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Technocracy and Statecraft in the Space Age 



1035 



decently enough without any system for surveying the resources of Amazonia or 

 multiplying by millions the bits of information that can be transmitted between 

 continents every few seconds. But it is another important historical conjuncture that 

 the age of space technology arrived concurrent not only with the Cold War and the 

 emergence of the Third World but also with the peak of the world demographic 

 explosion, which seemed to demand accelerating economic growth from advanced 

 nations to meet geometric increases in global needs. Still another inducement to 

 experimentation with new technology is the rapid decrease in risk capital required 

 after the preliminary breakthrough^-in this case, the plummeting cost per pound 

 of placing hardware in orbit. The Saturn rockets of the midT960s^had already 

 enhanced cost efficiency a thousand times over the first boosters.^^ The Space 

 Shuttle may reduce that figure even more significandy depending on the amortiza- 

 tion schedule for the cost of development. 



The most immediate impact of the space program was on the aerospace industry 

 itself, which was declared "Americas newest giant" in 1962.^ Individual NASA and 

 Air Force program histories abound, but histories of the industry as a whole in all 

 its political, economic, and labor facets in the United States and abroad, are 

 nonexistent.^^ This is perplexing, for aviation had become by the 1 930s an industry of 

 vital interest to all the major powers, and it poses unique problems for historians of 

 all stripes. Unlike most other industries, aerospace thrives on international discord. 

 It requires vast excess capacity for emergency expansion, saddling firms with 

 inordinate fixed costs. It has an unusually large percentage of highly skilled 

 workers— at Boeing in the late 1950s over 40 percent of the employees were 

 scientists and engineers. Aerospace is essentially a monopsony or oligopsony in 

 which only one or two buyers exist (for example, NASA and the Department of 

 Defense), and they provide both the market and the funds for research firms need 

 to stay competitive. Hence, the industry must be an unabashed suitor of the state. 

 Government agencies in turn have a stake in preserving competition among 

 suppliers, but the very awarding of a large contract to one firm accords it a 

 privileged position for the next assignment in the same field. Firms place a 

 premium on grantsmanship not unlike the way professors learned to hustle in the 

 regime of largesse after Sputnik. The effects of government patronage on 

 universities in the United States and abroad are well known.^ Similar effects in 

 industry suggest the creation of a "contract state" in which private institutions rely 



*' Sir Bernard Lovell. The Origins and International Economics of Space Exploration (Edinburgh. 1973), 29- 

 32. 



<* The Editors of Fortune. The Space Industry: Amencas Neu'est Giant (Englewood Cliffs. N.J., 1962). 



" Charles D. Bright's The Jet Makers. The Aerospace Industry from 1945 to 1972 (Uwrence, Kans.. 1978) is a 

 brief but incisive essay. Bright has also decried the lack of attention given one of the nation's largest, most 

 dynamic, and critical industries. A useful study from the peak of the Apollo boom is Herman O. Steklcr. The 

 Structure and Performance of the Aerospace Industry (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1965). Stekler has denied that the 

 American aerospace industry is a monopsony, citing the separate procurement processes of the armed services 

 and the inordinate leverage accorded a handful of firms by the governmental practice of choosing prime 

 contractors even for very large projects. 



** In 1963 the federal cornucopia supplied 88 percent of the entire research budget of Caltech, bb percent ot 

 MIT's. 59 and 56 percent for the University of Chicago and Princeton. 24 percent for Harvard and Stanford; 

 Etzioni. Moon Doggie. 68. The Denver Research Institutes Effects of a National Space Program on Vnwersities 

 (Denver. 1968). a NASA-sponsored study, praised federal largesse, but lound it to be more valuable to the 

 universities than to the government! 



