429 



Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age 1011 



Has similar distinctly Space Age change occurred in domestic and internation- 

 al politics? The explosion of science and technology and its impact on society in 

 the 1960s inspired numerous suggestions that this was so. John K. Galbraith and 

 Daniel Bell wrote of the postindustrial age, Charles S. Maier of an age in which 

 intense political exploitation of collective human thought replaced that of raw 

 materials and labor. Even Soviet theorists adopted the phrase "scientific and 

 technological revolution" as a stock description of the post-Sputnik world, in 

 which capitalism itself altered its laws and Leninist doctrine was modified to 

 include science as a "direct productive force. "^ The four realms most often cited 

 as the loci of revolutionary change in the Space Age are (1) international politics, 

 (2) the political role of science and scientists, (3) the relationship of the state to 

 technological change, and (4) political culture and values in nations of high 

 technology. This essay describes the literature on the impact of space technology 

 in these four realms and proposes some hypotheses for future inquiry.' Its 

 findings suggest that those who speak of the revolutionary consequences of 

 space and related technologies and those who belittle their impact both exagger- 

 ate the reality. For the history of the relationship of politics and technology is 

 evolutionary. Since the 1860s governments have steadily increased their interest 

 in the direct fostering of scientific and technological progress. But within that 

 evolution Sputnik triggered an abrupt discontinuity, a saltation that transformed 

 governments into self-conscious promoters, not just of technological change but 

 of perpetual technological revolution. This change above all defines the Space 

 Age as a historical period and helps explain what most alert undergraduates 

 would attest: that history, in our times, is speeding up. 



Why space flight in the mid-twentieth century? Although the mathemati- 

 cal, chemical, and metallurgical skills necessary for practical research into 

 rocketry were present by the 1920s, the investment required for orbital flight 

 was so large and the immediate military or economic benefits so uncertain that 

 the genesis of spaceflight in our time is no more self-explanatory than Iberian 

 sponsorship of world navigation is for the fifteenth century. Only in the late 

 nineteenth century did Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and others of his generation first 

 establish that rockets were the practical means to break the chains of gravity and 

 realize the ancient fantasy of voyages beyond the atmosphere. As late as the 

 1930s rocketry still belonged to determined individuals like Robert Goddard in 

 the United States or amateur clubs like Hermann Oberth's Verein fiir 



examining the impact of space-related technologies; Rostow, Tfw Diffusion of Power: An Essay in Recent History 

 (New York, 1972). 



^ Galbraith. The New Industrial State (New York, 197 1); Bell, The Coming of Post-1 ndustnal Society (New York, 

 1973); and Maier. Introduction to George B Kistiakowsky, A Scientist in the White House (Cambridge, Mass., 

 1976). On Soviet interpretations of the "scientific-technological revolution." see Bruce Parrot, Politics and 

 Technology m the Soiiet Union (Cambridge. Mass., in press), chap. 6. 



' The role of technological innovation as a cause of international political change has recently been argued 

 by Daniel K. Headrick; see Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism m llie Nineteenth 

 Century (Oxford, 1981). 



