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

exaMINING the ICONIC aND reDISCOVerING the phOtOGraphY Of 301
SpaCe expLOratION IN CONtext tO the hIStOrY Of phOtOGraphY
are—referencing Green’s consideration of the snapshot—a combination of both
deliberate preservation and the appropriate equivalent of modern experience.
V. CONfOUNDING expeCtatIONS
At NASA, the elegance was in the design of the engineering systems rather than in
the manners of the men. 46
Some 38 years after the frst publication of Of a Fire on the Moon, Mailer’s
astuteness on NaSa’s institutional culture during the era of apollo 11 helps
to suggest why most NaSa generated photography from the frst 50 years of
space exploration tends to typically focus on the elegance and design of its
engineering systems. Yet the results from some of its design and engineering
systems are typically the frst communication to the greater public. as a result,
NaSa releases pictures from weather satellites, robotic space craft fybys of the
inner and outer planets, the era of apollo 11, Skylab, the Space Shuttle, and the
ISS programs. the elegance of its engineering systems is also celebrated in the
manner of its rockets, rocket engines, guidance system avionics, the integration,
testing and assembly of earth orbiting satellites and space probes, interplanetary
robotic spacecraft and so on. Yet confounding expectations in the need to report
on the “elegance of its engineering systems” at often the expense of the “manners
of men,” are the photojournalists who, given the precious commodities of
accreditation, access, and time work mostly from “behind the velvet rope” to
capture these essential moments. essential moments that are typically captured
in the routine of rocket launches, press conferences, and guided media tours.
photographic coverage by the print media (in daily newspapers and
weekly news magazines) reached its zenith during the frst decade and a half of
the american space program. photographers working for the wire services like
ap (associated press), UpI (United press International), and reuters provided
the american audience with a steady supply of rocket launches—manned and
unmanned. More extensive storytelling in the form of photographic essays and
written reportage typically appeared in weekly magazines like Life, Look, Time,
Newsweek, US News and World Report, and the monthly National Geographic. In
Life magazine’s coverage of the frst 16 years of the Space age (between 1957
and 1972) for example, it published only 28 cover stories with 1962 and 1969
tying with 7. 47 With access, time, ingenuity and imagination, photojournalists
apollo-Saturn 4 and 6 Missions” (houston,tx, National aeronautics and Space administration
Lyndon b. Johnson Space Center, December 1976) http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/metadata/Apollo­
Saturn_4-6.html (accessed March 18, 2008).
46. Norman Mailer, Of a Fire on the Moon (New York, NY: Signet book/New american
Library,1971), p. 136.
47. See time, Inc., Life, the First 50 Years: 1936–1986 (boston, Ma: Little, brown and Company,1986).