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

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre
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these astrofuturists ofered especially powerful images and narratives about
a new “age of discovery” in which brave individuals would guide interplanetary
explorations. Walt disney employed von Braun and ley, both powerful advocates
of human piloted spacefight, as consultants to help design rocket ships and
Moon rides for disneyland’s tomorrowland, which opened in 1955, and a series
of tV episodes such as “Man is Space” (March 1955), “Man and the Moon”
(december 1955), and “Mars and Beyond” (december 1957). Chesley Bonestell
carved out a specialty as a spacefight artist, illustrating in colored ink during the
1950s much of the equipment and procedure that later NaSa scientists would
construct for real. Bonestell’s collaboration with ley in The Conquest of Space, for
example, exuded technological authority in both words and illustration, moving
the subject of space travel away from the interwar Flash gordon style and into
scientifc respectability. 4 likewise, comics and popular magazines frequently
featured human-piloted space travel, and hollywood also flled screens with
visions of space. Destination Moon (1950), a flm whose images and messages
infuenced a generation of movie makers as well as scientists, celebrated the idea
of a Moon landing. 5 In the realm of popular music, songwriter Bart howard’s
Fly Me to the Moon (1951) became such a hit, especially after peggy lee sang it
on the Ed Sullivan Show in the mid-1950s, that howard was able to live out his
life on its royalties.
Fiction writers and rocket scientists such as von Braun, in elaborating their
dreams of manned fight and space stations, implied that control of the Moon
and of outer space by any other nation would leave the United States abjectly
defenseless. hollywood’s Destination Moon had especially contributed to this
idea. In addition, the well-developed popular fears associated with atomic
power led credence to the idea that an enemy’s penetration of space might pose
an existential threat. Might the rockets that launched Sputnik indicate that
the Soviet Union’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) had the power to
send a nuclear weapon to the United States? Might Sputnik signal the enemy’s
capability of mounting a pearl harbor-style attack from the skies, this time
with atomic bombs coming from orbiting satellites?
Many scholars have argued that the ideas and literary productions of the
astrofuturists “prepared the american public for the conquest of space with
elaborate visions of promise and fear” and helped shape the nation’s cultural
and political responses. 6 as Sputnik orbited overhead, these space-exploration
4.
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6.
Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 72-74; Willie ley, The Conquest of Space (New York, NY: Viking, 1951).
Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 52, 56-58; howard e. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination
(Washington, dC: Smithsonian Institution press, 1997), pp. 41-43.
Crouch, Aiming for the Stars, pp. 118-121; Kilgore, Astrofuturism, pp. 31-48; McCurdy, Space,
pp. 54-74 [quote p. 54]. roger e. Bilstein, Flight in America: From the Wrights to the Astronauts
(Baltimore, Md: Johns hopkins University press, 1984) traces the development of interest in
early aerospace fights.