearsal for how america 

might react to the news that “we are not alone.” With its interchapters containing 

quotations from Seti’s pioneering generation, The Listeners is also a model for how 

the traffic between science, society, and literature moves at particular times in our 

history.this presentation of Seti’s social mission makes the science credible within 

the social investments important to a general reading public. it also, as Seti league 

executive director paul Shuch says in his introduction to the 2004 edition,“inspired 

a generation of Seti scientists to pursue the seemingly impossible.”42 it is the desire 

for a future occupied by intellects other than our own that gives c/Seti narratives 

the intellectual, formal cohesion necessary to argue for the social relevance of its 

authorizing science.as presented here, this branch of astronomy is neither apolitical 

nor disinterested in the nature and course of human life. its practitioners hope that by 

searching for and gaining more knowledge about the standing of life and intelligence 

in the cosmos, old-fashioned values such as tolerance, equity, peace, and freedom will 

be the anchoring virtues of any global destiny. it is a code of moral and intellectual 

conduct as well as a disciplined way of fixing our celestial knowledge.43 

4. gunn, p. 83. 

42. ibid., p. xi. 

43. for more on science as a moral force against social oppression, see neil de grasse tyson, The 

Sky Is Not the Limit:Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist (newyork: doubleday, 2000). 
C/SETI as Fiction: On James Gunn’s The Listeners 553 

at the end of the novel, humanity stands in relation to an extraterrestrial 

civilization in the way that the renaissance was influenced by classical antiquity: 

intellectual and cultural beneficiaries of a long-dead civilization.What is achieved 

is not utopia but, perhaps, a better world. The Listeners certainly argues for this 

possibility. it has produced or reinforced a pattern of expectation that would lead 

some to embrace rather than fear communication with another intelligent species. 
554 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Reclaiming the Future: 555

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress

chapter 29 

Reclaiming the Future:


Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


taylor e. dark iii 

the idea of progress is clearly central to american national identity, yet the 

popularity and credibility of the idea have undergone significant fluctuations 

over the course of american history. this essay assesses how the onset of space 

travel stimulated an attempted revitalization of ideas about progress that, by the 

late 960s, were coming under increased attack.the idea of progress has typically 

advanced three claims: () there are no fundamental limits on the human capacity 

to grow, however growth is defined; (2) advancements in science and technology 

foster improvements in the moral and political character of humanity; and (3) there 

is an innate directionality in human society, rooted in societal, psychological, or 

biological mechanisms, that drives civilization toward advancement. american 

believers in progress quickly embraced space travel, viewing it as a vindication of 

the doctrine’s original claims about the near-inevitability of human improvement. 

With space travel understood in this fashion, the fate of the space program took on 

a far greater meaning than developments in other areas of technological endeavor, 

as it became symbolic of the entire directionality of human civilization.the early 

and astonishing success of apollo, followed almost immediately by signs of disarray, 

served to stimulate a new vision of progress and then quickly threaten it. in this 

context, a space advocacy literature arose that was simultaneously grandiose about 

the human future yet intensely fearful about missed opportunities.this confluence 

of ambition and anxiety continues to characterize both the pro-space movement 

and the larger debate about the american future in space.as the historian charles 

Beard noted: “into the mood of the american people . . . the idea of progress fit 

with extraordinary precision . . . .it remains,and will remain,a fundamental tenet of 

american society, and while vigor is left in the race it will operate with all the force 

of a dynamic idea rooted in purpose, will, and opportunity.” 

. charles Beard,“introduction,” in J. B. Bury, The Idea of Progress:An Inquiry Into Its Origins and Growth 

(new york: dover publications, 932), pp. xxxvi–xxxvii. 
556 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

americans have been more deeply wedded to the idea of progress than perhaps 

any people on the face of earth.the key claim of the idea of progress—that human 

civilization has moved and will continue to move in a desirable direction—has been 

central to american culture and identity for virtually all of the nation’s history.2 

indeed, many would argue that a profound faith in progress has been one of the key 

features distinguishing americans from people elsewhere, and a recurring source of 

the country’s distinctive appeal across the globe.What happens,then,when the idea of 

progress starts to lose credibility? how do americans react when they become fearful 

that the direction of society has become negative rather than positive? the period 

of the late 960s and early 970s provides an example of a time when the american 

faith in progress started to unravel.although belief in progress has arguably recovered 

partially, most observers would still view the late 960s as a turning point after which 

the idea came under siege in ways that had not been experienced previously. 

the argument of this essay is that the rise of new forms and doctrines of space 

advocacy reflects exactly this crisis in the idea of progress. if the forward march of 

humanity (with america noticeably in the lead) had been halted, something had to 

be done. a movement into space was proposed as the solution.thus was born the 

modern pro-space movement, and the contemporary fusion of the idea of progress 

with ideas about space travel, space development, and, most of all, space colonization. 

over the last 40 years, space advocates have constructed a set of doctrines that 

address all the key components found in the idea of progress since it first took modern 

form during the enlightenment.this new pro-space ideology was a reaction to the 

problems that had become apparent by the time of the first Moon landing, namely, 

environmental crises, limits to economic growth, and fears of cultural decay. Space 

advocates proposed solutions to these problems and others.they concluded that an 

expanded space program was the essential condition to revive both the idea and 

reality of progress.the irony was that they embraced this belief at the very moment that the 

Apollo program was coming to a close,and the future of naSa and space travel becoming 

increasingly uncertain. thus, a strong edge of anxiety and urgency was introduced 

into the writings of space advocates.the means to ensure progress had been found 

but would soon be lost forever if government policy was not properly adjusted.this 

combination of certainty about the path toward redemption alongside anxiety about the 

possibility of missing a singular opportunity energized the new pro-space literature 

and encouraged the growth of an accompanying space advocacy movement. 

2. the definition here is derived from Bury, Idea of Progress,p.2.for the importance of the idea of progress 

in america, see clarke a. chambers,“the Belief in progress in twentieth-century america,” Journal 

of the History of Ideas 9, no. 2 (958); hugh de Santis, Beyond Progress: An Interpretive Odyssey to the 

Future (chicago:university of chicago press,992);Samuel huntington,American Politics:The Promise of 

Disharmony (cambridge,Ma:harvard university press,98),pp.259–262;christopher lasch,TheTrue 

and Only Heaven:Progress and Its Critics (newyork:W.W.norton & co.,98);Seymour Martin lipset, 

American Exceptionalism:A Double-Edged Sword (newyork:W.W.norton & co.,996),p.37;and robert 

nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress (newyork: Basic Books, 980). 
Reclaiming the Future:
 557 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


The Idea of Progress 

despite the many controversies over whether progress is actually taking place, 

there is little dispute about how to define the idea itself.J.B.Bury’s classic formulation 

of 920, with its succinct assertion that the idea “means that civilization has moved, 

is moving, and will move in a desirable direction,” remains as useful as any proposed 

since.3 But theories of progress have always tried to do far more than simply attach a 

normative gloss to the passage of time.By necessity,they have embraced a set of larger 

claims, captured in the following mutually reinforcing and interlocking premises: 

.	 No Limits.there are no fundamental limits—nor should there 

be—on the collective human capacity to grow, no matter 

how growth is defined (which may be in terms of knowledge, 

wealth, power, population, or morality). progress is endless (or 

at least indefinite for all practical purposes). 

2.	 All Good Things Go Together. advancements in science and 

technology, and the resulting mastery over nature, expand 

our knowledge, wealth, and power. in so doing, they bring 

improvements in the moral, political, and spiritual character 

of the human race.the elements of progress are linked to one 

another and are mutually reinforcing. 

3.	 Innate Directionality. there exist developmental tendencies, 

rooted in societal, psychological, or biological mechanisms, 

that make it far more likely that human civilization will move 

“upward” toward greater control and understanding of nature 

and ourselves, rather than “downward” toward chaos and 

entropy. progress is, if not inevitable, always highly probable. 

Whether one was a liberal who embraced science, markets, and technology; 

a Marxist who saw class conflict at work in capitalist society; or an evolutionist 

who focused on the winnowing effects of natural selection, these three premises 

were always addressed, either directly or implicitly, in the great nineteenth-century 

theories of progress. 

unfortunately for defenders of progress, all three of these premises became less 

convincing during the course of the twentieth century.4 Major limits on economic, 

demographic,and even intellectual growth were identified,and their importance was 

3. Bury, Idea of Progress, p. 2. for contemporary variations, see nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress, p. 4, 

and charles Van doren, The Idea of Progress (new york: praeger, 967), p. 7. 

4. for discussions of the declining faith in progress,especially among intellectuals,see gabriel almond, 

Marvin chodorow,and roy harvey pearce,eds.,Progress and Its Discontents (Berkeley,ca:university 

of california, 982); de Santis, Beyond Progress; John horgan, The End of Science: Facing the Limits of 

Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (new york:Broadway Books, 996);lasch, True and Only 

Heaven; leo Marx and Bruce Mazlish, eds., Progress: Fact or Illusion? (ann arbor, Mi: university of 

Michigan press, 996); and nisbet, History of the Idea of Progress. 
558 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

widely proclaimed in both elite and popular culture.a belief that there are innate 

human tendencies toward progress was undermined by the evidence that humans 

were inherently violent or even self-destructive due to deep-rooted psychological or 

biological drives. Science and technology, it was suggested, have advanced far out of 

proportion to the capacity of humans to control them rationally, making total selfdestruction as likely as benign development.advancements in humanity’s control over 

nature were thus no longer necessarily viewed as automatic improvements, and could 

even be seen as detrimental, contributing to the further estrangement of humanity 

from its natural environment. for many, gains in science, economics, and technology 

seemed to have corrupted humanity, producing a culture of widespread pornography, 

greed, and violence, and a political sphere dominated by the trivialized discourse of 

mass marketing. Summarizing a vast literature, physicist and historian gerald colton 

concluded in 980: “future historians will probably record that from the midtwentieth century on,it was difficult for anyone to retain faith in the idea of inevitable 

and continuing progress.people increasingly use the word in quotation marks or with 

mocking sarcasm or speak not of progress in civilization but in barbarism.”5 

Enter the Space Advocates 

it is in this context that the space advocates enter the debate, with their own 

agenda to revitalize the idea of progress and,in so doing,to buttress a central component 

of american national identity.although space advocacy ideologies and organizations 

have existed in various forms since the first decades of the twentieth century, the 

970s saw the formation of a pro-space movement that was determined to build upon 

the successes of apollo by creating the setting for an imminent migration into space 

on a massive scale.the most notable of these new advocates was princeton physicist 

gerard K. o’neill, who foresaw the creation of an expanding human civilization in 

space by the early 990s.at the core of his vision was the establishment of gigantic 

rotating colonies, shaped liked a sphere or cylinder, in which tens of thousands of 

inhabitants living on the interior surface would experience the sensation of gravity 

produced by centrifugal force. With sunlight beamed in by massive mirrors, these 

colonies could provide park-like conditions for their inhabitants and a lifestyle that 

resembled that of a comfortable american suburb.the economic rationale for this 

massive endeavor would come from the construction of enormous grids for collecting 

solar energy, which would then be converted into microwaves and beamed down 

to receptors on earth. in this manner, o’neill anticipated that the movement into 

space could provide clean,limitless,and inexpensive power for a world that was facing 

worsening shortages of energy and raw materials.the Space Shuttle, which promised 

to soon provide low-cost access to space, would be one of several vehicles that would 

5. Joel colton,“foreword,” in Progress and Its Discontents, ed.almond, chodorow, and pearce, p. xi. 
Reclaiming the Future:
 559 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


ferry construction crews to space, eventually arriving at lagrange point 5 (l-5), the 

location where the balancing of the gravity of earth and the Moon would allow a 

colony to remain stationary. 

this bold vision of a profitable and practical future in space prompted the 

formation of an interest group called the l-5 Society, which was set up in 975 in 

order to promote the creation of o’neill-style colonies as soon as possible.the group 

embraced the slogan “l-5 in 995” and proclaimed that its goal was “to disband the 

Society in a mass meeting at l-5.”Within a few years,the organization had attracted 

considerable attention, and the o’neill vision of a new human future in space was 

the object of serious study in congress and naSa. By the mid-980s, however, the 

limited success of the Space Shuttle, as well as the subsidence of energy prices and 

the avoidance of other predicted catastrophes, encouraged the postponement of the 

space colonization dream to a rather more distant future. By 987, a demoralized 

l-5 Society had merged with the national Space institute, a more subdued prospace group established in 974 with closer ties to naSa, and together formed the 

national Space Society (nSS), which continues as an active pro-space group to the 

present day.the nSS has eschewed the vision of l-5 colonies as the only desirable 

means to populate space, and toned down the messianic rhetoric that made the l-5 

Society somewhat notorious, but it remains committed to the goal of “people living 

and working in thriving communities beyond the earth.”6 

While nSS and its supporters delayed their dreams, a second group of space 

advocates emerged in the 990s with much of the same élan that had characterized 

the pro-space partisans of the 970s. for these activists, the plan was to colonize Mars 

rather than to create artificial spheres in space.as such,their program was simpler:they 

advocated immediate steps to begin the settlement of the red planet, hoping to send 

the first humans in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Supporters of Mars 

colonization believe that the long-term project of developing a human civilization on 

Mars will promote social cohesion and economic growth on earth, and create a new 

branch of civilization that will rival in its accomplishments anything that mankind has 

done previously.the most enthusiastic proponent of this plan has been the engineer 

and author robert Zubrin, who wrote the 996 book The Case for Mars and was 

instrumental in the founding of the Mars Society,an organization dedicated to making 

Mars settlement the main goal of america’s space policy. 

a third contemporary pro-space group is the planetary Society, founded by 

scientists carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and louis friedman in 980 to encourage “the 

exploration of the solar system and the search for extraterrestrial life.”With more than 

00,000 members from numerous countries, it is the largest single pro-space interest 

group, but has largely promoted exploration as a value in its own right, showing little 

6. national Space Society, “Statement of philosophy,” available online at http://www.nss.org/about/ 

philosophy.html (accessed 7 october 2006). 
560 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

interest in the grandiose vision of space industrialization and colonization endorsed 

by nSS and the Mars Society. nonetheless, the society has strongly supported the 

value of a human mission to Mars and has worked closely with other space groups to 

support president georgeW.Bush’sVision for Space exploration initiative.and Sagan 

himself became a prominent advocate of the larger goal of space colonization in his 

writings of the 990s, providing influential and eloquent support for a continued 

human role in spaceflight and the long-term goal of space migration. 

Space Development and the Idea of Progress 

although the various pro-space intellectuals and space advocacy groups often 

endorse different practical programs and strategies, they use similar arguments in 

justifying their vision of the human future in space. as they have attempted to 

persuade a skeptical public of the desirability of their (rather expensive) programs, 

they have come to address all three of the classical premises of the idea of progress. 

no limits 

the modern view of progress is resolutely opposed to the idea of limits, 

including limits in space and time on the growth of the human species.it is perfectly 

logical, therefore, that many authors see the rise in recent decades of the idea of 

“limits to growth” as signaling the decisive end of the idea (and reality) of progress 

in our time.“the belated discovery that the earth’s ecology will no longer sustain 

an indefinite expansion of productive forces deals the final blow to the belief in 

progress,” christopher lasch confidently asserts.7 

Space advocates will have none of this.responding to the first appearance of the 

“limits to growth” idea, pro-space intellectuals of the 970s were eager to assert that 

space could be the source of limitless new reserves of energy and natural resources. in 

promoting his scheme of magnificent l-5 colonies, gerard K. o’neill wrote: 

the human race stands now on the threshold of a new frontier, 

whose richness surpasses a thousand-fold that of the new 

western world of five hundred years ago.that frontier can be 

exploited for all of humanity, and its ultimate extent is a land 

area many thousands of times that of the entire earth. as little 

as ten years ago we lacked the technical capability to exploit 

that frontier. now we have that capability, and if we have the 

willpower to use it we cannot only benefit all humankind, but 

also spare our threatened planet and permit its recovery from 

the ravages of the industrial revolution.8 

7. lasch, True and Only Heaven, p. 529. 

8. gerard K. o’neill, The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space (newyork: Bantam Books, 977), p. 8. 
Based on his calculations (which assumed a robust and cost-efficient Space Shuttle 

fleet), o’neill thought it quite possible for a space colony to be “in place, with its 

productive capacity benefiting the earth, before 990.”9 

More recent space advocates have also been insistent that the development of 

space resources would overcome all resource constraints. robert Zubrin, in his 996 

vision of Mars colonization,writes:“We can establish our first output on Mars within 

a decade,using well-demonstrated techniques of brass-tack engineering backed up by 

our pioneer forebears’common sense.”once settled on Mars,the colonists would find 

the opportunities for growth to be immense:“Virtually every element of significant 

interest to industry is known to exist on the red planet.”eventually,the Mars colonists 

would venture off to the nearby asteroid belt,where they would find vast mineralogical 

resources just waiting to be tapped.the ultimate outcome would be a “triangle trade” 

similar to that which existed between Britain, the north american colonies, and 

the West indies during the eighteenth century. in the twenty-first-century version, 

earth would supply “high-technology manufactured goods to Mars,” Mars would 

supply “low-technology manufactured goods and food staples to the asteroid belt,” 

and the workers in the asteroid belt would send precious metals back to earth.the 

new Martian civilization would also be a “hotbed of invention,” producing “wave 

after wave of invention in energy production,automation and robotics,biotechnology, 

and other areas.”as a result, Mars colonization “will dramatically advance the human 

condition in the twenty-first century.”0 

Space advocates argue that even if such activities eventually deplete the resources of 

nearby planets and asteroids (an unlikely eventuality for thousands of centuries),humans 

can simply move on to other solar systems.carl Sagan suggests that human communities 

might migrate from planet to planet,exhausting the resources of each before moving on, 

much as earlier nomadic human communities exhausted local agricultural and animal 

resources and then migrated elsewhere.“We might call it‘pioneering’or‘homesteading,’” 

Sagan observes, while acknowledging that “a less sympathetic observer might describe 

it as sucking dry the resources of little world after little world. But there are a trillion 

little worlds in oort comet cloud.” Zubrin puts it simply:“the universe is vast. its 

resources, if we can access them, truly are infinite.”2 

the only danger these theorists see,not surprisingly,is the possibility that mankind 

will fail to grasp the opportunities before it. Zubrin is emphatic that humanity needs 

to be constantly on the move, constantly growing, or it will stagnate and die: 

9. ibid., p. 0. 

0. robert Zubrin, The Case for Mars:The Plan to Settle the Red Planet and Why We Must (new york: 

the free press, 996), pp. xix, xi, 236, 225, 30. 

. carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (new york: Ballantine Books, 

994), p. 32. 

2. Zubrin, Case for Mars, p. 305. 

Reclaiming the Future: 56 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress 
3. ibid.


562 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

the key is not to let the process stop. if it is allowed to stop for 

any length of time, society will crystallize into a static form that 

is inimical to progress.that is what defines the present age as one 

of crisis. our old frontier is closed.the first signs of stagnation 

are clearly visible.yet progress, while slowing, is still extant: our 

people still believe in it and our ruling institutions are not yet 

incompatible with it.3 

there is hope for the future, Zubrin avers, but only if the people act at this 

crucial movement to reverse decline by opening a new frontier.the stakes, in his 

view, could hardly be any higher: 

the creation of a new frontier thus presents itself as america’s 

and humanity’s greatest social need. Nothing is more important: 

apply what palliatives you will, without a frontier to grow in, 

not only american society, but the entire global civilization 

based upon values of humanism, science, and progress will 

ultimately die.4 

Zubrin specifically endorses the theories of frederick Jackson turner,agreeing 

that what makes america free, egalitarian, and innovative can all be traced to 

the existence of a frontier. Without a frontier, america will lose those traits. as 

evidence of decline, Zubrin cites the “increasing fixity of the power structure and 

bureaucratization of all levels of life; impotence of political institutions to carry off 

great projects; the proliferation of regulations affecting all aspects of public, private, 

and commercial life; the spread of irrationalism; the banalization of popular culture; 

the loss of willingness by individuals to take risks, to fend for themselves or think 

for themselves; economic stagnation and decline; the deceleration of the rate of 

technological innovation . . . . ” despite his purported faith in progress, science, 

technology,and the american dream,Zubrin believes that the contemporary united 

States is in deep trouble:“everywhere you look,the writing is on the wall.”5 But he 

is not too worried since he knows the real explanation for his long list of maladies: 

the frontier is gone. once we get it back, all those measures of societal health 

will reverse direction and start trending upward again. Zubrin is confident of this 

because he embraces the assumption that all facets of civilization will either rise or 

decline together as a function of the presence or absence of a frontier experience. 

even the limits posed by celestial threats to earth can be overcome, space 

advocates say,but only if we colonize space quickly.Since the 970s,space advocates 

4. ibid., p. 297, emphasis added.


5. ibid.

Reclaiming the Future:
 563 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


have become increasingly fond of justifying space or Mars colonization on the 

grounds that it is the only means to ensure the survival of the human race in a 

universe where an asteroid could slam into earth at any moment. Space advocates 

emphasize that the dinosaurs became extinct because they failed to master their 

environment—without a space program, they were left at the mercy of untoward 

celestial encounters.Such encounters await earth again in the future,space advocates 

note, and suitable preparation is therefore required. as Sagan puts it, we live in a 

solar system marked by “routine interplanetary violence.” he estimates that “[t]he 

chance is one in a thousand that much of the human population will be killed 

by an impact in the next century.”6 it was this possibility that prompted Sagan, 

long a skeptic of human spaceflight, to finally endorse an active program of space 

colonization in the near future. he writes: “the asteroid hazard forces our hand. 

eventually, we must establish a formidable human presence throughout the inner 

solar system. on an issue of this importance i do not think we will be content with 

purely robotic means of mitigation.”7 

Sagan notes that as humanity spreads to other planets,it will then possess a form 

of “planetary insurance” against the possibility that an asteroid deflection system 

might break down or that other catastrophes on earth might destroy humanity.8 

When life is spread widely, he writes, it can never be killed. thus, earthlife will 

become immortal or at least will find the means to survive as long as the universe 

itself. in this sense, space advocates see their own agenda as ultimately more lifeaffirming than any conceivable program of political action on the agenda today.as 

former astronaut John young puts it:“Knowing what we know now, we are being 

irresponsible in our failure to make the scientific and technical progress we will need 

for protecting our newly discovered severely threatened and probably endangered 

species—us. naSa is not about the ‘adventure of human Space exploration,’ we 

are in the deadly serious business of saving the species.”9 

But, alas, time is short. although all space advocates will acknowledge that 

the odds of a massive asteroid collision in the next century are extremely slim, 

they nonetheless argue for taking immediate steps to establish a permanent human 

presence in space.their reasoning is that humanity may be going through a “critical 

period” in which it simultaneously has the capability both to destroy itself and yet 

6. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 259.


7. ibid., p. 264.


8. ibid, p. 30. for a similar formulation, see William K. hartmann, ron Miller, and pamela lee, Out 


of the Cradle: Exploring the Frontiers Beyond Earth (newyork:Workman publishing,984),pp.37–42. 

9. John young, “the Big picture,” online at http://members.aol.com/ramjetwww1/private/Space/Young. 

html (accessed 6 September 2006). 
564 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

also to establish a beachhead in outer space.20 there may be a narrow window in 

human history, space advocates argue, in which humanity has the opportunity to 

move into space.this window has only recently been opened and it may swing shut 

quite soon, due to the surprise arrival of an asteroid, nuclear war, biological war, or a 

general societal breakdown.the lesson:act now, while you can, or forever be sorry. 

as Sagan writes:“the more of us beyond the earth, the greater the diversity of the 

worlds we inhabit, the more varied the planetary engineering, the greater the range 

of societal standards and values—then the safer the human species will be.”2 

thirty years after he first walked on the Moon, neil armstrong commented 

upon the apollo program’s significance: “the important achievement of apollo was a 

demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet. our visions go rather 

further than that and our opportunities are unlimited.”22 in this statement he expressed the 

abiding faith in an unlimited future that has historically been central to the idea of progress, 

and which space advocates insist,contrary to a host of critics,remains equally valid today. 

all good things go together 

in a review of enlightenment ideas about progress, political theorist nannerl 

Keohane writes:“in its most robust and purest form, the belief in progress affirms that 

increases in human knowledge, the establishment of human control over nature, and 

the perfecting of the moral excellences of the species will guarantee one another, with 

a concomitant increase in human happiness.” But it is precisely this faith, she argues, 

that “good things come in clusters” that is “the enlightenment addition to the theory 

of progress that is most problematical today.”23 the space advocates, however, are not 

worried. in general, they see advances in one area—science and technology—as 

contributing only to advances, not problems, in other spheres of human life. Space 

advocates cheerfully maintain the old, untroubled conviction that “good” things and 

ultimate values do not collide but,rather,reinforce each other.the human movement into 

space, consequently, is not expected to bring any unforeseen problems, but will instead 

only contribute to massive improvements in other aspects of human existence. 

“Space colonization appears to offer the promise of near-limitless opportunities 

forhumanexpansion,yieldingnewresourcesandenhancinghumanwealth,”concluded 

a 977 naSa study on the possibility of space settlements.the study asserted, 

20. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 32; see also J. richard gott iii, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The 

Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time (new york: houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 23. 

2. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 30. 

22. reuters,“Moonwalkers gather to remember apollo 3,”The DailyYomiuri [tokyo],8 July 999. 

23. nannerl Keohane, “the enlightenment idea of progress revisited,” in Progress and Its Discontents, 

almond, chodorow, and pearce, eds., pp. 26, 37. Keohane’s discussion is based on the more extensive 

critique developed in isaiah Berlin,Four Essays on Liberty (oxford,u.K.:oxford university press,969). 
Reclaiming the Future:
 565 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


the opening of new frontiers, as it was done in the past, brings 

a rise in optimism to society . . . . it has been argued that it may 

also enhance the prospects of peace and human well-being. Just 

as it has been said that affluence brings a reduction in the struggle 

for survival, many have contended that expansion into space 

will bring to human life a new spirit of drive and enthusiasm. 

[the benefits of space colonization will be experienced by all, 

for] successful exploitation of the extraterrestrial environment 

is expected to enhance the standard of living not only of the 

population in space but the population remaining on earth as 

well . . . . [the opening of space is so significant that] this new 

vista, suddenly open, changes the entire outlook on the future, 

not only for those who eventually want to live in extraterrestrial 

communities but also for those who want to remain on earth.24 

the naSa authors clearly see this change in outlook as a transformative 

one—a shift from a negative, cramped view of the future to a vision in which limits 

are overcome and countless new opportunities are created. the opening of the 

space frontier, they suggest, will improve human civilization in all respects—not just 

by bringing economic and technological advancement, but also by enhancing the 

spiritual, political, and cultural health of all humanity. 

others have argued that the diffusion of human beings off the planetary surface 

will open up new opportunities for social experimentation—opportunities that were 

last seen, they suggest, in the original settlement of the newWorld and the american 

frontier. “on earth it is difficult for . . . people to form new nations or regions for 

themselves,” science author t. a. heppenheimer observed. “But in space it will 

become easy for ethnic or religious groups,and for many others as well,to set up their 

own colonies . . . .those who wish to found experimental communities, to try new 

social forms and practices, will have the opportunity to strike out into the wilderness 

and establish their ideals in cities in space.” in a burst of multicultural enthusiasm, 

heppenheimer even suggests that “[W]e may see the return of the cherokee or 

arapaho nation—not necessarily with a revival of the culture of prairie, horse, and 

buffalo,but in the founding of self-governing communities which reflect the arapaho 

or cherokee customs . . . .”25 carl Sagan also sees more cultural diversity as humanity 

establishes new civilizations on different planets and other celestial bodies: “each 

society would tend to be proud of the virtues of its world, its planetary engineering, 

its social conventions, its hereditary predispositions. necessarily, cultural differences 

24. richard d. Johnson and charles holbrow, eds., Space Settlements: A Design Study (Washington, 

dc: naSa Sp-43, 977) pp. 75–76; also available online at http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/ 

Education/SpaceSettlement/75SummerStudy (accessed 6 September 2006). 

25. t.a. heppenheimer, Colonies in Space (new york:Warner, 978), pp. 279–280. 
566 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

would be cherished and exaggerated.this diversity would serve as a tool of survival.”26 

Zubrin likewise claims that Mars colonization will promote cultural diversity in a 

world where it is increasingly threatened by proximity and overcrowding. 

Space migration will also enlarge the pool of positive images of the future 

available to humanity—images that space advocates consider essential to motivate and 

guide purposeful activity. Many space advocates complain that optimistic images of 

the future have been displaced in recent decades by far more negative views. Sagan 

writes:“Where are dreams that motivate and inspire?Where are the visions of hopeful 

futures, of technology as a tool for human betterment and not a gun on a hair trigger 

pointed at our heads?”a rare exception to the spread of gloomy visions, according to 

Sagan, was the space program of the 960s: “apollo conveyed a confidence, energy, 

and breadth of vision that did capture the imagination of the world . . . . it inspired an 

optimism about technology,an enthusiasm for the future . . ..With apollo,the united 

States touched greatness.”27 With a renewed commitment to space, the psychological 

and cultural health of america and humanity in general would surely improve. 

Space advocates also foresee a new era of peace and mutual understanding 

arising as a result of space travel. Sagan writes that “the unexpected final gift of 

apollo” was “the inescapable recognition of the unity and fragility of the earth.” 

Sagan continues:“i’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight—conceived in the 

cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds—brings with it a stunning transnational 

vision.you spend even a little time contemplating the earth from orbit and the most 

deeply ingrained nationalisms begin to erode.they seem the squabbles of mites on 

a plum.”28 another space enthusiast, frank White, argues for the existence of what 

he calls an “overview effect” in which humans who are launched into space achieve 

a veritable breakthrough in human consciousness: 

[those living in space] will be able to see how everything is 

related, that what appears to be ‘the world’ to people on earth 

is merely a small planet in space, and what appears to be ‘the 

present’ is merely a limited viewpoint to one looking from 

a higher level. people who live in space will take for granted 

philosophical insights that have taken those on earth thousands 

of years to formulate.they will start at a place we have labored 

to attain over several millennia . . . . [Space dwellers will become 

aware that] we are one; we are all in this together; war and strife 

solve nothing . . . . [t]he multiplier effect means that sending a 

26. Sagan,	 Pale Blue Dot, p. 37; for similar views, see freeman dyson, Disturbing the Universe 

(new york: harper & row, 979), pp. 233–234. 

27. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, pp. 70, 7. 

28. ibid., pp. 7, 74–75. 
Reclaiming the Future:
 567 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


limited number of people into space can lead to a broad-based 

social transformation.the experiences of the few become new 

information for the many, serving as fuel for social evolution.29 

Sagan argues that the need to detect and deflect threatening asteroids will 

encourage the formation of some form of world government. Since the technology 

needed to deflect asteroids is potentially very dangerous (not least of all because 

it could be used to send asteroids hurtling into earth instead of away), it will be 

necessary to develop much stronger international institutions to develop and control 

this capability. “the existence of interplanetary collision hazards, when widely 

understood, works to bring our species together . . . . [t]he small near-earth worlds 

provide a new and potent motivation to create effective transnational institutions 

and to unify the human species. it’s hard to see any satisfactory alternative.”30 

With similar esprit, the planetary Society once stated in its officialWeb site that it 

hoped to “reach out into the low-energy universe, investigate and understand its many 

splendors, travel to and perhaps settle its distant shores, seek those unfound ‘others’ and, 

in the process, advance the cause of world citizenship here at home.”3 World citizenship:it has 

that universalistic ring that has informed theories of progress from the very beginning. 

the only real impediment to the realization of these noble dreams, Sagan and 

other space advocate suggest,is the rise of ungrounded fear of science.Writing in the 

990s, Sagan describes a “demon-haunted world” where popular understanding of 

science is under siege by believers in alien abductions, astrology, crop circles, crystal 

power, and so on.“We risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for 

grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along,” Sagan warns.32 his own message 

is simple: the more science and technology, the better. Sagan writes: “there’s no 

turning back from science. Many will have to become scientifically literate.We may 

have to change institutions and behavior. But our problems, whatever their origins, 

cannot be solved apart from science.”33 the faith in science is fundamental because 

the space advocates believe, as believers in progress always have, that science and 

technology will have predominantly beneficial effects for humanity. accordingly, 

moving into space will not have any unintended, negative consequences for either 

the humans living there or those remaining on earth. 

29. frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston: houghton 

Mifflin, 987) pp. 4, 50, 53. 

30. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 263. 

3. the 	planetary Society, “facts about the planetary Society’s history,” http://www.planetary. 

org/society/society-history.html (accessed 24 May 2000), emphasis added. 

32. carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (new york: Ballantine 

Books, 996), p. 39. 

33. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, p. 37. 
568 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Sagan sums up the prevailing view with his usual flair:“i think that, after some 

debugging,the settlement of the Solar System presages an open-ended era of dazzling 

advances in science and technology;cultural flowering;and wide-ranging experiments, 

up there in the sky, in government and social organization.”34 Zubrin similarly 

concludes that “Mars may someday provide a home for a dynamic new branch of 

human civilization, a new frontier, whose settlement and growth will provide an 

engine of progress for all of humanity for generations to come.”35 in such words we 

see a virtually perfect expression of the faith that all good things go together, and that 

profound and tragic choices between equally valued goals can be easily avoided. 

innate directionality 

Supporters of the idea of progress have usually insisted that there is some 

kind of mechanism or force—perhaps even a divine force—that keeps history 

on track, moving it forward toward betterment. in their own revitalization of the 

idea of progress, space advocates have also identified certain innate developmental 

tendencies that, in their view, are likely to drive history forward.as has historically 

been common with theorists of progress, the most popular mechanism is one based 

on the idea of evolution through natural selection. Sagan suggests that a human 

expansion into space is ultimately rooted in those traits that tens of thousands of years 

of natural selection have ingrained in mankind. humans began as nomadic hunters 

and foragers, and those who were the most adventuresome, who courageously 

sought new sources of food and water, were the ones who survived. “even after 

400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten.the open road still softly 

calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood . . . .this appeal, i suspect, has been 

meticulously crafted by natural selection as an essential element in our survival.”the 

exploratory urge is simply built-in to humanity, although not everyone possesses it 

in equal measure. “your own life, or your band’s, or even your species’ might be 

owed to a restless few—drawn,by a craving they can hardly articulate or understand, 

to undiscovered lands and new worlds.”this is the drive—the causal mechanism— 

that almost inevitably will eventually lead to an expanding human civilization in 

space. “We’re the kind of species that needs a frontier—for fundamental biological 

reasons,” Sagan writes.36 and it is in space, nowhere else, that the best and final 

frontier can be found. 

the same kind of evolutionary reasoning is employed by historian louis halle, 

who writes in Foreign Affairs in 98 that there is “reason to believe that, in its 

progressive evolution, life has at last reached the point where it is about to expand 

into outer space, as if it had been programmed in advance.for,as evolution has a direction, 

34. ibid., p. 38. 

35. Zubrin, The Case for Mars, p. . 

36. Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, pp. xiv, 230, emphasis added. 
Reclaiming the Future:
 569 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress


it has an implicit destiny in that direction; although it may fail to realize that destiny 

as an infant may be killed by an accident before it had realized its own destiny of 

achieving adulthood.”37 halle specifically endorses o’neill’s then-popular plan for 

space colonies, and suggests that the movement into space is functionally similar 

to the movement of life from the seas onto dry land some 350 million years ago. 

Wernher von Braun similarly exclaimed that the first Moon landing was “equal in 

importance to that moment in evolution when aquatic life came crawling up on the 

land.”38 neil armstrong himself joined in the naturalistic imagery, telling The New 

York Times that humans must move into space “just as salmon swim upstream.”39 

Such views typically reveal a classically teleological style of reasoning, so 

popular in theories of progress, in which all of human history is seen as motivated 

and guided by an ultimate purpose or final end. this doctrine imputes a certain 

consciousness and directionality—a telos—to a process that, on the face of it, might 

seem dominated by arbitrariness and accident.as one critic has noted, such thinkers 

claim that space migration “must be understood as an evolutionary stage, a natural 

development, not just comparable to but homologous with the emergence of life 

on earth from the water, or the separation of a child from its mother.”40 it is not 

surprising, then, that the directionality identified by space advocates often shades 

off into a prediction of outright inevitability.“Maybe not right now, or next year, or 

even in 990, but the space solution is inevitable, and, as shocking as it might at first 

appear, it is too late to debate the right-or-wrong of it,” former naSa astronaut 

Bryan o’leary informs us in his 98 work, The Fertile Stars. “it is fruitless to 

make value judgments about whether we should go into space,” o’leary continues, 

“whether mining the Moon and asteroids is the right thing to do, or whether we 

ought to build space shuttles or receive solar power from space—for we are in space 

to stay.”4 Still, o’leary does spend the rest of his book rehearsing the various 

arguments—both economic and spiritual—for why space colonization should, in 

fact, be pursued. Much like other theorists of progress, o’leary is convinced of the 

inevitability of his dream but sees no contradiction in calling for conscious action 

to bring about its realization. 

37. louis halle, “a hopeful future for Mankind,” Foreign Affairs (Spring 98); see also louis halle, 

Out of Chaos (Boston: houghton Mifflin, 977). 

38. Quoted in William Sims Bainbridge,	 The Spaceflight Revolution (new york: John Wiley & 

Sons, 976), p. . 

39. Quoted in Marina Benjamin,	 Rocket Dreams: How the Space Age Shaped Our Vision of a World 

Beyond (new york: free press, 2003), p. 57. 

40. david lavery, Late for the Sky: The Mentality of the Space Age (carbondale, il: Southern illinois 

university press, 992), p. 08. 

4. Brian o’leary, The Fertile Stars (newyork: everest house, 98), p. 8, emphasis in original. 
570 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Discussion 

in truth, most of the claims of the new pro-space ideology of progress do not 

withstand critical scrutiny.a massive program of space development and colonization 

was not and is not a rational response to rising energy costs. there are no known 

resources at the present time that could be obtained more profitably in space than 

on earth. likewise, arguments that america is stagnating scientifically, culturally, 

or economically, and therefore needs the stimulus of a major space endeavor have 

no backing in hard evidence.the notion that a frontier is crucial for freedom or 

innovation is not a finding accepted by either historians or social scientists. claims 

that space travel will broaden human sensibilities, thus reducing nationalist and 

chauvinist impulses, are about as convincing as the belief, once widely held, that the 

view from high-flying airplanes would alter consciousness in a more cosmopolitan 

direction. new forms of diversity and social organization in space might eventually 

occur,but any effort at space colonization in the near term is likely to involve a degree 

of regimentation and control that is hardly conducive to social experimentation. 

the oft-mentioned need to deflect asteroids could be handled effectively by robotic 

spacecraft or by small piloted missions.and if there is a compelling need for an offplanet civilizational “back-up” source, a small base on the Moon would suffice (no 

massive colony required). finally, claims that humanity is programmed to explore 

the universe fall prey to the fallacy of composition: just because individuals like 

to explore does not mean that the larger group of which they are a part (in this 

case, the human race) has a need to collectively explore. as some space advocates 

themselves point out, history is full of examples of human societies that decided to 

stay put, choosing to remain within a viable local habitat indefinitely.there is no 

known innate human tendency that will require human beings to explore space,any 

more than there is a program forcing humans to settle antarctica or the sea floor.to 

the extent that space migration does occur, it will be as a result of conscious human 

decisions, just as human migration has been in the past. 

Without question, then, much of the pro-space literature is deeply flawed.42 

ironically, it is also in tension with other forms of technological optimism. for 

those committed to the notion that humanity must move into space to survive, 

signs of growing success on earth are disconcerting.if advances in biotechnology, 

artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology allow humanity to prosper on earth 

42. fascinating 	discussions and critiques can be found in Benjamin, Rocket Dreams; Stewart 

Brand, ed., Space Colonies (San francisco:Walker press, 977); de Witt douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: 

Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space (philadelphia: university of pennsylvania, 2003); roger d. 

launius, “perfect Worlds, perfect Societies: the persistent goal of utopia in human Spaceflight,” 

Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 56 (2003); roger d. launius,“perceptions of apollo: Myth, 

nostalgia, Memory, or all of the above?” Space Policy 2 (2005); lavery, Late for the Sky; and howard 

Mccurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 997). 
Reclaiming the Future: 57 

Space Advocacy and the Idea of Progress 

to a greater extent than ever before, the urgency of the space endeavor is lost. 

in fact, if one has faith that terrestrial technology will continue to advance, 

the idea of spending billions of dollars on unprofitable space ventures becomes 

even less attractive.Why not just wait until new technologies reduce the cost of 

spaceflight to reasonable levels? at that point, normal market mechanisms (such 

as tourist demand) may allow major increases in human spaceflight without 

government intervention. But then, of course, no grandiose ideology of progress 

will be required, any more than such an ideology was required to populate the 

formerly arid deserts of the american southwest once water and air conditioning 

became widely available. 

despite all this, pro-space ideology retains the power that only a full-blown 

theory of progress can possess. naSa’s own discourse, not to mention that of 

president george W. Bush and other politicians, frequently invokes the language 

of progress, with talk of destiny and inevitability, the overcoming or abolition of 

limits, and the virtuous cycles of knowledge and goodness that space development 

will surely bring forth. it is reasonable, therefore, to expect that the discourse 

surrounding space will remain one of the primary expressions of the idea of 

progress for a very long time to come. 

Conclusion 

the rise of a post-apollo space advocacy literature,and its integral relationship 

to the idea of progress that has been at the core of Western civilization,surely counts 

as one of the more provocative societal consequences of the success of space travel. 

although its concerns are currently on the margins of public debate, the potency of 

the modern space advocacy synthesis suggests that it will continue to draw adherents 

and influence the thinking of policy-makers. in comparison to earlier doctrines 

of progress, pro-space ideology is more grandiose, with its vision of planetary 

engineering and cosmic expansion, yet also more fearful, with its suggestion that 

the end times may be near if the space frontier is not soon conquered.this peculiar 

confluence of ambition and anxiety is likely to influence the pro-space movement 

and the larger debate about the american future in space for many years to come. 

given the deep commitment of americans to ideas about progress, such ideological 

concerns are as likely to affect policy as any rational assessment of scientific or 

economic need. as the development of the american space program itself attests, 

the capacity of the idea of progress to drive politics—and history—in unexpected 

directions should not be underestimated. 

Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 573

chapter 30 

Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 

Wendell Mendell 

Within the halls of space agencies, common wisdom holds that a space 

program will inspire young people to study science and mathematics.the 

word “inspire” has its roots in an old belief that a supernatural spirit could infuse 

a person with a vision or an insight into truth. along those lines, one modern 

meaning concerns fostering creativity.again, common wisdom in the united States 

holds that science, mathematics, and engineering are “hard” subjects, to be avoided 

by anyone who is not “smart.” even “smart” people see no point in working hard 

to enter technical professions where the remuneration may not match such fields as 

business or law. on the other hand, policy-makers at the national level understand 

that the ultimate competitiveness of the united States is related to its ability to 

generate and utilize advanced technologies, which requires a workforce educated in 

science, mathematics, and engineering. 

if it is true that a vigorous and exciting space program can motivate a subset of 

young people to switch to technical studies, then the program will serve a national 

need. But why should a space program uniquely motivate young people to pursue 

a technical education? the methodologies of the robotic space science missions 

do not differ so much from other forms of research, and the explanations of their 

findings are esoteric. human space operations are intellectually more accessible to a 

young person, but few people actually become astronauts. 

it is true that people do become passionate about space.We all know the terms 

“space cadet” and “trekkie.”yet, both these terms have origins in entertainment 

media. are “space cadets” only a type of groupie, a product of celebrity worship? 

although people can also be passionate about hobbies and can be motivated to 

study to become a specialized expert, space seems to have very catholic appeal over 

all cultures and genders. is there something different about space that can motivate 

people, particularly young people, to form a life plan directed toward involvement 

at some level in the space program? 
574 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Rationales 

in 982 i became the junior member of a gang of three whose aim was 

to initiate discussion within naSa concerning a human lunar base for the era 

following the low-earth orbit space station.at the time, naSa had no long-term 

planning organization, and was focused on getting approval for a space station.talk 

of a lunar base was met with indifference if not hostility. 

over the next several years, our advocacy group was successful in attracting 

interest both within and external to the agency for discussion of human exploration 

of the Moon. Within our little cabal, my role usually was that of a spokesman at 

conferences and workshops.We developed a more or less standard presentation or 

“pitch” on overhead transparencies.the title chart was followed by a rationale or 

Justification chart, containing four to six bullets (talking points) that were intended 

to convince the audience of the importance and truth of our cause.the Justification 

chart is required by all managers for project presentations and represents the customer 

requirements. in an engineer’s ideal world, the rationale comes down the chain of 

command, generated at some higher pay grade. 

early in our process,we developed rationales based on our perception of strategic 

goals for naSa.as we consulted with a wider audience, we began to adopt rationales 

that might address national (or societal) needs. for example, the resources available on 

the Moon could supplement decreasing inventories of raw materials on earth. our 

presentations worked pretty well with passive audiences, but one-on-one encounters 

with senior experts on national policy were a different kettle of fish. i quickly learned 

that any of my naïve generalizations could be savaged by an appropriate authority 

unsympathetic to the “space solution.” i do not mean to imply that our ideas were bad 

or wrong, but our arguments needed much more sophistication and nuance. 

Within a very few years, my rationales had moved to grand concepts such as 

humanity moving into the solar system, or intangibles such as inspiration of youth. 

Many essayists and professional authors have written about the space program 

in terms that express the broadest human issues. While naSa was formulating 

the response to the 989 speech by president george h. W. Bush in which he 

outlined his Space exploration initiative, a number of philosophical discussions 

took place over how the space program serves the nation; some engineers were very 

uncomfortable talking about unquantifiable “requirements.” 

as the lunar base movement became more widespread prior to that presidential 

speech, i became identified in some quarters of the space community as a leading 

advocate for settling the Moon. consequently, i received invitations to speak at a 

number of events,particularly those sponsored by space activist groups.the audiences 

were thrilled with artist concepts of lunar facilities and loved to hear what kind of 

activities would take place on the Moon.the agendas of these conferences always 

included discussions of the “message” needed to encourage more spending on space 

programs. i noted that the advocate groups brainstormed to generate rationales for 

space investment, to be expressed in bullet format on charts. 
Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 575 

Epiphanies 

individual conference attendees always expressed a great passion for space 

activities and carried a vision of a future where living in space was commonplace. 

over the years i also became aware that many, if not most, of them could tell a 

story of some specific event in their lives that marked the beginning of their intense 

interest in space exploration and development. people said, for example,“i bought a 

science fiction book to read at girl Scout camp, and i have been interested in space 

ever since.” “When i was five years old, my dad told me to come downstairs and 

watch men walking on the Moon.” 

as i was absorbing this information, my wife was taking training to become 

more involved in evangelism for her lutheran church. i heard portions of training 

videos with discussions about christian outreach. i noted certain similarities and 

differences between the two advocacies. in both cases, congregations hear sermons 

expressing certain truths upon which they all agree. in both cases, people inside the 

movement cannot understand why everyone is not part of their belief system. in 

both cases, the group concludes that outsiders simply lack the facts. 

the two communities differ dramatically in their form of outreach. the 

church encourages individual christians to explain to outsiders how their lives have 

been changed for the better through adoption of the church’s belief system. in fact, 

many christians believe they have had transformational experiences—epiphanies, 

if you will—that have changed their lives, and they tell the unchurched that similar 

experiences will be accessible if they enter into the christian belief system. on the 

other hand, space advocates believe that their conclusions are based on reasoning, 

and some of them use the overhead chart with rationales.their success is limited. 

i wondered whether many space advocates also had had their interest 

awakened by some inspirational experience. if so, it would suggest an outreach 

strategy based on involving more people in space activities in a personal way. 

presumably, opportunities would present themselves from which people would 

discover an interest in a space future. 

frank White has written of an “overview effect” experienced by astronauts on 

orbit from which they experience a profound change in personal perspective toward 

life. i am not convinced that the overview effect is an example of a space-derived 

epiphany i am thinking about. rather, i associate it with a kind of perspective 

alteration associated with extreme experiences, such as a brush with death or 

personally witnessing for the first time grinding poverty or deep suffering. 

i had an opportunity to take a step toward exploring this hypothesis at the 2003 

meeting of the international lunar explorationWorking group (ileWg) in hawaii. 

. frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution, 2nd ed. (reston, Va: 

american institute for aeronautics and astronautics, 998). 
576 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

ILEWG 

in 989 president george h.W.Bush launched his Space exploration initiative 

(Sei),which charged naSa with returning to the Moon to stay and journey onward 

to Mars. naSa composed a reply with scenarios for future human exploration 

missions and hired a new associate administrator for exploration by the name of 

dr. Michael griffin. By 992, the Sei was politically dead in the united States and 

naSa had a new administrator by the name of dan goldin. for space pundits in 

the united States, that was that.2 

however, other nations had reacted to the u.S. initiative.the european Space 

agency (eSa) produced a collection of studies of potential scientific investigations 

on the Moon,which led to a technical session at the World Space congress in 992. 

in 994, eSa convened a workshop on a future lunar exploration and development 

strategy in Beatenberg, Switzerland. at that workshop, the Japanese delegation 

offered to host a subsequent topical workshop in 996 in Kyoto, Japan. 

after the Beatenberg event, the naSa associate administrator for Science 

proposed an international lunar exploration Working group (ileWg) to the 

interagency coordinating group (iacg).the 996 Kyoto workshop was convened 

as an ileWg meeting. Much to the surprise of many of the attendees, the Japanese 

presented a large number of papers on future lunar exploration plans, including the 

first official announcement of the Selene mission. (the lunar orbital scientific 

spacecraft, recently renamed Kaguya, will finally be launched in 2008.) however, a 

scientific finding suggesting evidence for past life in a Martian meteorite had been 

announced only two months before. naSa administrator goldin was looking past 

the Moon toward Mars. one of the official naSa representatives to ileWg in 

Kyoto gave a rather lengthy commentary on reasons to forget about the Moon and 

focus on Mars. 

after Kyoto,official naSa representation disappeared from ileWg.although 

meetings were held, the group became more of a gathering of lunar exploration 

advocates than a true interagency coordinating body. however, the Japanese were 

still treating ileWg as a recognized body and eSa continued to fund travel for a 

few representatives. dr. Bernard foing of eStec (the european Space research 

and technology centre, which is the design hub for most eSa spacecraft and 

technology development, and is situated in noordwijk,the netherlands) became a 

major advocate for ileWg and eventually was named project Scientist of the eSa 

Smart- lunar technology mission. 

2. on the Space exploration initiative see, george h. W. Bush, “remarks by the president at 20th 

anniversary ofapollo Moon landing,nationalair and Space Museum,July 20,989”;dwaynea.day, 

“doomed to fail:the Birth and death of the Space exploration initiative,”Spaceflight 37 (March 995): 

pp.79–83;thor n.hogan,“MarsWars:a case history ofagenda Setting andalternative generation in 

the american Space program,”ph.d.dissertation,georgeWashington university,2003. 
Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 577 

Steve durst, head of Space age publishing and a long-time advocate of human 

settlement of the Moon, offered to host the 2003 ileWg gathering at his home 

base in hawaii. i attended the meeting, but naSa sent no official representative. 

dr. Michael duke sat at the table as the senior u.S. presence, but he had retired 

from naSa. on the other hand, indian representatives attended, and the chinese 

Space agency tried to send a large delegation. no chinese actually attended 

because they could not obtain u.S. visas.the usual small number of Japanese and 

european delegates were there. the remainder of the attendees included various 

lunar scientists, advocates, students, and a few space celebrities, such as astronaut 

John young, invited by durst.the good attendance possibly had something to do 

with the attractive venue in hawaii. i have known Steve durst for more than 20 

years through his interest in lunar development, and i also knew almost all the 

senior people at the meeting because the list of usual suspects in the lunar advocacy 

community is not large. 

one of the luncheons at the meeting was sponsored by the aerospace company 

Spacedev and its founder, Jim Benson, was the featured speaker. i have heard Jim 

speak several times, and he often begins by pulling out his 955 membership card 

from the Science fiction Book club, where he encountered the writings of isaac 

asimov and was “turned on” to space. Jim was trained as a geologist and by chance 

entered the computer software industry in its early days. he later sold a successful 

software business and used the money to start Spacedev as a company to build small 

spacecraft for planetary science missions. here was another of my space stories. 

at the next luncheon,two young people spoke about their interest in the Moon. 

one was yuki takahashi, who had contacted me a year or two earlier with a great 

passion to build a telescope on the Moon. he went from an undergraduate degree 

at caltech to a doctorate program in astrophysics at the university of california 

at Berkeley.at one point he and i exchanged e-mails about his desire to abort his 

studies in astrophysics to work somewhere on a lunar telescope project. (i urged 

him to complete his doctorate!) at the luncheon, he spoke of a trip to a library 

with his parents in Japan at age 9. he discovered there an entire encyclopedia on 

astronomy. he devoured it and became absorbed with the idea of space exploration. 

here was another of my space stories. 

at an afternoon break that day, i rudely grabbed the microphone from Steve 

durst and told the people in the room that i wanted them to help me with an 

experiment. i briefly explained my idea about transforming experiences triggering 

an interest in space.at the hotel meeting room, every seat had a small notepad and 

a pen. i asked them to use the notepad to first answer the question,“did you have a 

specific event in your life that you remember as catalyzing your passion for space?” 

i asked them to write yes or no on the pad. if the answer was yes, i asked for a brief 

description of the event. i also asked for the person’s age at the time of the event 

and the person’s current age (at the time of the meeting in 2003). 
578 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Data 

i eventually received 50 submissions.adding Benson and takahashi and myself, 

i have 53. i forgot to ask for gender, but six submissions are clearly from women. 

current ages (in 2003) start at the early 20s. i have four from men older than 75. in 

the text below, i include three figures that are scans of actual submissions to me in 

order to illustrate the style and informality of typical responses. 

three submissions (including my own) simply answered in the negative. 

everyone else wrote a few words of explanation. Seven of them declared no real 

moment of “awakening”but elaborated on the beginnings of an evolution of interest. 

two men grew up in families involved in the space program or space science and 

just followed their parents into the field. another man has a stepfather who flew 

helicopters that picked up astronauts after landing in the water.that memory dates 

from when he was 8 or 9 years old. 

a man (i presume) states that he had no epiphany but remembers lying on 

his back, looking at the summer sky, and talking about the stars with his friends 

at age 0. he joined the high school astronomy club. after a B.Sc. in physics, he 

eventually acquired a doctorate in economics while maintaining a lifelong interest in 

astronomy.although he enters himself in the “negative” column, his commentary is 

not qualitatively different from that of another man, who writes simply,“astronomy 

merit badge age 4.”the latter submitter presumably intended that brief statement 

to indicate an event that brought him into the space community. 

a woman who denies having an “epiphany”nevertheless mentions that “[t]he 

movie Contact did inspire me to want to continue our space exploration efforts for the 

pure scientific joy if nothing else.”a 22-year-old woman who responded positively 

to the question recalls a transient interest after watching the movie Space Camp 

when she was about 8 years old.3 however, she attributes her current involvement 

to learning at age 6 that “a family member was involved in apollo .” 

a native hawaiian woman writes: “When i was a small girl, maybe 3 or 4 

years old, i noticed the moon would follow me wherever i went. obviously, the 

moon liked me. it even would follow me home and wait near my house for me 

to come outside . . . . So i decided she was my friend and always looked forward 

to seeing her.” how this cultural view of the Moon evolved into attendance at a 

space conference is not explained.another woman who describes herself as “a nonamerican female” writes:“i used to watch the Moon & stars with my father and he 

& my brothers used to tell me about astronauts, etc. when i had to go to sleep. So i 

always wanted to dedicate my life to space exploration. i am now 30 years old.and 

as far as i can remember i always looked up to the Moon & the stars.” 

3. Space Camp [film], Metro-goldwyn-Mayer, 986, directed by harry Winer, starring Kate capshaw, 

lea thompson, Kelly preston. 
Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 579 

a 42-year-old man denies any single event but adds,“i think that generally rocket 

launches are the thing that drives [sic] my interest the most.” another man, born in 

india but now a u.S. citizen, describes his triggering event as:“963—six years old(.) 

nike-apache sounding rockets blasting off fromthumba equatorial launching Station 

(terlS) intrivandrum,india.”for both,rocket launches are a common focus,but one 

writer sees them as triggering his interest in space whereas the other doesn’t. 

one interesting catalyzing event was mentioned by a 29-year-old from the 

netherlands: “i never had a specific moment to determine my interest. [it] has 

always been there. however, i never believed that i could do something with it. 

untill [sic] i helped organize a conference (998), then my life changed and got 

more direction to where i am now [sic].” here a person believes he went from a 

passive to an active role through volunteering to organize an activity. 

among those who responded positively to the basic question, certain themes 

are repeated. three (older) people mention Sputnik. Many inputs reference early 

human missions, particularly gemini and (of course) apollo. a tale of gemini 8 is 

reproduced as figure 30.. 

the apollo  first step on the Moon is listed by several. one woman’s 

memory of apollo  is reproduced here as figure 30.2. 

Figure 30.1—Here, a person was energized by a pre-Apollo 

human mission. Note the comment about leaving space 

studies after Apollo. Many people were disillusioned by the 

cancellation of the Apollo program by President Nixon. 

Figure 30.2—The first human landing on the Moon is widely 

considered to be an iconic event in the history of civilization. 

Not surprisingly, many people recall it as memorable, often 

mentioning watching the first lunar step with family. 
580 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

for a man,apollo 7 was the most important. his memoir:


launch of apollo XVii, december 7, 972


•  i was 6 years old in the first grade

•  i had never stayed up so late to watch tV

•  i remember nBc’s program theme music for its coverage o

the mission. 

•  i met gene cernan when i was 2

•  i will meet Jack Schmitt this thursday

Steve durst’s daughter, who was a graduate student at the time of the ileWg 

meeting, writes that she was raised in a family that talked about space a great deal. 

however, her personal interest was catalyzed by the ldef mission, a technology 

experiment that returned various material samples to earth after exposure to the 

low-earth orbit environment for five years. for Ms. durst, the most interesting 

returned cargo was tomato seeds that were distributed to schools for planting. 

a 38-year-old man cites a three-hour chat across the aisle on an airplane flight 

with tom Stafford at age 28. 

a 48-year-old man by chance heard Jim lovell speak in hawaii at a convention 

two years before this survey.the writer is president of a construction company who 

came to the ileWg meeting to learn more about construction on the Moon. 

Books, particularly science fiction books, are important, especially around 

ages 8 to 5.Verne, heinlein,asimov,Wells, and clarke are all mentioned. figure 

30.3 is a memorable submission. however, not only science fiction was important; 

yukitakahashi mentioned the encyclopedia of astronomy.Jack green,a prominent 

pre-apollo proponent of lunar craters as calderas and 78 years old at the time 

of this survey, writes, “945 publications of J. e. Spurr on lunar volcanism.” a Jet 

propulsion laboratory (Jpl) technologist 

recalls the time “My Mom gave me a 

section of the Chicago Tribune with an 

article by dr. dan Q. posen on space.”a 

woman writes:“When i was in 5th grade 

(0 or  years old), i had a class in the 

school library where we learned about 

the dewey decimal system.it was so boring 

that as i sat on the floor, i read the books 

i was seated next to. that happened to 

be the 523 section that contained the 

astronomy books. i knew i was hooked 

when i read them all!” 

Figure 30.3—Early science fiction featured utilization of 

exotic technology to conquer frontiers laden with adventure. 

While the modern genre is more complex and sophisticated 

in its themes, fiction set in the future continues to inspire 

careers in space exploration. 
Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 58 

a (now retired) internationally recognized scientist, who was one of the top 

leaders in the apollo scientific studies, writes:“My parent bought me a book which 

still sits in my bookcase,‘the omnibus of Jules Verne’,which had both books ‘from 

the earth to the moon’ and ‘around the moon.’ i was  years old. i was not aware 

at the time of a transformation. however, i realized during apollo 6 that ‘i had 

been there before’—and quickly found the page in the book which contained the 

specific paragraph which gave me that certainty.” 

Visual media also play a role. carl Sagan’s Cosmos series is mentioned three 

times. interestingly, no one mentioned the classic disney series from the 950s that 

featured Wernher von Braun, although i noted above two women who identified 

specific movies.a man writes,“My interest in space came when i was about 5 years 

old; i saw the movie ‘the conquest of the Moon’ in 955.” 

the last recurring category is astronomy. inputs already cited mention looking 

at the sky or reading books or achieving a merit badge.there are those who received 

telescopes from their parents or visited observatories. it has been known for a long 

time that widespread public interest in astronomy makes that subject a good way to 

introduce scientific concepts. 

Discussion 

My question to think about an epiphany may have seemed strange, but i was 

pleased by the enthusiastic reaction. approximately 80 percent of the responders 

believed they had something to say. even those who claimed to have nothing to say 

often added commentary. Several thanked me for the opportunity to write down 

their experiences. 

on the surface, nothing in these notes is new to those familiar with the space 

program.there are many different paths to an interest in space, yet no one describes 

his or her involvement in the form of a reasoned argument.two prominent lunar 

geologists come closest. one was a graduate student in geology, napping one day 

when a fellow student pounded on his door to tell him the russians had “launched 

a 80 pound satellite.”the other geologist was a young ph.d. who “watched neil 

and Buzz step onto the Moon” and “shortly thereafter . . . saw my st apollo  

rock.” the fact that so many people found my question interesting rather than 

bizarre and that such a large percentage remember their first awareness of space 

suggests an emotional attachment, which is part of what i was seeking.a next step 

would be to ask these responders to elaborate on their vision of humanity’s future 

in space. launch technology evolves so slowly that they might not actually see 

themselves in space. 

i chose the word epiphany deliberately because i find the passion behind many 

peoples’interest in space to be almost religious in nature.(i am not the only one to notice 

this.) i have encountered many individuals or groups who have some transcendent vision 

of future activities or assets in space.this basis for these beliefs becomes a particularly 
582 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

important issue today because the vision of an economic sphere in cislunar space and 

on the Moon has become an element of national policy and a little-understood element 

of the president georgeW. Bush’sVision for Space exploration initiative.4traditionally, 

people who believe in a private economy in space have been belittled by the space 

establishment such as naSa employees or major aerospace contractors.the latter argue 

that there is no business for major investors beyond government contracting. 

today, of course, we see a new phenomenon whereby so-called high net 

worth individuals (hWnis) are investing significant amounts in ventures to build 

new launch systems, space vehicles for tourism, and even a hotel. robert Bigelow 

has committed $500M million of his personal fortune to build an orbiting facility 

and has already launched the first test module. if the business case is so weak, why 

are these people in the game? i suggest that they are “believers” who happen to have 

the money to pursue their dreams.5 

Conclusions 

this simple,serendipitous sampling suggests that further studies by professionals in 

social science might prove interesting.however,one must remember that this particular 

meeting was convened by a visionary with the stated purpose of discussing future 

activities on the Moon, and the attendees may well be self-selecting for this kind of 

survey.We may be looking at a subculture rather than the space movement as a whole. 

in 995 in Stockholm,Sven grahn of the Swedish Space corporation and i led 

a team project titled “Vision 2020”at the summer session of the international Space 

university (iSu). about 40 young space professionals from a variety of countries 

and a variety of disciplines volunteered to be part of an attempt construct a vision 

of what space activities would be important 25 years into the future. as leader of 

the exercise, i went to great lengths to avoid providing structure that might suggest 

the “right answer” to the students.We worked with an academic in future Studies 

to employ visioning, a technique for creating desirable future scenarios. the lack 

of structure given to the students had the unfortunate effect of producing a lack of 

structure in their deliberations.When time came to present an outline of the final 

product to the iSu faculty, the presentations seemed unimaginative. 

4. on the Vision for Space exploration,see alain dupas and John M.logsdon,“creating a productive 

international partnership in the Vision for Space exploration,” Space Policy 23 (february 2007): pp. 

24–28; craig cornelius, “Science in the national Vision for Space exploration: objectives and 

constituencies of the ‘discovery-driven’ paradigm,” Space Policy 2 (february 2005): pp. 4–48; 

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”; 

Wendell Mendell,“the Vision for human Spaceflight,” Space Policy 2 (february 2005): pp. 7–0. 

5. the alt.space community has enjoyed considerable positive publicity.an example of this is elizabeth 

Weil, They All Laughed at Christopher Columbus:An Incurable Dreamer Builds the First Civilian Spaceship 

(newyork: Bantam Books, 2002). 
Space Activism as an Epiphanic Belief System 583 

i chaired a faculty meeting to provide feedback to the students. Sitting in on 

the meeting were about half a dozen iSu alumni who were in town for the annual 

alumni Weekend. the faculty criticism was savage. i took notes and struggled to 

understand how i might communicate the feedback in a constructive way.however, 

one by one, the alumni began to assail the faculty, accusing them of being part of 

a bygone and obsolete “apollo generation.”the young people claimed that space 

programs of today were not built around grand visions but should be directed to 

benefit the quality of life on earth—a theme that was being carried within the 

project. clearly, there was a generation gap in expectations in this exercise. 

When one looks around the world,one can see space projects aimed at disaster 

management or provision of services to the population or scientific investigation. 

the grand structure of the Vision for Space exploration initiative stands out for 

its bold assertion of a potential future society in space. is this just a u.S. cultural 

product, or is it really a more generally held vision? i personally find a response to 

the vision around the world, but i believe more study of societal response to visions 

of a future space civilization is important to the promoters of these policy goals. i 

must leave such studies to professionals in the social sciences. 
584 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 585

European Imagination, 1923–1969

chapter 3 

Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and 

the European Imagination, 1923–1969 

alexander c.t. geppert 

The only interplanetary voyages made by our species to date have been 

flights of fancy. 

A.V. Cleaver 

British interplanetary Society


 october 947

Historicizing the European Space Effort 

“historians need to explore . . .the cultural meaning of space exploration,and 

the space programs of other countries” besides those of the united States, 

american scholar pamela e. Mack has suggested. Since she made this statement 

in 989, i.e., almost 20 years ago, the state of research in europe has gradually, yet 

not absolutely, improved. the publication of the official history of the european 

Space agency (eSa), on the occasion of its 25th anniversary in 2000, certainly 

marked a milestone in this process. in much detail and on more than ,00 pages, 

. a.V. cleaver,“the interplanetary project,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7, no.  (January 

948): pp. 2–39, here p. 2. this paper presents the first findings of a comprehensive research 

project on the cultural history of outer space, astrofuturism and extraterrestrial life in the european 

imagination of the twentieth century, approximately between the publication of hermann oberth’s 

pioneering Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (923) and the establishment of eSa a half-century 

later (975). i would like to express my sincere gratitude to the editors of this volume for their kind 

invitation to me to discuss parts of my work at such an early stage, and to the fritz thyssen Stiftung 

for generously supporting this Habilitationsprojekt.heartfelt thanks are also due to dorothee dehnicke, 

rita hortmann, heinz hermann Koelle,tessa Mittelstaedt, and paul nolte. 

2. pamela e.Mack,“Space history,” Technology and Culture 30,no.3 (July 989):pp.657–665,here p.658. 
586 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

this multinational institution’s complex beginnings and the development of its 

organizational structure were meticulously traced back to the formation of its two 

precursors, the european launcher development organisation (eldo) in 962 

and the european Space research organisation (eSro) in 964,while deliberately 

leaving aside broader social, cultural, and imaginative issues. What is true for the 

history of europe at large, however, is applicable here as well: european history 

and the history of europe are not identical, but overlap at best. the in-depth 

analysis of a single european institution—thoroughly researched and, without the 

slightest doubt, enormously valuable as it now stands—should not be taken for 

a social and cultural history of european practices and representations of outer 

space per se. in other words: Because it lacks a direct equivalent to the naSa 

history office and the Space history division of the Smithsonian national air 

and Space Museum—with their concerted activities and unparalleled research 

programs which effectively created and later shaped the entire field in the united 

States—in europe, space history is a much smaller, more fragmentary, and by far 

less established area of historiographical research. 

in direct consequence, much research on the cultural history of the 

european space effort, its historical significance, and societal impact still remains 

to be done, especially with regard to the 2 years after peenemünde and prior to 

Sputnik—a period which many consider the golden age of Space travel avant 

la lettre. therefore, the following tentative reflections are limited to presenting 

and discussing three broader issues and provisional hypotheses.they are intended 

to ask the right questions rather than to provide possibly premature answers. 

first, where do historians have to look in order to locate what kind of possible 

repercussions of spaceflight? Why is it so complex a task to identify and measure 

any kind of impact spaceflight might have had on culture and society in general? 

Second, how can europe’s role and position in this entire scenario be described 

and assessed? has a distinctly european version of outer space evolved gradually, 

especially since 945? or were, for instance, the apollo flights already subject to 

3. John Krige, arturo russo, and lorenza Sebesta, A History of the European Space Agency, 2 vols. 

(noordwijk,the netherlands: european Space agency publications, 2000).“little has, in fact, been 

written on the european space effort,” the authors conceded in their preface, and went on to ask 

for “more reflective and comparative studies” to contextualize their results and to relate them to other 

research in the field (vol. , p. xvi).Walter a. Mcdougall,“Space-age europe: gaullism, euro-gaullism, 

and the american dilemma,” Technology and Culture 26, no.  (January 985): pp. 79–203. for a recent 

fact-oriented summary of european activities in outer space,see Brian harvey, Europe’s Space Programme: 

To ariane and Beyond (chichester,u.K.:Springer-praxis publishing,2003);see also eSa’s own historical 

series, called history Studies reports. the most recent of these more than 30 working paper-type 

publications are to be found at http://www.esa.int/esapub/pi/hsrPI.htm (accessed 7 January 2007). 

4. W. d. Kay,“naSa and Space history,” Technology and Culture 40, no.  (999): pp. 20–27; roger 

d. launius, “naSa history and the challenge of Keeping the contemporary past,” The Public 

Historian 2, no. 3 (Summer 999): pp. 63–8. 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 587 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

Figure 31.1—“Berlin, We Have a Problem.” National advertising campaign, German space industry (2005). 

such globalized, carefully orchestrated, and extensive media coverage that they 

subsequently gave rise to the same process of myth-making both in the united 

States and in europe? and, third, while the persistence of the so-called american 

spacefaring vision has,time and again,been attributed to the deeply rooted frontier 

myth in popular culture and in the public imagination, is the european vision of 

outer space best characterized by the complete lack of such a key trope and the 

absence of a commonly shared belief system—or is there any equivalent? 

“Berlin, wir haben ein problem,” (“Berlin, we have a problem”) read one 

of the most popular slogans in a recent national advertising campaign, entitled 

“deutschland braucht raumfahrt” (“germany needs spaceflight”). financed by 

the german space industry,this campaign lamented the lack of government support 

and endeavored to raise public awareness of the industry’s pecuniary needs and oftformulated appeal for increased government funding (figure 3.). it is more than 

remarkable that such a tribute to the famous apollo 3 phrase “houston, we’ve 

had a problem”—originally uttered by commander James lovell in april 970 

but popularized by tom hanks in the oscar-winning hollywood blockbuster 25 

years later—did not require an explanation, even in a german context, proving 

to be sufficiently effective in an entirely different public sphere. apparently, the 

responsible publicity agency had every reason to take for granted the existence 

of the necessary historical background information.the well-informed spectator 

would be rewarded with a smile for his successful knowledge transfer from one 

national context to another and applying it to quite a different problem. in the 

present academic context, however, this witty motif draws our attention to the 

potency of american popular culture myths far beyond national borders, where, in 

fact, they may be interpreted quite differently. in the end, “Berlin, wir haben ein 
588 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

problem” points to the far-reaching importance of international and crosscultural 

perspectives in analyzing both science fact and science fiction. it reminds us, in 

short, that the societal impact of spaceflight and its imaginative dimension cannot 

be properly historicized without considering transatlantic references, perceptual 

interdependencies, and transnational interrelations. 

Spaceflight, the Impact Question, and the Spatial 

Turn: Three Heuristic Remarks 

Without going into too much detail, the first heuristic remark consists of a 

fundamental conceptual question: how can we define—and then diagnose—the 

societal impact of spaceflight in an historical and international perspective? how do 

we describe, assess, and characterize it once such impact has been recognized? and 

what set of criteria do we employ in order to compare views and attitudes toward 

space and spaceflight across different cultures worldwide? 

the challenging aspect of this question lies, of course, in the paradigmatic 

inversion and the complete change in historiographical perspectives it proposes. 

for a long time one of the most fundamental question in the field of space history 

was how spaceflight, in a comparatively short time, developed from science fiction 

into science fact. Who invented the necessary technologies, where, and in what 

circumstances? What kind of institutions were established, who financed them, and 

how did they produce, structure, and organize knowledge? Which scientific fictions 

became, at what point, predominant and were transformed into actual science— 

whereas others remained merely fictitious? today, historians seem far less interested 

in compiling yet another, sometimes semi-hagiographical, often oversimplistic, yet 

almost always teleological genealogy of space travel thought, its pioneers, and its 

practitioners. the new perspective is diametrically reversed. it is also less prone 

to endorsing undercomplex master narratives. What was formerly the dependent 

variable now becomes the independent one.We take spacefaring as given, and then 

aim to understand and explain the impact and possible effects that outer space,space 

travel and space exploration have had on culture and society at large. 

from the viewpoint of a cultural historian and recent newcomer to this field 

of historical research,such a general change of perspective seems more than overdue. 

almost inevitably it should lead to less specialist and fewer internalist analyses,to the 

advantage of broader, more integrative perspectives, by paying greater attention to 

historical context and culturally ascribed meaning. Multifaceted links and manifold 

connections are conceivable if space history breaks with its self-chosen splendid 

isolation and decides to open itself up to different historiographical branches such 

as social, cultural and intellectual history, but also to less obviously related disciplines 

such as science studies, social and cultural geography, sociology of knowledge, 

literary criticism, art history, and contemporary archaeology. Most probably, such an 

extension will eventually lead to a complete transformation of the entire field and 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 589 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

enable space history to harmonize far better with presently “hot” historiographical 

debates on transnationality, globalization, and “entangled history” as the key features  of a state-of-the-art histoire du temps présent. 

at the same time, space historians must remain cautious. “impact” is a very 

broad and imprecise term that can denote many different aspects simultaneously. 

Space-related cultural artifacts, such as hermann oberth’s seminal 923 book Die 

Rakete zu den Planetenräumen and frith lang’s 929 film Frau im Mond, certainly 

had an immense public impact; so had Willy ley’s numerous public lectures and 

Wernher von Braun’s countless media appearances, not even to mention the actual 

events such as the Sputnik launch in 957, the first weather satellite launch three 

years later, the Mercury and gemini flights, or the apollo landings which, in many 

ways, marked the end of an epoch rather than the beginning. after defining and 

refining the original “impact question,” space historians thus need to sharpen their 

analytical tools by differentiating carefully between different kinds of impact, and by 

endeavoring to categorize, classify, and contextualize.Whom or what was affected, 

when and where, immediately or on a long-term basis? and did this impact have a 

lasting effect or did it fizzle out soon after? different notions such as “repercussions,” 

“influence,” “consequences,” and “effects” on the one hand, and “perception,” 

“reception,”“consumption,” and “appropriation” on the other, come to mind and 

could be considered possible alternatives. 

conceptual problems of an almost identical kind are by no means specific to this 

field of historical research.they have been discussed by neighboring disciplines and 

branches of research—such as reception aesthetics—at least since the 970s,if not even 

earlier. Quite clearly, this constitutes another good reason why space history can only 

profit from widening its thematic focus and sharpening its analytical tools, including 

the incorporation of innovative methodological achievements made elsewhere. 

Moreover, in order to locate and specify societal and cultural impacts of 

spaceflight and space exploration,it might prove necessary to search elsewhere,in areas 

where effects,consequences,and repercussions are not readily expected and hence are 

5.John M. Staudenmaier,“recenttrends in the history oftechnology,” American Historical Review 95, no. 3 

(June 990):pp.75–725;MichaelWerner and Bénédicte Zimmermann,“Vergleich,transfer,Verflechtung: 

der ansatz der Histoire croisée und die herausforderung des transnationalen,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 

28, no. 4 (2002): pp. 607–636; Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, “penser l’histoire croisée: 

entre empire et réflexivité,” Annales HSS 58, no.  (2003): pp. 7–36; Michael Werner and Bénédicte 

Zimmermann,“Beyond comparison: Histoire croisée and the challenge of reflexivity,” History andTheory 

45, no.  (february 2006): pp. 30–50. the numerous contributions to Jürgen Kocka’s recent Festschrift 

(gunilla Budde, Sebastian conrad and oliver Janz, eds., Transnationale Geschichte:Themen,Tendenzen und 

Theorien [göttingen:Vandenhoeck & ruprecht, 2006]) aim to make an interim stock-taking of these 

debates on the globalization of historiography itself through global and transnational history. 

6. See, for example, Martyn p. thompson, “reception theory and the interpretation of historical 

Meaning,” History andTheory 32, no. 3 (993): pp. 248–272; Marian füssel,“die Kunst der Schwachen: 

Zum Begriff der‘aneignung’in der geschichtswissenschaft,”Sozial.Geschichte 2,no.3 (2006):pp.7–28; 

JenniferWallace, Digging the Dirt:The Archaeological Imagination (london: gerald duckworth, 2004). 
590 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

less obvious than, say, in utopian literature, pop culture, or science fiction tV shows 

and movies. if the implicit assumption of this volume is correct—that spaceflight 

was, at least for several decades during the twentieth century, an emblematic and 

absolutely central element to the project of Western modernity—historians should 

be able to locate evidence for its lasting effectiveness far beyond the established circles 

of the international spaceflight community and their widespread activities, and as 

independently of its historical and contemporaneous advocates as possible. 

last but not least, it is somewhat surprising to observe that the notion of 

“space” itself has hardly been problematized and how little theoretical attention 

it seems to have received, despite the classic works by geographers, philosophers, 

sociologists, and ethnographers such as gaston Bachelard, henri lefebvre,yi-fu 

tuan, pierre nora, Marc augé, and numerous others. how can we explain that the 

current upsurge of interest in space as a specific category of historical analysis—which 

is frequently labeled topographical or spatial turn—and the historiographical field of space 

history have not at all been seen in relation to each other so far? “What are you buying 

when you go to outer space?”someone asked rhetorically during the conference which 

inspired the present volume, and then replied to his own question, seemingly surprised, 

by exclaiming in despair: “there is simply nothing there!”yet, outer space is by no 

means a spatial vacuum; it changes constantly and is always formed and refashioned. 

it is precisely this static and ahistorical notion of space that must be problematized by 

asking questions such as:“Where” and “what” was outer space at which point in time? 

how was it represented and imagined? has the perception of space changed over time? 

and in what way were changing conceptions in turn affected by the continuous and 

ongoing exploration of outer space? even if it may sound paradoxical, it would seem 

high time to apply the so-called spatial turn to space history, and to write a social and 

cultural history of outer space with special emphasis on: space. 

Europe’s Outer Space in the Postwar Period: 

1945 and 1968/69 as Global Turning Points 

is there a genuinely european variant of outer space? in fact, is there a specific 

perspective on outer space which could be called european? is there a set of commonly 

shared assumptions about space and the specific role of europe in the history 

7. gaston Bachelard, La Poétique de l’espace (paris: presses universitaires de france, 957); henri lefebvre, La 

Production de l’espace (paris:Éditions anthropos,974);yi-futuan,Space and Place:The Perspective of Experience 

(london:edwardarnold,977);pierre nora,ed.,Les Lieux de mémoire,3 vols.(paris:gallimard,984–992); 

Marcaugé, Non-Lieux:Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité (paris:Éditions du Seuil,992). 

8. alexander c. t. geppert, uffa Jensen, and Jörn Weinhold, “Verräumlichung: Kommunikative 

praktiken in historischer perspektive, 840–930,” in Ortsgespräche: Raum und Kommunikation im 

19. und 20. Jahrhundert, alexander c.t. geppert, uffa Jensen, and Jörn Weinhold, eds. (Bielefeld: 

transcript, 2005), pp. 9–49, 36–37, with numerous suggestions for further reading. 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 59 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

of spaceflight? for the period prior to 945 at least, these questions are not highly 

problematic.historians agree as to the fundamental significance of the various european 

space fads of the 920s, notably in germany and russia, and, in consequence, the farreaching effects of the slow yet steady formation of various interconnected networks 

of international space experts. also in other european nations, such as great Britain 

or france, transnational personal contacts among rocket scientists and space experts 

frequently preceded the establishment of the various amateur societies. 

yet,by the time the golden Space age was in full swing in the 950s—with actual 

space travel remaining far from a reality—europe’s position was secondary at best.hence, 

the crucial question in this context is precisely when and through which unilateral transfer 

processes such cultural hegemony was lost in the aftermath ofWorldWar ii,not least as a 

concomitant of the rapidly emerging u.S.–uSSr polarization.analytically, the problem 

is further complicated by the fact that many of the new key players then residing in the 

united States,such as the engineer and rocket scientistWernher von Braun (92–977), 

the writer and space science popularizerWilly ley (906–969),and the technician Krafft 

arnold ehricke (97–984), were clearly of european origin, even if they may have 

gradually developed a somewhat different attitude concerning their own nationality.Von 

Braun, for instance, did not participate in any of the early international congresses on 

astronautics which began in europe annually after 950, and did not (even temporarily) 

return to germany prior to the autumn of 957.0 Be this as it may,with regard to europe’s 

(self-)positioning vis-à-vis outer space, the end of World War ii was definitely the first 

decisive turning point whose long-lasting impact can still be felt today. 

indicationsofthisfundamentaldisplacementofculturalhegemonycan,forinstance, 

be observed in the realm of popular culture, especially with regard to imagery and 

iconography.More than 0 years after its 929 premiere,film stills originally produced 

for fritz lang’s epochal Frau im Mond were used time and again to illustrate numerous 

articles on rocketry and spaceflight appearing in a wide array of international 

journals and magazines, simply due to the lack of visual material otherwise 

available. By the early 950s, however, the situation had drastically changed. 

9. Michael J.neufeld,“Weimar culture and futuristic technology:the rocketry and Spaceflight fad 

in germany, 923–933,” Technology and Culture 3, no. 4 (990): pp. 725–752. See my forthcoming 

article “Space Personae: Scientific networks of remote Knowledge, 923–969,” Journal of Modern 

European History 6, no.  (2008). 

0. See, for instance, von Braun’s letter to frederick c. durant iii, 23 december 953, Wernher 

von Braun papers, Manuscript division, library of congress,Washington, dc, /3. 

.Willy ley collection,national air and Space Museum archives,Smithsonian institution,Washington, 

dc, 33/9. Milton fairman,“the race to explore,” Popular Mechanics 53 (March 930): pp. 286–289; 

Kenneth W. gatland,“development of rocket flight: a review of the film Shown to the British 

interplanetary Society in london on february 4th, 948,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7, 

no. 2 (March 948): pp. 2–9; Kenneth W. gatland,“history of rocket development:a review 

of the film Shown to fellows of the British interplanetary Society at the War office,Whitehall, on 

July 6, 949,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 9, no. 2 (950): pp. 64–70; heinz gartmann, 

“rakete und raumflug im film,” Weltraumfahrt , no. 3 (Juni 950): pp. 86–9. 
592 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Figure 31.2—British Interplanetary Society 

Christmas Card (Annual Report of the British 

Interplanetary Society/Journal of the British 

Interplanetary Society 11 [1952]: p. 364). 

at that time, a direct equivalent to 

the enormously successful Collier’s/ 

disney complex simply did not exist 

in any european context. popular 

iconography widely available in the 

european public sphere was far less 

elaborate, less futuristic, and by no 

means as imaginative as its american 

counterpart—just compare, for 

instance, the visual expressiveness 

of chesley Bonestell’s (888–986) 

famous illustrations for Collier’s 

magazine with a number of european samples from the same period (figures 3.2 

and 3.3).the first example, showing a spaceship on the Moon with its crew about 

to begin their exploration, was distributed by the British interplanetary Society 

to its approximately 2,300 members as their official christmas card for 952; the 

second stems from one of the numerous publications of heinz gartmann (97– 

960),a german engineer,author,and well-connected editor of Weltraumfahrt:Beiträge 

zur Raketenentwicklung, and was based on a painting by graphic artist Klaus Büergle 

(926–). it is hardly surprising that these illustrations proved far less effective and by 

no means as trendsetting as their american counterparts. 

on the other hand, 

the lavishly illustrated, 

large-format books into 

which the american 

Collier’s series had swiftly 

Figure 31.3—Frontispiece to a 


1950 German magazine article. 


(Heinz Gartmann and Klaus 


Büergle, “Zwischenfall mit 


Heliopolis/Weltraumstation im 


Bau,” Das Neue Universum 67 


[1950]: pp. 173–191.)

Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 593 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

been transformed were soon translated into numerous foreign languages, including 

Japanese, italian, dutch, Swedish, finnish, german, french, and Spanish, and sold 

especially well in europe. in germany, for instance, S. fischer, one of the bestreputed publishing houses, soon acquired the copyrights and, before long, sold a 

considerable number of copies, running into several thousands. thus, geopolitical 

and iconographical shifts went hand in hand. from a european perspective, the 

950s space race was accompanied by a new sociocultural space fad in the public 

imagination, although this time of transatlantic rather than domestic origin. 

ever since then, autonomy—or, rather, the quest for it—has been the 

predominant theme of the european space effort. Since the first “philosophical” 

reflections, undertaken by the italian physicist edoardo amaldi (908–989) in 

april 959, on the urgent need to establish an official and independent european 

space organization, “encouraging” or even “increasing” european unity “from 

without” has been the explicit political aim in all common activities in space. 

in the late 980s five european research institutes came to the conclusion that 

a european “space spirit” had gradually developed, largely as a consequence of 

eSa’s activities. they argued that to undertake such activities would give the 

european union (eu) nothing less than a genuine chance to “consolidate a 

common identity.” the eu, they concluded in their large-scale study, should 

hence have its “eyes and ears in space.” Steadily pursuing this goal has, at least at 

times, posed a considerable challenge to all plans of cooperation with third parties 

and possible partners such as the united States. 

2 chesley Bonestell and Willy ley, The Conquest of Space (new york:Viking press, 949);Wernher 

von Braun, Joseph Kaplan, heinz haber, oscar Schachter, fred l.Whipple, and cornelius ryan, 

Across the Space Frontier (new york:Viking press 952); cornelius ryan,Wernher von Braun, fred 

l.Whipple, and Willy ley, Conquest of the Moon (new york:Viking press, 953);Willy ley,Wernher 

von Braun, and chesley Bonestell, The Exploration of Mars (new york:Viking press, 956). the 

german editions were Wernher von Braun, Joseph Kaplan, heinz haber, oscar Schachter, fred 

l. Whipple, and cornelius ryan, Station im Weltraum: Die technischen, medizinischen und politischen 

Grundlagen des Raketenflugs in den Weltraum (frankfurt am Main: S. fischer, 953); cornelius ryan, 

Wernher von Braun, fred l.Whipple, and Willy ley, Die Eroberung des Mondes (frankfurt am Main: 

S. fischer, 954);Willy ley,Wernher von Braun, and chesley Bonestell, Die Erforschung des Planeten 

Mars (frankfurt am Main: S. fisher, 956);Wernher von Braun and Willy ley, Start in den Weltraum: 

Ein Buch über Raketen, Satelliten und Raumfahrzeuge (frankfurt am Main: S. fischer, 958). 

3. edoardo amaldi: introduction to the discussion on Space research in europe, 30 april 959, 

historical archives of the european union (haeu), florence, italy, coperS 000. reimar lüst, 

“cooperation between europe and the united States in Space,” ESA Bulletin 50 (May 987): pp. 

98–04, here pp. 99, 04; forschungsinstitut der deutschen gesellschaft für auswärtige politik 

(Bonn), institut français des relations internationales (paris), istituto affari internazionali (rome), 

nederlands instituut voor internationale Betrekkingen “clingendael” (den haag), and royal 

institute of international affairs (london), Europas Zukunft im Weltraum: Ein gemeinsamer Bericht 

europäischer Institute (Bonn: europa union Verlag, 988), here pp. , 68:“der Weltraum [ist,actg] 

ein wichtiger Bereich, in dem europa eine gemeinsame identität konsolidieren und seine einheit 

verwirklichen kann . . . europa muß seine eigenen augen und ohren im Weltraum haben.” 
594 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

christmas 968 marks the second,well-known turning point,with the epochmaking spaceflight of apollo 8 and the first photographs of the entire earth taken 

on this occasion. american writer archibald Macleish (892–982) and austrian 

philosopher günter anders (902–992) were among the first to realize that the 

most profound consequence of the apollo program was not at all the continued 

exploration of outer space, its scientific results, or the proof of the actual technical 

possibility for so doing. it was, rather, a radical change in self-perception on 

a genuinely global level, literally resulting in a new Weltanschauung, i.e., ways of 

viewing the world. for the first time ever, it was felt that the entire earth could be 

seen—and see itself—from without and as a whole. 

even if this argument,originally coined by Macleish andanders simultaneously 

but independently of each other,has been repeated and modified so many times since 

that it now might be considered trite, it is beyond doubt that the images originating 

from this particular mission (especially the famous photograph “earthrise”) produced 

enormous,hitherto entirely unforeseen effects.it is no exaggeration to state that these 

images fundamentally altered our contemporary geographical imagination.thus,the 

major television event of the 960s, the 969 apollo Moon landing, must, first and 

foremost,be seen as a carefully orchestrated,global media event.the fact,that it could 

be witnessed by approximately 600 million people, i.e., approximately a fifth of the 

world population,live ontV in 49 countries worldwide,symbolizes the central role of 

space exploration in the process of globalization. taking place only seven months after 

apollo 8,it was cause and effect at the same time:technically only possible because of 

the recently set up intelsat system, the Moon landing proved an event which, in itself, 

had considerable globalizing consequences difficult to overestimate in retrospect. not 

only does this second turning point afford a perfect example of how the exploration 

of outer space substantially affects and alters conceptions of “inner,” (i.e., earthly) 

space, it also makes the question of europeanness even more complex.  

4.archibald Macleish,“a reflection: riders on earth together, Brothers in eternal cold,” The New 

York Times, 25 december 968: p. ; günther anders, Blick vom Mond: Reflexionen über Weltraumflüge, 

2nd ed. (München: c. h. Beck, 994), p. 2: “das entscheidende ereignis der raumflüge besteht 

nicht in der erreichung der fernen regionen des Weltalls oder des fernen Mondgeländes, sondern 

darin, daß die erde zum ersten Mal die chance hat, sich selbst so zu sehen, sich selbst so zu 

begegnen, wie sich bisher nur der im Spiegel sich reflektierende Mensch hatte begegnen können.” 

5. See, for instance, frank White, The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution (Boston: 

houghton Mifflin, 987); Wolfgang Sachs, “Satellitenblick: die ikone vom blauen planeten und 

ihre folgen für die Wissenschaft,” in Technik ohne Grenzen, ingo Braun and Bernward Joerges, 

eds. (frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 994), pp. 305–346; denis cosgrove, “contested global 

Visions:‘one-World,’‘Whole-earth,’ and the apollo Space photographs,” Annals of the Association of 

American Geographers 84,no.2 (June 994):pp.270–294;denis cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye:A Cartographic 

Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore,Md: the Johns hopkins university press, 

200);andreas rosenfelder,“Medien auf dem Mond: Zur reichweite des Weltraumfernsehens,” in 

Medienkultur der 60er Jahre: Diskursgeschichte der Medien nach 1945, vol. 2, irmela Schneider,torsten 

hahn, and christina Bartz, eds. (opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag, 2003), pp. 7–33. 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 595 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

the same tension—a certain form of nationalism or europeanness on one 

hand, versus a specific variant of internationalism or globalism avant la lettre on the 

other—was already a central element in many of the programmatic self-descriptions 

of the early space advocates, often proving a highly problematic issue. directly after 

its inception in 934, members of the British interplanetary Society, for instance, 

discussed their self-image as expressed in the Society’s name on several occasions. 

although it was at first disputed whether British rocket Society would not be a 

more appropriate name than British interplanetary Society if it was to harmonize 

better with its continental and north american sister organizations, 7 years later, 

in 95,the conflict had become whether the word “British”should not be omitted 

completely from the its title. Some of the Society’s members strongly feared that it 

could be interpreted as an expression of just that kind of latent nationalism which they 

considered as contradictory to the Society’s international character and detrimental 

to their common “vision of the coming of interplanetary communication.” from 

their perspective,europe was a state in between two different stages of development. 

europe was to be preferred to any national context and something of a self-evident 

frame of reference, yet not the global society either, which they hoped eventually to 

create through their cosmic activities. 

Infinite Frontiers, Cosmic 


Visions, Futures Past


“the desire to explore and understand is part of our character,” president 

george W. Bush declared on 4 January 2004, announcing his new “Vision for 

Space exploration”initiative at naSa headquarters in Washington,dc.“Mankind 

is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown 

lands and across the open sea,” he continued, in order to justify space travel by 

making bold psychological statements and indicating broad historical parallels:“We 

choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives, and lifts our national 

spirit.So let us continue the journey.” thus Bush,in a few simple words,connected 

6. p. e. cleator, “What’s in a name?” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 4, no.  (october 934): 

p. 34: “the raison d’être of the Society—however remote it may seem at present—is to achieve the 

conquest of space, and thence interplanetary travel.there can be no question, therefore, but that the 

term ‘interplanetary’ is a fitting designation.” h. e. ross,“gone with the efflux,” Journal of the British 

Interplanetary Society 9,no.3 (May 950):pp.93–0,here p.95;d.f.Martyn,“correspondence:change 

of the Society’s name?” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 0,no.2 (March 95):p.93f. 

7.“president Bush announces new Vision for Space exploration program: remarks by the president 

on u.S. Space policy, naSa headquarters, Washington, dc,” 4 January 2004, http://www. 

whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040114-3.html (accessed 3 January 2007). 
596 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

individual with collective psychology, history with the future, and questions of the 

quality of life with the welfare of the entire nation. he also reintroduced one of the 

oldest and most frequently advanced arguments for investing extensive resources in 

human spaceflight: outer space as humankind’s final frontier, as an enormous, quite 

natural task only to be undertaken by all concerned collectively, yet obviously and 

exclusively under his direction and leadership. 

By no means was george W.Bush the first to envisage the exploration of outer 

space as a direct consequence of america’s alleged predisposition to continuously 

open new frontiers and steadily seek new discoveries. originally, this famous 

argument goes back to historian frederick Jackson turner (86–932) who, on 

the occasion of the epochal World’s columbian exposition 893 in chicago, had 

tried to explain that many characteristic features of american society developed 

during the exploration of the american West and later persisted, even after the 

actual process of conquest and settlement was long completed. turner’s so-called 

frontier thesis has, ever since, been attacked by legions of professional historians 

who have severely and successfully criticized his argument from various angles, 

eventually debunking the thesis as a myth.it was,nevertheless,successfully politically 

exploited in the 960s in order to strengthen unity and the nation’s self-image by 

conjuring one great common task. thus, Bush did not add a new element to the 

debate but, rather, took over and gave fresh justification to exactly the same kind of 

frontier rhetoric that numerous other space advocates, including John f. Kennedy 

and John glenn, had already used long before him, and in which current naSa 

administrator Michael griffin also seems willing to invest. 

Whether true or not, from the perspective of a professional historian it is quite 

remarkable how present a simplified and vulgarized version of turner’s original thesis 

still is in everyday public discourse, and what considerable influence it continues 

to have in the american public sphere. it might be best described as an historical 

argument of the second order, i.e., an argument that is historically far from accurate 

but is retrospectively believed to be true and, despite its original falseness, thus proves 

enormously effective (in this case, up to the present day). When applied within a 

european context, its shortcomings become even more obvious. although europe 

8. frederick Jackson turner, “the Significance of the frontier in american history,” in frederick 

Jackson turner, The Frontier in American History (new york: henry holt, 92), pp. –38; Janice 

hocker rushing,“Mythic evolution of ‘the new frontier’ in Mass Mediated rhetoric,” Critical 

Studies in Mass Communication 3, no. 3 (September 986): pp. 265–296; Matthias Waechter, Die 

Erfindung des amerikanischen Westens: Die Geschichte der Frontier-Debatte (freiburg im Breisgau: 

rombach, 996). 

9. for instance, in a recent interview, christian Schwägerl, “‘Wir könnten längst unterwegs sein’: 

ein gespräch mit dem nasa-chef Michael griffin über unsere Zukunft im Weltraum,” Frankfurter 

Allgemeine Zeitung 22 (26 January 2007): p. 44; roger d. launius,“perfect Worlds, perfect Societies: 

the persistent goal of utopia in human Spaceflight,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 56 

(September/october 2003): pp. 338–349. 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 597 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

has always had a variety of different and oft-changing frontiers and open spaces, both 

real and imagined (most of which were located overseas), a direct equivalent to the 

american frontier has never existed, neither in Realgeschichte nor in myth. even more 

than in the united States, some time in the early 970s the theme of “space” lost 

much of its popular and futuristic appeal, as did nuclear power and atomic energy.0 

from the aftermath ofWorldWar ii through the early 970s, however, outer space 

clearly had constituted one of the“major sites of utopian thinking,”not only in the united 

States but also in europe. during these three decades it was a widely shared assumption 

that the future would—literally—take place in outer space.While also fostering actual 

technological developments, scientists, technicians, and engineers drafted grand schemes 

of how the world would soon appear.they attempted to anticipate a future in space and 

at the same time tried to interpret and make this understandable from a philosophical 

perspective. Some of the main protagonists, such as the english science-fiction author 

arthur c. clarke (97–), philosopher olaf Stapledon (886–950), aeronautical 

engineer a. V. cleaver (97–977), and the already mentioned technician Krafft a. 

ehricke (97–984), considered themselves explicitly as agents of an ongoing spatial 

revolution—the“interplanetary project”—which would change humankind forever.long 

before Sputnik they already declared the advent of the “Space age” or the “orbital age,” 

featuring an “interstellar” or “multi-planetary society” peopled by “Homo extraterrestris” 

or “interplanetary man,” and diagnosed the dawn of a new “3-dimensional civilization.” 

they discussed potential repercussions of spacefaring on the human psyche,demanded the 

establishment of a united nations organization control,and debated with great verve not 

only whether “on Mars life (such as we know) has evolved to the human level” but also 

how communicative exchange with extraterrestrials might be made possible. reflecting 

upon the necessity for a“common field of semantic reference (c.f.S.r.)”as a condition for 

any exchange between earthlings and their “extra-terrestrial neighbours (e.t.n.),”under 

the heading of “astraglossa” some enthusiasts even set out to take “first steps in celestial 

syntax,” just in case genuine long-distance communication “with beings with whom we 

presumptively share no idiom of discourse” had to be initiated (figure 3.4). 

20.“european interest in apollo dwindles,” The New York Times, 0 february 97: p. 24. 

2. constance penley, NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America (new york:Verso, 997), p. 22. 

22. arthur c. clarke, “the challenge of the Spaceship (astronautics and its impact upon human 

Society),” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 6,no.3 (december 946):pp.66–8;a.V.cleaver, 

“the interplanetary project,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7, no.  (January 948): pp. 

2–39; olaf Stapledon, “interplanetary Man?” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society 7, no. 6 

(november 948): pp. 23–233; Krafft a. ehricke,“the anthropology of astronautics,” Astronautics 

2,no.4 (november 957):pp.26–29,65–68;Siegfried Johannes gerathewohl,“Zur psychologie der 

raumfahrt: eine kleine Studie über unsere Vorstellung von raum und Zeit,” Weltraumfahrt 5, no. 3 

(Juli 954): pp. 65–68;a.W. B. hester,“Some political implications of Space-flight,” Journal of the 

British Interplanetary Society 4, no. 6 (november/december 955): pp. 34–39; lancelot hogben, 

“astraglossa or first Steps in celestial Syntax,” Journal of the British Interplanetary Society , no. 6 

(november 952): pp. 258–274, here p. 259. 
598 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Figure 31.4—In the 1920s, it was suggested to communicate with the Martians by means of a newly-invented 

“light-telephone” which is here shown in action. The question of whether the inhabitants of planet Mars (if they 

existed) would understand the constitution of such a signal, set up a corresponding station of their own, and then 

respond in the same language, remained controversial. (“Communication with Martians,” Die Umschau: Illustrierte 

Wochenschrift über die Fortschritte in Wissenschaft und Technik 28, no. 16 [19 April 1924]: p. 284). 

controversies on the existence of extraterrestrial life are by no means an 

epiphenomenon of postmodernity; they go back at least to the copernican 

revolution. even if early experts such as Willy ley, Wernher von Braun or the 

numerous members of the german Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (gfW), under 

the direction of engineer heinz hermann Koelle (925–), often did their very best 

to steer clear of such muddy waters and preferred, mainly for tactical and strategic 

reasons,not to take an openly positive stand,the quest for extraterrestrial life has always 

been one of the most central,yet often hidden,motives behind many scientific debates 

and space-related enterprises; not surprisingly, it still is today. it is not a coincidence 

that so many contemporary space exploration projects are motivated by the search for 

water, believed to be a necessary precondition for extraterrestrial life-forms. 

23. Karl S. guthke, Der Mythos der Neuzeit: Das Thema der Mehrheit der Welten in der Literatur- und 

Geistesgeschichte von der kopernikanischen Wende bis zur Science Fiction (Bern/München: francke, 

983); lucian Boia, L’Exploration imaginaire de l’espace (paris: la découverte, 987); Steven J. dick, 

The Biological Universe: The Twentieth-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science 

(cambridge, u.K.: cambridge university press, 996); Steven J. dick, Life on Other Worlds: The 

20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (cambridge, u.K.: cambridge university press, 998) 
Flights of Fancy: Outer Space and the 599 

European Imagination, 1923–1969 

ultimately, it can be argued that a vast number of the debates fought out 

during the twentieth century on the social and cultural rationale behind the space 

effort oscillated between two distinct poles—or, as it were, “discursive vanishing 

points”—other than the myth of the frontier.first,there is that entire argumentative 

strand for which literary scholar de Witt douglas Kilgore has found the neat label 

“astrofuturism,”i.e.,the widely shared belief system that the future would necessarily 

take place in outer space and that it would entail an encounter with alien lifeforms as the twentieth century’s most radical version of imagined alterity but yet an 

“other” unlike any other before. a german journalist summarized expectations 

for the future in 95:“the steady progress of science and technology obscure the 

boundaries. More than ever the world of tomorrow is a concern of the present, and 

even to visit a secret laboratory can today become the beginning of an adventurous 

voyage of discovery into the future.”25 

Second, in addition to this utopian component there is a strong religious, 

spiritual, and/or mythical strand to be detected behind these numerous debates 

and activities. how did changing images and conceptions of outer space, “other 

worlds,” and the entire cosmos impinge not only on competing versions of the 

future but also on religion and transcendental beliefs? as early as the late 920s, 

contemporary critics spoke of the “religion of spacecraft,” calling it a “technological 

ersatz religion.”although such an aspect continues into the present, it has hitherto 

not been adequately examined, sometimes quite dramatically so. Both factors—the 

utopian/futuristic strand and the spiritual/religious component—must be made 

central categories when historicizing outer space.26 last but not least, it is archibald 

Macleish and günter anders who deserve credit for drawing our attention to 

the anthropocentrism so deeply inherent in all variants of space exploration.they 

made us realize that the copernican revolution never took place in the realm of 

the imaginary.the more elaborate and far-fetched our conceptions and images of 

outer space, of other worlds “out there,” and extraterrestrial life-forms have become, 

the more anthropocentric they remain. indeed, distinguishing between space 

exploration and its impact can only constitute a temporary analytical separation. in 

fact, spaceflight already affected european culture and society long before it ceased 

to be a mere “flight of fancy.” 

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

university of pennsylvania press, 2003); cf. in this context especially c. g. Jung, “ein moderner 

Mythus:Von dingen, die am himmel gesehen werden [958],” c. g. Jung, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 

0: Zivilisation im Übergang (düsseldorf:Walter, 995), pp. 337–474. 

25. rosemarie Knittel, “gesellschaftsreisen in die Zukunft,” Alles aus der Welt (Mai 95): pp. 33–38, 

here p.38:“die schnellen fortschritte vonWissenschaft undtechnik verwischen die grenzen.Mehr denn 

je ist die Welt von morgen eine angelegenheit der gegenwart, und schon der Besuch eines geheimen 

laboratoriums kann heute zu einer abenteuerlichen entdeckungsreise in die Zukunft werden.” 

26. Walter deubel,“die religion der rakete,” Deutsche Rundschau 55 (oktober 928): pp. 63–70. 
600 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Section VII


afterWord 

~

602 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 603

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It

chapter 32 

Are We a Spacefaring Species? 

Acknowledging Our Physical Fragility 

as a First Step to Transcending It 

M. g. lord 

i

n a preface to The Man Who Sold the Moon, a 950 collection of short stories, 

robert heinlein emphasized that science-fiction authors do not generate 

“prophecy.”they write speculative fiction, a riff on the notion of “What if?”often 

they invent alternative realities to critique aspects of the world in which they live. 

yet our aspirations to become a spacefaring species—and our assumptions about 

our abilities to do so—were defined by science fiction,from the cannon-ball-shaped 

spaceship that blasted off in Jules Verne’s 865 fantasy From the Earth to the Moon to 

the canonical stories and screenplays produced by various authors—ray Bradbury, 

isaac asimov, frank herbert—during the cold War. 

What interests me is the disparity between who we are in our imaginations and 

who we are in real life.in fiction,we have mastered extraterrestrial flight;our technology 

enables us,to quote a classic split infinitive,“to boldly go” anywhere.in reality,however, 

we are fragile creatures that do not thrive outside Mother earth’s atmosphere, gravity, 

and magnetic field. in the last 40 years, robotic scouts—many designed and flown by 

naSa’s Jet propulsion laboratory (Jpl)—have sent home tantalizing glimpses of new 

worlds.in the next 40 years,we ourselves will strike out for these worlds—planets many 

times more distant than our Moon, worlds truly apart. 

engineers have demonstrated the know-how to build a craft that will transport 

a crew to, say, Mars. But there is a catch. in recent months, biomedical researchers 

working in relative obscurity have begun to raise a big unanswered question: can 

the human body withstand a prolonged journey into deep space? the constraints 

imposed by our biology could have profound societal implications. What does it 

mean to our collective dreams if a major obstacle exists to realizing them? and how 

much risk—as well as financial expenditure—will society tolerate in their pursuit? 

. heinlein, robert, The Man Who Sold the Moon (new york: Signet, 950), pp. v–vi. 
604 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

galactic cosmic rays are the “dragons” that lurk beyond earth’s magnetic field, 

the biggest threat to human spaceflight. and they are not just of concern to a few 

chicken littles. they trouble, for example, Shannon lucid, the plucky astronaut 

who spent 223 days, 2 hours, and 50 minutes in space, the longest stint of any 

american woman.“radiation could be a showstopper,” she said.2 

this is a far cry from the way radiation appeared in literature at the dawn of the 

space program.in Americans into Orbit,a 962 book aimed at young readers,radiation 

was simply one more hurdle that a can-do astronaut could easily surmount.3 no air 

in space? We’ll take it with us. no gravity? We’ll spin the spacecraft and make some. 

and to reverse the decline of muscle and bone caused by weightlessness, we’ll lash 

ourselves to a treadmill and break a sweat. 

in 96, Marvel comics writer Stan lee and artist Jack Kirby actually cast 

radiation as benign, suggesting it could produce positive mutations.after exposure 

to a solar flare during the flight of an experimental spacecraft, the fantastic four— 

scientist reed richards and his fellow astronauts—morphed into crime-fighting 

superheroes: Mr. fantastic, the thing, the human torch, and invisible Woman (who 

back then was called invisible girl). 

perhaps the fiction most responsible for the dream of safe, easy travel was 

robert heinlein’s Rocket Ship Galileo, a 947 tale of two boys who, with the help of 

one boy’s scientist uncle, cobble together a rocket in their back yard and blast off for 

the Moon. nearly every engineer i interviewed for Astro Turf, my recent book on Jpl, 

recalled heinlein’s impact, as did many of today’s space entrepreneurs: X-prize founder 

peter diamandis,Xcor chief Jeff greason,and even SpaceShipOne financier paul allen. 

heinlein was not unaware of radiation,and he knew it could cause mutations.But 

he, too, cast them as benign. his character Joe-Jim, for example, a two-headed beefcake 

who leads a mutant army in Universe (95), is none the worse for his genetic anomaly. 

if anything, because Joe-Jim has the thinking power of two brains, he is better. 

What exactly is a galactic cosmic ray and why does it pose a threat? it is a 

high-energy heavy ion that originates from an exploding supernova outside our 

galaxy. Such atoms travel very fast, about the speed of light, and they are said to 

be “ionized,” meaning that they have gained or lost electrons. as a consequence, 

they carry a positive or negative charge.they can be any element up to the atomic 

weight of iron.We don’t encounter them on earth because our atmosphere protects 

us. likewise, the earth’s magnetic field, which extends beyond the atmosphere, 

functions as a shield—except for a small, quirky patch of orbit over Brazil known as 

the “South atlantic anomaly,” where it does not. 

2. interview with Shannon lucid, Johnson Space center, 5 June 2005. 

3. gurney,gene,Americans Into Orbit:The Story of Project Mercury (newyork:random house,962),p.28. 
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 605 

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It 

Figure 32.1—This image shows a “track” made by a 

heavy ion passing through a brain cell in vitro. (Image 

courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory.) 

one might expect lead—that 

familiar prophylactic against dental xrays—to provide shielding. But a lead 

“shield”actuallycompoundstheproblem. 

When a heavy ion strikes an atom of lead, 

it dislodges a cascade of charged particles 

that can cause destruction similar to that 

of the heavy ion. 

think of a cosmic ray as “a bullet 

flying around with speed and mass,” 

Marcelo Vazquez explained.4 he is a 

researcher at Brookhaven national 

laboratory on long island who studies 

the effect of radiation on brain cells and 

other tissue.“When the rays go through 

matter—it can be a rock, a body, or your brain—they produce so much energy and 

charge that they produce a kind of hole. But they also produce secondary particles, 

like a shower.”these secondary particles are called delta rays. 

hydrogen compounds offer the best protection against secondary particles 

because hydrogen atoms contain one electron for one proton. the current best 

solution for a Mars-bound ship is an aluminum or carbon-composite shell, with 2 

to 4 inches (5 to 0 cm) of polyethylene (a hydrogen compound) around the crew 

compartment.Water is another efficient shield. But nothing—not even an artificial 

electromagnetic shield around the spacecraft—will block the rays entirely. 

Shielding matters because cosmic rays kill brain cells (or,in any case,brain cells 

in vitro). in Vazquez’s laboratory experiments, cosmic rays induced what is called 

programmed cell death in neurons. the bombarded brain cell assesses its degree 

of damage and decides to die rather than try to fix itself. Moreover, as a heavy 

ion passes through a column of cells, it forms a “track,” which you can see in the 

microscopic image in figure 32.. dislodged particles career out from this track, 

inflicting yet more damage on adjacent tissues. 

4. interview 	with Marcelo Vazquez, Brookhaven national laboratory, 0 november 2005. all 

Vazquez quotations are from this interview; some of Vazquez’s observations are cited in M. g. lord, 

“impossible Journey,” Discover (June 2006): 38–45. 
606 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Vazquez has written papers calculating the amount of brain cells that will be 

struck by cosmic rays on a two-and-a-half year voyage beyond the earth’s magnetic 

field—in other words, on a Mars trip as it is currently conceived by naSa planners. 

depending upon the size of the cell, we estimate that between 

3 percent and 40 percent of brain cells will be hit once by 

cosmic rays . . . . We have billions and billions of cells in our 

brain. But 40 percent is a lot. Some areas are very tiny, but they 

play an important role in functioning. if you wipe out those 

cells, you don’t need to worry about the hundreds of billions 

of cells. a few million—you’re gone. [alzheimer’s patients lose 

about 5 percent of their brains annually.]5 

radiation, we know from studying atomic bomb survivors, put people at risk 

for long-latency soft-tissue tumors. But,Vazquez pointed out, leukemia can develop 

more quickly, in as few as two years, raising the possibility of a severely braindamaged, fatally sick astronaut barely limping back to earth. 

of course, what happens to cells in vitro does not always reflect what happens 

in the body, where optimists hope repair will be possible.“to go from petri dishes 

to humans is a big jump,”Vazquez said. But his experiments on animals do not 

bode well for astronauts. rats exposed to cosmic rays, as well as rats exposed to 

conventional radiation,showed major impairment of motor skills,measured by their 

ability to move around in a box. over a period of  months, the rats exposed to xrays and gamma rays recovered some of their lost coordination, but the rats exposed 

to cosmic rays appeared never to recover. 

on the bright side, naSa scientists believe they have solved one major 

radiation problem: solar particle events. these are sudden bursts of hot plasma 

that periodically spew out at high speeds from our Sun. When astronauts return 

to the Moon, they will most likely tour its surface in a vehicle equipped with a 

solar-particle shield. or they will carry equipment for building a temporary storm 

shelter—a concept that will also work on Mars where, because the planet is farther 

away from the Sun, astronauts will have more time to secure refuge.the most acute 

problem remains chronic exposure to cosmic rays. 

not only does chronic radiation exposure hurt people, it also degrades the 

drugs used to treat them.the antibiotics naSa currently uses on Shuttle missions 

(Bactrim, cipro, and augmentin) lose their potency after about two weeks in space, 

according to lakshmi putcha, a pharmacotherapeutics researcher at the Johnson 

Space center.6 if Mars-bound astronauts equipped with these drugs in their current 

formulations became ill, she said,“We would have no way of treating them.” 

5. lord,“impossible Journey.” 

6. interview with lakshmi putcha, Johnson Space center, 7 June 2005. 
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 607 

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It 

the problem of drug degradation, however, is not insoluble, and its resolution 

could come through chemical engineering—coating the active ingredients of a 

drug with a substance or material that will preserve its effectiveness. for example, 

lidocaine (an anesthetic used on the Space Shuttle) is suspended in water—a radioresistant substance—so it tends not to degrade in flight. dosage for astronauts is 

also a hit-and-miss affair, particularly for substances ingested orally. gastrointestinal 

motility slows down in space and it takes longer for medications to be absorbed. 

Space medicine is a long way from the ideal projected in StarTrek:Voyager where 

a holographic doctor, the Mark i emergency Medical hologram, performs nifty 

repairs without ever making a cut. indeed, laparoscopic surgery, because it does not 

release buckets of blood, is well-suited to microgravity.astronaut and medical doctor 

dafydd Williams and Mehran anvari, a canadian scientist specializing in telerobotic 

surgery, have been experimenting with telerobotic medical techniques that might be 

used at, say, a Moon base.7 But because of the 20-minute lag for radio signals between 

earth and Mars, telerobotics will not be of much use to a crew on Mars. 

Space medicine must advance before a Mars flight because the human body— 

even one belonging to a robust astronaut—is extremely vulnerable in space. in a 

test on an early Shuttle mission, astronauts were pricked on the arm with various 

antigens, to which they showed diminished immune response. latent viruses also 

express themselves in space. naSa microbiologist duane pierson has published 

several papers documenting the presence in astronaut saliva of various viruses, 

including epstein-Barr, which has been linked to human mononucleosis.8 other 

common latent viruses could be yet more uncomfortable if they reactivated on a 

long spaceflight—chicken pox, for example, which usually returns as shingles.and 

no data exist on whether antiviral drugs, such as acyclovir, work in flight. 

the main issue, which naSa scientists have been unable from their current 

data to determine, is: does the immune system remain severely depressed, or, in the 

words of naSa immunologist clarence Sams, does it “adjust to a new normal?”9 

Some researchers are optimistic that if they could collect data throughout the 

mission, instead of merely at takeoff and landing, their results might be different. 

But stress of the sort experienced by, say, researchers in antarctica also degrades the 

immune system.and radiation is a big wild card,which may intensify the weakening. 

Vazquez was blunt in his assessment of a Mars mission:“no matter what you do,you 

put a guy in a can for six months and it’s a big stress.” 

Skeptics often ask, Why bother to leave earth? Science fiction answers that 

question with a bigger question, a question that has haunted human society since its 

first members looked skyward:are we alone in the universe? 

7. interview with dafydd Williams, Johnson Space center, 6 June 2005. 

8. interview with duane pierson, Johnson Space center, 7 June 2005. 

9. interview with clarence Sams, Johnson Space center, 7 June 2005. 
608 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

in the 980s,naSa began a ground-based program,the Microwave observing 

project, to address this question. it involved a systematic sweep of the heavens 

with radio telescopes. the project was of immense concern to scientists, artists, 

theologians—just about everyone but former Senator William proxmire,who tarred 

it with his “golden fleece” award for wasting public money. in 982, congress cut 

the project’s funds, but the public’s yearning for an answer was more powerful than 

proxmire’s scorn. privately financed, the sweep continues. 

robots also seek evidence of life. at Jpl, the mission architect’s mantra— 

“follow the water”—is code for “find clues linked to life.” in 976, scientist carl 

Sagan was involved with project Viking, the Martian probe that some scientists 

hoped would detect traces of life. Such a wish, however, was never made explicit. 

nor was it gratified, which may have led Sagan to fulfill it through science fiction. 

nine years later he published Contact, a novel describing a fictive alien encounter. 

Scientists approach the hunt for life with a mixture of hope and dread, their 

expectations molded by science fiction.hope is inspired by the aliens who came in peace; 

dread, by those who waged war.the film The Day the Earth Stood Still (95), directed 

by robert Wise, is a hopeful classic; benevolent aliens try to stop us from destroying 

ourselves.they stand in sharp contrast to the weapon-toters who touched down in h. 

g.Wells’s War of theWorlds (898).and i find it hard not to view robert heinlein’s The 

Puppet Masters (95), about an invasion of parasitic extraterrestrial slugs, as a prescient 

book. in one scene, scientists view a map of this country. its central states are designated 

“red”—indicating the residents’ brains have been taken over by alien slugs.0 

the most interesting fantasy, however, involves the commingling of human 

dna with that of a benign alien species—the subject of octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis 

trilogy, whose first volume, Dawn, appeared in 987. Butler, an idiosyncratic loner, 

may not consciously have sought to comment on the zeitgeist, but her theme 

reflected the times.With the cold War nearing an end,americans were less paranoid 

about the alien, or—to strip away a metaphor—the communist “other.” 

in contrast, at the height of the cold War, alien motives were highly suspect. 

arthur c. clarke’s Childhood’s End (952) is a chilling fantasy of alien “overlords” 

who dupe us into relinquishing our autonomous future. perhaps the funniest—and 

the cruelest—comment on our eagerness to trust was a 962 television episode of 

the Twilight Zone adapted by rod Serling from a short story by damon Knight. 

titled “to Serve Man,” the show introduced an extraterrestrial race devoted to 

advancing human health and agriculture. all that human cryptographers know 

about this race is the title of what appears to be their bible: To Serve Man—which, 

as it turns out, is a cookbook.  

0. robert heinlein, The Puppet Masters (new york: Ballantine, 990), p. 5.


. Marc Scott Zicree, The Twilight Zone Companion (los angeles: Silman-James press, 982), pp.


235–236. 
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 609 

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It 

Since the beginning of the cold War, gender roles have also been rethought. 

no longer, for instance, is the idea of women astronauts ridiculed as it was in 

962,when scientist Wernher von Braun responded dismissively to a question about 

women in space. his boss at the agency, he quipped, might allow room on a future 

mission for “0 pounds of recreational equipment.”2 

curiously, during the cold War, when the private lives of american engineers 

were often rigidly sexist,the science fiction they consumed explored unconventional 

gender identities.3 heinlein, for instance, was almost subversive in the way he 

proselytized for women as equals,anticipating the careers of astronauts such as Shannon 

lucid.“delilah and the Space rigger,” his short story from 949, featured a woman 

engineer who coeducates an all-male space station, transforming her misogynistic 

boss into a cautious feminist because her presence increases productivity. 

But at odds with fiction is this troubling fact:Women are in certain ways less 

suited than men to long-duration space travel. Breasts and ovaries are vulnerable 

to radiation-linked cancers in ways the prostate, for example, isn’t.4 and women’s 

metabolisms are different.promethazine,naSa’s motion sickness drug,takes longer 

to reach a level of effectiveness in women.Women also tend to show more orthostatic 

intolerance—light-headedness after getting up from bed or being in space. 

Walter Sipes, a Johnson Space center psychological researcher, believes a 

mixed-gender crew may have psychosocial advantages on a Mars trip.5 But women 

will have to ask themselves: is this worth the risk? 

in an e-mail sent in September 2006,Vazquez reminded me that solutions to 

the radiation problem will mostly likely not come exclusively through engineering. 

they will also be operational and medical, and they will always involve minimizing 

rather than eliminating risk. 

francis cucinotta, chief scientist of naSa’s radiation program, explains his 

agency’s goal: limit an astronaut’s radiation exposure so that his or her likelihood 

of developing cancer will be no more than 3 percent greater than that of an average 

person.6 astronauts, as a result, wear dosimeters to monitor the radiation they 

receive during flight. But the 3 percent is a murky number because data on softtissue cancer formation, gleaned largely from atom bomb survivors, are imprecise. 

likewise, the dose rate, the type of radiation, and the differences between the 

populations exposed play a role in computing probability, as do individual dietary, 

environmental, and genetic factors. 

2. Wernher von Braun quoted in howard e. Mccurdy, Space and the American Imagination 

(Washington, dc:the Smithsonian institution, 997), p. 224. 

3. M. g. lord, AstroTurf:The Private Life of Rocket Science (newyork:Walker, 2004), pp. 85–87. 

4. Vazquez talked about women’s cancer risks in the interview cited earlier. 

5. interview with Walter Sipes, Johnson Space center, 7 June 2005. 

6. interview with francis cucinotta, Johnson Space center, 9 June 2005. 
60 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

these are some solutions that might make for a safer Mars trip: 

.travel faster to reduce exposure. power the spacecraft with a nuclear 

reactor placed far away from a well-shielded crew compartment. 

2.Surround the spacecraft with an artificial magnetic field—an engineering 

solution that has not yet proven feasible. 

3.Surround the crew quarters with a shield of water—currently impractical 

because of the expense of getting an immense weight, or mass, of water 

off the earth. 

4.ingest foods or drugs that shield against radiation. the flavonoids in 

blueberries and strawberries have antioxidant properties. they don’t 

yet protect the brain from radiation, but in 30 years there may be a 

breakthrough.7 

5.finally, send a bunch of aging space cowboys. if, after 0 years, astronauts 

in their seventies developed cancer, one could hardly say they were struck 

down in the prime of life. “My kids said that naSa should send me to 

Mars,” Shannon lucid joked.“they said, if naSa would send you when 

you’re 80, Mom, then you could live up there, do something, and they 

wouldn’t even have to worry about bringing you back.” of course, with 

the nearest emergency room 30 million miles away, naSa had better 

make progress on that holographic doctor.8 

the most radical solution, and the one with the greatest societal impact, however, 

may involve genetic engineering. in defiance of the odds, some atom bomb survivors 

have not developed soft-tissue cancers.Scientists need to examine their genetic material to 

determine why.resistance to radiation would be a strong asset to an astronaut on a longduration mission.Because of concerns over the medical privacy of astronauts,it’s currently 

illegal to screen a crew based on genetics,but this might change for a Mars mission.or,in 

the more distant future,a private agency could grow radio-resistant astronauts through the 

miracles of genetic engineering—an idea with a science-fiction precedent. 

Gattaca, a 997 movie written and directed by andrew niccol, describes a space 

program in which astronauts are chosen based on genetic superiority. in the movie, 

this is a bad thing.the hero is a love child, not the product of a eugenics exercise.yet 

the hero’s short-term triumph—securing a spot on a desirable space mission—may 

seem less admirable if his weak genes expose him to a fatal illness.in the 970s,in vitro 

fertilization procedures were uncommon as well as ethically suspect.today they are 

performed frequently and not considered an ethical problem.likewise,other eugenics 

procedures that are not approved today may become commonplace in the future. 

7. Vazquez discussed flavonoids during his 2005 interview cited earlier. 

8. a variety of solutions are discussed in eugene n. parker, “Shielding Space travelers,” Scientific 

American (March 2006): 4–47; also lord,“impossible Journey.” 
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 6 

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It 

at an international Space development conference in los angeles in May 

2006, i chatted informally with some people from the Space frontier foundation. 

We discussed space tourism—the fact that engineer Burt rutan’s suborbital 

spaceship and los Vegas entrepreneur robert Bigelow’s orbiting hotel, things that 

science fiction writers had forecast, were hurtling toward reality. 

When heinlein’s 955 novel Tunnel in the Sky came up, however, some space 

fans said things that disturbed me. in expressing their desire to emulate the novel’s 

characters, they failed to make a distinction between plausible reality and fantasy. 

Set in the future, the novel deals with a group of high school students taking 

a survival test who end up stranded on a hostile planet. one of the kids who 

weathers the ordeal returns to earth but later goes back to the planet with other 

settlers to found a colony. 

i understand the allure of space settlement and share a passion to achieve it. But 

there is no “tunnel in the sky”—a safe passage without radiation to distant worlds.on 

Mars, the preferred destination of today’s settlers, there is no magnetic field to shield 

people from cosmic rays.the most disturbing comment i heard in a space settlement 

workshop was “When are we going to see babies born in space?” not soon, i hope, 

given the damage cosmic rays are known to cause to genetic material. 

robert Zubrin, the engineer-founder of the Mars Society who favors a trip 

to Mars with apollo-era technology, has pooh-poohed the threat of radiation. in 

a 2003 letter responding to a New York Times article on space radiation, he pointed 

out that astronauts who spent months in earth orbit have not been debilitated.9 

yet oddly, he did not adequately consider the fact that low-earth orbit is within 

the earth’s magnetic field, and apollo astronauts never spent more than a couple of 

weeks outside it. 

John charles of the naSa Space life Sciences division seems to have a firmer 

grip on reality.“lots of internal discussion is going on now about what level of risk 

is acceptable for trips like the Mars flight,” he told me, and added, 

What is it going to mean in terms of real-world manifestations, 

including: What is the likelihood of losing a person—having 

somebody die on a trip to Mars? We may have a case where 

they only have so much morphine and so many antibiotics so if 

somebody’s really sick, do you just keep pumping them full of 

morphine that somebody else might need tomorrow? or does 

something else have to happen? and what that something else 

is, we all dance around because nobody wants to talk about 

it . . . . We constantly remind each other that our examples 

9. robert Zubrin, “new york times Misrepresents Mars radiation danger,” online at http:// 

www.marssociety.org/news/2003/1210.asp, accessed September 2006. 
62	 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

would be people like those who settled the north american 

continent. [When they struck out for the West], they weren’t 

planning on coming home. if they got sick along the way, 

somebody buried them.20 

astronauts have a different relationship to risk than normal people. i got my 

first sense of this reading the astronaut ten commandments on a Web site for 

astronaut hopefuls (or as hos, as they call themselves).“Keep your weaknesses to 

yourself,” says commandment three. “if you don’t point them out to others they 

will never see them.”2 

this sense was confirmed when i raised cosmic-ray concerns at a recent dinner 

in hollywood.an astronaut visiting the host rolled her eyes dismissively.“doctors 

have been wrong in the past,” she said. “they used to think you couldn’t swallow 

in space.”and here sat one astronaut, she assured me, who would leap for a spot on 

a one-way Mars mission. 

public perception, however, is another story. this has profound implications 

for society. Society must determine, through public discussion, how much risk it is 

willing to tolerate or, in any event, how much it is willing, through tax dollars, to 

underwrite. i’m not sure a federal agency should use public money to place civilian 

astronauts at high risk. Soldiers maybe, but not civilians. the burgeoning private 

space industry may best accommodate those who choose to place themselves in 

extreme jeopardy.according to federal aviation administration guidelines,a tourist 

on a suborbital flight, for example, does not have the same assurance of safety as a 

passenger on a commercial airline. he or she understands and chooses the hazard. 

likewise, explorers on a privately funded space mission could imperil themselves in 

any way they want, irrespective of society’s disapproval. 

this evaluation of risk reminds me of the way scientists discussed cosmic rays 

in the 970s and of the unusual means by which a controversy about high-energy 

heavy ions was resolved.When a heavy ion passes through an astronaut’s head, the 

astronaut sees a burst of light. this is called a retinal flash. astronaut Buzz aldrin 

first reported the phenomenon in 969, when he returned from the Moon, but 

scientists studying cosmic rays had anticipated it. in the early 950s, university of 

california at Berkeley biophysicist cornelius tobias posited a link between cosmic 

rays and such visual fireworks. in 970 (a time when guidelines for experimenting 

on oneself were more lax than they are today),tobias placed his own head in the 

path of a high-energy heavy ion. he wore a black hood when the beam sliced 

through him; ambient light, he feared, would distort his perception.tobias believed 

20. interview 	with John charles, Johnson Space center, 6 June 2005. all charles quotes are 

from this interview. 

2. “ascan	 ten commandments,” online at http://www.ashos.org/astro_ten_commandments.html, 

accessed September 2006. 
Are We a Spacefaring Species? Acknowledging Our 63 

Physical Fragility as a First Step to Transcending It 

Figure 32.2—A high-energy heavy ion passes through the head of Cornelius Tobias (wearing a hood) at the Lawrence 

Berkeley Laboratory in 1970. 

strongly that he would see a pyrotechnic streak, and what he saw would confirm his 

thesis.the experiment accomplished this and more:“it was as if i were looking into 

the universe itself,” he said.22 

i hope the optimists are right: that the human body can survive chronic 

exposure to cosmic rays. i hope our flesh does not forever curtail our dreams. But 

to prove this, the optimists might, in the manner of cornelius tobias, have to place 

themselves in the line of fire. and unless society becomes dramatically less riskaverse, they might have to do it on their own dime, without popular support. 

22. tobias’s 	experiment is discussed in “cosmic ray Questions: Studies at lawrence Berkeley 

laboratory’s Bevalac Will help resolve uncertainties about radiation risks to astronauts,” online 

at http://imglib.lbl.gov/LBNL_Revs/RR_online/91fw.html, accessed September 2006. 
64 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
chapter 33 

Production and Culture Together:


Or, Space History and the Problem of 


Periodization in the Postwar Era


Martin J. collins 

i

n 956,philosopher hannah arendt delivered at the university of chicago a series 

of lectures entitled “Vita activa.” She reworked these reflections, yielding the 

classic The Human Condition,published in 958. in these works,arendt’s organizing 

question centered on whether the Western experience in the previous two centuries 

might confound rather than aid in working through the challenges of a “modern 

world . . .born with the first atomic explosion.”2 She argued that historically ingrained 

modes of economic and cultural life had created “a theoretical glorification of labor” 

and “a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society.”3 as 

labor ascended as a social organizing principle, ends rather than means guided value 

judgments, the practical overshadowed the theoretical, and (enlisting a pairing from 

classical philosophy) action (vita activa) trumped contemplation (vita contemplativa) as 

a principle of self- and community-attainment. 

in “laboring society,”arendt claimed,the very intellectual resources we needed 

to judge, weigh, and direct our technical creations had withered. events such as 

the “first atomic explosion” signaled that thought and “know-how” had “parted 

company for good,” and that we risked becoming “helpless slaves, not so much of 

our machines as [that] know-how,thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget 

that is technically possible.”4 in this concern, she drew on more than a century of 

social and political critique of the fusion of science, technology, industrialization, 

and capitalism—the influences of Marx and Weber are prominent, and heidegger 

and Mumford loom just offstage.to this quartet of historical vectors, she conjoined 

. hannah arendt, The Human Condition (chicago: university of chicago press, 998). 

2. ibid, p. 6. 

3. ibid, p. 5. 

4. ibid, p. 4. 
66 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

stepped-up postwar levels of advertising and mass consumption to reinforce her 

claims about the scope and entrenchment of a “laboring society.” 5 collectively, these 

deep cultural transformations held “great political significance”—not only in terms 

of the decision making of nation-state elites but also as a rupture among citizens, 

increasingly disinclined and unable to assess, weigh, and manage their circumstances. 

her narrative, thus, fit into a well-developed genre of alienation in modernity; of new 

modes of social being conditioning human consciousness in ways that threatened the 

quintessentially human; and of technological supplanting humanistic values.6 

as historians interested in spaceflight,what might catch our eye about arendt’s 

analysis and this literature of sociological and philosophic critique? one fact i have 

withheld. in that short interval between her chicago lectures and their revision as 

The Human Condition,Sputnik occurred,and in her prologue to the book it becomes 

the dominant symbol of this condition of alienation. Sputnik, viewed through the 

arendtian lens, was neither sui generis nor an exclamatory act in the superpowercentered geopolitical drama of the cold war. it was, rather, a manifestation and 

symbol of deeper structures of economic and cultural order, an analysis deriving 

broadly from Marxian sociology (in distinction from Marxian politics).7 

this blend of theory and historiography provides the vantage for this essay. 

Marx’s sociology often is seen with a hard, deterministic slant (“[t]he hand mill 

gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam mill society with the industrial 

capitalist”), but is used here less rigidly and as a methodological injunction: in 

assessing the “social” in spaceflight, look for the relations between modes of 

production (often with emphasis on the economic) and the cultural.8 this mantra 

5. although arendt does not cite either theodor adorno or Marshall Mcluhan, one suspects she 

probably was familiar with their claims on the enhanced integration of mass production and mass 

consumption inWestern societies.adorno’s well-known essay,“the culture industry,” was published 

in 947 and Mcluhan also had begun a long run of media and advertising critiques. See theodor 

W. adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture (new york: routledge, 200) and 

Marshall Mcluhan, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (newyork:Vanguard press, 95). 

6. this critique took a sharper turn in the 960s. See, as an important example, herbert Marcuse, Onedimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (Boston: Beacon press, 964). for a 

useful assessment of this genre and its meaning for the 960s and beyond,see Marianne deKoven,Utopia 

Limited:The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern (durham,nc:duke university press,2004). 

7. for an assessment of Marx from a contemporary stance,especially as regards the distinction between 

sociology and politics in Marx’s thought, see göran therborn, “after dialectics: radical Social 

theory in a post-communist World,” New Left Review 43 (2007): pp. 63–4. See also anthony 

giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory:An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max 

Weber (cambridge, u.K.: cambridge university press, 999). 

8. Marx’s notion of culture, of course, was not that of the post-World War ii academy in the West. 

for a classic, brief etymological essay on “culture,” see raymond Williams, Keywords:A Vocabulary of 

Culture and Society (new york: oxford university press, 976). on Marx’s notion of culture and its 

relation to the broader genealogy of the concept, see Michael denning, Culture in the Age of Three 

Worlds (london:Verso, 2004). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 67 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

is intended only as a point of orientation. as analytical terms, “production” and 

“culture” run at the edges, embracing different elements, with different meanings, 

in different contexts. they only get life and clarity through historical specificity. 

for the historian, an arendt-type or Marxian sociological analysis carries a burden: 

details of difference and situatedness yield to the bright line-making of theory. 

despite such semantic and methodological liabilities, i will use this high-level talk 

to highlight what i regard as a central historiographic problem in the field: the place 

of culture in our understanding of the development of spaceflight, a problem bound 

to its theoretical sibling, production. i will approach this claim not through the 

space history literature but through the broad, postwar intellectual reorientation of 

the humanities, in which the concepts of production and culture became key sites 

of theoretical engagement. the underlying question for space history is whether 

this theorizing and its implications,only loosely grounded in the empirical,provides 

a means for looking afresh at the field.9 

in distilling the postwar theoretical landscape i will necessarily (dangerously) set 

the “google map” to a wide view, emphasizing selected features. Soon after arendt’s 

The Human Condition,notions of production and culture took on new connotations. 

production as a form of power, control, and as a technique for replicating and 

perpetuating particular forms of social life (through capitalist configurations of 

economic ownership, technology, and labor) came to include also (via the influence 

of foucault’s writings) the power attached to scientific disciplines, professions, and 

the academy, especially when seen historically as coincident with the formation and 

consolidation of nation-states.0 in concert, culture as an analytic construct enjoyed 

luxuriant growth, in narrow application (subcultures of every stripe, corporate 

culture, institutional culture, and the like—think of how unquestionably natural it 

now seems to speak of “naSa culture”), and in the expansion of its ambit, carried 

along by the ever-widening reach of commodities and consumer values.Both trends 

helped to erase the older distinctions of high and low culture and to establish culture 

as a pervasive conditioner of human affairs. culture, thus, with protean alacrity, 

adhered to production in the small (say, within a community, an institution) and 

in the transnational-spanning large. it served, at once, as energetic contributor to 

capitalism and as a potential source of resistance.the dominant thread in the mix,at 

9. this essay may be read as a companion to Martin collins,“community and explanation in Space 

history (?),” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Stephen J. dick and roger launius, eds. 

(Washington, dc: naSa, 2006): pp. 603–63. 

0. the 	works generally cited as most influential in the united States are Michel foucault, 

The Birth of the Clinic:An Archaeology of Medical Perception (new york: pantheon Books, 973), and 

Michel foucault, Discipline and Punish:The Birth of the Prison (new york: pantheon Books, 977). 

for a useful instance of foucault-style analysis regarding states and production, see James c. Scott, 

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (new haven, 

ct:yale university press, 998). 
68 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

least as regards theory,focused on big capital,commodities,and consumption. culture, 

in this sense, not only was bound to a particular era of capitalist production, but also 

participated in an important epistemological shift:in a world of circulating commodities, 

representations and meanings readily detach from the circumstances of their creation 

(a basic tenet of poststructuralism, deconstructionism, and postmodernism), become 

malleable,locally or individually defined.inWestern and global capitalism,culture,then, 

is expressive of production and constitutes a phenomenon that envelops and conditions 

it. or, simply, culture becomes self-referential.2 

this theoretical neighborhood informed a range of cultural and social fields 

that emerged in the 960s and has dominated academic critique since, in part, 

. the point here is to emphasize the emergence of culture as a widely used conceptual category. 

different definitions of the cultural coexisted under this umbrella.two of the most influential came 

from raymond Williams (culture as a creative intersection between tradition and new experience) 

and clifford geertz (culture as a semiotic system). particularly relevant here,Williams’s work served 

as an exemplar in connecting culture and modes of production; see raymond Williams, Culture and 

Society, 1780–1950 (new york: columbia university press, 983) [originally published 958]. for 

geertz,see clifford geertz,The Interpretation of Cultures:Selected Essays (newyork:Basic Books,973). 

not discussed here is the relation between the “social” and the “cultural” in the academy in this time 

period; seeVictoria Bonnell and lynn hunt, eds., Beyond the CulturalTurn: New Directions in the Study 

of Society and Culture (Berkeley, ca: university of california press, 999). for a broad review of 

notions of culture, see peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History (ithaca, ny: cornell university press, 

997). for the important argument on the historically specific character of the postwar use of culture, 

see denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds; making a similar case is geoff eley, A Crooked Line: 

From Cultural History to the History of Society (ann arbor, Mi: university of Michigan press, 2005). 

for a view that emphasizes the connection between protest politics and the rise of culture, see terry 

eagleton, The Idea of Culture (oxford, u.K.: Blackwell, 2000). on cold war culture, see Stephen J. 

Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore, Md: Johns hopkins university press, 996); and 

peter J. Kuznick and James gilbert, eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture (Washington, dc: Smithsonian 

institution press, 200). on consumption, see richard Wightman fox and t. J. Jackson lears, The 

Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880–1980 (new york: pantheon Books, 

983); Sande cohen and r. l. rutsky, eds., Consumption in an Age of Information (oxford: Berg, 

2005);david B.clarke, The Consumer Society and the Postmodern City (london:routledge,2003);John 

n. duvall. ed., Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies (albany, ny: State 

university of newyork press, 2002); and Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures 

(london:Sage publications,998).on the important question of the international reach of american 

culture and its effects, see rob Kroes, IfYou’ve Seen One,You’ve Seen the Mall: Europeans and American 

Mass Culture (urbana, il: university of illinois press, 996), and rob Kroes, ed., High Brow Meets Low 

Brow:American Culture as an Intellectual Concern (amsterdam: free university press, 988). 

2. it is important to distinguish two threads of this claim. one is a general epistemological claim 

on the foundations of knowledge: the view that we have no privileged a priori or empirical means 

to assess the validity of propositions about the world.the other is historically grounded: that an 

emergent postwar commercial and communications culture created a new relation between signs 

and the real and the cultural status and use of such signs.this work built on Marx’s early arguments 

on the commodity as “fetish.” this view is most thoroughly developed in Jean Baudrillard, For a 

Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign (St. louis, Mo:telos press, 98). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 69 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

because it offered a first-order cut at defining and investigating basic questions.3 

it pushed to the fore questions of causation: how and why modes of production 

change and, in turn, are related to and interact with reshaped social or cultural 

orders. in highlighting causation, it made questions of periodization, of alertness to 

patterns of change, an explicit, necessary project. 

consider the colloquialism that provided the organizing idea for this conference 

(and as an assumption only is occasionally engaged by the papers)—that spaceflight 

“impacts” society and by implication that such effect is historically descriptive and 

serves as an important basis for conceptualizing research.the first part of this claim 

is trivially true in a limited way but obscures a more cogent historical question: 

how do we theorize the relation between spaceflight and the social? or, more aptly 

and fundamentally, to build on the interpretive sketch advanced here, how do we 

theorize spaceflight in and as part of a causally informed history? 

in space history,“impact”seems a natural category because of the privileged role 

ascribed to state-centered action in cold war historical accounts.the invigoration 

of government-directed power and action postwar (especially in the united States) 

gives credence to a rough causal formula of “the state acts, society receives.” or, to 

venture a touch more complexity, each may affect the other, but each stands as a 

relatively distinct sphere of activity. few, if any, historians would subscribe overtly 

to this cartoonish causal sketch, yet the field has been noticeably slow to articulate 

more robust frames of analysis. in this conference, authors joined social and cultural 

with politically centered narratives but leaned away from considering underlying 

causal issues or broader frames of theoretical interpretation. in terms of engagement 

3. this thumbnail is not meant to supplant or diminish other key analytic concepts such as class, 

gender,or race,or the related pairing of identity and difference.culture and production may complement 

or serve as tools for understanding how these other categories may be constituted.too, the emphasis on 

culture highlights the way in which,over this time period,anthropology (in particular) and sociology have 

been the crucial intellectual sites for working through the implications of theoretical claims generated in 

philosophy,literary criticism,and intellectual history.a focal point,relevant to this essay,for examining this 

process is the material culture literature, which largely originated in the 960s. See especially the work 

of daniel Miller,founding editor of the journal Material Culture;books include daniel Miller,Capitalism: 

An Ethnographic Approach (oxford: Berg, 997); daniel Miller, ed., Material Cultures:Why Some Things 

Matter (chicago: university of chicago press, 998); daniel Miller, ed., Materiality (durham, nc: duke 

university press, 2005). in this vein, see also arjun appadurai, ed., The Social Life ofThings: Commodities 

in Cultural Perspective (cambridge, u.K.: cambridge university press, 986); Bill Brown, ed., Things 

(chicago: university of chicago press, 2004); nicholas thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material 

Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (cambridge, Ma: harvard university press, 99); and fred r. 

Myers,ed.,The Empire ofThings:Regimes ofValue and Material Culture (Santa fe,nM:School ofamerican 

research press,200).on theory in relation to material culture,see especially pierre Bourdieu,The Logic 

of Practice (Stanford,ca:Stanford university press,990),and Jean Baudrillard, SelectedWritings (Stanford, 

ca: Stanford university press, 200. 
620 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

with other historical subfields, this represents a measure of progress but leaves 

unaddressed the deeper challenges of using available theoretical tools to clarify the 

field’s explanatory aims—of placing spaceflight in history.4 

and that brings us back to arendt, the tradition of Marxian sociological 

critique of which her work is part, and the analysis presented here.5 this analytic 

frame has deep relevance to post–World War ii historiography, including and 

especially for spaceflight. it cautions us to de-center the importance given to state 

political action and actors in trying to understand historical change; that is, it suggests 

that the crucial unit of analysis is not the state in isolation, or even the “contract 

state” or “military-industrial-university complex” (as widely used constructs attentive 

to government–market interdependencies).6 rather, it directs our attention to the 

largest configurations of production—of the state in conjunction with capitalism writ 

large (to include the academy as it constitutes disciplines and professions).7 arendt’s 

fleeting attention to Sputnik was to make this theoretical point and to situate the 

event historically—to ask how the first satellite and the emerging effort of spaceflight 

fit into a particular configuration of production (state and capital) and culture. that 

question should be as paramount for space history as it was for arendt. 

in the 960s and after, a torrent of literature concerned with production and 

culture yielded theoretically infused, historically specific, profound claims regarding 

the postwar years: that the basis of production and the basis of culture had been 

transformed,reconfiguring each and,to use arendt’s labeling,the human condition.8 

Business, markets, and nation-state prerogatives and power changed; postcolonial 

and new forms of global politics and geographies emerged; and, above all (especially 

4. for a related example of this type of exercise, reflecting a different historiographic moment, see 

eric hobsbawm,“from Social history to the history of Society,” Daedalus 00 (97):pp.20–45.for a 

review of the space history literature that samples a range of current methodologies but is relatively silent 

on the issue of relating the field to broader theoretical accounts,see roger d.launius,“interpreting the 

Moon landings: project apollo and the historians,” History andTechnology 22 (2006): pp. 225–255. 

5. i loosely confederate under the banner of Marxian sociology a broad range of authors and 

perspectives, including those that fall on a spectrum of sympathy or antipathy to Marxian politics 

(consider, say, the work of frederic Jameson and daniel Bell).the circumstance that this essay points 

to is the deep sway of Marxian modes of explanation in the historical and cultural studies fields and the 

still-powerful utility of a structural analysis in probing issues of causation.even the poststructuralist and 

postmodern literatures that see history as composed of texts and representations loosened from any 

notion of a substantial historical reality don’t quite succeed in diminishing history to mere narrative. 

6. on the notion of the united States as a contract state, see h. l. nieburg, In the Name of 

Science (chicago: Quadrangle Books, 966). 

7. for a useful instance of engagement with issues of causation and periodization relevant to this essay, 

seeann douglas,“periodizing theamerican century:Modernism,postmodernism,and postcolonialism 

in the coldWar context,” Modernism/Modernity 5 (998): pp. 7–98. douglas is skeptical of the various 

“isms” of critique but relies fundamentally on the notion of Marxian sociology sketched here. 

8. the clearest exposition of these claims is david harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An 

Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (oxford, u.K.: Blackwell publishers, 989). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 62 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

given the topic of this conference), that culture (as embodied in commodities, 

transnational business practices, and ever more ubiquitous communications and 

media technologies) was not merely a glossy coat of paint on capitalism’s formidable 

machine but integral to it and constituted a potent, complementary reality. the 

insights relating to causation and periodization in this swath of research and 

theory have remained at the margins of space history, despite the obvious: the 

changes mapped and claimed are coeval and intimately bound to the development 

of spaceflight—in its many dimensions as technology, site of knowledge creation, 

state activity, business undertaking, military venture, global utility, and national and 

international cultural trope extraordinaire. can space history be history without 

more fundamentally assessing and testing itself against this theoretical frame, 

seemingly, at first pass, deeply relevant to the field’s research challenges (allowing for 

many the points of disputation on methodology, cause, and consequence contained 

in this unwieldy set of literatures)? not just to import methods into the field, but to 

wrestle with problems of cause and change alongside other humanistic disciplines? 

the state-centered narratives that seemed passably suitable in the early years of 

the field now seem increasingly inadequate for reinterpreting the early cold war 

and, especially, to organize the history of recent decades. the rest of this essay 

will look briefly at the two nodes of this analysis—production and culture—and 

their implications for situating spaceflight in this broader landscape of the postwar 

historical experience. 

after World War ii, the united States, in a series of steps in collaboration 

with business and the academy, created, to use daniel yergin’s coinage, a national 

security state.9 assessments of its relation to modes of production and shifts in the 

cultural landscape surfaced in short order.20 But broad views that an assertive policy 

of massive government spending on research, development, discipline-centered 

knowledge, and technology was providing an opportunity to refashion the very 

basis of capitalism took longer to arise.2 emblematic in this regard was the work 

of the politically liberal economist John Kenneth galbraith and the conservative 

9. on the national security state, see daniel yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold 

War and the National Security State (Boston: houghton Mifflin, 977). My analytic focus here is 

the united States.the goal is not a comprehensive historiographic review and argument; rather, 

it is only to suggest underlying research problems for the field. it should be noted, though, that 

the literature on the transformation of capitalism in the 960s and 970s is u.S.-centric, given the 

united States’ dominant economic position. 

20. critiques and targeted assessments were prevalent throughout the late 940s and 950s. See, 

as but one example, c.Wright Mills, The Power Elite (new york: oxford university press, 959). 

2. in my reading, most of the early literature envisions the military-industrial-academic complex 

as an adjunct to the broader economic system of capitalism.the focus tends to be on distortion 

rather than on a reconstitution of economic structures.the distortion view is the organizing idea 

of the classic study by rand economist charles hitch. See charles Johnston hitch, The Economics 

of Defense in the Nuclear Age (cambridge, Ma: harvard university press, 960). 
622 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

sociologist daniel Bell. By 960, both had examined capitalism’s condition sans 

consideration of the cold war elephant in the room. galbraith’s 958 The Affluent 

Society explored the cultural changes accompanying widespread consumerism (a 

theme already much in the air, as indicated by arendt’s exposition); Bell’s 960 

The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties claimed that the 

long-standing tussle between capital and labor had petered out.22 a triangulation 

of accommodation among labor, business, and the state, he argued, dampened the 

conflicting ideological positions of Marxian and capital-oriented politics. in short, 

both authors saw the defining issues of the 950s in conceptual terms consistent with 

the political economy of the early twentieth century. But each, as a consequence of 

these researches, immediately began a reappraisal of the postwar landscape. 

By the late 960s, galbraith and Bell made their central research concern 

the question of whether capitalism and the state, through cold war scientific and 

technological activism, had revamped existing modes of production. galbraith’s 

967 The New Industrial State and,especially,Bell’s 973 The Coming of Post-Industrial 

Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting began to make the case that (among other 

factors) the federal research and development engine had facilitated a fundamental 

change in business practice,elevating the role of knowledge,and thereby knowledge 

professions, serving to recast the basic relationship between labor and capital.23 this 

reconfiguration had many other elements, including a policy shift that loosened 

government controls over markets and corporations (nationally and internationally), 

the burgeoning possibilities of information technologies, and the enhanced role 

22. new 	additions with updated introductions by the authors help in approaching these texts; 

see John Kenneth galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: houghton Mifflin, 984) and daniel Bell, 

The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties:With “The Resumption of History 

in the New Century” (cambridge, Ma: harvard university press, 2000). 

23. John Kenneth galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: houghton Mifflin, 967); daniel Bell, 

The Coming of Post-industrial Society:AVenture in Social Forecasting (newyork: Basic Books, 999). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 623 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

of consumption in economic and cultural life.24 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).25this spare delineation of this significant shift, played out 

over two-plus decades, is intended only for a limited point: that spaceflight—in its 

civil, military, commercial dimensions—developed and participated in fundamental 

changes in state-market regimes. thus, if explanation (whether of “impact,” of 

causes, or patterns of change) is a goal, then such explanation needs to encompass, 

as a first-order concern, how nation-state-centered accounts relate to the different 

frames of analysis suggested by globalism and postmodernism.26 But these points 

bring us back to the other, crucial question of this review: What is the relation 

between modes of production and culture in the age of spaceflight? 

24. 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 (cambridge, u.K.: polity, 987); 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, 975) [first published 

as der Spätkapitalismus, Suhrkamp Verlag, 972]. for an overview of changes from the 960s 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 petertemin,“Beyond Markets 

and hierarchies:towards a new Synthesis of american Business history,” American Historical Review, 

08 (april 2003): pp. 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 MarketplaceThat Is Remaking the ModernWorld (newyork: Simon & 

Schuster: 998). on changes in modes of production from the perspective of history of science and 

technology,see paul forman,“the primacy of Science in Modernity,oftechnology in postmodernity, 

and of ideology in the history oftechnology,” History andTechnology 23 (2007): pp. –52; and philip 

Mirowski, The Effortless Economy of Science? (durham, nc: duke university press, 2004). 

25. See, as a range of examples, arjun appadurai, ed., Globalization (durham, nc: duke university 

press, 200); francis fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (new york: perennial, 2002); 

anthony giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, ca: Stanford university press, 990); 

harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late 

Capitalism (durham, nc: duke university press, 99); 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 2 (2005): pp. 30–324; lisa parks, Cultures in 

Orbit:Satellites and theTelevisual (durham,nc:duke university press,2005);and peter redfield,“the 

half life of empire in outer Space,” Social Studies of Science 32 (2002): pp. 79–825. More broadly, in 

the historical profession these changes have given new life to the transnational (in contrast to the longstanding 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). 

26. Much of the globalism literature makes the case for the diminishment of nation-state power 

in face of the market. a cogent analysis of the relation among markets, states, and ideology is 

therborn,“after dialectics.” 
624 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

this question vexes space history—all the more for lack of explicit theoretical 

attention.27 for it is in the very period in which spaceflight develops that culture 

becomes an historically specific, key concept—as an analytical instrument within 

the academy and as a descriptor of the broad phenomenological effect of commerce, 

commodities, and communications on our day-to-day perceptions and constitution 

of the world.28 in this latter regard, it embodies deep claims, ontological and 

psychological: that time, distance, what counts as global or local, and how identities 

are constituted (ours and those of distant others) all are conceptualized and 

experienced in new ways.Such propositions became commonplace in the globalism 

and postmodernism literatures.29 philosopher langdon Winner, as one example, 

captured this melding of productive regimes, technology, global-local perceptions, 

and individual identity and their close association with the construct of culture: 

the map of the world shows no country called technopolis, yet 

in many ways we are already its citizens. if one observes how 

thoroughly our lives are shaped by interconnected systems of 

modern technology, how strongly we feel their influence, respect 

their authority and participate in their workings, one begins to 

understand that, like it or not, we have become members of a new 

order in history.to an ever-increasing extent, this order of things 

transcends national boundaries to create roles and relationships 

groundedinvast,complexinstrumentalitiesofindustrialproduction, 

electronic communications, transportation, agribusiness, medicine, 

and warfare. observing the structures and processes of these vast 

systems,one begins to comprehend a distinctively modern form of 

power, the foundations of technopolitan culture.30 

27. of course, the cultural has long been on space history’s radar. in howard Mccurdy’s oft-cited 

work, the claim is advanced that popular culture helped political elites accept the idea of spaceflight. 

Missing is theoretical understanding of why that might have been so.See howard Mccurdy,Space and 

the American Imagination (Washington, dc: Smithsonian institution press, 997). closer to the mark 

methodologically is Michael l. Smith,“Selling the Moon:the u.S. Manned Space program and the 

triumph of commodity Scientism,” in The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 

1880–1980, richardWightman fox andt. J. Jackson lears, eds. (newyork: pantheon, 982). 

28. again, denning, Culture in the Age of Three Worlds, is the best historical account of this change. 

the touchstone theoretically is Jameson, Postmodernism. See also Zygmunt Bauman,The Individualized 

Society (cambridge, u.K.: polity, 200). 

29. a useful assessment and critique of these claims is anna tsing, “the global Situation,” in The 

Anthropology of Globalization, ed. Jonathan Xavier inda and renato rosaldo (new york, Blackwell 

publishers, 200), pp. 453–485. 

30. langdon Winner, The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology 

(chicago:the university of chicago press, 986), p. ix.Winner presented this notion as a preamble 

to his study and not as the focus of his research.a kindred outlook, richer in sociological claims, is 

ulrich Beck, Risk Society:Towards a New Modernity (london: Sage publications, 992). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 625 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

in its emphasis on the constitutive role of technology, one easily can read 

into this description the multiple ways in which the various aspects of spaceflight 

intersect and participate in this reinvention of the human experience on a global 

scale. less evident in Winner’s characterization are the myriad sites of contestation 

to these changes, the ways in which the local and global get interpreted, defined, 

and formed by individuals, communities, and nations.3 culture, in this argument, 

is as pervasive as capital and the technological systems with which it is one—not 

resolutely dominant, but “there” as an element joined, adapted, or countered by 

many local cultures.32 it becomes a form of political power and a framework of 

meanings that may reinforce modernist, nation-state-centered notions of progress, 

or, or alternatively, in postmodern fashion refer back on itself.33 

the linkage between culture and capitalism has been strongest in the 

postmodernist critique, reflecting the seminal influence of frederic Jameson’s 984 

essay,“postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism.”34 Writing in 99, 

Jameson gave the condition described byWinner a different inflection,shifting emphasis 

from technological systems vast in extent to commodities as key in understanding the 

status of culture and its relation to changes in the human experience: 

postmodernism is what you have when the modernization 

process is complete and nature is gone for good. it is a more 

fully human world than the older one, but one in which 

“culture” has become a veritable “second nature.” indeed, what 

happened to culture may well be of the more important clues for 

tracking the postmodern: an immense dilation of its sphere (the 

sphere of commodities), an immense and historically original 

acculturation of the real “[c]ulture” has become a product in 

3. the anthropological and postcolonial literatures have covered this issue in depth. See, as examples, 

arjun appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, Mn: university of 

Minnesota press, 996); edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (newyork:Vintage Books, 994); James 

clifford, Routes:Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (cambridge, Ma: harvard university 

press,997);frederick cooper, Colonialism in Question:Theory,Knowledge,History (Berkeley,ca:university 

of california press, 2005); The Anthropology of Globalization:A Reader (Malden, Ma: Blackwell publishers, 

2002);and Bryan S.turner, Orientalism,Postmodernism,and Globalism (london:routledge,994). 

32. Valuable in sorting through these issues from a sociological perspective is ulrich Beck, Power 

in the Global Age:A New Global Political Economy (cambridge, u.K.: polity, 2005); and ulrich Beck, 

The Cosmopolitan Vision (cambridge, u.K.: polity, 2006). 

33. the modernist ideals of progress, especially 	as adopted by less-developed countries, are a 

crucial part of geopolitics in this dynamic.they are a resource in defining these nation-states contra 

to the West. See, for example, gyan prakash, Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern 

India (princeton, nJ: princeton university press, 999). 

34. Jameson’s 984 essay provided the title for his 99compilation of essays and was republished 

therein:fredric Jameson, Postmodernism,Or,the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (durham,nc:duke 

university press, 99). on Jameson’s singular standing in postmodern and critical thought after 

980, see perry anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (london:Verso, 998). 
626 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

its own right; the market has become a substitute for itself and 

fully as much a commodity as an any of the items it includes 

within itself.35 

the “dilation” of the congruent spheres of commodities and culture implied 

not only that more stuff circulated ever more widely through capitalism’s arteries, 

but also that ever more realms of life—ideas,images,emotions,spirituality,politics— 

had become commoditized, packaged, and divorced from the circumstances of their 

creation, infused with the values of the market, including culture itself. 

Jameson’s analysis, Marxist and pointedly historical, was not wholly original. 

in 96, the more politically and theoretically measured daniel Boorstin 

emphasized, too, culture’s historically new and ascendant status, especially as 

connected to the use of images. 

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 newfangled content. everything we see and hear and do persuades us 

that this power is ours.36 

the primary distinction between the historical-empirical Boorstin and 

critically inclined Jameson was a profound shift in attitude. Boorstin lamented this 

undermining of the real; Jameson accepted it as a constitutional feature of capitalism 

in the latter half of the twentieth century.37 

What might we make of these claims binding together epistemology, 

commodities, and culture conceived as a “second nature”? first is to reemphasize 

that these are claims about periodization—the making of an era which included 

spaceflight. as a start, they might encourage us to overlay this analytic on space 

history’s chronology and look for reorientations that include state-centered politics 

35. Jameson, Postmodernism, pp. ix–x. 

36. daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America (new york: atheneum, 97), pp. 

82–83. 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 950s, early 960s. 

37. to 	daniel Bell, writing in 976, Boorstin’s concern loomed large. the abandonment of 

the real meant abandoning the protestant ideals of restraint and soberness (borrowing from Max 

Weber’s classic argument), and thus hollowing out a key pillar of capitalism. Jameson’s account, on 

this point, seems to have weathered best. See daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism 

(new york: Basic Books, 996 [a 20th anniversary edition]). 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 627 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

and happenings in production and culture broadly conceived.a reconceptualization 

in this vein of the 960s, for example, might offer interpretations that correlate 

culture and politics within an integrated frame, rather than as partially overlapping 

but separate orders of experience.this integration already can be found in several 

examples of literary criticism that have plumbed space- and business-themed 

literature.these works employ the same conceptual structure presented here (not 

surprising) and stand as examples of the explanatory possibilities of this type of 

analysis.38 and they raise a deeper point: that in an era of culture, literary tools and 

modes of analysis may be a necessary complement to history in understanding the 

human condition. in modernism, the view prevailed that artists stood as critics 

positioned athwart the culture of their time.in postmodernism and an era of culture 

as “second nature,” the implied claim is that all historical actors are so suffused 

with the cultural that no one stands beyond it—we all, in different ways, are users, 

interpreters, and refashioners in the tide of symbols. 

this deep, prosaic sense of culture in the postwar period is the essence of 

Jameson’s observation.this view marries well with my own research on multinational 

business and the development of a global satellite telephony system by the fortune 

500 company, Motorola—a subject distant from literary theory but richly indicative 

of these claims about the status of culture. culture as preoccupation, conceptual 

category, and tangible reality suffused Motorola and its development of this satellite 

project in the later 980s and 990s. Such an outlook came to seem essential 

in running a business with tens of sites around the globe, managing a complex 

organization, creating new modes of engineering project management, and 

operating in a media and symbolic environment over which the corporation only 

had partial control.this culture fixation led the firm to create Motorola university 

in 989, with the charge to research and manage the many intersections of culture 

and corporate practice that now seemed central to the firm’s success. Within the 

university sat the center for technology and culture, led by an anthropologist 

who established a range of links to academic anthropology. as the work of these 

units became integrated into the Motorola business enterprise, they reinforced the 

view that a necessary relationship existed among culture, the corporation, and an 

ability to act across the world stage.39 Motorola university was one notable instance 

38. See William d. atwill,	 Fire and Power: The American Space Program as Postmodern Narrative 

(athens, ga: university of georgia press, 994);thomas peyser, Utopia & Cosmopolis: Globalization 

in the Era of American Literary Realism (durham, nc: duke university press, 998); Joseph tabbi, 

Postmodern Sublime:Technology and American Writing from Mailer to Cyberpunk (ithaca, ny: cornell 

university press, 995); and graham thompson, The Business of America:The Cultural Production of a 

Post-war Nation (london: pluto press, 2004). 

39. for a comic, often polemical, and sometimes accurate account of the relation between academic 

cultural studies and business uses of culture,seethomas frank,One Market Under God:Extreme Capitalism, 

Market Populism, and the End of Democracy (newyork:doubleday,2000),chapter 8. 
628 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

of a larger trend: over a decade, from the mid 980s to mid 990s, 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 culture problem and its 

relation to competition in transnational markets.40 

this example suggests the ways in which culture—and the pursuit of space 

history—may be intimately bound to configurations of production and politics.4 

More broadly, it suggests the possibilities for space history when we widen the 

frame of analysis. in emphasizing theory, the argument in this essay is not a call to 

reductionism, to suggest that richness of historical experience get shoehorned into 

an empirically contestable structure of critique.nor is it to minimize the limitations 

of this theoretical literature. it, by and large, reflects its origination in the Western 

academy and life experience. rather, this essay presents a gentle imperative: Be 

attentive to the possibilities of thought in the humanities that has seen production 

and culture as a historical problem of the first rank. the notions limned here, as 

propositions and analytic constructs, provide a basis for reassessing space history’s 

domain of problems and questions, such as the meaning and status of spaceflight 

since World War ii; its political possibilities; its place in rhetoric and thought in the 

period; its relation to capital, culture, and commodities; and the combinations of the 

real, the symbolic, and the imaginary that have gained cultural preference. 

in making a profound historical claim that a new configuration of epistemology, 

production, and culture marks the very period coincident with the development 

of spaceflight, this body of thought poses a deep challenge to space history. to 

understand the functioning of symbols and images surfaces as a crucial problem. 

in what ways, for example, do spaceflight and space fiction—in what balance, with 

what blurring of genres, of the real and the semiotic—speak to the preoccupations 

of particular regimes of production and cultural experience? What satisfies and why? 

What period themes—whether utopia, earthly escape, the human body, identity, 

difference—find resonance in the narratives of spaceflight?42 these are substantial 

questions that deserve theoretical articulation. otherwise, our understanding of 

40. for an overview of this trend from a policy perspective, see Stuart cunningham et al., “the 

Business of Borderless education,” a report commissioned by the department of education,youth, 

and training, canberra, commonwealth of australia, 2000. 

4. this perspective is partially realized in constance penley, NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex 

in America (london:Verso, 997). 

42. Jameson, the doyen of the capitalist-articulated postmodern, has made science fiction a major 

theme of his research, reflecting a judgment that the genre is deeply expressive of the period. 

See frederic Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future:The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions 

(london:Verso,2005).for an overview of culture-inflected literature in space historiography,see asif 

Siddiqi, “american Space history: legacies, Questions, and opportunities for future research,” 

in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, Stephen J. dick and roger launius, eds. (Washington, 

dc: naSa, 2006), pp. 433–480. But, again, the question of how culture might relate to broader 

problems of explanation in the postwar period are not explicitly addressed. 
Production and Culture Together: Or, Space History 629 

and the Problem of Periodization in the Postwar Era 

spaceflight (whether as a state or market undertaking) may remain disconnected 

from analyses and insights that view production more comprehensively. Without 

an invigorated conceptual toolbox, the intersection of the cultural and spaceflight 

may seem primarily as kitsch (Star trek Enterprise/Space Shuttle Enterprise) or as 

haphazard and of elusive meaning—rather than as a critical site for investigating the 

postwar experience. 

this analysis offers one path toward a more considered balance between theory 

and the empirical, toward thinking about spaceflight in history, as a telling angle on 

our understanding of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. 
630 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 63

About the Authors 

James T. Andrews is an associate professor of modern russian and comparative 

european history in the department of history at iowa State university (iSu),where 

he is co-director of iSu’s ph.d. program and center for the historical Studies of 

technology and Science.at iSu,he has also been director of russian,east european, 

and central asian Studies and director of graduate studies in history. he holds a 

ph.d. in modern russian/Soviet history from the university of chicago and has 

taught as a visiting professor at several research institutions, including the university 

of texas at austin. Since the summer of 995, he has been affiliated as a senior 

research associate with the russian academy of Sciences institute for the history 

of the natural Sciences and technology in Moscow and St. petersburg. professor 

andrews’s books and numerous articles have analyzed the intersection of science 

and technology, society, and public culture in modern russia and in a comparative 

eurasian framework. he is the author of Science for the Masses:The Bolshevik State, 

Public Science, and the Popular Imagination, 1917–34 (texas a&M university press, 

2003) and editor of Maksim Gor’kii Revisited: Science,Academics and Revolution (995). 

his newest book, to be published in the texas university press centennial of airflight Series, is entitled Visions of Space Flight: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Russian Popular 

Culture, and the Birth of Soviet Cosmonautics, 1857–1957 (forthcoming, 2008). he is 

also currently completing a monograph (overview synthesis) entitled Science and the 

Public Sphere:Technology, Science, and European Public Culture, 1543–Present. 

Glen Asner joined the naSa headquarters history division in december 2004. 

he recently completed his doctoral dissertation, titled “the cold and american 

industrial research,” at carnegie Mellon university.among his publications is an 

article, “the linear Model, the u.S. department of defense, and the golden age 

of industrial research,” in The Science-Industry Nexus, proceedings of the 23rd 

nobel Symposium, edited by Karl grandin, nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm. 

in collaboration with Stephen garber, glen is currently writing a history of the 

development of the Vision for Space exploration.glen served as a contract historian 

prior to joining naSa on projects for the u.S. department of defense, the u.S. 

department of energy, and the hagley Museum and library. 

Linda Billings is a Washington-based research associate with the Seti (Search 

for extraterrestrial intelligence) institute of Mountain View, california. She has 

been conducting science and risk communication research for naSa’s planetary 

protection office since September 2002. from September 999 through august 
632 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

2002, she was director of communications for SpacehaB, inc., a builder of 

space habitats. dr. Billings earned her ph.d. in mass communication from indiana 

university’s School of Journalism in September 2005. her expertise is in mass 

communication, science communication, risk communication, rhetorical analysis, 

and social studies of science. her research has focused on the role that journalists 

play in constructing the cultural authority of scientists and the rhetorical strategies 

that scientists and journalists employ in communicating about science. She earned 

her B.a.in social sciences from the State university of new york at Binghamton and 

her M.a. in international transactions from george Mason university. dr. Billings 

has worked for 25 years in Washington, dc as a researcher, journalist, freelance 

writer, communication specialist, and consultant to the government.as a researcher, 

she has worked on communication strategy, risk communication, and audience 

studies for naSa’s planetary protection program.as a corporate communications 

director, she was responsible for communications with the media, the public, and 

the financial community.as a journalist, she covered energy, the environment, labor 

relations,and aerospace,primarily for the trade press.She was the founding editor of 

Space Business News (983–985) and the first senior editor for space at Air & Space/ 

Smithsonian magazine (985–988). She also was a contributing author for First 

Contact:The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (new american library, 990). dr. 

Billings was a member of the staff for the national commission on Space (985– 

986). for the national Science foundation and naSa, she has worked as a policy 

analyst, communications specialist, education and outreach planner, and writer and 

editor. her freelance articles have been published in outlets such as the Chicago 

Tribune (“Space Station is good for More than Star-gazing,” 8 october 998), 

the Washington Post Magazine (“realtime: pre-life Sciences,”  august 996) and 

Space News (“aim for exploration, not exploitation,” 4–20 october 996). 

Kevin M. Brady is a doctoral candidate in history at texas christian university 

in fort Worth,texas, and is studying with dr. gregg cantrell. Brady’s classwork and 

research have focused on texas history, science and technology, history of naSa, 

and military history. currently, Brady is working on a dissertation titled “naSa 

launches houston into orbit: the economic, political, and Social impact of the 

aerospace program on Southeast texas, 96–969.” in May 2000, Brady earned a 

B.S. degree in secondary education with a specialization in american history from 

Baylor university in Waco,texas. after graduating from Baylor, he remained at the 

university to pursue graduate work in history.While at Baylor,Brady was the recipient 

of numerous awards for his academic excellence and dedication to the university. 

for example, Baylor’s Student life division awarded him with the James huckins 

award for outstanding graduate assistant. in august 2002, Brady received an M.a. 

in history from Baylor university.in the fall of 2002,Brady enrolled attexas christian 

university to pursue doctoral studies in history. from 2003 until 2005, he served as a 

teaching assistant at texas christian university, where he taught u.S. survey courses. 
About the Authors 633 

during this time, Brady also worked as an adjunct instructor at the tarrant county 

community college. Brady is the author of several articles and has also contributed 

to a number of reference works, including Space Exploration and Humanity:A Historical 

Encyclopedia. currently, Brady serves as a research intern with the universities Space 

research association (uSra) at the naSa lyndon B. Johnson Space center (JSc) 

in houston,texas, where he assists the staff of the JSc history office. 

Andrew Chaikin has authored books and articles about space exploration and 

astronomy for more than two decades. he is also active as a lecturer at museums, 

schools, and corporate events, and in radio and television appearances. chaikin is 

best known as the author of A Man on the Moon:The Triumphant Story of the Apollo 

Space Program, first published in 994.this acclaimed work was the main basis for 

tom hanks’s hBo miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon, which won the emmy 

for best miniseries in 998. chaikin spent eight years writing and researching A 

Man on the Moon, including hundreds of hours of personal interviews with each 

of the 23 surviving lunar astronauts.apollo Moonwalker gene cernan said of the 

book, “i’ve been there. chaikin took me back.” a three-volume, fully illustrated 

edition of A Man on the Moon was published by time-life Books in 999. chaikin 

co-edited The New Solar System, a compendium of writings by planetary scientists, 

now in its fourth edition. he is also the author of Air and Space:The National Air and 

Space Museum Story of Flight, published in 997 by Bulfinch press. he collaborated 

with Moonwalker-turned-artist alan Bean to write Apollo: An Eyewitness Account, 

published in 998 by the greenwich Workshop press. chaikin co-authored the 

text for the highly successful collection of apollo photography, Full Moon, which 

was published by Knopf in 999. his book, SPACE: A History of Space Exploration 

in Photographs, was published in 2002 by carlton Books. in 2004 he authored the 

chapter on human spaceflight in The National Geographic Encyclopedia of Space. from 

999 to 200 chaikin served as executive editor for Space and Science at Space. 

com, the definitive Web site for all things space. he was also the editor of Space. 

com’s print magazine,Space Illustrated. chaikin is a commentator for national public 

radio’s Morning Edition, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, and 

the npr programs Fresh Air and Talk of the Nation. he has been an advisor to 

naSa on space policy and public communications. a former editor of Sky & 

Telescope magazine, chaikin has also been a contributing editor of Popular Science 

and has written for Newsweek, Air&Space/Smithsonian, World Book Encyclopedia, 

Scientific American, and other publications.a graduate of Brown university, chaikin 

served on the Viking missions to Mars at naSa’s Jet propulsion laboratory, and 

was a researcher at the Smithsonian’s center for earth and planetary Studies before 

becoming a science journalist in 980. 
634 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Martin J. Collins is a curator in the Smithsonian national air and Space Museum. 

he received his ph.d. from the university of Maryland in history of science and 

technology. Book publications include Cold War Laboratory:RAND,the Air Force,and 

the American State (2002) and Showcasing Space, edited with douglas Millard, volume 

6 of the artefacts Series: Studies in the History of Science and Technology (2005). he is 

currently working on a history of the iridium satellite telephone venture. 

Erik Conway is the historian at the Jet propulsion laboratory (Jpl) of the 

california institute of technology. he is completing a history of atmospheric 

research at naSa that he started as a contract historian at langley research center 

in Virginia, and is beginning a history of robotic Mars exploration in the 980s and 

990s. he has been at Jpl since 2004. 

Taylor E. Dark, III received his ph.d. in political science from the university of 

california, Berkeley and currently teaches in the department of political Science 

at california State university, los angeles. he was formerly associate dean of 

the graduate School of american Studies at doshisha university in Kyoto, Japan, 

where he taught for eight years. professor dark is the author of The Unions and 

the Democrats: An Enduring Alliance (999) and has previously published in The 

National Interest, Journal of Labor Research, Labor History, Political Science Quarterly, 

Political Parties, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Presidential Studies Quarterly. he 

is currently completing a book manuscript on philosophies of space exploration 

and development in american culture titled “reclaiming the future: the Space 

program and the idea of progress.” 

Steven J.Dick is the chief historian for naSa.he obtained his B.S.in astrophysics 

(97) and his M.a. and ph.d. (977) in history and philosophy of science from 

indiana university. he worked as an astronomer and historian of science at the 

u.S. naval observatory in Washington, dc for 24 years before coming to naSa 

headquarters in 2003. among his books are Plurality of Worlds:The Origins of the 

Extraterrestrial Life Debate from Democritus to Kant (982), The Biological Universe:The 

Twentieth Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate and the Limits of Science (996), and Life 

on Other Worlds (998).the latter has been translated into chinese, italian, czech, 

greek, and polish. his most recent books are The Living Universe: NASA and the 

Development of Astrobiology (2004) and a comprehensive history of the u.S. naval 

observatory, Sky and Ocean Joined:The U.S. Naval Observatory, 1830–2000 (2003). 

the latter received the pendleton prize of the Society for history in the federal 

government. he also is editor of Many Worlds:The New Universe, Extraterrestrial Life 

and the Theological Implications (2000) and (with Keith cowing) of the proceedings 

of the naSa administrator’s symposium Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea and 

the Stars (2005). he is the recipient of the navy Meritorious civilian Service 

Medal. he received the naSa group achievement award for his role in naSa’s 
About the Authors 635 

multidisciplinary program in astrobiology.he has served as chairman of the historical 

astronomy division of the american astronomical Society and as president of the 

history of astronomy commission of the international astronomical union, and 

he is the immediate past president of the philosophical Society of Washington. he 

is a member of the international academy of astronautics. 

Andrew Fraknoi is the chair of the astronomy program at foothill college near 

San francisco. for 4 years, he served as the executive director of the astronomical 

Society of the pacific, the largest and oldest organization devoted to astronomy 

education. he founded and directed project aStro, a national program that 

partners volunteer astronomers with fourth- through ninth-grade teachers.a branch 

of the project has developed family astronomy games and kits and trained educators 

and amateur astronomers to use them in regional sites from Boston to hawaii. 

fraknoi organized and moderated more than 20 workshops on teaching astronomy 

in grades 3–2 and four national symposia on teaching introductory astronomy to 

college nonscience majors. educated at harvard and the university of california, 

Berkeley, fraknoi has also taught astronomy and physics at San francisco State 

university.With Sidney Wolff, he is co-editor of Astronomy Education Review, a Webbased refereed journal on education and outreach.among the books he has written 

and edited are Voyages through the Universe (a college astronomy text), The Universe 

at Your Fingertips (a collection of K–2 activities and resources), and The Planets and 

The Universe, two collections of science and scientifically accurate science fiction. 

fraknoi serves on the board of trustees of the Seti institute and is a fellow of the 

committee for the Scientific investigation of claims of the paranormal,specializing 

in debunking astrology. awards he has won include the annenberg prize of the 

american astronomical Society for his contributions to astronomy education.the 

international astronomical union has named asteroid 4859 asteroid fraknoi to 

recognize his work in astronomy outreach. 

Alexander Geppert teaches modern european history at freie universität 

Berlin. he studied history, philosophy, and psychology at universität Bielefeld, 

Johns hopkins university (M.a., 995) in Baltimore, georg-august-universität 

göttingen (M.a., 997), and the university of california, Berkeley. from 997 to 

2004, he was a ph.d. candidate and research associate at the european university 

institute in florence, where he wrote and defended his dissertation, “london vs. 

paris: imperial exhibitions, transitory Spaces and Metropolitan networks, 880– 

930,” under the supervision of professors John Brewer, luisa passerini, and Bernd 

Weisbrod. he has held various long-term fellowships at the École des hautes 

Études en Sciences Sociales in paris (999), the german historical institute in 

london (2000), the internationales forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften in 

Vienna (200–2002), and the Kulturwissenschaftliches institut in essen (2002– 

2005). his work on oral, visual, and urban history (particularly on the history of 
636 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

international expositions); on the history of sexuality; and on the occult has been 

published in german, english, italian, and chinese. currently, he is developing a 

new research project tentatively titled “outer Space and the european imagination, 

923–969.” publications include five edited or co-edited volumes: European EgoHistoires. Historiography and the Self, 1970–2000 (athens, 200); Orte des Okkulten 

(Vienna, 2003); Esposizioni in Europa tra Otto e Novecento. Spazi, organizzazione, 

rappresentazioni (Milan,2004); Ortsgespräche. Raum und Kommunikation im 19. und 20. 

Jahrhundert (Bielefeld,2005); New Dangerous Liaisons. Discourses on Europe and Love in 

the Twentieth Century (oxford/new york, 2006). geppert is also the author of Brief 

Cities: Imperial Expositions in Fin-de-siècle Europe (london, 2006). 

Roger Handberg is professor of political science and chair at the university of 

central florida. his published work in space policy and history includes works on 

naSa, international space commerce, and military space activities. he has published 

54 articles and book chapters, 24 professional papers, and 8 books, the most recent 

being International Space Commerce: Building from Scratch, published in June, 2006 by 

the university presses of florida. current work involves a study of the chinese space 

program and work on nanotechnology policy. dr. handberg received his B.a. from 

florida State university and ph.d. from the university of north carolina. 

James R. Hansen is professor of history in the department of history at auburn 

university in alabama, where he teaches courses on the history of flight, history of 

science and technology, space history, and the history of technological failure. he 

has published nine books and three dozen articles on a wide variety of technological 

topics, ranging from the early days of aviation to the first nuclear fusion reactors, to 

the Moon landings, to the environmental history of golf course development. his 

books include First Man:The Life of Neil A.Armstrong (2005); The Bird Is on the Wing: 

Aerodynamics and the Progress of the Airplane in America (2003); The Wind and Beyond: 

A Documentary Journey through the History of Aerodynamics in America (Vol. , 2002), 

Spaceflight Revolution (995), From the Ground Up (988), and Engineer in Charge 

(987). hansen earned a B.a. degree with high honors from indiana university 

(974) and an M.a. (976) and ph.d. (98) from the ohio State university. he 

served as historian for naSa langley research in hampton,Virginia, from 98 

to 984, and as a professor at the university of Maine in 984–985. professor 

hansen has received a number of citations for his scholarship,including the national 

Space club’s robert h. goddard award, the air force historical foundation’s 

distinction of excellence, the american astronautical Society’s eugene emme 

prize in astronautical literature (twice), the american institute of aeronautics 

and astronautics’s history Book award; and aiaa distinguished lecturer. he has 

served on a number of important advisory boards and panels,including the research 

advisory Board of the national air and Space Museum, the editorial advisory 

Board of the Smithsonian institution press, the advisory Board for the archives 
About the Authors 637 

of aerospace exploration at Virginia polytechnic institute and State university, 

the Museum advisory Board of the u.S. Space and rocket center in huntsville, 

alabama, and the board of directors of the Space restoration Society. he is a past 

vice president of the board of directors of the Virginia air and Space Museum and 

hampton roads history center in hampton,Virginia. 

Glenn Hastedt holds a ph.d.in political science from indiana university.formerly 

the chair of the political Science department at James Madison university, he is 

now the director of the center for liberal and applied Social Sciences. he is the 

author of American Foreign Policy: Past, Present, Future, 6th edition (2005) and has 

recently authored two articles on intelligence policy, “public intelligence: leaks 

as policy instruments—the case of the iraq War,” Intelligence and National Security 

(2005), and “estimating intentions in an age of terrorism,” Defense Intelligence 

Journal (2005). along with Kay Knickrehm, he is co-author of International Politics 

in a Changing World (2003).With tony eksterowicz, he is co-editor of White House 

Studies. he contributed a chapter,“Sputnik and technological Surprise,” to roger 

launius et al., Reconsidering Sputnik (2000). 

Henry R. Hertzfeld is a research professor of Space policy and international 

affairs at the Space policy institute,center for international Science andtechnology 

policy, elliott School of international affairs, georgeWashington university. he is an 

expert in the economic, legal, and policy issues of space and advanced technological 

development and teaches a course in space law as well as one in microeconomics. 

dr. hertzfeld has served as a senior economist and policy analyst at naSa and the 

national Science foundation.he has been a consultant to both u.S.and international 

agencies and organizations, including the organization for economic cooperation 

and development, naSa, the aerospace corporation, and private companies. he 

was the co-editor of Space Economics (aiaa, 992) and co-author of A Study Guide to 

Managerial Economics (2005) as well as many articles on the economic and legal issues 

concerningspaceandadvancedtechnology.dr.hertzfeldhasaB.a.fromtheuniversity 

of pennsylvania,an M.a.fromWashington university,and a ph.d.in economics from 

temple university. he holds a J.d. degree from the george Washington university 

and is a member of the bars in pennsylvania and the district of columbia. 

Stephen B. Johnson is an associate research professor with the institute for 

Science and Space Studies at the university of colorado at colorado Springs; he is 

also a health management systems engineer for the advanced Sensors and System 

health Management Branch,naSa Marshall Space flight center.he was a faculty 

member in the university of north dakota’s department of Space Studies from 

997 to 2005,teaching military space,space history,and management and economics 

of space endeavors. he is the author of The United States Air Force and the Culture of 

Innovation, 1945–1965 and The Secret of Apollo: Systems Management in American and 
638 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

European Space Programs, both published in 2002. he was also the editor of Quest: 

The History of Spaceflight Quarterly from 998 to 2005 and is currently the general 

editor for a two-volume encyclopedia of space history to be published in 2007 by 

aBc-clio, Space Exploration and Humanity: A Historical Encyclopedia. his current 

research involves dependable space system design and operations, space industry 

management and economics, the history of space science and technology, and the 

history of cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence. he received his bachelor 

degree in physics from Whitman college in 98 and his doctorate in 997 in the 

history of science and technology from the university of Minnesota, where he was 

also the associate director of the Babbage institute for the history of computing. 

prior to 997, he worked for northrop and Martin Marietta and was co-owner of 

his own small business managing computer simulation laboratories, designing space 

probes, and developing engineering processes. 

De Witt Douglas Kilgore is associate professor of english and american Studies 

at indiana university.he is the author of Astrofuturism:Science,Race andVisions of Utopia 

in Space (2003).in 200,he received the Science fiction researchassociation’s pioneer 

award for excellence in Scholarship.Within the field of twentieth-century american 

literature and culture,he is particularly concerned with exploring the political (utopian) 

hopes expressed by our society through its projects in science and technology. he is 

interested in race as both a social and an analytic category. his first book, Astrofuturism, 

is an incisive engagement with the science writing and science fiction produced by the 

modern spaceflight movement.as a history,it takes seriously the (sometimes progressive) 

hopes of those scientists and engineers who wrote the Space age into being as a great 

cultural project.as a critique,it turns a cold eye on those narratives of disciplined futurism. 

Kilgore’s current work engages the fiction and science writing that has emerged from 

Seti (Search for extraterrestrial intelligence). 

John Krige is the Kranzberg professor in the School of history,technology and 

Society at the georgia institute of technology in atlanta. Krige is a long-time 

member of the history of Science Society (hSS) and the Society for the history of 

technology (Shot) and has published in the Societies’ journals, Isis and Technology 

and Culture. he is also the editor of the journal History and Technology, published by 

routledge (uK). Krige’s main focus of research is the relationship between foreign 

policy and science and technology. he played a major role in two international 

projects that resulted in a three-volume history of cern (the european laboratory 

for particle physics) and a two-volume history of eSa (the european Space 

agency). Since moving to the united States in the summer of 2000, he has placed 

increasing emphasis on u.S.–european relationships in science and technology. he 

is co-editor (with Kai-henrik Barth of georgetown university,Washington, dc) 

of Global Power Knowledge. Science and Technology in International Affairs, Osiris 2 

(2006), and his most recent book is American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction 
About the Authors 639 

of Science in Europe (2006). during academic year 2004–2005, Krige was the charles 

a. lindbergh professor in aerospace history at the Smithsonian national air and 

Space Museum,Washington, dc. he took this opportunity to initiate research on 

his next project, which will deal with the role of space technology as an instrument 

of u.S.–european relations in the 960s and early 970s. his preliminary findings 

were presented as “technology, foreign policy, and international cooperation in 

Space,” in Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight, ed. Steven J. dick and roger d. 

launius (2006).this project was at the core of Krige’s successful application for a 

fellowship at the davis center, department of history, princeton university. Krige 

was awarded the biennial dickinson Medal by the (uK) newcomen Society for the 

Study of the history of engineering and technology in london in May, 2005. 

W. Henry “Harry” Lambright is a professor of public administration and 

political science, and director of the Science and technology policy program at the 

Maxwell School of citizenship and public affairs at Syracuse university.he teaches 

courses at the Maxwell School on the intersections of technology, politics, energy, 

environment, and resources policy. he is a fellow of the american association for 

the advancement of Science. dr. lambright has served as a guest scholar at the 

Brookings institution, director of the Science and technology policy center of the 

Syracuse research corporation,and director of the center for environmental policy 

and administration at the Maxwell School of Syracuse university. he has served 

as an adjunct professor in the graduate program of environmental Science and 

forestry at the State university of new york. he has testified before congress and 

consulted for various governmental and private-sector organizations, including the 

columbia accident investigation Board. he has performed research under support 

from naSa, the national Science foundation (nSf), the State department, the 

department of energy (doe), the environmental protection agency (epa), the 

department of defense (dod), iBM, and other sponsors. a longtime student of 

large-scale technical projects, and particularly space policy, dr. lambright worked 

for naSa early in his career as a special assistant in its office of university affairs. 

he has been a member of the naSa history advisory committee and has written 

extensively on naSa over many years. he is author of Powering Apollo: James E. 

Webb of NASA (995) and editor of Space Policy in the 21st Century (2003). he has 

written or edited 5 other books and more than 275 articles, reports, and papers. his 

doctorate is from columbia university, where he also received his master’s degree. 

dr. lambright received his undergraduate degree from Johns hopkins university. 

Roger D.Launius is a member of the division of Space history at the Smithsonian 

institution’s national air and Space Museum in Washington, dc. Between 990 

and 2002, he served as chief historian of naSa.a graduate of graceland college 

in lamoni, iowa, he received his ph.d. from louisiana State university, Baton 

rouge, in 982. he has written or edited more than 20 books on aerospace history, 
640 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

including Space:A Journey to Our Future (2004); Space Stations: Base Camps to the Stars 

(2003), which received the aiaa’s history Manuscript prize; Flight:A Celebration of 

100 Years in Art and Literature (2003); Reconsidering a Century of Flight (2003); To Reach 

the High Frontier:A History of U.S.Launch Vehicles (2002);Imagining Space:Achievements, 

Possibilities, Projections, 1950–2050 (200); Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the 

Soviet Satellite (2000); Innovation and the Development of Flight (999); Frontiers of Space 

Exploration (998; rev. ed., 2004); Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership 

(997); and NASA: A History of the U.S. Civil Space Program (994; rev. ed. 200). 

he is frequently consulted by the electronic and print media for his views on space 

issues. his research interests encompass all areas of u.S. and space history and policy 

history, especially cultural aspects of the subject and the role of executive decision 

makers and their efforts to define space exploration. 

John M.Logsdon is the director of the Space policy institute at george Washington 

university’s elliott School of international affairs, where he is also professor of 

international affairs. he holds a B.S. in physics from Xavier university (960) and a 

ph.d. in political science from new york university (970). dr. logsdon’s research 

interests focus on the policy and historical aspects of u.S. and international space 

activities. dr. logsdon is the author of The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo 

and the National Interest (970) and is the general editor of the eight-volume naSa 

history series Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. 

Civil Space Program (995- ). he has written numerous articles and reports on 

space policy and history. he is frequently consulted by the electronic and print 

media for his views on space issues. in 2003, dr. logsdon served as a member of the 

columbia accident investigation Board. he is a member of the naSa advisory 

council and of the commercial Space transportation advisory committee of 

the department of transportation. he is a recipient of the naSa public Service 

and distinguished public Service Medals, the 2005 John f. Kennedy award from 

the american astronautical Society (aaS), and the 2006 Barry goldwater Space 

educator award from the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics 

(aiaa). he is a fellow of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics 

and of the american association for the advancement of Science (aaaS), and he 

is a member of the international academy of astronautics. 

M. G. Lord is a cultural historian and investigative journalist. She is the author of 

Astro Turf:The Private Life of Rocket Science (2005) and Forever Barbie:The Unauthorized 

Biography of a Real Doll (994,2004).Since 995 she has been a frequent contributor 

to The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times arts & leisure Section. 

her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, 

The Los Angeles Times Book Review, The New Yorker, ArtForum,and Vogue. for 4 years 

she was a syndicated political cartoonist based at Newsday. She currently lives in los 

angeles, where she teaches a nonfiction workshop in the Master of professional 

Writing program at the university of Southern california. 
About the Authors 64 

Howard E. McCurdy is a professor of public affairs at american university in 

Washington, dc. author or co-author of six books on the u.S. space program, 

he is best known for Space and the American Imagination (997). he authored Faster, 

Better, Cheaper (200), a critical analysis of cost-cutting initiatives in the u.S. space 

program, and an earlier study of naSa’s organizational culture, Inside NASA, won 

the 994 henry adams prize for that year’s best history on the federal government. 

he is often consulted by the media on public policy issues and has appeared on 

national news outlets such as NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, national public radio, and 

NBC Nightly News. professor Mccurdy received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees 

from the university of Washington and his doctorate from cornell university. 

Kim McQuaid is a professor of history at lake erie college in painesville, ohio. 

he received his undergraduate degree in history at antioch college and his master’s 

degree and ph.d. in u.S. history at northwestern university. he was a Woodrow 

Wilson fellow in 970 and has held several fulbright overseas teaching positions:first 

as Mary Bell WashingtonVisiting professor of u.S. history at the university college 

dublin in 985–986, and later as a visiting lecturer in u.S. history at the university 

of Science in penang, Malaysia’s second-oldest national university campus, in 995– 

996. McQuaid’s books are Creating the Welfare State (co-authored with edward 

Berkowitz); Big Business and Presidential Power (982); The Anxious Years: America in 

the Vietnam-Watergate Era (989); and Uneasy Partners: Big Business in American Politics, 

1945–1990 (993):and A Response to Industrialism: Liberal Businessmen and the Evolving 

Spectrum of Capitalist Reform, 1886–1960 (2003). he is a contributor to academic 

and nonacademic journals. his most recently published academic piece is “Selling 

the Space age: naSa and earth’s environment, 958–990,” which appeared in 

Environment and History, a journal published in the united Kingdom. he is a member 

of three space advocacy groups and as many environmental groups.he is also a regular 

visitor to the high arctic of canada and, most recently, norway; most of these trips 

have been wilderness travel. he began to try and grow old gracefully on a russian 

scientific survey vessel with an ice-hardened hull. he is currently at work on a social 

history of the Space age. a native of rural Maine, he has worked as an antiquarian 

bookseller and a psychiatric social worker in addition to being an academic. 

Wendell Mendell is a planetary scientist serving as the manager of the office for 

human exploration Science of the naSa Johnson Space center, where he has 

been employed since 963. he is married and has four children. dr. Mendell has a 

B.S. in physics from the california institute of technology, an M.S. in physics from 

the university of california, los angeles (ucla), and an M.S. in space science 

and a ph.d. in space physics and astronomy from rice university. his scientific 

research focus is remote sensing of planetary surfaces, particularly specializing in 

thermal emission radiometry and spectroscopy of the Moon. Since 982, he has 

worked at naSa on planning and advocacy of human exploration of the solar 

system, especially on the establishment of a permanent human base on the Moon. 
642 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

his interests in this regard lie as much with policy issues as with technical solutions. 

he is most well known as the editor of the volume Lunar Bases and Space Activities 

of the 21st Century, and he received the 988 Space pioneer award for Science and 

engineering from the national Space Society for this work. currently, dr. Mendell 

splits his time between communicating the principles of the human exploration of 

the solar system to both lay and technical audiences and working on lunar research. 

he is a member of the college of teachers of the international Space university 

(iSu).at the iSu,he has led “design projects for an international lunar Base”(988); 

“international Mars Mission” (99);“international lunar farside observatory and 

Science Station” (993);“Vision 20/20” (995), a sampling of the future as seen by 

young space professionals; and “Space tourism: from dream to reality” (2000). he 

belongs to several professional scientific and engineering societies. he is most active 

in the international academy of astronautics, where he has served as secretary of 

the cosmic Study on international human exploration of Mars and is currently 

serving on academic commission iii; and in the aiaa, where he has chaired the 

Space Science and astronomy technical committee and sits on the international 

activities committee. he served on (and chaired) the executive committee of 

the aerospace division of the american Society of civil engineers. he has served 

as editor for nine technical volumes and has published more than 40 articles in 

professional journals and conference proceedings.he is also the author of numerous 

abstracts and short papers presented at technical conferences. 

Ron Miller is the author/illustrator of some 40 books, most of them dealing with 

space exploration, astronomy, and other sciences.these include the award-winning 

Worlds Beyond series of astronomy books for young adults and The Art of Chesley 

Bonestell (2000), a biography of the grand master of astronomical art. he has also 

collaborated on five books with noted astronomer William K. hartmann. these 

include The Grand Tour, Cycles of Fire, In the Stream of Stars, and The History of Earth 

(all published by Workman publishing co.).considered an authority on Jules Verne, 

Miller has translated and illustrated new,definitive editions of Verne’s 20,000 Leagues 

Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. a book published in July, 993, 

The Dream Machines (a comprehensive, quarter-million-word, 744-page history 

of manned spacecraft) was nominated for the prestigious iaf Manuscript award 

and won the Booklist editor’s choice award for 994. he designed a set of 0 

commemorative space exploration stamps for the u.S. postal Service, one of which 

is on-board the new horizons spacecraft bound for pluto.a current project is the 

reprinting of classic and little-known space travel novels from the past 200 years. 

ValerieNeal hasbeenaspacehistorycuratorattheSmithsoniannationalairandSpace 

Museum since 989, where she engages in scholarly research, exhibit development, 

artifact collection, and public service. She has edited two books on space exploration 

and curated two major exhibitions on the space race and the challenges of future 
About the Authors 643 

exploration. Most recently, she led the effort to restore the Space Shuttle Enterprise for 

permanent display and to acquire SpaceShipOne for the national collection.her recent 

articles on Shuttle history have appeared in History andTechnology and Space Policy.her 

current projects are a book and exhibition on the Space Shuttle era. Before joining 

the Smithsonian, neal spent a decade as a writer, editor, and manager for some 50 

naSa publications on Shuttle and Spacelab missions, the great observatories, the 

space sciences, and naSa history. She also participated in astronaut training activities 

and worked on the mission management team for four Shuttle missions. neal earned 

graduate degrees in american studies from the university of Southern california 

(M.a.) and the university of Minnesota (ph.d.). She has taught at the university of 

Minnesota, the university of alabama in huntsville, andVanderbilt university. 

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal currently serves as the historian for the naSa Johnson 

Space center (JSc) in houston,texas and is a member of the editorial board for 

Quest:The History of Spaceflight Quarterly. ross-nazzal began working for JSc in 

the summer of 2000 when she received an internship with the Johnson Space 

center oral history project. in her position as historian, she has conducted more 

than 86 interviews for the Johnson Space center oral history project and the 

naSa headquarters history office. from 2002 to 2004, she served as the oral 

history editor for Quest. ross-nazzal also participated in the Columbia recovery 

oral history project and later took the lead in a series of interviews to explore 

naSa’s role in the development of microelectromechanical systems. in addition 

to her work for the JSc history office, she works as an adjunct instructor for the 

university of Maryland university college, where she teaches u.S. and women’s 

history. ross-nazzal received her M.a. in history from new Mexico State 

university in 996 and her ph.d. in history from Washington State university in 

May, 2004. her dissertation, which was nominated for the david h. Stratton award 

for the department’s best dissertation, the lerner-Scott dissertation prize, and the 

phi alpha theta/Westerners international dissertation prize, focused on the life 

and times of suffragist emma Smith deVoe. ross-nazzal is currently revising her 

dissertation for publication.two articles spun off from her dissertation have been 

published by the Pacific Northwest Quarterly and South Dakota History. among her 

many honors and awards, she received a practicum grant from the Woodrow Wilson 

national fellowship foundation, and she is a former graduate fellow at the thomas 

S. foley institute for public policy and public Service. Most recently, she received 

the hra new professional award from the national council on public history. 

Philip Scranton is university Board of governors professor, history of industry 

and technology, at rutgers university, where he directs the M.a. history program 

(camden) and assisted in developing a ph.d. field in the history of technology, 

environment and health (new Brunswick). he served the georgia institute of 

technology as Kranzberg professor of the history of technology and Science from 
644 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

997 to 999. professor Scranton also directs the hagley Museum and library’s 

research arm, the center for the history of Business,technology and Society, with 

responsibility for a seminar series, twice-yearly conferences, short-term fellowships, 

and consultation on collections, programs, and planning. during 2003–2004, he 

held the lindbergh chair in aeronautic and aerospace history at the Smithsonian’s 

national air and Space Museum. his publications include 5 books and 35 scholarly 

articles; multiple contributions to museum catalogs; and numerous reviews of 

books, conferences, and exhibits. Since 985 he has presented research papers at 38 

international conferences in europe, canada, and Japan. Most recently, princeton 

university press released his Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American 

Industrialization, 1865–1925 (997, paperback 2000, Japanese translation, 2004). 

earlier monographs include Proprietary Capitalism (983) and Figured Tapestry (989), 

which received the Shear and taft prizes,respectively.at present,Scranton is editor 

or co-editor of two book series: Studies in industry and Society (Johns hopkins 

university press) and hagley perspectives on Business and Society (formerly 

routledge, presently Macmillan, with roger horowitz). he has edited or coedited three volumes in the hagley Series. in addition, Scranton served the Business 

history conference as president (2002–2003) and its journal, Enterprise and Society 

(oxford university press), for four years as its initial associate editor for reviews. he 

is a member of the editorial boards of Technology and Culture, Business History Review, 

and Pennsylvania History. Born in 946 in western pennsylvania, Scranton received 

undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from the university of pennsylvania 

(ph.d., 975). he taught at the philadelphia college of textiles and Science (974– 

984) before joining the faculty at rutgers-camden (984–997), moving to 

georgia tech, then returning to rutgers in fall, 999. his current research project 

examines the course of specialty manufacturing in the united States during the 

cold War, with a focus on jet propulsion and naSa space capsules. 

Asif A. Siddiqi is an assistant professor of history at fordham university in new 

york. he specializes in the social and cultural history of technology and modern 

russian history. his forthcoming book, The Rockets’ Red Glare: Spaceflight and the 

Russian Imagination, 1857-1957, will be published in 2008. he is also working on a 

project on technology, authenticity, and the evolution of rock’n’roll. 

Rick W. Sturdevant is the deputy director of history at headquarters air force 

Space command,peterson air force Base,in colorado Springs,colorado.he holds 

B.a. (969) and M.a. (973) degrees in history from the university of northern 

iowa and a ph.d. (982) from the university of california, Santa Barbara. dr. 

Sturdevant joined the united States air force history program in april, 984 as the 

chief historian for air force communication command’s airlift communications 

division at Scott air force Base, illinois. in april, 985 he moved to peterson air 

force Base, colorado to become the chief historian for Space communications 
About the Authors 645 

division. he held that position until the division was inactivated in 99, at which 

time he moved to the air force Space command history office.dr.Sturdevant has 

published extensively on the subject of military aerospace history in such periodicals 

as Space Times, Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Air & Space/Smithsonian, 

Quest:The History of Spaceflight Quarterly, Air Power History, Air Force Magazine, High 

Frontier:The Journal for Space & Missile Professionals, and Journal of the West. he has 

authored or co-authored chapters or essays in Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of 

Satellite Communication (997); Organizing for the Use of Space: Historical Perspectives on 

a Persistent Issue (995); Golden Legacy, Boundless Future: Essays on the United States Air 

Force and the Rise of Aerospace Power (2000); Air Warfare:An International Encyclopedia 

(2002); To Reach the High Frontier: A History of U.S. Launch Vehicles (2002); The 

Limitless Sky: Air Force Science and Technology Contributions to the Nation (2004); and 

Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Technology (2005).a frequent lecturer on space history 

topics, he has taught elderhostel and pillar courses under the sponsorship of pikes 

peak community college in colorado Springs and was a guest speaker at the 

2005 high plains chautauqua in greeley, colorado. dr. Sturdevant is an active 

member of the american institute of aeronautics and astronautics (aiaa), British 

interplanetary Society (BiS), air force Space operations association (afSoa), 

Society for the history of technology (Shot),and american astronautical Society 

(aaS). Serving on the aaS history committee, he has participated for nearly a 

decade in selecting the annual recipient of the eugene M. emme astronautical 

literature award. he is a recipient of the air force exemplary civilian Service 

award and the aaS president’s recognition award. 

James A. Vedda joined the aerospace corporation in March 2004 to perform 

research and analysis on national security, civil, and commercial space issues. 

previously,he spent six and a half years at anSer inc.in arlington,Virginia,assigned 

full-time to the office of the Secretary of defense.this included two years with 

the assistant secretary for homeland defense and four and a half years in the Space 

policy directorate. While at anSer, dr. Vedda received the company’s highest 

employee award, the alan S. Boyd award for professional development, in 2002; an 

annual trustee’s award and a quarterly team excellence award in 2003; and several 

awards for publications throughout his tenure. Jim received his ph.d. in political 

science from the university of florida. his dissertation analyzed the evolution of 

post-apollo space policy making in the executive and legislative branches. he also 

has an M.a. in science, technology, and public policy from george Washington 

university in Washington, dc and a B.S in business administration from John 

carroll university in cleveland, ohio. he has been a member of the american 

astronautical Society since 997, serving as its vice president for public policy from 

July 2002 to november 2004, and as a member of its board of directors since then. 

from 987 to 993, Jim was a professor in the department of Space Studies at the 

university of north dakota, where he taught courses on civil, commercial, and 
646 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

military space policy to undergraduate and graduate students. he was one of the 

founding members of the faculty, helping to create the curriculum for the M.S. in 

Space Studies degree. he was associate director of north dakota’s participation 

in the naSa Space grant program, served for a period as department chairman, 

and pioneered the department’s use of multimedia teaching techniques. Jim’s 

writing has appeared in publications such as Space Policy, Space News, Space Times, 

Ad Astra, Space Energy and Transportation, and Space Business News. he has presented 

conference papers and commentary for the international astronautical federation, 

the Midwest political Science association, the public Members association of the 

foreign Service, and cnn. 

Peter J. Westwick is visiting researcher in history, university of california, Santa 

Barbara. he was previously an olin fellow in international security studies atyale 

university and, from 2000 to 2004, senior research fellow in humanities at the 

california institute of technology. he is the author of The National Labs: Science 

in an American System, 1947–1974 (2003), which won the 2004 Book prize of 

the forum for the history of Science in america (for best first book), and Into 

the Black: JPL and the American Space Program, 1976–2004 (2006). he is currently 

working on a history of the Strategic defense initiative. he received his B.a. in 

physics and ph.d. in history from the university of california, Berkeley. he is a 

moderator of the working group on science and technology at the institute on 

california and the West, university of Southern california (uSc)/huntington 

library, where he is helping to start an initiative to document the history of the 

aerospace industry in southern california. 

David J. Whalen is vice president, satellite systems consulting at iot Systems 

llc. he has been an engineer and engineering manager in the communications 

satellite industry for more than 30 years. he has also worked on weather satellites 

(inSat, goeS-neXt), earth observing satellites (landsat), and science satellites 

(gro, hubble). he is an associate fellow of the american institute of aeronautics 

and astronautics (aiaa). he has been a member of the aiaa history technical 

committee and is currently a member of the aiaa communications Systems 

technical committee. over the last 20 years he has written about space history and 

space policy in addition to his engineering work.he holds a B.a.in astronomy from 

Boston university, an M.S. in astronomy from the university of Massachusetts, an 

M.B.a. from the college of William and Mary, and a ph.d. in science, technology, 

and public policy from george Washington university. he has taught university 

and industrial courses in orbit determination and maneuver planning, satellite 

communications, space policy, and the history of technology. his book, Origins of 

Satellite Communications 1945-1965, was published by the Smithsonian institution 

press in 2002. he is currently at work on a book about coMSat corporation. he 
About the Authors 647 

has made many presentations at aiaa, ptc, caSBaa, aha, Shfg, and naSa 

conferences. he has published articles and book reviews on space history, space 

policy, and space technology in a variety of publications, including IEEE Technology 

and Society and Technology and Culture. 

Ray A. Williamson is research professor of space policy and international affairs 

in the Space policy institute, focusing on the applications of geospatial information 

for the management of natural and cultural resources. he is principal investigator 

for a naSa/noaa-funded study of the socioeconomic benefits of earth science. 

he was also co-investigator of Bridging the Gap:
European C4ISR Capabilities and 

Transatlantic Interoperability (2004), and principal investigator of a two-year study 

of dual-purpose space technologies (satellite communications; remote sensing; 

and position, navigation, and timing) for a private foundation. he serves on the 

national academy of Sciences committee on Space-based global precipitation 

Measurements and the independent committee to assess the national Space 

Weather program. dr. Williamson is also a member of the noaa advisory 

committee on commercial remote Sensing (accreS). from 979 to 995, he 

was a senior associate and project director in the office of technology assessment 

(ota) of the u.S. congress. While at ota, dr. Williamson was project director 

for space policy reports that focused on satellite remote sensing. dr.Williamson is 

an external faculty member of the international Space university (iSu), illkirch, 

france, teaching general space policy and remote sensing for the iSu Masters of 

Space Studies and summer session programs. he has lectured on remote sensing 

policies and markets and the applications of geospatial technologies in regional, 

national, and international forums. dr.Williamson received his B.a. in physics from 

the Johns hopkins university and his ph.d. in astronomy from the university of 

Maryland, and spent two years on the faculty of the university of hawaii studying 

diffuse emission nebulae. he taught philosophy, literature, mathematics, physics, and 

astronomy at St. John’s college, annapolis for 0 years, the last 5 of which he also 

served as assistant dean of the college. dr. Williamson is editor of Imaging Notes 

and a contributing editor to the journal Space Policy. from 998–200 he was a 

member of the aeronautics and Space engineering Board of the national academy 

of engineering. he is also a member of the international academy of astronautics. 

his published books include Bridging the Gap: European C4ISR Capabilities and 

Transatlantic Interoperability, ed. with gordon adams, guy Ben-ari, and John M. 

logsdon (2004) and Commercial Observation Satellites: At the Leading Edge of Global 

Transparency, ed. with John c. Baker and Kevin o’connell (200). 
648 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 649

The NASA History Series 

Reference Works, NASA SP-4000: 

grimwood, James M. Project Mercury:A Chronology. naSa Sp-400, 963. 

grimwood,James M.,and c.Barton hacker,with peter J.Vorzimmer. Project Gem

Technology and Operations:A Chronology. naSa Sp-4002, 969.


ini 


link, Mae Mills. Space Medicine in Project Mercury. naSa Sp-4003, 965.


Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1963: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa


Sp-4004, 964. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1964: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4005, 965. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1965: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4006, 966. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1966: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4007, 967. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1967: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4008, 968. 

ertel, ivan d., and Mary louise Morse. The Apollo Spacecraft:A Chronology,Volume I,


Through November 7, 1962. naSa Sp-4009, 969.


Morse, Mary louise, and Jean Kernahan Bays. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology,


Volume II, November 8, 1962–September 30, 1964. naSa Sp-4009, 973.


Brooks, courtney g., and ivan d. ertel. The Apollo Spacecraft: A Chronology,Volume 

III, October 1, 1964–January 20, 1966. naSa Sp-4009, 973. 

ertel,ivan d.,and rolandW.newkirk,with courtney g.Brooks.TheApollo Spacecraft: 

A Chronology,Volume IV, January 21, 1966–July 13, 1974. naSa Sp-4009, 978. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1968: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-400, 969. 

newkirk, roland W., and ivan d. ertel, with courtney g. Brooks. Skylab: A 

Chronology. naSa Sp-40, 977. 

Van nimmen, Jane, and leonard c. Bruno, with robert l. rosholt. NASA Historical 

Data Book,Volume I: NASA Resources, 1958–1968. naSa Sp-402, 976, rep. ed. 988. 
650 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

ezell, linda neuman. NASA Historical Data Book,Volume II: Programs and Projects, 

1958–1968. naSa Sp-402, 988. 

ezell, linda neuman. NASA Historical Data Book,Volume III: Programs and Projects, 

1969–1978. naSa Sp-402, 988. 

gawdiak, ihor y., with helen fedor, compilers. NASA Historical Data Book,Volume 

IV: NASA Resources, 1969–1978. naSa Sp-402, 994. 

rumerman, Judy a., compiler. NASA Historical Data Book, 1979–1988: Volume V, 

NASA Launch Systems, SpaceTransportation, Human Spaceflight, and Space Science. naSa 

Sp-402, 999. 

rumerman, Judy a., compiler. NASA Historical Data Book,Volume VI: NASA Space 

Applications,Aeronautics and Space Research and Technology,Tracking and Data Acquisition/ 

Space Operations, Commercial Programs, and Resources, 1979–1988. naSa Sp-2000­

402, 2000. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1969: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-404, 970. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1970: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-405, 972. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1971: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-406, 972. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1972: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-407, 974. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1973: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-408, 975. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1974: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-409, 977. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1975: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4020, 979. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1976: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-402, 984. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1977: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4022, 986. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1978: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4023, 986. 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1979–1984: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. 

naSa Sp-4024, 988. 
The NASA History Series 65 

Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1985: Chronology of Science,Technology, and Policy. naSa 

Sp-4025, 990.


noordung, hermann. The Problem of Space Travel:The Rocket Motor. Edited by Ernst 


Stuhlinger and J. D. Hunley, with Jennifer Garland. naSa Sp-4026, 995.


Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1986–1990:A Chronology. naSa Sp-4027, 997.


Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1990–1995:A Chronology. naSa Sp-2000-4028, 2000.


Management Histories, NASA SP-4100: 

rosholt, robert l. An Administrative History of NASA, 1958–1963. naSa Sp40, 966. 

levine,arnold S. Managing NASA in the Apollo Era. naSa Sp-402, 982. 

roland,alex. Model Research:The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, 1915– 

1958. naSa Sp-403, 985. 

fries, Sylvia d. NASA Engineers and the Age of Apollo. naSa Sp-404, 992. 

glennan,t. Keith. The Birth of NASA:The Diary of T. Keith Glennan. J. D. Hunley,


editor. naSa Sp-405, 993.


Seamans, robert c., Jr. Aiming at Targets:The Autobiography of Robert C. Seamans, Jr.


naSa Sp-406, 996. 

garber, Stephen J., editor. Looking Backward, Looking Forward: Forty Years of U.S.


Human Spaceflight Symposium. naSa Sp-2002-407, 2002.


Mallick, donald l. with peter W. Merlin.The Smell of Kerosene:A Test Pilot’s Odyssey.


naSa Sp-408, 2003.


iliff, Kenneth W. and curtis l. peebles. From Runway to Orbit: Reflections of a NASA 


Engineer. naSa Sp-2004-409, 2004.


chertok, Boris. Rockets and People,Volume 1. naSa Sp-2005-40, 2005.


laufer, alexander, todd post, and edward hoffman. Shared Voyage: Learning and 


Unlearning from Remarkable Projects. naSa Sp-2005-4, 2005.


dawson,Virginia p. and Mark d. Bowles. Realizing the Dream of Flight: Biographical 


Essays in Honor of the Centennial of Flight, 1903-2003. naSa Sp-2005-42, 2005.


Mudgway, douglas J. William H. Pickering:America’s Deep Space Pioneer, naSa Sp­


2007-43, 2007.

652 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Project Histories, NASA SP-4200:


Swenson, loyd S., Jr., James M. grimwood, and charles c. alexander. This New 


Ocean:A History of Project Mercury. naSa Sp-420, 966; rep. ed. 998.


green,constance Mclaughlin,and Milton lomask. Vanguard:A History.naSa Sp­


4202, 970; rep. ed. Smithsonian institution press, 97.


hacker, Barton c., and James M. grimwood. On the Shoulders of Titans:A History of 


Project Gemini. naSa Sp-4203, 977.


Benson, charles d., and William Barnaby faherty. Moonport: A History of Apollo 


Launch Facilities and Operations. naSa Sp-4204, 978.


Brooks, courtney g., James M. grimwood, and loyd S. Swenson, Jr. Chariots for 


Apollo:A History of Manned Lunar Spacecraft. naSa Sp-4205, 979.


Bilstein, roger e. Stages to Saturn:A Technological History of the Apollo/Saturn Launch 


Vehicles. naSa Sp-4206, 980, rep. ed. 997.


Sp-4207 not published. 

compton,W. david, and charles d. Benson. Living and Working in Space:A History of 

Skylab. naSa Sp-4208, 983. 

ezell, edward clinton, and linda neuman ezell. The Partnership: A History of the 

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. naSa Sp-4209, 978.


hall, r. cargill. Lunar Impact:A History of Project Ranger. naSa Sp-420, 977.


newell, homer e. Beyond the Atmosphere: Early Years of Space Science. naSa Sp­


42, 980. 

ezell, edward clinton, and linda neuman ezell. On Mars: Exploration of the Red 


Planet, 1958–1978. naSa Sp-422, 984.


pitts, John a. The Human Factor: Biomedicine in the Manned Space Program to 1980.


naSa Sp-423, 985. 

compton, W. david. Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar 


Exploration Missions. naSa Sp-424, 989.


naugle, John e. First Among Equals:The Selection of NASA Space Science Experiments.


naSa Sp-425, 99. 

Wallace, lane e. Airborne Trailblazer:Two Decades with NASA Langley’s Boeing 737 


Flying Laboratory. naSa Sp-426, 994.


Butrica,andrew J., editor. Beyond the Ionosphere: Fifty Years of Satellite Communication.


naSa Sp-427, 997. 
The NASA History Series 653 

Butrica,andrew J. To See the Unseen:A History of Planetary Radar Astronomy. naSa 

Sp-428, 996. 

Mack, pamela e., editor. From Engineering Science to Big Science: The NACA and 

NASA Collier Trophy Research Project Winners. naSa Sp-429, 998. 

reed, r. dale, with darlene lister. Wingless Flight:The Lifting Body Story. naSa 

Sp-4220, 997. 

heppenheimer,t. a. The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA’s Search for a Reusable Space 

Vehicle. naSa Sp-422, 999. 

hunley,J. d.,editor. Toward Mach 2:The Douglas D-558 Program. naSa Sp-4222, 999. 

Swanson, glen e., editor. “Before this Decade Is Out . . .”: Personal Reflections on the 

Apollo Program. naSa Sp-4223, 999. 

tomayko, James e. Computers Take Flight:A History of NASA’s Pioneering Digital Flyby-Wire Project. naSa Sp-2000-4224, 2000. 

Morgan, clay. Shuttle-Mir:The U.S. and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage. naSa 

Sp-200-4225, 200. 

leary,William M. “We Freeze to Please”: A History of NASA’s Icing Research Tunnel 

and the Quest for Flight Safety. naSa Sp-2002-4226, 2002. 

Mudgway, douglas J. Uplink-Downlink: A History of the Deep Space Network 1957–


1997. naSa Sp-200-4227, 200.


dawson,Virginia p. and Mark d. Bowles. Taming Liquid Hydrogen:The Centaur Upper 


Stage Rocket, 1958-2002. naSa Sp-2004-4230, 2004.


Meltzer, Michael. Mission to Jupiter: A History of the Galileo Project. naSa Sp­


2007-423.


heppenheimer,t. a. Facing the Heat Barrier: A History of Hypersonics. naSa Sp

2007-4232, 2007. ­

Center Histories, NASA SP-4300: 

rosenthal,alfred. Venture into Space: Early Years of Goddard Space Flight Center.naSa 

Sp-430, 985. 

hartman, edwin p. Adventures in Research:A History of Ames Research Center, 1940– 

1965. naSa Sp-4302, 970. 

hallion, richard p. On the Frontier: Flight Research at Dryden, 1946–1981. naSa 

Sp-4303, 984. 

Muenger,elizabeth a. Searching the Horizon:A History of Ames Research Center,1940– 

1976. naSa Sp-4304, 985. 
654 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

hansen, James r. Engineer in Charge:A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 

1917–1958. naSa Sp-4305, 987. 

dawson,Virginia p. Engines and Innovation: Lewis Laboratory and American Propulsion 

Technology. naSa Sp-4306, 99. 

dethloff, henry c. “Suddenly Tomorrow Came . . .”: A History of the Johnson Space 

Center. naSa Sp-4307, 993. 

hansen, James r. Spaceflight Revolution: NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik 

to Apollo. naSa Sp-4308, 995. 

Wallace, lane e. Flights of Discovery: 50 Years at the NASA Dryden Flight Research 

Center. naSa Sp-4309, 996. 

herring, Mack r. Way Station to Space:A History of the John C. Stennis Space Center. 

naSa Sp-430, 997. 

Wallace, harold d., Jr. Wallops Station and the Creation of the American Space Program. 

naSa Sp-43, 997. 

Wallace, lane e. Dreams, Hopes, Realities: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center,The 

First Forty Years. naSa Sp-432, 999. 

dunar,andrew J., and Stephen p.Waring. Power to Explore:A History of the Marshall 

Space Flight Center. naSa Sp-433, 999. 

Bugos, glenn e. Atmosphere of Freedom: Sixty Years at the NASA Ames Research Center. 

naSa Sp-2000-434, 2000. 

Schultz, James. Crafting Flight: Aircraft Pioneers and the Contributions of the Men and 

Women of NASA Langley Research Center. naSa Sp-2003-436, 2003. 

General Histories, NASA SP-4400: 

corliss, William r. NASA Sounding Rockets, 1958–1968: A Historical Summary. 

naSa Sp-440, 97. 

Wells,helen t.,Susan h.Whiteley,and carrie Karegeannes.Origins of NASA Names. 

naSa Sp-4402, 976. 

anderson, frank W., Jr. Orders of Magnitude:A History of NACA and NASA, 1915– 

1980. naSa Sp-4403, 98. 

Sloop, John l. Liquid Hydrogen as a Propulsion Fuel, 1945–1959. naSa Sp-4404, 978. 

roland, alex. A Spacefaring People: Perspectives on Early Spaceflight. naSa Sp4405, 985. 
The NASA History Series 655 

Bilstein, roger e. Orders of Magnitude: A History of the NACA and NASA, 1915– 

1990. naSa Sp-4406, 989. 

logsdon, John M., editor, with linda J. lear, Jannelle Warren-findley, ray a. 

Williamson, and dwayne a. day. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the 

History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume I, Organizing for Exploration. naSa 

Sp-4407, 995. 

logsdon, John M., editor, with dwayne a. day and roger d. launius. Exploring the 

Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume II, 

Relations with Other Organizations. naSa Sp-4407, 996. 

logsdon, John M., editor, with roger d. launius, david h. onkst, and Stephen J. 

garber. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space 

Program,Volume III, Using Space. naSa Sp-4407, 998. 

logsdon, John M., general editor, with ray a. Williamson, roger d. launius, 

russell J.acker,Stephen J.garber,and Jonathan l.friedman.Exploring the Unknown: 

Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume IV, Accessing 

Space. naSa Sp-4407, 999. 

logsdon,John M.,general editor,with amy paige Snyder,roger d.launius,Stephen 

J. garber, and regan anne newport. Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in 

the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program,Volume V, Exploring the Cosmos. naSa Sp

200-4407, 200. 

­

Siddiqi,asif a. Challenge to Apollo:The Soviet Union and the Space Race, 1945–1974. 

naSa Sp-2000-4408, 2000. 

hansen,James r.,editor.The Wind and Beyond:Journey into the History of Aerodynamics 

in America,Volume I,The Ascent of the Airplane. naSa Sp-2003-4409, 2003. 

hogan,thor. Mars Wars:The Rise and Fall of the Space Exploration Initiative. naSa 

Sp-2007-440,2007. 

hansen,James r.,editor.The Wind and Beyond:Journey into the History of Aerodynamics 

in America,Volume II, Reinventing the Airplane. naSa Sp-2007-4409, 2007. 

Monographs in Aerospace History, NASA SP-4500: 

launius, roger d. and aaron K. gillette, compilers, Toward a History of the Space 

Shuttle:An Annotated Bibliography. Monograph in aerospace history, no. , 992. 

launius, roger d., and J. d. hunley, compilers, An Annotated Bibliography of the 

Apollo Program. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 2, 994. 

Launius, Roger D.Apollo:A Retrospective Analysis. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 

3,994. 
656 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

hansen, James r. Enchanted Rendezvous: John C. Houbolt and the Genesis of the LunarOrbit Rendezvous Concept. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 4, 995. 

gorn, Michael h. hugh l. Dryden’s Career in Aviation and Space. Monograph in 

aerospace history, no. 5, 996. 

powers, Sheryll goecke. Women in Flight Research at NASA Dryden Flight Research 

Center, from 1946 to 1995. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 6, 997. 

portree, david S. f. and robert c.trevino.Walking to Olympus:An EVA Chronology. 

Monograph in aerospace history, no. 7, 997. 

logsdon, John M., moderator. Legislative Origins of the National Aeronautics and Space 

Act of 1958:Proceedings of an Oral History Workshop. Monograph in aerospace history, 

no. 8, 998. 

rumerman, Judy a., compiler, U.S. Human Spaceflight, A Record of Achievement 

1961–1998. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 9, 998. 

portree, david S. f. NASA’s Origins and the Dawn of the Space Age. Monograph in 

aerospace history, no. 0, 998. 

logsdon, John M. Together in Orbit:The Origins of International Cooperation in the Space 

Station. Monograph in aerospace history, no. , 998. 

phillips, W. hewitt. Journey in Aeronautical Research: A Career at NASA Langley 

Research Center. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 2, 998. 

Braslow, albert l. A History of Suction-Type Laminar-Flow Control with Emphasis on 

Flight Research. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 3, 999. 

logsdon, John M., moderator. Managing the Moon Program: Lessons Learned From 

Apollo. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 4, 999. 

perminov,V. g. The Difficult Road to Mars:A Brief History of Mars Exploration in the 

Soviet Union. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 5, 999. 

tucker,tom. Touchdown:The Development of Propulsion Controlled Aircraft at NASA 

Dryden. Monograph in aerospace history, no. 6, 999. 

Maisel,Martin d.,demo J.giulianetti,and daniel c.dugan. The History of the XV-15 

Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft: From Concept to Flight. naSa Sp-2000-457, 2000. 

Jenkins,dennis r.Hypersonics Before the Shuttle:A Concise History of the X-15 Research 

Airplane. naSa Sp-2000-458, 2000. 

chambers, Joseph r. Partners in Freedom: Contributions of the Langley Research Center 

to U.S. Military Aircraft in the 1990s. naSa Sp-2000-459, 2000. 

Waltman, gene l. Black Magic and Gremlins: Analog Flight Simulations at NASA’s 

Flight Research Center. naSa Sp-2000-4520, 2000. 
The NASA History Series 657 

portree, david S. f. Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning, 1950–2000. 

naSa Sp-200-452, 200. 

thompson, Milton o., with J. d. hunley. Flight Research: Problems Encountered and 

What They Should Teach Us. naSa Sp-2000-4522, 2000. 

tucker,tom. The Eclipse Project. naSa Sp-2000-4523, 2000. 

Siddiqi,asif a. Deep Space Chronicle:A Chronology of Deep Space and Planetary Probes, 

1958–2000. naSa Sp-2002-4524, 2002. 

Merlin, peter W. Mach 3+: NASA/USAF YF-12 Flight Research, 1969–1979. naSa 

Sp-200-4525, 200. 

anderson, Seth B. Memoirs of an Aeronautical Engineer—Flight Tests at Ames Research 

Center: 1940–1970. naSa Sp-2002-4526, 2002. 

renstrom, arthur g. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Bibliography Commemorating the 

One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered Flight on December 17, 1903. naSa 

Sp-2002-4527, 2002. 

no monograph 28. 

chambers, Joseph r. concept to Reality: Contributions of the NASA Langley Research 

Center to U.S. Civil Aircraft of the 1990s. Sp-2003-4529, 2003. 

peebles, curtis, editor. The Spoken Word: Recollections of Dryden History, The Early 

Years. Sp-2003-4530, 2003. 

Jenkins, dennis r.,tony landis, and Jay Miller. American X-Vehicles:An Inventory-X1 to X-50. Sp-2003-453, 2003. 

renstrom, arthur g. Wilbur and Orville Wright: A Chronology Commemorating the 

One-Hundredth Anniversary of the First Powered Flight on December 17, 1903. naSa 

Sp-2003-4532, 2002. 

Bowles, Mark d. and robert S. arrighi. NASA’s Nuclear Frontier:The Plum Brook 

Research Reactor. Sp-2004-4533, 2003. 

Matranga, gene J. and c.Wayne ottinger, calvin r. Jarvis with d. christian gelzer. 

Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle. naSa Sp2006-4535. 

Mccurdy, howard e. Low Cost Innovation in Spaceflight:The History of the Near Earth 

Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) Mission. naSa Sp-2005-4536, 2005. 

Seamans, robert c. Jr. Project Apollo:TheTough Decisions. naSa Sp-2005-4537, 2005. 

lambright, W. henry. NASA and the Environment: The Case of Ozone Depletion. 

naSa Sp-2005-4538, 2005. 
658 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

chambers, Joseph r. Innovation in Flight: Research of the NASA Langley Research Center 

on Revolutionary Advanced Concepts for Aeronautics. naSa Sp-2005-4539, 2005. 

phillips, W. hewitt. Journey Into Space Research: Continuation of a Career at NASA 

Langley Research Center. naSa Sp-2005-4540, 2005. 

Monograph 41: 

rumerman, Judith a., compiler, with chris gamble and gabriel okolski, U. S. 

Human Spaceflight:A Record of Achievement, 1961-2006. naSa SP-4541, 2007. 

Electronic Media, NASA SP-4600: 

Remembering Apollo 11:The 30th Anniversary Data Archive CD-ROM. naSa Sp460, 999. 

The Mission Transcript Collection:U.S.Human Spaceflight Missions from Mercury Redstone 

3 to Apollo 17. naSa Sp-2000-4602, 200. 

Shuttle-Mir: The United States and Russia Share History’s Highest Stage. naSa Sp200-4603, 2002. 

U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission Presents Born of Dreams—Inspired by Freedom. 

naSa Sp-2004-4604, 2004. 

Of Ashes and Atoms:A Documentary on the NASA Plum Brook Reactor Facility. naSa 

Sp-2005-4605, 2005. 

Taming Liquid Hydrogen:The Centaur Upper Stage Rocket Interactive CD-ROM. naSa 

Sp-2004-4606, 2004. 

Fueling Space Exploration: The History of NASA’s Rocket Engine Test Facility DVD. 

naSa Sp-2005-4607, 2005. 

Conference Proceedings, NASA SP-4700: 

dick, Steven J., and Keith l. cowing, editors. Risk and Exploration: Earth, Sea and the 

Stars. naSa Sp-2005-470, 2005. 

dick,Steven J.,and roger d.launius,editors.Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight. 

naSa Sp-2006-4702, 2006. 
Spaceflight and Popular Culture 659

indeX 

a 

Abbott, W. D., 131


Abernathy, Ralph, 56


ABI Research, Inc., 338


ABM (anti-ballistic missile) systems, 


292-293


Across the Space Frontier (1952), 488


Advanced Reconnaissance Satellite 


(ARS), 291


Advanced Research Projects Agency 


(ARPA), 374


Advanced Spinning-Vehicle 


Navigation (ASVN), 334


Advanced Technology Satellite, 270


Aelita (1923), 530, 533


Aelita: Zakat Marsa (Aelita: Sunset of 


Mars), 531-532


Aerojet General, 130, 135


Aerospace Corporation, 158, 331


Aerospace Industries Association 


(AIA), 147


AGM-86C, 334


AGM-114 Hellfire missiles, 336


AGM-130 air-to-surface missile, 334


AGM-154 Joint Stand-Off Weapon, 


(JSOW), 334


Agnew, Spiro T., 422


Agricultural Research Service, 343


AgRISTARS (Agriculture and 


Resources Inventory Surveys 


Through Remote Sensing), 240


Air Force Security Service, 371


Air Force, Chinese, 107


Air Force, Soviet, 151


Air Force, U.S., 142, 270, 354; 


and human spaceflight, 357­


358; interservice rivalries, 


356; and management procedures, 


137; and manufacturing, 134; and 


NASA, 124; and national recon­


naissance program, 124, 142, 268, 


291-293, 370-375; and navigation 


satellites, 294-295; and non profit 


organizations, 158; role in space 


activities, 159; satellite communi­


cations, 170; and space food, 222; 


and space weather, 285 and Thor 


IRBM. See also Global Positioning 


System (GPS), Manned Orbiting 


Laboratory, SAMOS


A-OK Business Service, 455


Akiyama, Toyohiro, 183


Albritton, Dan, 318


Aldrin, Buzz, 55, 114, 464-465, 612; 


Return to Earth, 60


Allen, Paul, 183, 604


Allied Force, Operation, 334


Alouette I, 209, 210


Amana Farms, Iowa, 342 


Amaldi, Edoardo, 593


“American Moon,” 57


Americans into Orbit, 604


Ames Research Center, California, 401


Amoco Corp., 340


Analogy, use of, xii-xiii 

Anders, Bill, 55


Anders, Günter, 594, 598


Anderson, Walt, 183


Anik satellite, 362


Animal and Plant Health Inspection 


Service, Plant Protection and 


Quarantine APHIS/PPQ), 343-344

660 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Annan, Kofi, 114 

Ansari, Anousheh, 183 

Anvari, Mehran, 607 

Apollo: 137, 180, 212, 314-315, 328, 

358, 421; decline in public inter

est, 58-59; expenditures, 56; From 

the Earth to the Moon, 63; impact of, 

4, 5, 15, 34-35, 53-66; Kennedy 

legacy, 94; and space food, 222-224, 

236. See also individual Apollo 

missions 

­

Apollo 8, 54-55, 94-95, 314-315 

Apollo 11, 53, 56-57, 60, 96, 289, 404;

dissenting opinions, 56, 544-545; 

See also environmental activism 

Apollo 12, 58, 61 

Apollo 13, 59; film, 63 

Apollo 14, 60 

Apollo 15, 58, 59, 60-61 

Apollo 17, 62, 275 

Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, 96 

Applications satellites: see satellites, 

applications 

Applications Technology Satellite: 

see ATS 

Applied Perception, Inc. (API), 337 2

Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), 331 A

AQUACADE, 293 

Arabsat satellite, 362 

ARGON satellite, 292 

Arendt, Hannah, 615-617 

Ares (Crew Launch Vehicle), 182 

Ariane, 160, 162-163 

Arianespace, 152, 153, 163 

Ariel I, 209, 210 

Ariel II, 209 

Armageddon, 475 

Armageddon 2419 AD (1929), 508 

Armstrong, Neil: 55, 464-465, 564, 

569, first words on Moon, 53, 72; 

on Moon hoax, 64 

Armed Forces Security Agency 

(AFSA), 371 

Army, U.S., 159, 166, 170, 268; communications satellites, 268; and 

Explorer 1, 357, launch vehicles, 

176; and navigation units, 334, 335, 

337; and reconnaissance satellites, 

268, 370; and space food, 221, 232; 

and weather satellites, 171, 174, 268, 

273, 297, 311 

Army Air Forces, 124 

Army Ballistic Missile Agency, 151, 357 

Arthur D. Little Co., 443-444 

Asimov, Isaac, 9, 603 

Asner, Glen, xi-xii 

Astronauts, 59-61; See also individual 

astronaut names, taikonaut 

Astronomy Education Review, 408, 417 

Astro Turf, 398, 604 

Atair Aerospace, 335 

AT&T, 152, 168, 356, 360 

Atheism, 55 

Atkin, L., 225 

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 375 

ATS (Applications Technology Satellite), 

38, 270, 275, 299; See also GOES 

ura, 326 

A-V Corp., 456 

B 

B-52 bombers, 334 

Bachelard, Gaston, 590 

Baker, Doug, 340 

Baker, Erine, 463 

Ball, George, 215 

Ballistic missiles, 162, 176 

Bamford, James, 372 

Bao Zheng, 103 

Barksdale Air Force Base, 

Louisiana, 334 

Basalla, George, 550 
Index 66 

Bauer, William, 342-343


Bauman, Howard E., 220-236


Baumgartner, Frank, 21


Bay of Pigs invasion, 376


Bean, Alan L., 58, 464-465


Beard, Charles A., 555


Becker, Carl, 22-23


Beckman Instruments Inc., 455


Beggs, James, 97, 317


Beidou satellites, 178


Beliaev, Aleksandr, 522, 523


Bell, Daniel, 621-622


Bell, David, 453


Benjamin, Marina, xiii-xiv


Benson, Charles D., 394


Benson, Jim, 577, 578


Berdichevskii, V. S., 523


Bergerac, Cyrano de, 502, 518


Berry, Charles A., 222


Berry, Wendell, 497-498


BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise 


missile, 334


Big Bird satellite, 124, 293; See also 


HEXAGON


Bigelow, Robert, 184, 582


Biocosmists, 43-44


Biomedical spinoffs, 136


Bissell, Richard, 374


Blamont, Jacques, 210-211


Blinn, James, 476, 477


Boehlert, Sherwood, 327


Boeing Co., 334


Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 530-531


Bonestell, Chesley, 509, 510, 591


Bonnet, Roger, 210-211, 216


Bonneville Power Administration 


(BPA), 347


Boorstin, Daniel, 626-627


Boulton, V. R., 135


Bova, Ben, 545


Bowles, Mark, 400


Bracewell, Ronald, 543


Bradbury, Ray, 56, 65, 475, 541


Brand, Stewart, 55


Branson, Richard, 183-184


Brewer, Robert H., 454


British Interplanetary Society, 595


Bromley, Alan, 320


Brookhaven National Laboratory, 


474, 605


Brown & Root Inc., 456


Brownell, Herbert, 372


Brownlee, Donald, 15


Bruce, David, 217


Buergle, Klaus, 592


Buran spacecraft, 6, 180, 183


Bureau of Intelligence and Research, 370


Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 532


Burrows, William E., 488, 490, 491


Bury, J. B., 485, 557


Bush, President George H. W., 62, 65, 


85, 89n1, 99, 320, 322, 329, 493­


494, 574, 576


Bush, President George W., 23, 87, 182, 


325-328, 330, 494, 560, 582, 595


Bush, Vannevar, 196


Butler, Octavia, 608


c 

California Cooperative Medfly 


Project, 344


Calkins, Dick, 508


Camp Korean Village, Iraq, 335


CANYON, 293


Capra, Fritz, 20


Capricorn One, 64


Captain Video, 509


Carey, James, 484-485


Carlowicz, Michael, 285


Case for Mars, The, 559

662 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, 216-218


Carlyle, Thomas, 387


Carter, President Jimmy, 97


CAT scan machines: see computed 

axial tomography 

Center for Educational Technology, 418


Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute 


(TsAGI ), 519-520


Central Intelligence Agency, 291, 370, 


373-378, 383


Centre National d’Études Spatiales 

(CNES) 

Cernan, Eugene, 62; The Last Man on 


the Moon, 65


Challenger accident, 62, 81-83, 84, 98, 


160, 163, 180-181, 182, 329, 361, 


395-396


Chan, Jackie, 111


Chapman, Richard L., 274


Charles, John, 611-612


Charney, Jule, 280-281


Charyk, Joseph V., 298


Chen, Peter, 443-444


Chernov, Valentin, 523, 526, 535


Chertok, Boris, 50


Chiang Kai-shek, 105


Childhood’s End (1952), 608


China: see People’s Republic of China 

China National Space Administration, 112


China Space Foundation, 112


Chrysler, 138


CIA: see Central Intelligence Agency 

Civilized Life in the Universe (2006), 550


Clarke, Arthur C., 6-7, 9, 56, 65, 168, 


290-291, 297, 298, 301, 354-355, 


475, 597, 608


Cleaver, A. V., 597


Clementine spacecraft, 152


Climate Change Research Initiative, 325


Clinton, President Bill, 29, 322-324, 


325, 329, 364, 366, 494


Cloud, John, 269


Cocconi, Giuseppe, 543


Cochran, Grace, 225


Cochran, Samuel, 225, 226


Cold War, 89-102, 193


Collier’s, 354, 510-511, 591, 592-593


Collins, Eileen, 449


Collins, Martin, xii


Collins, Mike, 464-465


Colmore, Henry P., 225


Columbia, Space Shuttle, 73, 74, 83, 


86, 87, 3181, 26


Comic History (1657), 502


Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A 


Venture in Social Forecasting, The, 622


Commerce, space, 10


Commerce, Department of, 361


Commercial and economic impact 


of spaceflight, 121-140, 141-191; 


approaches to studying, 123-124; dif­


ficulties of attribution, 124, 139; and 


Earth Observing satellites, 237-263; 


and experimental development for 


space, 125, 128-; and management 


tools, 137-139; and manufactur­


ing, 129; measurement of, 255-258; 


and military, 124-125; and political 


economy, 141-192; and space enter­


prises, 125, 127-128; and space 


operations,125-127; See also spinoffs


Commercial space sector, 152-155; 


and launch technology, 162-165


Commercial Technology Program, 


NASA, 4


Committee on Earth and 


Environmental Sciences (CEES), 320


Communications satellites, 6-7, 


168-171, 362; See also satellites, 


communications


Communications Satellite Corporation 

(COMSAT), See Comsat 

Computed axial tomography (CAT) 


scans, 4

Index 663 

Computer industry, 5; See also integrated circuits 

COMSAT, 146, 168, 152, 186, 


302-310


Comstar, 307


Conant, James B., 373


Confucius, 108


Congressional Black Caucus, 435


Conquest of Space, The (1949), 488, 


509-510


Conquest of Space (1955), 511


Conrad, Pete, 58, 61


Conservatives, and space exploration, 


8-9


Contact (1997), 539, 578, 608


Conventional Air-Launched Cruise 


Missile (CALCM), 334-335


Corn, Joseph, 12


Corona program, 147, 171, 268, 291­


292, 373, 374


Cosmographie (1682), 502


Cosmos, 476, 581


Countryman, J. E., 228


Courier satellite, 311


Cowen, Ruth Schwartz, 276


Cox, Archibald M., 422


Cramer, William C., 451


Criticom International Corporation, 345


Crystal satellite, see Kennan/Crystal 

Cuban missile crisis, 359


Cucinotta, Francis, 609


Cultural impact, 8-14; and metaphors, 

8-14; See also Societal impact 

Culture, meaning of, xi


Cunningham, Walter, The All-


American Boys, 61


d 

Day, Dwayne, 268, 286, 293


Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The, 608


Davis, Tom Martin, 459


De Blij, Harm, 117


De France, Smith J., 401


De Tocqueville, Alexis, 11


Dean, John W., 422


Deaton, Scott, 345


Defense Meteorological Satellite 


Program, 171, 174, 272, 298


De Gaulle, Charles, 215


Denver Research Institute, 122, 123, 


128-129, 139


Deep Impact, 475


Department of Defense (DoD), U.S., 


146, 165


Desert Storm, Operation, 334, 


337-338


Dessler, Alexander J., 457


Destination Moon (1950), 511


Devlin, Bernadette, 56


Diamandis, Peter, 604


Dick, Steven, 267, 276, 277, 540


Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen, 589


Digital Image Animation Lab (DIAL), 


476-477


Director of Central Intelligence 


(DCI), 373


DirecTV, 152


Discover satellite, 268, 292, 311


Discoverer Program, 373, 374


DISH Network, 145


Disney, Walt, 511, 591


Disneyland, 511


DMSP satellites, 272, 311, 312


Dobbs, Lou, 10


DOMSAT, 306


DORIAN, 292


Douglas, Deborah G., 25, 26, 39


Drake, Frank, 15, 539, 543


DuBridge, Lee, 331


Duke, Charles M., Jr., 465


Duke, Michael, 577


Dulles, Allen, 373

664 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Dumb and Dumber, 409


Dunar, Andrew, 398-399, 401


Durst, Steve, 577


DYNO, 293


Dyson, Freeman, 489, 491


e 

EA SPORTS, Inc., 341


Early Bird satellite, 304, 311


Earth, whole, effect of; 15, 53, 54, 


66, 275


Earth, urgent needs argument, 56, 66


Earth & Sky, 414


Earth in the Balance, 322


Earth Day, and Apollo, 55, 275


Earth Observing satellites, 237-263


Earth Observing System (EOS), 243, 


319, 320, 321, 325, 326, 327, 329


Earth Resources Technology Satellite; 

see ERTS-1; Landsat


Earth Sciences Program, 313-328


Earth Systems Science, 285, 320


Earthrise photo, effect of; 15, 275. See 


also Apollo 8


Easton, Roger, 331-332


Echo I, 301, 311


Economic data, uses and abuses, 145-147


Economic impact of spaceflight: see 


commercial and economic impact


Economy, political, 141-191


Edelson, Berton, 317


Education: see spaceflight, education


Edwards, Charles C., 226


Edwards, Paul, 272, 273


Ehrenberg, Il’ia, 48


Ehricke, Krafft, 490, 591, 597


Eisenhower, President Dwight D., 28­


33, 91, 92, 97, 301, 356-358, 511; 


and weather satellites, 268, 271; and 

reconnaissance satellites and intel­


ligence, 369-374


El-Bisi, Hamed, 221, 222


Eliot, Charles, 408-409


El Niño, 248, 286, 324, 329


Eldorado Canyon, Operation, 334


Electric energy industry, 249-251


Empire Strikes Back, The, 477


End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of 


Political Ideas in the Fifties, The, 622


Engineering: and NASA, 125


Engineers’ Dreams (1954), 488


Enterprise, Space Shuttle, 67


Environmental activism, 55


Environmental Protection Agency 


(EPA), 315-316, 318, 343


EORSAT, 175


EOSAT (Earth Observation Satellite 


Company), 172-173, 241; See also 


Landsat


Equal Employment Opportunity 


Commission (EEOC), 399


Erb, Bryan R., 460


Erhard, Chancellor Ludwig, 213-214, 215


ERTS-1, 238, 311; See also Landsat


ESSA, 298


Exceptionalism, American, 11, 38, 


483-499, 555-571


Eumetsat, 174


European Aeronautic Defence and 


Space Company (EADS), 145, 155, 


156, 157


European Space Agency, 78, 216, and 


vision of spaceflight, 585-599


European Launcher Development 


Organisation (ELDO), 586


European Space Research 


Organisation (ESRO), 167, 586


Eurospace, 147


Eutelsat satellites, 362


Exploration, human spaceflight as, 76, 


81, 82, 83-87


Explorer, 297


Extravehicular activity (EVA), 74, 143

Index 665 

f 

Faget, Maxime A., 460


Faherty, John, 394


Falcon rocket, 361-362


Federal Aviation Administration 


(FAA), 333


Federal Communications Commission 


(FCC ), 349


Federal Electric Corp., 455


Federal Emergency Management 


Agency (FEMA), 344-346, 381


Federov, Nikolai, 44


Feng Yun satellites, 174


Ferguson, Eugene, 395-396


Ferris, Timothy, 86


Fertile Stars, The, 469


Finch, Robert H., 226


First Millennial Foundation, 492


Fisk, Lennard, 320-321, 323


Flanigan, Peter, 306


Fletcher, James C., 96, 315-316, 318, 


and civil rights, 423-445


Foing, Bernard, 576


Food and Drug Administration, 


219-236


Food Safety, and spaceflight, 219-236


Forbidden Planet (1956), 511


Foreman, Carol Tucker, 233


Framing, definition of, 68-69; impor­


tance of, 11-12, 67-88; as interpre­


tive tool, 68


Frau im Mond (1930), 589, 591


Freedom, see space station 

Friedman, Louis, 559


Friedman, Milton, 282


Friedman, Thomas, 194, 195, 199


Friendswood Development 


Company, 452


Fries, Sylvia, 392-393, 395, 398


From the Earth to the Moon (1865), 505­


506, 603


Frontier analogy, 4, 9-10, 11, 13, 37, 


67-76, 486-487, 493, 498, 562


Frost & Sullivan Inc., 350-351


Frost, David, 345


Frutkin, Arnold W., 167, 209


Fyodorov, Nikolai, 488


g 

Gagarin, Yuri, 47, 50, 92, 106, 180, 


211, 302


Gaia hypothesis, 15, 279, 284-285, 


316, 328


Galbraith, John Kenneth, 621-622


Galileo, 501-502


Galileo Jupiter Probe, 411


Galileo navigation satellite, 178-179, 


334-335, 366


GAMBIT, 292


Gao Feng, 111


Gartmann, Heinz, 592


Gates, Thomas, 371


Gattaca, 609


Geertz, Clifford, xi, 484


Geller, Uri, 60


Geo Space Corp., 455


Gemini project, 137, 180; and impact 


on industry, 127; and space food, 


222-224, 236


General Electric, 454


General Operational Requirement 


No. 80, 372


Geodesy, and satellites, 286


Geodetic Services, Inc., 341


George C. Marshall Institute, 280


Geostationary Operational 

Environmental Satellite, See GOES 

Getting, Ivan, 331


Gilruth, Robert R., 446, 460-461


GIOVE (Galileo In-Orbit Validation 


Experiment), 296


Giulani, Rudolph, 3, 4

666 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Glenn, John, 596


Glennan, Keith, 136


Globalization, and communications 


satellites, 194; criticism 201-202; 


definition of, 194; periods of, 195; 


and space development, 193-205; 


and Cold War, 193


Global Positioning System (GPS), 177­


180, 197-198, 271, 294-297, 311, 


331-351, 364-366


Global warming, 281-285, 319-321


GLONASS (Global Orbiting 


Navigation Satellite System), 177, 


296, 333


Glory satellite, 326-327


Glushko, Valentin, 46-47


God, 60


Goddard, Robert H., 13, 354-355, 


488-489, 507, 508, 515, 522, 524­


525, 528-530


Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 


280, 319


Godwin, Francis, 502


Goel, Prateek, 345


GOES (Geostationary Operational 


Environmental Satellite), 174, 238, 


244, 246, 299


Goertzel, Ted, 21, 24


Gol’berg, Ia., 524-525


Goldin, Daniel S., 216, 321, 323, 324, 


325, 329, 576


Goldman, Jack, 225


Goodman, Clark, 460


Gorbachev, Mikhail, 98-99


Gordon, Flash, 507, 509


Gore, Al, 216, 275, 321, 322, 325


Government, vs. private sector in 


space, 200


GPS: See Global Positioning System 

GPS-Aided Inertial Navigation 


System (GAINS), 336


GRAB, 293


GRACE satellite, 286


Graham, Loren, 47


Grahn, Sven, 482


Grapes of Wrath, The, 541


Grasshopper Integrated Pest 


Management (GHIPM) Project, 


343-344


Gravity Probe B, 159


Gray, Colin, 124


Greason, Jeff, 604


Greenfield, Stanley, 290


Griffin, Michael, 327, 494-495, 576, 596


Griggs v. Duke Power Company, 


424-425


Grinspoon, David, 539


Grissom, Gus, 108


Group for the Study of Reactive 


Motion (GIRD ), 536


Grumman Corp., 394, 399


Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory 


at Caltech (GALCIT), 468


Guier, Bill, 294


Gulf Aerospace Corp., 455


Gunn, James, 539-553


Guo Jinjing, 115


h 

Haber, Heinz, 511


Haldane, J. B. S, 14


Hall, R. Cargill, 272


Hall, Forrest, 240


Halle, Louis, 568-569


Hallion, Richard P., 38


Hammick, David M., 460


Hanks, Tom, 63, 587


Hansen, James, 279-281, 319-320, 


321, 327


Harnessing Space (1963), 488


Harris, Ruth Bates, 423-424, 426­


429, 430-439


Hartz, Louis, 11

Index 667 

Hastedt, Glenn, 272


Hayms, Peter, 64


Hazard Analysis and Critical Control 


Point (HACCP), 219-236


Heidelbaugh, Norman D., 232


Heinlein, Robert, 475, 603, 604, 608, 


609, 611; and Apollo 11, 55, 65


Helios, 212-215


Heritage Foundation, 348


Henson, Carolyn, 490


Henson, Keith, 490


Heppenheimer, T. A., 565


Herbert, Frank, 603


Herring, Mack, 401


HEXAGON, 293


Heylyn, Peter, 502


High Frontier, The, 545


Hinners, Noel, 444


Hodges, Gil, 56


Hoffman, Philip G., 461 


Holden, Constance, 432


Holland, William M., 459


Hollender, Herbert A., 221


Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 544


Horton, Eugene E., 463


How William Shatner Changed the 


World, 408


Howard, Ron, 63


Hubbard, L. Ron, 475


Hubble Space Telescope, 411, 412, 415


Hu Jintao, 108


Hufbauer, Karl, 285


Hughes Aircraft, 133


Human Condition, The, 615-617


Human spaceflight: 180-184; as 


business, 72-73; costs, 182-183; 


as exploration, 81, 82, 83-87; as 


heroism, 80-83; launchers, 160; 


to Mars, 83; vs. robotic, 79,80-81, 


122, 123, 287; and microgravity 


research, 184-185; and scientific 


research, 78-80; as space transpor­


tation, 70-72; See also spaceflight


Humble Oil and Refining Company, 


452, 461


Hurricane Andrew, 344


Hurricane Katrina, 346, 381


Hussein, Saddam, 382


Hussey, Kevin, 476-478


i


ICBMs, 29, 176


IGY: see International Geophysical Year 

Ikonos 1, 172, 173


Indian Remote Sensing Satellite 


(IRS), 173


Inhofe, Senator James, 283


Inside NASA, 393


Insurance, 186


Integrated circuits, 5


Intelligence, see National 

Reconnaissance Office 

Intelligence, Electronic, 175


Intelsat, 152, 168, 169, 170, 303-311


Interkosmos program, 183


International Astronautical Federation, 


489-490


International Business Machines’s 


Federal System Division, 454


International cooperation in space: 

see spaceflight, international 

cooperation 

International Earth Observations 


Summit, 326


International Geophysical Year (IGY), 


31, 209, 297, 511-512


International Launch Services, 157-158


International Lunar Exploration 


Working Group (ILE WG), 575-580


International 


MaritimeCommunications Satellite 


Organisation (Inmarsat), 169-170

668 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

International Solar-Polar Mission 


(SPM), 217


International Space Development 


Conference, 611


International Space Station: see space station 

International Traffic in Arms 


Regulations (ITAR), 150, 361


Inzhener Menni (Engineer Menni), 530


Iraqi Freedom, Operation, 337


Iridium satellites, 146, 170


Irwin, Jim, 58, 59-60; To Rule the 


Night, 60


Italian Space Agency, 216


ITAR: see International Traffic in 

Arms Regulations 

IT&T, 360


Izvestiia, 518


J 

Jackson, Michael, 477


Jackson, Shirley Ann, 448


Jaffe, Leonard, 301


Jameson, Frederic, 625-628


Jastrow, Robert, 280


Jenkins, Harriett, 440-442, 443, 444, 


445-447


Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, 


159, 394, 603, 608; impact on 


southern California, 467-479


Jezeski, James J., 225, 232


Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, 105


Johns Hopkins University, 331


Johnsen, Katherine, 304


Johnson, Louis, 371


Johnson, President Lyndon B., 10, 34, 


213, 214, 293-294, 451


Johnson, Raymond, 459


Johnson Space Center, Texas: impact 


on Texas, 451-465


Johnson, Stephen, 127, 269


Joint Chiefs of Staff Directive, 371


Joint Precision Airdrop System 


(JPADS), 335


Jones, Bryan, 21


Jorden, Kristen P., 285


Josephson, Paul, 49


Journal of the British Interplanetary 


Society, 489


Just Cause, Operation, 380


K 

Kármán, Theodore von, 468


Keith, Robert J., 220


Kellogg, William, 290


Kelvin, Lord, 144


Kennell, Charles, 323


Kennan/Crystal satellite, 293


Kennedy, Donald, 280


Kennedy, President John F., 34-35, 


53, 54, 92-93, 211, 212, 217, 289, 


302, 377, 451-452, 496


Kennedy, Robert F., 55, 62, 65, 67, 97


Kennedy Space Center (KSC), 


Florida, 394


Keohane, Nannerl, 564


Kepler, Johannes, 502


Kerr, Sir John, 380


Keyhole satellites, 172, 268. See also 


Corona, Discover, KH satellites


KH satellites, see Corona, GAMBIT, 

HEXAGON 

Khrushchev, Nikita, 34, 41, 46, 47-52, 


378-379


Kibal’chich, Nikolai, 533


Kilgore, De Witt Douglas, xiv, 598


Killian, James R. Jr., 373


King, Martin Luther, 54


Kirby, Jack, 604


Klicka, Mary V., 221


Kobrick, Mike, 476


Koelle, Heinz Hermann, 598


Kohlhase, Charles, 476

Index 669 

Kompfner, Rudolf, 301, 302 

Korean Air Line (KAL) Flight 007, 

332, 365 

Korolev, S. P., 49, 50, 536 

Kosmicheskii reis (Space Voyage, 1935), 532 

Kraft, Jr., Christopher C., 454 

Kramarov, Grigorii, 524, 526, 533, 

534, 535 

Krantz, Gene, 63 

Krasin, Leonid, 43 

Krasnaia zvezda (Red Star, 1908), 

530-531 

Kubrick, Stanley, 56 

Kuhn, Thomas, 21-22 

Kukkonen, Carl, 471 

Kyoto Protocol, 325 

l 

L5 Society, 490, 559, 560 

Lachance, Paul A., 221, 222-224 

LACIE (Large Area Crop Inventory 

Experiment), 240-244 

Lacis, Andrew, 280 

Lacrosse satellites, 269 

Lambright, Harry, 278 

Land, Edwin, 373 

Land Remote Sensing Act of 1992, 

362-363 

Landsat, 172, 197; 238, 239-243, 269, 

277-28, 298, 300, 316, 323, 328, 

362-363, 381, 476 

Lang, Fritz, 589, 591 

LANYARD satellite, 292 

Lapirov-Skoblo, Mikhail, 518, 521­

523, 526, 536 

Lasch, Christopher, 485, 560 

LaSalle Ambulance Service, 340 

L.A. the Movie, 476 

Launch attempts (by country), 148 

Launch companies, 157 

Launch vehicles, 162-165; and ballistic 

missiles, 162 

Launius, Roger, 122, 387-388 

Lefebvre, Henri, 489 

Lei Feng, 104 

Leiteizen, Moris, 519-520, 523, 526, 

527, 531, 532, 535, 536 

LeMay, Curtis, 374 

Learlink, Edward, 544 

Lee, Stan, 604 

Leinster, Murray, 544 

Lessl, Thomas, 484 

Lewis and Clark, 354 

Ley, Herbert L., Jr., 226 

Ley, Willy, 14, 488, 511, 589, 591, 598 

Life, extraterrestrial, 14-15 

Life magazine, 60, 64 

Life sciences, 79 

Limbaugh, Rush, 278 

Limerick, Patricia Nelson, 487, 488 

Lin Dan, 111 

Lindov-Leiteizen, G. D., 523 

Lipp, James E., 290 

Listeners, The, 539-553 

Lockheed Electronics Company, 454 

London Graphic, 507 

Lopez, Ramon, 285 

Lord, M. G., 398 

Lovell, Bernard, 543 

Lovelock, James, 15, 279, 284, 

316-317 

Lovell, James, 54, 59, 63, 587 

Low, George M., 422; and civil rights, 

423-445 

Lowell, Percival, 14 

Lucasfilm, 477 

Lucas, George, 477 

Lunar Orbiter 1, 275 

Lunney, Glynn S., 454 

Lüst, Reimar, 216 

Luton, Jean-Marie, 216-217 
670 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

M MERCURY, 293


McConnell, Dudley, 432-437


McCurdy, Howard, 393


Mao Zedong, 105


Mack, Pam, 277


MacLeish, Archibald, 54, 594, 598


McCall, Robert, 70


McDonnell Aircraft Company, impact 


of space projects on, 127-128


McDougall, Walter A., 198-199, 212, 


267, 290, 486, 488


McGlade, David, 310


McLure, Frank, 294


McNamara, Robert, 92


Mack, Pamela E., 585


Mailer, Norman, 64


Malina, Frank J., 475


Man, The (1964), 545-546


Man and the Moon, 511


Man Who Sold the Moon, The, 603


Man in the Moone, The (1638), 502


Man in Space,511 

Manned Orbiting Laboratory, 127, 


182, 292, 293


Manufacturing, impact of space on, 129


Marburger, John, 494


Mariner spacecraft, 186, 284, 314


Mars and Beyond, 511


Mars, and human spaceflight, 83, 84­


85, 86, 87, 97-98


Mars Exploration Rovers, 407, 411, 412


Mars Pathfinder, 475, 512


Mars Society, 492, 559, 611


Marshall Space Flight Center, 


Alabama, 398-399, 401


Marvel Comics, 604


Materials testing in space, 126


Meaning, social construction of, 68-69


Measurement, 136-137


“Meeting the Threat of Surprise 


Attack,” 373


Mercury project, 137, 358; and indus­


try impact, 127


Metaphor, use of, 8-9, “ocean of 


space,” 67, 68


Meteor (satellite), 171, 174


Meteosat, 174, 300


Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 475


Meynell, Alice, 544


Microgravity research, 184-185


Mikhailov, A.A., 42


Military space: compared to civilian 


and commercial sectors, 151; impact 


on NASA and innovation, 123-124, 


151; institutions, 159; space budget, 


29; uses of space, 10, 29, 124-125, 142


Miller, Jon, 411


MILSPACE, 269


MILSTAR, 293


Minuteman missile, 130


Missile Defense Agency (MDA), 176


Missile Technology Control Regime 


(MTCR ), 353, 361-362


Mission to Mars, 475


Mission to Planet Earth (MPTE), xiii, 


313-315, 318, 320-324, 327, 329


Mir, 98, 99, 143, 180, 183, 323


Missiles, see ballistic missiles


Mitchell, Ed, 60


Mitchell, Joni, 57


MK-171 Extended-Range Guided 


Munition (ERGM), 334


Modisette, Jerry L., 460


Mohler, J. B., 129


MOL: see Manned Orbiting Laboratory


Mona Lisa, 477


Montana State University, 342


Montgolfier, Étienne, 502


Montgolfier, Joseph, 502


Montreal Protocol, 318-319, 322, 


324, 328
Index 67 

Moon Hoax, 63-64


The Moon-Maker (1917), 501


Moonwalking, 61


Morris, C. F., 132


Morrison, Grant, 463


Morrison, Philip, 543


Morrow, Cheri, 416


Mortensen, Bob, 476


Moss, Steven, 398-399


MTV, 61


Muenger, Elizabeth, 401


Mumford, Lewis, 544


Muraviev, Valerian, 43


Murray, Bruce, 478-479, 559


Myers, Dick, 24


n 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund, 425, 


441


Nader, Ralph, 220, 226


Nash, Roderick, 12


National Aeronautics and Space 


Administration (NASA): and 


advocacy, 483-499; and American 


exceptionalism, 11, 483-499, 


555-571; and applications satel­


lites, 312; and civil rights, 421-449; 


commercial and economic impact, 


121-140; cultural impacts vs. mate­


rial impacts, 8-13; and dispersed 


technology, 125; and dual-use 


technology, 353-368; and education, 


143, 407-419; and electric energy 


industry, 249-251; and engineering, 


125; and European vision, 585­


599; and food safety, 219-236; and 


foreign policy, 207-218; and global 


warming controversy, 278-285; and 


globalization, 193-205; goals for, 67, 


90-102, 121; and ideology, 483­


499; impact on southern California, 


467-479; impact on Texas, 451-465; 


international cooperation, 98-100, 


207-218, 300; methodological chal­


lenges, 4-16; and national prestige, 


6; political economy of, 141-191; 


and popular culture, 501-512; and 


progress, 555-571; social history 


of, 387-405; and space activism, 


573-583; and survival, 144, and 


theory, 6-8; and technocracy, 198; 


and turning points, 16; unantici­


pated impacts of, 14-16; and U. S. 


foreign policy, 207-218; and water 


resources, 251-254; and weather, 


238-239, 244-251, 258-263.


NASCAR, 4


National Advisory Committee for 


Aeronautics (NACA ), 401


National Assessment of Educational 


Progress, 410-411


National Conference of Catholic 


Charities, 435


National Defense Education Act of 

1958, 409


National Education Association, 408


National Electronics Corp., 455


National Imagery and Mapping 

Agency (NIMA), 375


National Commission on Space, 84, 493


National Geodetic Survey, 333


National Geospatial Intelligence 

Agency (NGIA), 371, 381


National Oceanic and Atmospheric 


Administration (NOAA), 274-77, 


285, 300, 314, 317, 318, 323


National Organization of Women, 

425, 435


National Park Service, 346


National Photographic Interpretation 


Center (NPIC ), 371, 375


National Polar Orbiting Environmental 

Satellite System: See NPOESS 

National Reconnaissance Office 


(NRO), 151, 172, 292, 298, and 


reconnaissance satellites and intel­


ligence, 171, 369-383

672 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

National Reconnaissance Program, 124


National Research Council, 327


National Science Foundation (NSF), 


317, 318, 415


National security, 71, 91, and recon­


naissance satellites and intelligence, 


268-273, 291-294, 369-383. See also 


Satellite, reconnaissance


National Security Act of 1947, 


369-370


National Security Agency (NSA), 


371, 372


National Security Council (NSC), 


370-372


National Security Council 


Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 


No. 6, 371


National Space Association, 490


National Space Institute, 490-490, 559


National Space Society, 490-491, 559


Naugle, John, 126-127


Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), 


331, 357


Navigation satellites: see satellites, 

navigation 

NAVSTAR: see Global Positioning 

System 

Navy, U.S., 127, 137, 151, 159, 166, 


176, 177, 271. See also Transit satel­


lite, Vanguard


Nelson, Senator Bill, 114


New Industrial State, The, 622


New York City Department of Design 


and Construction, 345


Nickerson, Hoffman, 20


Nierenberg, William, 283


Nimbus, 174, 298


Nisbet, Robert, 485-486, 496


9/11 Commission, 376


Nixon, President Richard M., 36, 60, 


95, 96, 97, 331, 422-423


NOAA: see National Oceanic and 


Atmospheric Administration


No Child Left Behind Act, 410


North American Aviation Inc., 454


North Atlantic Treaty Organization 


(NATO), 334, 336, 338


North Texas Auto Theft Task Force, 341


Northwestern University, Illinois, 411


Nowlan, Philip, 508


NPOESS (National Polar Orbiting 


Environmental Satellite System), 


174, 275, 298, 327


Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 353


Nye, Joseph, 218


o 

Oberth, Hermann, 488, 515, 518, 522, 


525, 528, 589


Oceanography, 286


Office of Science and Technology 


Policy (OSTP), 322


Office of Space Science and 


Applications (OSSA), NASA, 314, 


317, 318, 319, 321


O’Hare, Madeline Murray, 55


O’Keefe, Sean, 62, 325-327, 328


O’Leary, Bryan, 469


O’Neill, Gerard K., 316, 490-491, 


545, 558-559, 560, 561, 569


Onkst, David, 394, 399


O’Sullivan, William J., 301


Onyx satellites, 269


Open Skies Doctrine, 377-379


Operational Paratroopers Navigation 


System (OP ANAS), 335-336


Orion (Crew Exploration Vehicle), 182


Orr, James, 130


Orwell, George, 277


Outer Space Treaty, 359


Ozone, and NASA studies, 278-279, 


317-318, 319, 321-322, 329

Index 673 

p 

Paine, Thomas, 95


PanAmSat, 152, 307, 308, 309, 310, 362


Parent, Robert, 298


Parkinson, Bradford, 331-332, 351


Parsons, Jack, 475


Pearson, Raymond, 453


People’s Republic of China, 103-117, 


147, 174, 178, 181, 183, 187


Penley, Constance, 498


Perel’man, Ia. I., 44-45, 518, 522, 524


Persian Gulf War, 380


Perspective from space, new, 54-55


Pharmaceuticals and space, 126


Philco Houston Operations of 


Honeywell Inc., 454


Phillips, General Sam, 137


Photographic Intelligence Center, 371


Physics Today, 490


Pierce, John R., 291, 301, 302


Pierson, Duane, 607


Pierson, George W., 37


Pickering, William H., 301


Pillsbury, and food safety, 220-236


Pioneering the Space Frontier, 84, 493


Pitzer, Kenneth S., 456, 457


Plains Cotton Growers Diapause 


Program, 343


Planetary science, 166-167


Planetary Society, 479, 559-560, 567


Plum Brook Nuclear Reactor, Ohio, 


400-401


Poe, Edgar Allan, 503-505


POES (Polar-orbiting Operational 


Environmental Satellites), 238, 246


Polar-orbiting Operational 


Environmental Satellites, see POES


Pollack, James, 280


Polaris missile, 130


Political economy: see Economy, 


political


Poppe, Barbara, 285


POPPY, 293


Popular Science, 507


Postmodernism, xi-xii, 11-12, and 


turning points, 20


Power to Explore, 401


Powers, Sheryll Goecke, 398


Powers, Francis Gary, 371, 372


Prather, Michael, 285


“Preliminary Design of an 


Experimental Earth-Circling 


Spaceship,” 372


Princeton University, 316


Program Evaluation and Review 


Technique (PERT), 137


Progress, concept of, 10-11; and post-


modernism, 12; and space advocacy, 


555-571


“Progress: A Faustian Bargain,” 486


Proxmire, William, 435-437, 608


Pul’ver, V. L., 523


Puppet Masters, The (1951), 608


Purser, Paul E., 461


Putcha, Lakshmi, 605


Pyne, Stephen, 488, 495-496, 498


Q 

Qualcomm Inc., 340


Quayle, Dan, 89n1


QuickSCAT, 245


r 

Raborn, William, 374


Rados, Robert, 137


Raiders of the Lost Ark, 477


Railroad and the Space Program, xii


Ramo, Simon, 468


RAND, 124, 290, 291, 296, 372


Rau, Erik, 22


Raytheon Company, 454


RCA, 356

674 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Reagan, President Ronald, 29, 82, 


97-99, 217, 279, 319-320, 332, 362­


363, 493


Reconnaissance satellites: see 

Satellites, reconnaissance 

Red Planet, 475


Redish, Joe, 418


Reed, Ishmael, 486


Reich, Robert, 195


Relay satellite, 302


Religion, 10


Remote Environmental Monitoring 


Units (REMUS), 337


Resources, space, 144


Rezunov, M. G., 532, 535


Richelson, Jeffrey, 268


Ride Report, 243, 318


Ride, Sally, 318, 329


Ridenour, Louis, 290


Robinson, Kim Stanley, 543


Robotic Evacuation Vehicle (REV), 337


Robotic Extraction Vehicle (REX), 337


Robotic spaceflight, 143, 287; See also 


human spaceflight


Roddenberry, Gene, 12


Rocket Ship Galileo, 604


Rockets: in Soviet Union, 41-52; 


sounding, 30; V2, 30; Vanguard, 30


Rocky Jones, 509


Rockwell International, 332


Rogers, Buck, 508, 509


Rohrabacher, Dana, 323


Roland, Alex, 121, 122-123, 139


Roland, Tim, 343-344


Roosevelt, President Franklin D., 196


Root, L. Eugene, 138


Rosen, Harold, 302


Rosendahl, Jeffrey, 416


Ross-Nazzal, Jennifer, x-xi 

Round the Moon (1870), 505


Rushing, Janice Hocker, 487-488, 498


Rusk, Dean, 213


Russia, 147, 149-150; See also Soviet 


Union


Rutan, Burt, 183


Ruth, John, 342


Ryan Aeronautics, 130


Rynin, N. A., 43


S 

Safe Drinking Water Act of 1976, 473


Sagan, Carl, 13, 15, 84, 216, 279-280, 


281, 319-320, 412, 476, 512, 539, 


543, 559, 561, 563, 565, 567, 568, 


581, 608


Sagdeev, Roald, Z., 46


Salyut, 96, 97, 143, 151, 180-181


SAMOS, See Satellite and Missile 


Observation System (SAMOS), 171, 


291, 292, 373


Sams, Clarence, 607


Satellite and Missile Observation 


System (SAMOS), 171, 291, 292, 373


Satellites: applications, 273-278, 289­


312; civilian, 273-278; and DoD, 


31; communications, 29, 33, 168­


171,194, 202, 270-271, 276-277, 289­


291, 301-311; deployed from Shuttle, 


75; geosynchronous, 298; and global­


ization, 197-198; military, 267-273; 


navigation, 177-180, 197-198, 271, 


294-297; oceanographic, 286;polar, 


297-298; reconnaissance, 29, 142, 


171-175, 268-273, 291-294; remote 


sensing, 171-175, 197; scientific, 142, 


166-167, 208-218, 267-268, 278-287; 


weather, 142, 174, 197, 267, 268, 


271-272, 273-275, 297-301. See also 


individual names of satellites


Saturn rocket, 131


Savage, Marshall, 492


SBS, 307


Schefcik, Mitch, 342-343


Schlesinger Report, 376

Index 675 

Schriever, General Bernard, 134


Science in Flux, 400


Scientific American, 507


Scientific research, see human spaceflight; satellites, scientific 

Scott, David, 58


Scott-Heron, Gil, 57


Scranton, Philip, 25


SENTRY, 291, 373


Search for Extraterrestrial 

Intelligence (SETI), 539-553


SETI League, 553


SETI Institute, 539


Sharman, Helen, 183


Sharonov, V. V., 529


Sharp, Darryl, 341


Shatner, William, 477 


Sheldon, Charles, 490


Shenzhou program, 181, 183


Shenzhou V, 105-110, 113, 181


Shenzhou VI, 115


Shepard, Alan, 106, 108


Shuch, H. Paul, 553


Siddiqi, Asif, 267-268


“Significance of the Frontier in American 

History, The,” 486-487, 493, 562


Silliker, John H., 225, 232


Simms, Brenda, 23


Simulacrum, 12


Sipes, Walter, 609


SLAM-ER (Stand-off Land Attack 

Missile—Enhanced Response) mis­


sile, 334


Slaton, Amy, 404


Slayton, Donald K., 454


Slotkin, Richard, 487


SM-3 interceptor missile, 336-337


Smith, Adam, Wealth of Nations, 141


Smith, Alvy Ray, 477


Smith, Benjamin A., 451


Smith, Walter Bedell, 371-372


Snow, C. P., 58


Society for the Study of Interplanetary 


Communications, 514, 515, 523-536


Societal impact: and American excep­


tionalism, 11, 483-499, 555-571; 


and space advocacy, 483-499; 


anticipation of, 8; and civil rights, 


421-449; and comparative analysis, 


6, 16; cultural impacts vs. mate­


rial impacts, 8-13; and education, 


407-419; and European vision, 


585-599; and Jet Propulsion 


Laboratory impact on southern 


California, 467-479; and Johnson 


Space Center impact on Texas, 451­


465; interpretative framework for, 


3-16; methodological challenges, 


4-16; and National Aeronautics and 


Space Act, ix; and national prestige, 


6; and popular culture, 501-512; and 


prediction, 6-8; and progress, 555­


571; and search for extraterrestrial 


intelligence (SETI ), 539-553; social 


history of spaceflight, 387-405; and 


space activism, 573-583; and space 


advocacy, 483-499; and space ideol­


ogy, 483-499; studies of, xii-xiii; 


and theory, 6-8; and turning points, 


16; unanticipated, 14-16. 

Somnium (1634), 502


Sorel, Charles, 502


Sorenson, Theodore, 94


Sorkin, Aaron, 412


Soros, George, 282


Southern Christian Leadership 

Conference, 544


Soviet society and space exploration, 


41-54


Soviet Union and space exploration, 

90-102, 159


Soyuz, 180-181; and Shenzhou V, 105


Space activism, 573-583


Space Age Publishing, 577


Space agencies, 159

676 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Space and the American Imagination, 4


Space Camp, 578


Space commerce, 125-127; See also 


commercial and economic impact 

of spaceflight 

SpaceDev Inc., 577


Space Exploration Initiative, 62, 65, 


494, 574, 576


Space Frontier Foundation, 490-492


Space Patrol, 509, 511


Space policy, U.S., 91, 101-102


Space science, 33, 208-218, 278-287


Space Shuttle, 19, 61-62, 67-88, 137, 


162-163, 180-181, 316; and science, 


78-80; See also Challenger, Columbia, 


Enterprise, human spaceflight


Space station: 180, 184-185; arguments 


against, 80, 85, 86; Freedom, 78, 79, 


86, 180-181; 322, International Space 


Station, 78, 79, 80, 86, 181, 323; Mir, 


180. See also Salyut


Space Studies Institute, 490


Space Task Group, 95, 96, 100


SpaceLab, 137


Space tourism, 183-184


Space transportation, 70-72, 160


Space weapons, 176


Spaceflight: and American excep­


tionalism, 11, 483-499, 555-571; 


anticipation of, 8; British, 209; 


budgets, 149; burial services, 187; 


Canadian, 209, 210; and civil rights, 


421-449; civilian, 152; commercial 


and economic impact, 121-140; and 


comparative analysis, 6, 16; cultural 


impacts vs. material impacts, 8-13; 


and education, 143, 188-189; 407­


419; and electric energy industry, 


249-251; and European vision, 585­


599; and food safety, 219-236; and 


foreign policy, 166-167; 207-218; 


French, 210; German, 212-215;and 


globalization, 193-205; goals for, 67, 


90-102, 121; and insurance indus­


try, 186; institutions of, 155-160; 


international cooperation, 98-100, 


167-170,181, 207-218, 300; inter­


pretative framework for, 3-16; and 


Jet Propulsion Laboratory impact 


on southern California, 467-479; 


and Johnson Space Center impact 


on Texas, 451-465; methodologi­


cal challenges, 4-16; micrograv­


ity research, 184; motivations 


for, 13, 67, 68, 90-102, 142-145; 


and national prestige, 6; political 


economy of, 141-191; and popular 


culture, 501-512; and progress, 555­


571; and prediction, 6-8; and search 


for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), 


539-553; sectors, 160-161; as social 


movement, 68; social history of, 


387-405; and Soviet Union, 41-52; 


and space activism, 573-583; and 


space advocacy, 483-499; and space 


ideology, 483-499; and survival, 


144; and technology R & D, 165­


166; and theory, 6-8; and tourism, 


183-184; and turning points, 16; 


unanticipated, 14-16; and water 


resources, 251-254; and weather, 


238-239, 244-251, 258-263. See 


also human spaceflight, robotic 


spaceflight, satellites; transportation


Spacelab, 78


SpaceShipOne, 512, 604


SpaceX Corp., 361-362


Species (1995), 539


Sperber, William, 232, 234, 236


Spinoff (NASA publication), 4, 137, 


143 n4


Spinoffs, commercial, 143-144; bio­


medical, 136-137, 143; early, 123; 


and Denver Research Institute 


study, 123-124; and food, 143, 


219-236; imagery enhancement, 


143; and Jet Propulsion Laboratory 

Index 677 

impact on southern California, 

467-479; and Johnson Space 

Center impact on Texas, 451-465; 

resources, 144; See also commercial and economic impact of space, 

Tang, Teflon, Velcro and other 

individual items 

SPOT satellite, 152, 173, 363-364, 381


Sputnik I, xii, 268; and Soviet Union, 


41, 47-52; as turning point, x, 19, 


24, 27, 28-33


Sputnik II, 33


Stalin, 42, 46


StarDate, 414


Star Trek, 475


Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, 477


Star Trek: Voyager, 606


Star Wars, 475, 477


Starr, Kevin, 478


State Department, 318, 326, 361-362


Stapledon, Olaf, 13, 489, 597


State Commission for Electrification 


of Russia (GEOLRO ), 521


Stearns, Ron, 350-351


Stennis Space Center, Mississippi, 401


Stephan, Halina, 532


St. Germain, Fernand, 435


Stiglitz, Joseph, 194


Stewart, Tim, 341


Strategic Air Command (SAC), 374


Strategic Arms Limitations Talks 


(SALT I), 378-379


Stuhlinger, Ernst, 511


Sturgeon, Theodore, 544


Sullivan, Walter, 539


Sun, and space weather, 285


Sun Na, 111


Supersonic Transport (SST), 315


Suomi, Vern, 275, 297, 298


Supreme Council of the People’s 


Economy (VSNKh or Vesenkha), 521


Sutherland, Ivan, 476


Symphonie satellite, 306, 360


Synchronous Meteorological Satellites 


(SMS), 299


Syncom, 168, 299, 302, 311


Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), 269


Sysoeva, Nataliia, 523


t 

Tactical Satellite (TACSAT) 

Taikonaut, 103-117


Takahashi, Yuki, 577, 578


Tang, 122


Taylor, Frederick, 43


TDRSS, 293


Technocracy, 267


Technology, and society, 11, 59, 123, 267


Technology utilization, and space, 


121-122


Teflon, 122 n 4., 133


Tele Atlas and Navteq Corporation, 338


Television Infrared Observing 

Satellite, see TIROS, POES 

Telstar, 168, 302, 311


Terminator 2, 477


Terra, 325


Test Equipment Corp., 455


Texas Instruments Inc., 455


Theno, David M., 233


Thermal Systems Inc., 453


Thomas, Albert, 451, 459


Thompson Ramo Wooldridge (TRW) 


Systems Inc., 454


Thor-Delta launcher, 147


Tiller, F. M., 460


Timasheff, Nicholas, 45


Timation Satellite, 331-332


TIROS (Television Infrared 


Observing Satellite), 137-138, 171, 


174, 238, 268, 273, 297-298, 311; 


See also TOS

678 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

Tito, Denis, 183


Tobias, Cornelius, 612-613


Todd, Helen, 408


Tolstoi, Aleksei, 522, 530-531


Tom Corbett,509, 511


TOPEX/Poseidon, 286, 324


TOS (TIROS Operational System), 298


Train, Arthur, 501


Trakker Pvt. Limited, 340-341


Transit satellite, 177, 271, 294, 311


Transportation, space, 70-72, 162-165


Trimble Navigation Ltd., 348


Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 

(TRMM), see TRMM 

TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring 


Mission), 243-244, 246, 324


Truly, Richard, 321


Truman, Harry S., 371-372


Tsander, Fridrikh 515-517, 518-520, 


524, 526, 528, 532, 535, 536


Tsiklon satellite, 177


Tsiolkovsky, Konstantin, 41, 43, 44­


45, 46-47, 49, 50, 488, 514, 518, 


519-520, 521, 523, 524, 526, 


Tucker, George, 502


Tumlinson, Rick, 492


Tunnel in the Sky, 611


Turner, Frederick Jackson, 11, 37, 


486-487, 493, 562, 596


Turner, James S., 226


Turning points, space age: 5-6, 16, 


19-117; definition of, 19, 20-27; list of 


potential, 27; maxims, 36-38; Moon 


landing, 19; and punctuated equi­


librium model, 21; scientific revolu­


tions as, 22; Space Shuttle events, 19, 


27; Sputnik, 19, 24, 27, 28-33; and 


Tsiolkovsky, 46; use of term, 20


Twining, Nathan, 374


Tyuratam, Kazakhstan, 377


u 

U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, 371-374, 


376, 377


UARS satellite, 324


United Nations Conference on the 


Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN 


COPUOS), 317


United Space Alliance, 152, 157


United States Golf Association, 


341-342


Univac Division of Sperry-Rand, 454


“Unparalleled Adventures of One 


Hans Pfaal, The” (1835), 503-505


UpLink Corporation, 341-342


Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite 


(UARS), 321-322


Urban and Regional Information 


Systems Association (URI SA) 


GISCorps, 346


U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 344-46


U.S. Global Change Research 


Program (USGCRP), 320, 322, 


325, 330


V


V2, 142


Valier, Max, 507, 508


Van Allen, James A., 80, 281


Vanchu, Anthony J., 537


Van Fleet, James, 371-372


Vance, Cyrus, 374


Vanguard, project, 31, 33, 151, 152, 


297, 357; Vanguard/Minitrack, 124


Varhese, Alan A., 338


Vazquez, Marcelo, 605-606


Vedda, James, 126


Velcro, 122 n 4


Vernadsky, V. I., 43


Verne, Jules, 505-507, 518, 603


Vetchinkin, Vladimir, 519, 520, 524, 


529, 535

Index 679 

Viking, 186, 316, 608


Vietnam War, effects of, 54, 59


Vinci, Leonardo da, 518


Vision for Space Exploration, 182, 


326, 560, 582, 583, 595


Vogt, A. E. van, 544


Volt Technologies Corp., 454


von Braun, Wernher, 188, 354, 357, 


429-430, 488, 489, 490, 507, 509, 


510, 512, 591, 598


Von Hoerner, Sebastian, 543


VORTEX, 293


Voyage to the Moon, A (1827), 503


Voyager 2, 80-81, 83, 87, 186, 411, 476


W 

Walance, Charles, 134


Waldo, Dwight, 10


Wallace, Irving, 545


War of the Worlds, 522, 608


Ward, David, 25


Ward, Peter, 15


Waring, Stephen, 398-399, 401


Warrior Constructors Inc., 455


Wassenear Arrangement on Export 


Controls for Conventional Arms 


and Dual-Use Goods and 


Technologies, 353, 360


Water resources, 251-255


Watson, Robert T., 279, 318


Weapon System 117L (WS-117L), 


291, 292


Weather, space, 285


Webb, Del W., 452


Webb, James, 34, 92-93, 213-214, 451


Weapons in space, see space weapons 

Weather, and spaceflight, 238-239, 


244-251, 258-263; See also ATS, 


Defense Meteorological Satellite 


Program (DMSP, GOES, Nimbus, 


NPOESS, POES, satellites, 


weather; TIROS, TRMM


Wehner, R. S., 290


Weifenbach, George, 294


Weinberger, Caspar, 96


Weitekamp, Margaret, 397-398


Wells, H. G., 9, 518, 522, 544, 608


West Wing, The, 412


Wexler, Harry, 297


Whalen, David, 276


Whipple, Fred, 488


White, Frank, 566-567


Whitehead, Clay T., 306


White Sands Missile Range, New 


Mexico, 335


Whitlam, Gough, 380


Whitman, Walt, 544


Whitney/Demos Productions, 477


Wildavsky, Aaron, 11


Wilford, John Noble, 63, 70, 72, 73, 


74, 82, 85


Williams, Dafydd, 607


Wilson, E. O., xi


Winner, Langdon, 624-625


Winter, Frank, 488


Wireless Communications and Public 


Safety Act of 1999, 349


Wise, Robert, 608


Wooldridge, Dean, 468


Wolfe, Tom, 59, The Right Stuff, 61


Women’s Equity Action League, 425


Wood, Robert, 501


World Trade Center, NYC, 344-345


World’s Columbian Exposition, 596


Wright, Robert, 486


WS-117L/Pied Piper, 171, 373


X


XCOR, 604


XM982 Excalibur, 334


X-Prize, 604

680 Societal iMpact of Spaceflight 

y 

Yang Liwei, 103-117


Yantar (satellite), 172


Yao Ming, 111


Yeltsin, Boris, 99 


Yergin, Daniel, 621


Young, John W., 465


Yue Fei, 103


Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, 


332, 334


Yusuf, Jameel, 340-341


Z


Zenith (satellite), 171


Zhang Yimou, 104-105


Zhang Yumei, 109


Zhang Ziyi, 111


Zheng Chenggong, 104


Zheng He, 103-104, 116-117


Zhukovskii Academy of the Air Fleet, 


518, 519, 529, 533


Zhukovskii Military Air Engineering 

Academy, 518


Zinn, Howard, 25


Zubrin, Robert, 10, 116-117, 493, 559, 


561-562, 566, 611