Organizing for the Use of Space: Historical Perspectives on a Persistent Issue ed. by Roger D. Launius

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 973 dipole oscillator and resonator, when “problems arose that under­ mined Hertz’s original claims, and indeed that undermined the character of the device itself as a stable effect-generator” (p. 3). In the meantime, historians of science and technology should find the present volume to be rewarding in many ways. Ronald Kline Dr. Kune is associate professor of the history of technology at Cornell University. Organizingfor the Use ofSpace: HistoricalPerspectives on a Persistent Issue. Edited by Roger D. Launius. San Diego: American Astronautical Society, 1995. Pp. xiii+220; illustrations, figures, tables, notes. $60.00 (hardcover); $40.00 (paper). What most unites the articles in Organizingfor the Use of Space is the background of its authors. Six of the eight are historians for NASA or the military; the other two are affiliated with universities in or near Washington, D.C. Most have been reflecting and writing on the history of the American space program for more than a de­ cade. By contrast, the papers range over a variety of subjects and periods, from rocketry in World War II, through NASA’s formation, to the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s. The treatments also vary, from brief and impressionistic to de­ tailed and studiously researched. There is excellence at both ends of this spectrum. Dwayne A. Day makes exemplary use of primary sources to tell us as much as we may ever want to know about the National Aeronautics and Space Council, a body that “played only a minimal role in the formulation ofAmerican space policy for most of its . . . existence” (p. 117). At the other end, Howard E. McCurdy contributes a short piece based mainly on published sources but cen­ tered on a provocative question: how did popular culture affect fed­ eral policy-making? The other articles treat more familiar topics. R. Cargill Hall re­ minds us that Eisenhower was mainly interested in space for its mili­ tary applications. Volume editor Roger D. Launius contributes a well-written resume of U.S. space policy through 1960. The novelty is his argument that Eisenhower’s NASA administrator, T. Keith Glennan, played a critical role in fending off the coalition of space cadets, industrialists, military officers, and members ofCongress who were urging a more aggressive stance. Through his resistance, Glen­ nan succeeded in securing a balanced space program for his admin­ istration. The implication—more acceptable, probably, to historians than to the American Astronautical Society members to whom some of these papers were first addressed at a 1993 meeting—is that the Kennedy administration unbalanced the program when it trans­ formed it into “a huge scientific and technological effort with pi­ loted activities serving as the mainstay” (p. 63). 974 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Sylvia K. Kraemer’s overview of NASA’s culture mainly follows a well-beaten track with such themes as the tension between NASA’s ethos of in-house research and its practice of contracting research out. It is, however, an exceptionally well-informed reiteration. J. D. Hunley pushes beyond prior accounts of the birth of U.S. rocketry by dint ofmeticulous research and the productive device of compar­ ing the Peenemunde rocketeers’ use of academic and industry con­ sultants with the practices of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Rick W. Sturdevant’s article hews the most closely to the book’s title, laying out the air force’s organizational arrangements for space as they evolved over the course of five decades. In my opinion, how­ ever, the time is past for us to content ourselves with this kind of chronology or to limit our studies to a single organization as actor. Martin J. Collins recently exhorted us to view NASA’s program in the larger context of the combined military, intelligence, and civil­ ian efforts (Collins and Sylvia K. Kraemer, eds., Space: Discovery and Exploration, Southport, Conn.: Hugh Lauter Levin Associates for the Smithsonian Institution, National Air and Space Museum, 1994, p. 11). His injunction is equally appropriate for historians of military space. The final article, by Donald R. Baucom, is a clearly articulated account of the fight the Pentagon waged and won for control of the Strategic Defense Initiative against the High...