... The heavens and the earth: a political history of the space age

This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy" — which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States. "Once every decade or so, a book comes along that stands by itself as a remarkable contribution to the literature of a field. Such a work is Walter A. McDougall's... the Heavens and the Earth." — Technology and Culture "[A] boldly conceived, elegantly written, and unfailingly provocative history of the new age of space." — Science "[An] immensely readable and elegant book" — Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Publishers Weekly The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian examines the competing U.S. and Soviet space programs. (Oct.) [I]n 1997, the fortieth year after Americans named Sputnik I a "technological Pearl Harbor," who can deny that the space program has been a profound disappointment? Indeed, what surprises me now about ... the Heavens and the Earth is not whatever prescience it may have shown regarding the flaws of the technocratic approach symbolized by NASA, but rather how much I still wanted to believe as late as 1985 that the Space Shuttle might usher in a second Space Age of ineffable potential. In short, I should have been even gloomier than I was. From today's vantage point the Space Age may well be defined as an era of hubris. Not only did it become obvious in the 1960s and 1970s that "planned invention of the future" through federal mobilization of technology and brainpower was failing everywhere from Vietnam to our inner cities, but that it even failed in the arena for which it had seemed ideally suited: space technology. In the years following Sputnik I, experts assured congressional committees that by the year 2000 the United States and the Soviet Union would have lunar colonies and laser-armed spaceships in orbit. The film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) depicted Hilton hotels on the Moon and a manned mission to Jupiter (January 12, 1992, was the supercomputer Hal's birthday in the film). In the late 1960s, NASA promoters imagined reusable spacecraft ascending and descending like angels on Jacob's ladder, permanent space stations, and human missions to Mars-all within a decade. In the 1970s, visionaries looked forward to using the Space Shuttle to launch into orbit huge solar panels that would beam unlimited, nonpolluting energy to earth, hydroponic farming in space to feed the earth's exploding population, and systems to control terrestrial weather for civilian or military purposes. In the 1980s, the space station project was revived (to be completed again "within a decade"), the Strategic Defense Initiative was to put laser-beam weapons in orbit to shoot down missiles and make nuclear weapons obsolete, and the space telescope was to unlock the last secrets of the universe. By 1990, a manned mission to Mars by the year 2010 was on the president's wish list, and research had begun on an aerospace plane (the "Orient Express") to whisk passengers across the Pacific in an hour and land like an airplane in Asia. None of it came to pass. Instead, the dream of limitless progress through government-sponsored research and development began to fade even before astronauts stepped on the Moon. [...] But the foibles of Space Age technocracy have been most strikingly exposed in the fate of the regime that made technocracy its founding principle: the USSR. Not only did Soviet space programs keep even fewer promises than the American programs, but the Soviet Union itself crashed and burned. Nothing has changed our perspective on the political history of the Space Age more than the end of the Cold War. In the 1980s it was still possible to imagine the United States in a mortal race for the "high ground" of space and to argue the pros and cons of the "Star Wars" program. Today, with the Soviet empire gone, the Space Age seems almost coterminous with the Cold War itself. That age was born in the initial competition between the Americans and Soviets to get their hands on Nazi V-2s and their designers. It accelerated in the 1950s as both sides raced for an intercontinental ballistic missile. It took off with Sputnik I, climaxed with the Moon race, declined with detente, and died when the Soviet Union died. [from the Preface to the Johns Hopkins paperback edition, 1997] Frontmatter ILLUSTRATIONS (page x) ABBREVIATIONS USED IN TEXT (page xi) PREFACE TO THE JOHNS HOPKINS EDITION (page xiv) PREFACE (page xix) Introduction (page 3) PART I The Genesis of Sputnik CHAPTER 1 The Human Seed and Social Soil: Rocketry and Revolution (page 20) CHAPTER 2 Political Rains and First Fruit: The Cold War and Sputnik (page 41) Conclusion (page 63) PART II Modern Arms and Free Men: America Before Sputnik CHAPTER 3 Bashful Behemoth: Technology, the State, and the Birth of Deterrence (page 74) CHAPTER 4 While Waiting for Technocracy: The ICBM and the First American Space Program (page 97) CHAPTER 5 The Satellite Decision (page 112) Conclusion (page 132) PART III Vanguard and Rearguard: Eisenhower and the Setting of American Space Policy CHAPTER 6 "A New Era of History" and a Media Riot (page 141) CHAPTER 7 The Birth of NASA (page 157) CHAPTER 8 A Space Strategy for the United States (page 177) CHAPTER 9 Sparrow in the Falcon's Nest (page 195) CHAPTER 10 The Shape of Things to Come (page 210) Conclusion (page 227) PART IV Parabolic Ballad: Khrushchev and the Setting of Soviet Space Policy CHAPTER 11 Party Line (page 237) CHAPTER 12 The Missile Bluff (page 250) CHAPTER 13 Hammers or Sickles in Space? (page 263) CHAPTER 14 Space Age Communism: The Khrushchevian Synthesis (page 276) Conclusion (page 294) PART V Kennedy,Johnson, and the Technocratic Temptation CHAPTER 15 Destination Moon (page 307) CHAPTER 16 Hooded Falcons: Space Technology and Assured Destruction (page 325) CHAPTER 17 Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy (page 344) CHAPTER 18 Big Operator: James Webb's Space Age America (page 361) CHAPTER 19 Second Thoughts (page 389) Conclusion (page 403) PART VI The Heavens and the Earth: The First Twenty-five Years CHAPTER 20 Voyages to Tsiolkovskia (page 415) CHAPTER 21 The Quest for a G.O.D. (page 436) CHAPTER 22 A Fire in the Sun (page 450) APPENDIX (page 462) ABBREVIATIONS USED IN NOTES (page 465) NOTES (page 466) INDEX (page 537) The book chronicles the politics of the Space Race, comparing the different approaches of the US and the USSR. ...the Heavens and the Earth was a finalist for the 1985 American Book Award and won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for History. The work highlights the role of Soviet space achievements in spurring the US into mounting its own space efforts to prove the superiority of the American political and economic system, while at the same time adopting the technocratic methods of the Soviet Union in order to do so. McDougall defines technocracy as the state funding and managing technological change for its own purposes. He finds that President Eisenhower took a skeptical point of view on the idea of adopting technocracy in the United States, as he opposed committing the nation to a lunar landing and stated that the progress of state managed technology had contributed to a dangerous military industrial complex in his farewell address. Yet Eisenhower fought against the tide, because by the time he left office the federal research and development budget had increased by 131 percent over the last five years. Gradually the idea of state managed technological progress went from being considered a violation of local freedoms to an accepted part of the federal government’s responsibility. McDougall makes clear that he did not view this in positive terms, as this perceived responsibility trampled the traditional American value of limited government. [[Wikipedia]][1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...The_Heavens_and_the_Earth:_A_Political_History_of_the_Space_Age "Wikipedia" A widely acclaimed history of the space age. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History This highly acclaimed study approaches the space race as a problem in comparative public policy. Drawing on published literature, archival sources in both the United States and Europe, interviews with many of the key participants, and important declassified material, such as the National Security Council's first policy paper on space, McDougall examines U.S., European, and Soviet space programs and their politics. Opening with a short account of Nikolai Kibalchich, a late nineteenth-century Russian rocketry theoretician, McDougall argues that the Soviet Union made its way into space first because it was the world's first "technocracy"which he defines as "the institutionalization of technological change for state purpose." He also explores the growth of a political economy of technology in both the Soviet Union and the United States. McDougall covers the first twenty-five years of space travel, from Sputnick to the Pioneer 10, including the industry surrounding space exploration, political machinations relevant to the Cold War, and social effects from an age where "the heavens" were transformed into "outer space." without ceasing to be man, for he is Homo faber, the toolmaker, the technologist.And man explores through idiosyncratic choice, because he is also Homo pictor, the symbolist, the dreamer. Chronicles the political history of the space race, from its nineteenth-century beginnings with the rocketry pioneers to the Cold War competition between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.