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

Great (UNFULFILLeD) expeCtatIONS: tO BOLDLY GO Where NO 141
SOCIaL SCIeNtISt aND hIStOrIaN have GONe BeFOre
In the summer of 1962, the committee held a summer conference to
determine the most signifcant areas of study, which the aaaS and NaSa
then approved. throughout the contract, the aaaS remained in “continuous
conferring” with NaSa. 21 In March 1963, the committee dissolved itself, and
in april the aaaS Council created a smaller Committee on Space to supervise
a study group that would conduct and organize the actual research. 22 the
members were almost all from the Boston area with harvard and MIt faculty
monopolizing the committee and study group.
the committee discovered an unexpected challenge in convincing academics
to conduct space-oriented research. Its 1962 request to sociologists for
research proposals to “apply social science insight and imagination to the problem
of massive technological innovation and the space program” received a poor
response. Describing projects in language and concepts familiar to potential
researchers seemed a necessary step. 23 the problem was not just faculty: four
years later, administrator Webb would turn “almost bitter about the response of
the nation’s university presidents” to NaSa’s Sustaining University program,
his efort to remake higher education into a more service-oriented, interdisciplinary
enterprise. 24
By 1965, the Committee considered its work “substantially completed.”
another goal—stimulating research—had been accomplished with the harvard
Business School studying “technology transfer” and the National planning
association developing “indicators of trends in social and political change” or
“social indicators.” 25 publication, however, lagged.
Four volumes were planned; MIt press published only three. the
fourth, apparently a summary of committee activities, never appeared due to
“insurmountable” problems of “choice and format.” 26 the three published
volumes were: 1) Bruce Mazlish, ed. The Railroad and the Space Program. An
21 . “Introduction,” in raymond a. Bauer with richard S. rosenbloom and Laure Sharp and the
assistance of others, Second-Order Consequences. A Methodological Essay on the Impact of Technology
(Cambridge, Ma: MIt press,
1969), p. 9.
22 . earl p. Stevenson, “report of the Committee on Space,” Records of the Academy (American Academy
of Arts and Sciences), 1963/1964, 141-142.
23 . “the profession: reports and Opinion,” American Sociological Review 27, 4. (august 1962), 595;
Committee on Space eforts and Society, “Space eforts and Society: a Statement of Mission and
Work,” (Boston, Ma: aaaS, January 1963), reprinted in Bauer et al., op. cit., p. 212).
24 . W. henry Lambright, op. cit., pp.
136-139.
25 . earl p. Stevenson, “report of the Committee on Space,” Records of the Academy (American Academy
of Arts and Sciences), 1964/1965, 18.
26 . earl p. Stevenson, “report of the Committee on Space,” Records of the Academy (American Academy
of Arts and Sciences), 1965/1966, 22; raymond a. Bauer, “preface,” in raymond a. Bauer with
richard S. rosenbloom and Laure Sharp and the assistance of others, Second-Order Consequences.
A Methodological Essay on the Impact of Technology (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press, 1969), p. ix. this
may explain the change of editor, too.