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Technocracy and Statecraft m the Space Age 



1025 



primarily by scientists and became, thanks to administrator James Webb and the 

 Apollo mission, a juggernaut of the engineers and politicians^ 



The answer seems to lie once again ,n the process of technological evolution 

 itself If artificial-that is, institutionalized-st.mulation of science and technology 

 has become a fundamental source of national power, then the political leadership 

 needs to guide the allocation of technical resources according to its version of the 

 national fnterest. Resistance to a political imprimatur over the creation of new 

 knowledge had complicated legislation for the Atomic Energy Comm^sion and 

 National Science Foundation. But a command economy in state-funded research 

 and development is implicit as political leaders move from choosing socia goals for 

 new technology to choosing new technology for social (and political) goals. This is 

 what Eisenhower feared, for that meant abandoning the concept of a ree society, 

 which develops naturally according to myriad choices on the local level, and 

 replacing it with a central directorate, which charts the path of social progress and 

 orders fabrication of techniques for traversing it. This transition had already 

 occurred m Western Europe (not to mention in the Soviet Un.on, which was 

 founded on the principle), but it occurred in the United States only in the 19b0s- 

 and the catalyst was the space program. 



Eisenhower shaped American space policy, but program funding can tilt the 

 balance of policy. Kennedy defined the character of the American space effort with 

 his commitment of May 25, 1961, to go to the moon. Thanks to Apollo, the space 

 program came to stress engineering over science, competition over cooperation, 

 civihan over military management, and prestige over practical applications^ This 

 crucial decision, the first turning point in the history of manned space H.ght, has 

 been examined by John Logsdon.^^ Why did we go to the moon.^ Why did $30 

 billion go into Apollo technology instead of other space P"";;)*^^^ "^ """^f ";^; 

 applications? The answer lies not in technology, nor even in the Cold War itself, 

 which might also have dictated a space program centered on military or eccniomic 

 applications, but rather in the conjunction of the early Soviet space triumphs with 

 the emergence of the neutralist Third World. The prestige race to the moon- 

 against the Russians if they were game, against the end of the decade if they were 

 not-followed hard on reverses in Laos and the Congo, on the Bay of Pigs, and on 

 the flight of Yuri Gagarin, first man in space. Vice-President Johnson condensed 

 the wisdom of the new administration: "Failure to master space means being second 

 best in every aspect, in the crucial area of our Cold War world. In the eyes of the 

 world first in space means first, period; second in space is second in everything. 

 So space technology was drafted, in the first months of the New Frontier, into the 

 cause of national prestige. . . r . ,u^, 



Apollo was a magnificent achievement, but there is irony in the fac that 

 observers worldwide consider it one of the "good" products of the maniacal 1960s. 



« Logsdon. The Dec.:an to Go io the Moon: Project A potto and the '^'-'"-''"'-f <['^'';^9^|°; ollcTp^Z 

 Vernon' Van Dyke. Pnde and Po.er: The Rat..u.te l'''^-^^/™^; '^Xl\ Vaslg^^^^^ 



52-283 0-86-15 



