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

176 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
nation-states. they also, to some, signifed a new ecological awareness about
the interrelatedness of planetary systems and called for greater stewardship of
the Spaceship earth on which humans live. Steward Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog
and its famous cover, which came out in 1968, powerfully expressed the goal of
linking the stewardship of earth to individual empowerment. It opened with
the words “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.” the catalog, a kind
of Bible for the counterculture including many of those innovators who would
later magnify Brand’s ideas in creating the Internet, promised a broad access to
whatever tools might save earth and foster self-improvement. If technology was
to be the future, it should be a technology that empowered everyone, not just
technological elites and their political masters. 51
In the early 1980s, the disney Corporation opened an exhibit called
“Spaceship earth” as the center of its new epcot exhibit in Florida. advised by
ray Bradbury and presumably inspired by Fuller’s ideas about the advantages
of geodesic dome architecture, the disney Spaceship reached 18 stories tall. Its
intricate system of some 11,000 triangles formed cladding that absorbed rainwater
and channeled it into a lagoon. Upon its opening, “Spaceship earth” presented
a story of human enlightenment beginning with early cave dwellers and ending
with a spacecraft launch. disney’s rendition of civilization as a linear arc of
progress fattened the complexities of many of the era’s other representations of
earth as a spaceship, but it surely attracted the largest crowds.
Images of earth in space raised complex questions about the future role
of nations and nationalism on a Spaceship earth. Such tensions between nation
and planet, of course, preceded Sputnik and recalled the astrofuturist visions
of the pre-Sputnik years. In the 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, for
example, the dangerous combination of atomic power, rocketry, and nationalistic
competition prompted a visit from a superior civilization from outer space.
the emissary, Klaatu, issued a warning that unless nations of earth began to
live peacefully, superior beings would blow up their planet. Nationalism and
international confict, this early Space age movie suggested, were obsolete and
threatened the extraterrestrial order.
Other science fction scenarios, especially those from Star Trek, which
debuted in 1966, played imaginatively with the idea that space exploration might
provide new confgurations of power and authority. the 23rd century “starship,”
the Enterprise, cruised space to explore rather than to dominate other worlds
through violence. the creation of gene roddenberry, Star Trek aired for three
years, after which it went into syndication, developed a global following of loyal
fans, and ultimately spun of fve television series and nearly a dozen movies. In its
much-quoted introduction, Captain James t. Kirk (William Shatner) presented
the Enterprise’s purpose in traditional astrofuturist and Kennedyesque terms: “to
51. andrew g. Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism
(lawrence, KS: University press of Kansas, 2007).