Power to explore: a history of Marshall Space Flight Center, 1960-1990 (original) (raw)

Exploring Space: NASA at 50 and Beyond

Public Administration Review, 2010

of NASA (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), and more than 275 articles, papers, and reports. He is presently working on a book about NASA and Mars.

SPACE STUDIES PROGRAM 2012 Operations And Service Infrastructure for Space Authors Final Report

The OASIS concept is represented in the cover artwork and logo. Within the logo are the nodes representing the spaceport way-points. It was inspired by the skipping of stones across a body of water, representing stepping stones throughout space. The abstract palm tree represents the OASIS concept -a location where you gather supplies and services while traveling through a harsh environment. Design work courtesy of the OASIS Graphics Team.

STS 202 Annotated Bibliography

The Heavens and the Earth written by Walter McDougall, an acclaimed historian who has won the Pulitzer Prize, is an exceptional and detailed history of the European, Soviet, and American space programs and their complex sociopolitical and technological births, as well as a comprehensive overview of the numerous areas that their developments significantly influenced. He fruitfully explores what he calls the rise of an American technocracy following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik, and later delves into some of the societal implications of growing dependence upon technology. He argues that the government must be reined in in its efforts to exploit technological development for goals he deems questionable at best, and quite clearly displays some preference towards Eisenhower's light-touch approach to government over more recent political ideologies. This book truly is an exceptional work of astronautical history that remains largely unprecedented today, according to the reviews I came across. It in fact won a Pulitzer Prize for history in 1986, and it is by no means unclear as to why McDougall's work is worthy of such praise. Due to his dutiful examination of the roles of culture, society, politics, and science in the rise of the Space Age, as well as the consequences that age has had and is likely still having on every corner of society, this book is of unique relevance to my topic of the tumultuous relationship that government and science have had and still have with each other. Nonetheless, The Heavens and the Earth contains some serious flaws, although they are more aesthetic than structural. In the last two chapters, McDougall leaves behind history and delves into an arguably dubious philosophical discussion of the religious implications of modern society's dependence on technology. He also is overly heavy-handed in his implications that governments inevitably attempt to take advantage of their populaces with the very technologies that same government exploits them to research and develop. This part of the book is much weaker and significantly takes away from McDougall's impressive historiographic abilities. Even so, it still easily earns first place as the most important source for my subject. 2. Duggins, Pat-Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program. This book is an interesting examination of post-Apollo NASA and its great many missteps and failures. It particularly focuses on the Space Shuttle and its two infamous disasters. Duggins focuses on the Challenger and Columbia disasters for over five chapters out of thirteen, and he does so because they provide an important look inside the institutional and cultural problems that led two eerily similar accidents to occur nearly two decades apart. More importantly, Duggins also looks at the relationship that post-Apollo NASA has held with the government and came away with a clear impression that NASA was frequently used by politicians for causes less than directly related to either space or aeronautics. This ilustrates NASA's political use essentially since its creation in the 1950s.