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

Far OUt: the SpaCe age IN aMerICaN CUltUre
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of federal aid to education, but he reluctantly bowed to space-race clamor and
backed this new extension of governmental funding. 16
even so, eisenhower’s sense of caution distanced him from the strident space
race rhetoric adopted by future presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon—all
already maneuvering to succeed him. after hearing the news in early 1958 that the
United States had fnally orbited its own satellite, eisenhower characteristically
advised his press team not to “make too great a hullabaloo” of the event.
John Kennedy had few reservations about “hullabaloo.” he shaped his
presidential campaign of 1960 around a critique of national complacency.
eisenhower was by now an aging fgure whose stroke that occurred just seven
weeks after Sputnik’s launch attracted much media attention. By contrast,
Kennedy ofered youth and vigor (one of his favorite words). he warned against
a supposed “missile gap” vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, and he portrayed the presumed
gap in space technology as a visible sign of the Cold War challenge facing
the United States.
Once in the White house, Kennedy drew efectively on the themes already
well established in astrofuturist writings and the pervasive space race rhetoric. On
april 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri gagarin became the frst human into space.
NaSa followed up by rushing alan Shepard into his fve minute ride in space.
the popular media went wild over america’s achievement and its new astronaut
hero. Building on the excitement, Kennedy’s famous message to Congress on
May 25, 1961, set the goal “before this decade is out, of landing a man on
the Moon and returning him safely to the earth.” On September 12, 1962,
a presidential address at rice University, given during a trip to tour NaSa
facilities, elaborated the rationale for his lunar objective. Space was a “new
frontier,” a “new sea” in the next great age of discovery. the conquest of space,
a historic and strategic imperative, would challenge americans to show their
greatness and would signal national prestige and global leadership. Invoking
the competition of the space race, the speech nevertheless transcended the
Cold War by emphasizing a romantic and visionary national quest. It stressed
how practical and technological greatness could mix with the noblest goals
of human aspiration. It provided a chronology of urgency: “We meet in an
hour of change and challenge, in a decade of hope and fear, in an age of both
knowledge and ignorance.” 17
16. Barbara Barksdale Clowes, Brainpower for the Cold War: The Sputnik Crisis and National Defense
Education Act of 1958 (Westport, Ct: greenwood press, 1981); John a. douglass, “a Certain
Future: Sputnik, american higher education, and the Survival of a Nation,” in Reconsidering
Sputnik: Forty Years since the Soviet Satellite, ed. roger d. launius, et al., (amsterdam: harwood,
2000), pp. 327-362; Juan C. lucena, Defending the Nation: U.S. Policymaking to Create Scientists and
Engineers from Sputnik to the “War Against Terrorism,” (lanham, Md: University press of america,
2005), pp. 29-53; divine, The Sputnik Challenge, pp. 89-93.
17. John F. Kennedy, “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,” May 25,
1961, at John F. Kennedy Moon Speech, http://www1.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/ricetalk.htm (accessed