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Was the space program the signature project of secular modernity or a symbol of humankind's perpetual quest for communion with God? \"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth...\" In 1968 the world watched as Earth rose over the moonscape, televised from the orbiting Apollo 8 mission capsule. Radioing back to Houston on Christmas Eve, astronauts recited the first ten verses from the book of Genesis. In fact, many of the astronauts found space flight to be a religious experience. To Touch the Face of God is the first book-length historical study of the relationship between religion and the U.S. space program. Kendrick Oliver explores the role played by religious motivations in the formation of the space program and discusses the responses of religious thinkers such as Paul Tillich and C. S. Lewis. Examining the attitudes of religious Americans, Oliver finds that the space program was a source of anxiety as well as inspiration. It was not always easy for them to tell whether it was a godly or godless venture. Grounded in original archival research and the study of participant testimonies, this book also explores one of the largest petition campaigns of the post-war era. Between 1969 and 1975, more than eight million Americans wrote to NASA expressing support for prayer and bible-reading in space. Oliver's study is rigorous and detailed but also contemplative in its approach, examining the larger meanings of mankind's first adventures in \"the heavens.\"

Space is the ultimate canvas for the imagination, and in the 1950s and '60s, as part of the space race with the United States, the solar system was the blank page upon which the Soviet Union etched a narrative of exploration and conquest. In Picturing the Cosmos, drawing on a comprehensive corpus of rarely seen photographs and other visual phenomena, Iina Kohonen maps the complex relationship between visual propaganda and censorship during the Cold War. Kohonen ably examines each image, elucidating how visual media helped to anchor otherwise abstract political and intellectual concepts of the future and modernization within the Soviet Union. The USSR mapped and named the cosmos, using new media to stake a claim to this new territory and incorporating it into the daily lives of its citizens. Soviet cosmonauts, meanwhile, were depicted as prototypes of the perfect Communist man, representing modernity, good taste, and the aesthetics of the everyday. Across five heavily illustrated chapters, Picturing the Cosmos navigates and critically examines these utopian narratives, highlighting the rhetorical tension between propaganda, censorship, art, and politics.

The pace of space exploration has long been dictated by political motivations. This book helps to explain why this is so in the post-Cold War era. Combining essays, a glossary of terms, tables and statistics, this new title from Routledge comes as a welcome addition to this increasingly popular topic. The book: covers theories and concepts, as well as current issues gives a background to international and national space agencies contains essays that cover military, commercial and governmental actors in space politics. CONTENTS PART I: ESSAYS Politics of Space - ELIGAR SADEH National Security Space - PETER L. HAYS Developed Space Programmes - LAURENCE NARDON Moderate Space Powers - WADE L. HUNTLEY Commercial Space Actors - DAVID CHEN AND MOLLY K. MACAULEY International Organizations in Civil Space Affairs - HENRY R. HERTZFELD Non-governmental Space Organizations - JAMES A. VEDDA Public Sector Actors - ROGER B. HANDBERG PART II: A – Z GLOSSARY: Survey of major space organizations in the civil, commercial and military space sectors - CHRISTIAN SADEH PART III: FIGURES AND TABLES

From its beginnings, NASA was convinced that its real mission was to create the opportunity for a much different and better society on Earth, namely through human space flight. Pursuit of such a goal has led the agency to persist in certain activities even when they conflict with the wishes of Congress and the President. Recent changes in the international environment, changes that began well before September 11, 2001, have brought the military back into the field of human space flight, a situation that holds certain hazards for NASA since the military is more powerful politically. Dramatic changes could be in store, changes that could severely damage NASA's capacity for continuing what it sees as its primary objective.While most analyses see the agency as riddled with incompetence, Handberg argues that NASA's troubles are a product of its internal values. He begins with an historical overview of the major themes in NASA's history, followed by chapters on specific areas of concentration, such as the space station, space transportation, space science, and internal reforms. He also discusses the long-term future of the agency and human space flight in general, both domestically and internationally.

In this innovatory book Daniel Sage analyses how and why American space exploration reproduced and transformed American cultural and political imaginations by appealing to, and to an extent organizing, the transcendence of spatial and temporal frontiers. In so doing, he traces the development of a seductive, and powerful, yet complex and unstable American geographical imagination: the 'transcendental state'. Historical and indeed contemporary space exploration is, despite some recent notable exceptions, worthy of more attention across the social sciences and humanities. While largely engaging with the historical development of space exploration, it shows how contemporary cultural and social, and indeed geographical, research themes, including national identity, critical geopolitics, gender, technocracy, trauma and memory, can be informed by the study of space exploration.

Dark Skies is the first work to assess the full impacts of space expansion, past, present, and future. Thinking about space, and the visions fervently promoted by the global space movement, is dominated by geographic misperceptions and utopian illusions. The parts of space where almost all activity has occurred are part of the planet Earth, its astrosphere, and, in practical terms, are smaller than the atmosphere. Contrary to frontier visions, orbital space is already congested and degraded with dangerous space debris. The largest impact of actual space activities is an increased likelihood of catastrophic nuclear war stemming from the use of orbital space and space technology to lob nuclear weapons at intercontinental distances. Building large-scale orbital infrastructures will probably require or produce world government. The ultimate goal of space advocates, the colonization of Mars and asteroids, is promoted to guarantee the survival of humanity if major catastrophes strike Earth. But the spread of humanity into a multiplanet species will likely produce an interstate anarchy highly prone to total war, with Earth having many disadvantages. Altering the orbits of asteroids, a readily achievable technology vital for space colonization, also makes possible “planetoid bombs” with destructive potentials millions of times greater than all nuclear weapons. The biological diversification of humanity into multiple species, anticipated by space advocates, will further stoke interworld wars. Astrocide—the extinction of humanity resulting from significant space expansion—must join the lengthening list of potential threats to human survival. Large-scale space expansion should be relinquished in favor of an Earth-oriented space program of arms control and planetary security.

In a critical Cold War moment, Dwight D. Eisenhower's presidency suddenly changed when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world's first satellite. What Ike called \"a small ball\" became a source of Russian pride and propaganda, and it wounded him politically, as critics charged that he responded sluggishly to the challenge of space exploration. Yet Eisenhower refused to panic after Sputnik-and he did more than just stay calm. He helped to guide the United States into the Space Age, even though Americans have given greater credit to John F. Kennedy for that achievement. InEisenhower's Sputnik Moment, Yanek Mieczkowski examines the early history of America's space program, reassessing Eisenhower's leadership. He details how Eisenhower approved breakthrough satellites, supported a new civilian space agency, signed a landmark science education law, and fostered improved relations with scientists. These feats made Eisenhower's post-Sputnik years not the flop that critics alleged but a time of remarkable progress, even as he endured the setbacks of recession, medical illness, and a humiliating first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite. Eisenhower's principled stands enabled him to resist intense pressure to boost federal spending, and he instead pursued his priorities-a balanced budget, prosperous economy, and sturdy national defense. Yet Sputnik also altered the world's power dynamics, sweeping Eisenhower in directions that were new, even alien, to him, and he misjudged the importance of space in the Cold War's \"prestige race.\" By contrast, Kennedy capitalized on the issue in the 1960 election, and after taking office he urged a manned mission to the moon, leaving Eisenhower to grumble over the young president's aggressive approach. Offering a fast-paced account of this Cold War episode, Mieczkowski demonstrates that Eisenhower built an impressive record in space and on earth, all the while offering warnings about America's stature and strengths that still hold true today.