Remembering The Space Age

This volume is nearly 500 pages and topics covered include: Gigantic Follies? Human Exploration and the Space Age in Long-term Historical Perspective; National Aspirations on a Global Stage: Fifty Years of Spaceflight; Building Space Capability through European Regional Collaboration; Imagining an Aerospace Agency in the Atomic Age; Creating a Memory of the German Rocket Program for the Cold War; Operation Paperclip in Huntsville, Alabama; The Great Leap Upward: China's Human Spaceflight Program and Chinese National Identity; The "Right" Stuff: The Reagan Revolution and the U.S. Space Program; Great (Unfulfilled) Expectations: To Boldly Go Where No Social Scientist and Historian Have Gone Before; Far Out: The Space Age in American Culture; A Second Nature Rising: Spaceflight in an Era of Representation; Creating Memories: Myth, Identity, and Culture in the Russian Space Age; The Music of Memory and Forgetting: Global Echoes of Sputnik 2; From the Cradle to the Grave: Cosmonaut Nostalgia in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film; Discovering the Iconic in Space Exploration Photography; Robert A. Heinlein's Influence on Spaceflight; American Spaceflight History's Master Narrative and the Meaning of Memory; A Melancholic Space Age Anniversary; Has Space Development Made a Difference?; Has There Been a Space Age?; and Cultural Functions of Space Exploration. NASA-SP-2008-4703

From the Publisher: Proceedings of October 2007 conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

From the Publisher: Proceedings of October 2007 conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

From the Publisher: Proceedings of October 2007 conference, sponsored by the NASA History Division and the National Air and Space Museum, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik 1 launch in October 1957 and the dawn of the space age.

This is a full color book. There is no doubt that the last 50 years have witnessed numerous accomplishments in what has often been termed "the new ocean" of space, harkening back to a long tradition of exploration. Earth is now circled by thousands of satellites, looking both upward into space at distant galaxies and downward toward Earth for reconnaissance, weather, communications, navigation, and remote sensing. Robotic space probes have explored most of the solar system, returning astonishing images of alien worlds. Space telescopes have probed the depths of the universe at many wavelengths. In the dramatic arena of human spaceflight, 12 men have walked on the surface of the Moon, the Space Shuttle has had 119 flights, and the International Space Station-a cooperative effort of 16 nations-is almost "core complete." In addition to Russia, which put the first human into space in April 1961, China has now joined the human spaceflight club with two Shenzhou flights, and Europe is readying for its entry into the field as well. After 50 years of robotic and human space­ flight, and as serious plans are being implemented to return humans to the Moon and continue on to Mars, it is a good time to step back and ask questions that those in the heat of battle have had but little time to ask. What has the Space Age meant? What if the Space Age had never occurred? Has it been, and is it still, important for a creative society to explore space? How do we, and how should we, remember the Space Age?

There is no doubt that the last 50 years have witnessed numerous accomplishments in what has often been termed "the new ocean" of space, harkening back to a long tradition of exploration. Earth is now circled by thousands of satellites, looking both upward into space at distant galaxies and downward toward Earth for reconnaissance, weather, communications, navigation, and remote sensing. Robotic space probes have explored most of the solar system, returning astonishing images of alien worlds. Space telescopes have probed the depths of the universe at many wavelengths. In the dramatic arena of human spaceflight, 12 men have walked on the surface of the Moon, the Space Shuttle has had 119 flights, and the International Space Station-a cooperative effort of 16 nations-is almost "core complete." In addition to Russia, which put the first human into space in April 1961, China has now joined the human spaceflight club with two Shenzhou flights, and Europe is readying for its entry into the field as well. After 50 years of robotic and human spaceflight, and as serious plans are being implemented to return humans to the Moon and continue on to Mars, it is a good time to step back and ask questions that those in the heat of battle have had but little time to ask. What has the Space Age meant? What if the Space Age had never occurred? Has it been, and is it still, important for a creative society to explore space? How do we, and how should we, remember the Space Age?

Just in time for John Glenn's next flight: a history of space from an expert.-

The "Cape Canaveral" stories, eight stories originally published between 1962 and 1985.