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

IntroductIon
Fifty years ago, with the launch of Sputnik I on October 4, 1957 and the
furry of activity that followed, events were building toward what some
historians now recognize as a watershed in history—the beginning of the
Space Age. Like all “Ages,” however, the Space Age is not a simple,
straightforward, or even secure concept. It means diferent things to diferent
people, and, space bufs notwithstanding, some would even argue that it has
not been a defning characteristic of culture over the last 50 years and
therefore does not deserve such a grandiose moniker. Others would fnd that
to be an astonishing viewpoint, and argue that the Space Age was a saltation
in history comparable to amphibians transitioning from ocean to land. 1
There is no doubt that the last 50 years have witnessed numerous
accomplishments in what has often been termed “the new ocean” of space,
harking back to a long tradition of exploration. Earth is now circled by thousands
of satellites, looking both upward into space at distant galaxies and downward
toward Earth for reconnaissance, weather, communications, navigation, and
remote sensing. Robotic space probes have explored most of the solar system,
returning astonishing images of alien worlds. Space telescopes have probed the
depths of the universe at many wavelengths. In the dramatic arena of human
spacefight, 12 men have walked on the surface of the Moon, the Space Shuttle
has had 119 fights, and the International Space Station (ISS), a cooperative
efort of 16 nations, is almost “core complete.” In addition to Russia, which
put the frst human into space in April 1961, China has now joined the human
spacefight club with two Shenzhou fights, and Europe is contemplating its
entry into the feld.
1. Walter McDougall (see chapter 18 of this volume) opens his Pulitzer-Prize winning book
. . . the Heavens and the Earth with such a scenario. See also Walter A. McDougall,“Technocracy
and Statecraft in the Space Age:Toward the History of A Saltation,” American Historical Review
87(1982), 1025. By the 40th anniversary of Sputnik in 1997 McDougall had revised his thesis
to say “I no longer think that saltation was the right label for the chain of events kicked of by
Sputnik.” But he thought in the long term, when a new launch technology had replaced the
“clumsy chemical rocket,” saltation might still prove an apt term. Walter A. McDougall, “Was
Sputnik Really a Saltation?” in Reconsidering Sputnik: Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite, ed. Roger
D. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and Robert W. Smith (Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), pp.
xv-xx. In chapter 4 of this volume, Robert MacGregor also challenges the view of Sputnik as a
technological saltation, arguing that technocratic ideas of the relation of science to the state were
already well established by this time. In particular he points to the parallels between the Atomic
Energy Commission and NASA, and further argues that “NASA’s rise in the 1960s as an engine
of American international prestige was rooted in atomic diplomacy, and that certain debates in
Congress about the new Agency were largely approached from within a framework of atomic
energy, thereby limiting the range of discourse and infuencing the shape of the new Agency.”