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

CULtUraL FUNCtIONS OF SpaCe expLOratION
411
age tended to repeat familiar and ofcial narratives. the New York Times
reported, for example, “Sputnik changed everything: history, geopolitics, the
scientifc world. It launched careers, too. . . . Sputnik lifted us into the future.”
the Houston Chronicle asserted, “today the U.S. reigns over a growing cast of
nations . . . on a vast new frontier,” framing contemporary space exploration as
the geopolitical enterprise it was depicted to be in the 1960s. Writing in the Los
Angeles Times, Matthew Brzezinski (author of Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the
Hidden Rivalries that Ignited the Space Age) characterized space exploration since
Sputnik as geopolitics as usual.
In contrast, the Toronto Globe and Mail ofered a diferent 50th anniversary
perspective on the meaning of space exploration. In an editorial entitled
“Venturing into space and fnding earth,” the paper made the claim that “the
most signifcant achievement of the space age is a better understanding of the
vulnerability of our own home planet.”
University of California, Santa Barbara, cultural studies scholar Constance
penley is one of a small number of researchers who have explored alternative
or subordinate narratives of space exploration. to young people and others for
whom the ofcial narrative of space exploration may not have been meaningful,
she noted during comments at this meeting, the makers of Star Trek ofered an
alternative narrative, “a sustainable and inclusive vision” of a human future in
space. 4 Star Trek producers have done a better job than NaSa has of articulating
a widely appealing vision. today young people “are not interested in space
unless they can participate in some way,” penley said, and while NaSa “lives
and dies by popular culture,” they have just barely begun to engage with 18­
35-year-olds via now-dominant social networks such as MySpace that provide
broad opportunities for participation. penley mentioned NaSa ames research
Center’s creation of a meeting and working space on the social networking site
Second Life and ames’s hosting of a public “Yuri’s Night” party in 2007 as frst
steps toward a more participatory space program. She also mentioned privatesector
initiatives to expand public participation in space exploration, such as
the Google-sponsored Lunar x prize competition to land a robotic explorer
on the Moon.
During the meeting, Yale University historian, Bettyann Kevles showed
how artists working in a range of media, from science fction to dance to music,
have interpreted and remembered the Space age, making space exploration
meaningful in ways not typically considered outside the space community.
Kevles played an excerpt of a jazz suite composed and performed by saxophonist
Jane Ira Bloom under commission by NaSa’s space art program. It is not clear
what interest space exploration holds for contemporary artists.
4. Constance penley, NASA/TREK: Popular Science and Sex in America. (New York, NY:Verso, 1997).