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

Chapter 21
Cultural Functions of Space exploration
Linda Billings
Culture: a “historically transmitted pattern of meanings
embedded in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions
expressed in symbolic forms by means of which [people]
communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge
about and attitudes toward life.” 1
What role has space exploration played in the cultural environment of the
U.S. and the world? What has space exploration meant, or done, for the
vast majority of people on earth outside the space community? has this role or
function varied across cultural boundaries (for example, gender or nationality),
time, or space? Where, or what, has space exploration been in public discourse?
has space exploration had subcultures as well as a dominant culture? In short,
what cultural functions has space exploration performed? how have people
remembered, represented, and made use of space exploration?
all these questions may be addressed from a broad range of perspectives.
the papers in this volume illustrate in a variety of ways that space exploration
means diferent things to diferent people at diferent times and in diferent
geographical and sociocultural places. Ofcial and dominant cultural narratives
of space exploration are not the only sites where meaning is constructed. the
so-called “public” makes meaning out of space exploration in its own ways. Just
how space exploration has afected aspects of social life such as material culture,
education, aesthetics, values and attitudes, and religion and spirituality is an
interesting question in its own right. In her paper in this volume, University of
California, Irvine, historian emily rosenberg documented how the apolloera
U.S. space program infuenced art and architecture and produced “space
spectaculars” for the newly dominant mass medium of television. “Space was
the star of this historical moment,” she said. Ultimately, she concluded, space
exploration might mean many things, or it might mean nothing. National air
and Space Museum historian Martin Collins noted that the traditional narrative
1. Cliford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 14, 34.