'What's a Heaven For?' National Public Culture's Role in Shaping US Space Policy, 1957-61

Abstract

While cultural tenets exert strong impact on defense policy and doctrine, these ideas are crucially distilled and adjusted by people and institutions, and other opinion seek to influence the minds and actions of these bodies. Culture can be seen as the aggregate attitudes, practices, and values of a particular group of people. These, and perceived circumstances, determine the tenets or ideas which will resonate with a society. Culture is both learned and taught, so it adapts and is continuously contested. Dwight Eisenhower's employment of airpower and nuclear weapon technology complemented dominant tenets in US culture up to Sputnik. But Soviet space accomplishments prompted elites amongst the media and the Air Force to promote the idea of "aerospace" as a continuous realm to be explored and protected through technological advance and armed Air Force presence, and the Eisenhower Administration struggled for the remainder of his administration to control space policy and the contours of the culturally induced faith in technology. The Dynamic Soarer, the Air Force's flagship project envisioning a space-to-earth bomber, represents an essential part of the history of US space development. From the Air Force preparation for "Dyna Soar" spun off the first iconic element of the US space program - the Mercury ballistic capsule. Dyna Soar was seen as a rival to Apollo in 1961, and afterward as a precursor to the shuttle. Understanding its history and place in this critical period helps provide a more complete understanding of the US space program. Eisenhower officials sought to impede Dyna Soar development and the President sought to calm the nation so that it would again ratify his employment of technology for massive retaliation (and secret reconnaissance) without leading to an arms race in space. Candidate, and ultimately President John Kennedy, aimed to galvanize political support by embracing noisy calls for a space adventure. He then gradually shifted the emphasis and direction of the adventure on which the nation embarked.