Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

Chapter 3
Building Space Capability through european
regional Collaboration
John Krige
O n September 26, 2007, the widely distributed daily USA Today
published a special feature on the dawn of the Space age. It devoted
more than a full page to the launch of Sputnik and to the conquest of space,
more than a week before the 50th anniversary of the Soviet achievement.
USA Today, obviously trying to steal a march on its competitors, also wanted
to intervene in current debates on american space policy, as the title of the
feature, “Lost in Space,” made clear. USA Today’s approach was dominated
by two themes: the U.S. vs. Soviet competition in the space race, of which
the newspaper gave a blow-by-blow chronological summary, and which
ended victoriously when Neil armstrong stepped onto the Moon; and the
frustration of “those who were involved at the beginning and others who
are key to future explorations”—pioneers and visionaries who were
concerned that the United States had no long-term and sustainable space
policy. the feature in USA Today thus provided both an historical and a
policy-oriented intervention, an attempt to defne a past and to use that
representation of the past to shape the future.
I do not draw attention to this article because I deem it to be representative;
indeed, a thorough, comparative analysis of how the launch of Sputnik and its
aftermath were depicted in the world’s press 50 years later awaits scholarly
attention and will, I am sure, be most illuminating. It interests me because it
embodies some of the typical traps that lie in wait for those of us who set out to
“remember the Space age.” three of these are particularly striking.
Firstly, USA Today shrunk the content: the Space age is reduced to human
space fight and the competition for space frsts between two superpowers. While
this focus is understandable in a popular daily newspaper, it is also regrettable
It is understandable since human spacefight is a feature of the conquest of
space that continues to inspire the public’s imagination. It is regrettable because
people are not becoming educated about the other dimensions of space (i.e.,
space for science, space for applications both civil and military, and space
as a means for building high-tech industry and national competitiveness in
the aerospace sector). public support for human space exploration may be,
according to roger Launius in the same edition of USA Today, “a mile wide