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

Great (UNFULFILLeD) expeCtatIONS: tO BOLDLY GO Where NO 147
SOCIaL SCIeNtISt aND hIStOrIaN have GONe BeFOre
Stennis Space Center). Would NaSa act as a colonialist or contributor to the
state? how would it handle race relations, an explosive issue in the mid-1960s?
Would NaSa improve education so locals could be hired, or would NaSa
import the skilled workforce from outside the state? 50
Based on his signifcant 1964 The Machine in the Garden, Leo Marx
examined why so little was known about the impact of technological progress
upon the collective consciousness. Commenting on Marx, Mazlish noted, “in
some ways the most difcult to trace and establish, the railroad’s impact on
the imagination seems almost to be the most fundamental.” Just as the iron
horse altered conceptions of the pastoral landscape, “one of the most signifcant
impacts” of the space program could be new perceptions of earth and space. 51
the rise of the environmental movement has afrmed this impact.
reception to Railroad was positive. academic book reviews admired this
“thought-provoking and intriguing book,” though some considered the analogy
“tremulous.” 52 For Bauer and the Committee on Space, the value of Railroad
was demonstrating that, after a century of writing, the scope and nature of the
technology-society relationship had not been fully evaluated and that causation
and change were more complex than assumed. By implication if not analogy,
the space program would prove equally academically challenging. 53
Unfortunately, the book’s impact was restricted. In a serious blow to
its difusion, MIt press never issued a paperback version, the fate of many
collected works. Consequently, the infuence of Railroad, especially on graduate
students, remained limited.
a 1979 NaSa-sponsored study on the space program from the perspectives
of the social sciences and humanities placed Railroad under the category of
“Impact analysis,” which was “an intellectual invention of the late 1960s and
early 1970s and evolved as part of the burgeoning academic study of technology
in its social context.” 54 the main directions of the social study of technology as
well as the aaaS project, however, moved away from Railroad.
50 . robert L. Brandfon, “political Impact: a Case Study of a railroad Monopoly in Mississippi,”
in Bruce Mazlish, ed. The Railroad and the Space Program. An Exploration in Historical Analogy
(Cambridge, Ma: MIt press,
1965), p. 200.
51 . Mazlish, “historical analogy,” pp. 33, 41.
52 . John F. Stover, “the railroad and the Space program,” American Historical Review 72, 1 (October
1966) 280-281; Julius rubin, “the railroad and the Space program,” Business History Review 41,
3 (autumn 1967): 334.
53. raymond a. Bauer, “Detection and anticipation of Impact: the Nature of the task,” in raymond
a. Bauer, ed., Social Indicators (Cambridge, Ma: MIt press,
1966), p. 20.
54. t. Stephen Cheston, “Space Social Science: Suggested paths to an emerging Discipline,” Space
Humanization Series 1 (1979): 1.