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

158 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
gravitational pull so stirred emotions that space exploration became an intense
cultural preoccupation.
Focusing on representations that comprise collective, not individual
memory, this essay seeks to suggest some of the diverse symbols and narratives
of the Space age as they circulated in american culture. as a complex of
collective signs and symbols, the Space age intertwined with other rival
designations for the postwar era: the Cold War, the Media age, what Zbigniew
Brzezinski called the technetronic age, and the age of a Mid-century
Modernist aesthetic. Space exploration augmented the Cold War with the space
race, enhanced the Media age with truly amazing dramas and visual
spectacularity, heightened the technetronic age’s moral and philosophical
concerns over the implications of technocracy and a so-called “Spaceship
earth,” and inspired Mid-century Modernist impulses that emerged as googie
and abstract expressionism. refracting aspirations and fears, the Space age held
multiple meanings for foreign policy, politics, media, engineering, morality,
art, and design. 1
1. the COld War: SpaCe raCe
In October 1957, Sputnik I became a media sensation. hurled into orbit
by a massive rocket, the Soviet-launched space satellite, circling earth every
95 minutes, appeared to demonstrate urgent strategic dangers. this “Sputnik
moment,” in which fear mingled with fascination, prompted signifcant changes
in america’s Cold War landscape. It by no means, however, began america’s
fascination with a new Space age.
a vibrant spacefight movement comprised largely of science fction writers
and engineers had preceded Sputnik and helped set a tone for the space race that
emerged in Sputnik’s wake. a team of mostly german rocket-scientists headed
by Wernher von Braun had worked for the U.S. army since the summer of 1950
under order to develop a ballistic missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon. 2
On the side, von Braun had energetically promoted popular interest in spacefight,
and his eforts during the mid-1950s became part of a boom in both science and
science fction writing about space. a group that the scholar de Witt douglas
Kilgore has called “astrofuturists”—writers who based their tales of an
intergallactical future on new scientifc breakthroughs in physics—included
Isaac asimov, robert heinlein, arthur C. Clarke, Willy ley, and others. 3
1.
2.
3.
the author wishes to express special thanks to Norman l. rosenberg for his contributions to
this essay.
tom d. Crouch, Aiming for the Stars: The Dreamers and Doers of the Space Age (Washington, dC:
Smithsonian Institution press, 1999), p. 118.
de Witt douglas Kilgore, Astrofuturism: Science, Race, and Visions of Utopia in Space (philadelphia, pa:
University of pennsylvania press, 2003) examines the major scientifc and literary productions.