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

184 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
even by the time of these breathless predictions, however, the most storied
days of the Space age were already coming to a close. an image-saturated
public seemed to be tiring of spectacles in space. Only a major triumph, such
as the walk on the Moon in 1969, or a major disaster—such as the death of
three apollo astronauts in January 1967, the apollo 13 travails in april 1970,
or the Challenger explosion in January 1986—could reclaim a large viewing
public. Between 1969 and 1972, the United States landed six sets of astronauts
on the Moon. the successes of the Moon program, frst amazing and then
routine, became its greatest burden. Media attention ebbed along with the
public’s investment of emotional and monetary assets. In 1979, tom Wolfe’s
The Right Stuf seemed the stuf of nostalgia. Wolfe recalled the early 1960s
fascination with the buccaneer days of space and concluded with the epitaph
“the era of america’s frst single-combat warriors had come, and it had gone,
perhaps never to be relived.” 63
even as the exuberant high of the Space age slipped away, it nonetheless
left an enduring array of creative and rhetorical resources in american culture.
like any star celebrity, the legacy of meanings for national identities and global
futures were complex and multiple. Space exploration in this era—entangled
in Cold War rivalries, magnifed by the explosion of new image-based media,
intertwined with discussions over the role of technology and planetary
stewardship, and expressed through innovative artistic products and designs—
anchored diverse images and representations.
the Space age boosted national pride—and placed it under threat. It
forged pipelines to pump money into fantastic new projects—and prompted
warnings about the size of a “Moon-doggle” and an enervating dependence
on government largesse. It promoted techno-science—and stimulated new
fears about “technocracy.” It encouraged the triumph of rational endeavor—
and a mystical faith about the meanings of the heavens. It promised peace and
social justice—and more frightening forms of hierarchy and war. It ofered the
excitement of new modes of living—and apprehensions about the unknown. It
inspired creativity—and created bureaucracies that could stife it.
In its intersections with the Cold War, the Media age, the technetronic
age, and Mid-century Modernism, the Space age provided a canvas for many
visions, a setting for multiple narratives about who “we” were and could be.
loaded with so many meanings, space indeed seemed infnite. and in its
undefnability and semiotic expansiveness, space was—and still is—far out.
63. tom Wolfe, The Right Stuf (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus, giroux, 1979), p. 436.