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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
This book traces the Space Age from the visionary fantasies of the 19th century's pioneers in rocketry to the Star Wars scenarios of the 1980's.
| Illustrations | ||
| Abbreviations Used in Text | ||
| Preface to the Johns Hopkins Edition | ||
| Preface | ||
| Introduction | 3 | |
| Pt. I | The Genesis of Sputnik | |
| Ch. 1 | The Human Seed and Social Soil: Rocketry and Revolution | 20 |
| Ch. 2 | Political Rains and First Fruit: The Cold War and Sputnik | 41 |
| Pt. II | Modern Arms and Free Men: America Before Sputnik | |
| Ch. 3 | Bashful Behemoth: Technology, the State, and the Birth of Deterrence | 74 |
| Ch. 4 | While Waiting for Technocracy: The ICBM and the First American Space Program | 97 |
| Ch. 5 | The Satellite Decision | 112 |
| Pt. III | Vanguard and Rearguard: Eisenhower and the Setting of American Space Policy | |
| Ch. 6 | "A New Era of History" and a Media Riot | 141 |
| Ch. 7 | The Birth of NASA | 157 |
| Ch. 8 | A Space Strategy for the United States | 177 |
| Ch. 9 | Sparrow in the Falcon's Nest | 195 |
| Ch. 10 | The Shape of Things to Come | 210 |
| Pt. IV | Parabolic Ballad: Khrushchev and the Setting of Soviet Space Policy | |
| Ch. 11 | Party Line | 237 |
| Ch. 12 | The Missile Bluff | 250 |
| Ch. 13 | Hammers or Sickles in Space? | 263 |
| Ch. 14 | Space Age Communism: The Khrushchevian Synthesis | 276 |
| Pt. V | Kennedy, Johnson, and the Technocratic Temptation | |
| Ch. 15 | Destination Moon | 307 |
| Ch. 16 | Hooded Falcons: Space Technology and Assured Destruction | 325 |
| Ch. 17 | Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy | 344 |
| Ch. 18 | Big Operator: James Webb's Space Age America | 361 |
| Ch. 19 | Second Thoughts | 389 |
| Pt. VI | The Heavens and the Earth: The First Twenty-five Years | |
| Ch. 20 | Voyages to Tsiolkovskia | 415 |
| Ch. 21 | The Quest for a G.O.D. | 436 |
| Ch. 22 | A Fire in the Sun | 450 |
| Appendix | 462 | |
| Abbreviations Used in Notes | 465 | |
| Notes | 466 | |
| Index | 537 |
Overview
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 ...