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

Chapter 8
“the ‘right’ Stuff: the reagan revolution
and the U.S. Space program”
andrew J. Butrica
this paper addresses two questions related to the overall theme of “National
and Global Dimensions of the Space age”: 1) has the Space age fostered a
new global identity or has it reinforced distinct national identities? and 2) how does
space history connect with national histories and the histories of transnational or
global phenomena? the evolution of the U.S. space program, I argue, is a direct
outgrowth of the impact of ideology, specifcally the conservative ideology of the
so-called New right. Because of the connection to this ideological agenda, space
history has become linked with national history.
the intellectual origins of this paper began many years ago as an
investigation into the infuence of ideology on technology. 1 the ideology
was the internationalist, pacifst, feminist, religious, and other beliefs of the
Saint-Simonians. Named after its founder, Claude henri de rouvroy, le comte
de Saint-Simon, the Saint-Simonians belonged to a French movement that
fourished from roughly 1830 to 1870. Many of its members were engineering
graduates of the prestigious École polytechnique employed by the French state
in a number of technical positions. they and the Saint-Simonian bankers
sought to use transport technologies—such as canals and railways—to achieve
a number of their ideological goals, one of which was to bridge the divide
between the Christian and Moslem worlds using, among other means, a canal
linking the Mediterranean and red seas. 2
In this study of the conservative space agenda, I suggest how the reagan
administration—as the triumph of the New right—projected into space the
conservative political agenda that elected it into ofce. america’s turn to the
right took place over several decades, and its intellectual origins can be traced
back to the 1950s at the start of the Cold War. as historian George h. Nash
1.
2.
recently, this question was taken up by paul Forman in his “the primacy of Science in
Modernity, of technology in postmodernity, and of Ideology in the history of technology,”
History and Technology 23, 1 (March 2007): 1-152.
this research was the subject of the paper “Saint-Simonian engineers: an aspect of French
engineering history” presented at the history of Science Society meeting in philadelphia,
pennsylvania in October 1982.