Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age—Toward the History of a Saltation

Abstract

THE SPACE AGE, born with the first artificial earth satellites in the autumn of 1957, is already twenty-five years old. The origins of space technology have passed into contemporary history even as the Space Shuttle, the European rocket Ariane, permanent Soviet space stations, and the prospect of space-based laser weapons open a second Space Age of ineffable potential. What is the Space Age? Did Sputnik I mark the beginning of a distinct period in the history of human institutions and collective behavior? These questions matter at a moment in history when our societies, politics, economies, and diplomacy are wrenched by perpetual technological revolution. The prima facie case is impressive for marking the technological turning point of the mid-twentieth century at the birth of the Space Age. The first Sputniks seemed to overturn the foundations of the post-World War II international order. They promised imminent Soviet strategic parity, placed the United States under direct military threat for the first time since 1814, triggered a quantum jump in the arms race, and undermined the calculus on which European, Chinese, and neutralist relations with the superpowers had been based. The space and missile challenge was then mediated by massive state-sponsored complexes for research and development, in the United States and throughout the industrial world, into institutionalized technological revolution and, hence, accelerating social, economic, and perhaps cultural change. Space technology altered the very proportions of human power to the natural environment in a way unparalleled since the spread of the railroads. Machines can now travel, deal destruction, store and transmit information, observe and analyze the earth and universe at orders of magnitude beyond what was possible before 1957. Virtually every field of natural science has leapt forward or been transformed on the strength of space-based experimentation and data. Sputnik would seem to qualify as a historical catalyst.'