Roger D. Launius

Public opinion polls and perceptions of US human spaceflight

Abstract A belief exists in the United States about public support for NASAs human spaceflight activities. Many hold that NASA and the cause of the human exploration of space enjoyed outstanding public support and confidence in the 1960s during the era of Apollo and that public support waned in the post- Apollo era, only to sink to quite low depths in the decade of the 1990s. These beliefs are predicated on anecdotal evidence that should not be discounted, but empirical evidence gleaned from public opinion polling data suggests that some of these conceptions are totally incorrect and others are either incomplete or more nuanced than previously believed. This article explores the evolution of public support for space exploration since the 1960s. Using polling data from a variety of sources it presents trends over time and offers comments on the meaning of public perceptions for the evolution of space policy and the development of space exploration in the United States.

Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership.

The reluctant racer, Dwight D. Eisenhower and United States space policy / Da Callahan and Fred I. Greenstein -- Kennedy and the decision to go to the moo Michael Beschloss -- Johnson, Project Apollo, and the politics of space prog planning / Robert Dallek -- The presidency, Congress, and the deceleration o the U.S. space program in the 1970s / Joan Hoff -- Politics not science, the U.S. space program in the Reagan and Bush years / Lyn Ragsdale -- Presidenti leadership and international aspects of the space program / Robert Ferrell - National leadership and presidential power / John M. Logsdon.

NASA : a history of the U.S. civil space program

When future generations review the history of the 20th century, they will undoubtedly judge humanitys movement into space, with both machines and people, as one of its seminal developments. Even at this juncture, the complex nature of space-flight and the activity that it has engendered on the part of many peoples and governments, makes the US civil space programme a significant area of investigation. People from all avenues of experience and levels of education share an interest in the drama of spaceflight. This book offers an up-to-date synthesis of the American civil space programme and is designed specially for use as a college textbook. Written by NASAs Chief Historian, it describes the history of this effort from its earliest origins to the early 1990s and offers an analysis of the space programme that merges political, economic, technological, scientific and foreign affairs factors into a powerful story. In common with all the Anvil Series texts, historical narrative is enhanced with material from key documents which shed light on other aspects of the story.

Can we colonize the solar system? Human biology and survival in the extreme space environment

Throughout the history of the space age the dominant vision for the future has been great spaceships plying the solar system, and perhaps beyond, moving living beings from one planet to another. Spacesuited astronauts would carry out exploration, colonization, and settlement as part of a relentlessly forward looking movement of humanity beyond Earth. As time has progressed this image has not changed appreciably even as the full magnitude of the challenges it represents have become more and more apparent. This essay explores the issues associated with the human movement beyond Earth and raises questions about whether humanity will ever be able to survive in the extreme environment of space and the other bodies of the solar system. This paper deals with important historical episodes as well as wider conceptual issues about life in space. Two models of expansion beyond Earth are discussed: (1) the movement of microbes and other types of life on Earth that can survive the space environment and (2) the modification of humans into cyborgs for greater capability to survive in the extreme environments encountered beyond this planet.

Escaping Earth: Human Spaceflight as Religion

What if we viewed the history of human spaceflight somewhat less through the lens of Cold War politics, which admittedly was central to the race to the Moon, but more as an expression of what might be called a religion of spaceflight? There seems to be a deeply religious quality to advocacy for the investment in and support for human space exploration, lending to the endeavor of a “higher purpose” that helps to explain both the generous nature of the actual investment and the ultimate unwillingness of Americans to eviscerate space budgets despite less than full support for space exploration. This article examines religious conceptions as a means of analyzing what might be termed a “space gospel.” I lay out here the proposition that human spaceflight may be viewed as a religion with similar attributes to those present in mainstream religious denominations. This approach to exploring the history of human spaceflight offers a different and useful frame of understanding that broadens basic conceptions about this aspect of the human past.

Is It Finally Time for Space Tourism

To date, only four paying space tourists have flown, and the prospect for broad, sustainable space tourism remains a dream. This article notes that there are two types of tourists conflated by the advocates of space tourism. The first are a tiny group of adventurers with significant wealth and other resources who seek thrills and bragging rights. They have enjoyed success in using government-owned resources for their extreme tourism experience by flying on Soyuz capsules operated by Russia, and the International Space Station owned and operated by a consortium of nations as a major research station. The second group seeks more modest excursions with a minimum of risk and a smaller price tag. Only the first group has much prospect for tourism in space in the foreseeable future, but the second group is the more important, and expanding its space tourism opportunities represents the primary means of achieving the goal of opening space to the public. This article also differentiates between private sector suborbital space tourism, which may achieve reality within the next five to seven years, and the prospects for orbital space tourism, which are at least an order of magnitude more difficult and will probably require at least another generation of technological work to achieve.

After Columbia: The Space Shuttle Program and the Crisis in Space Access

The loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia on 1 February 2003 brought to the fore the sad history of the Space Shuttles origins, evolution, operation, and the continuing challenge of space access. The crisis that emerged in human access to space because of the accident was greater than any experienced since the end of the Apollo program more than thirty years earlier. This essay explores the origins and operations of the Space Shuttle, the varied efforts to build a successor vehicle versus upgrading the shuttle fleet, and suggests that the first decade of the twenty-first century promises to offer both serious challenges and enormous potential for the development of new launch vehicles that may finally achieve the long-held dream of reliable, affordable access to space. The essay ends by asking whether or not the half-hearted quest for a shuttle replacement might not portend the demise human spaceflight for the United States.

Imprisoned in a Tesseract: NASA's Human Spaceflight Effort and the Prestige Trap

This essay focuses on the decision by senior National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officials at the creation of the agency to focus its efforts on human spaceflight, Moon and Mars missions, and human settlement of the solar system. Its leaders made a conscious decision to downplay space applications projects, exclusive of technological research and development, and eschew operational activities. They did so in favor of concentrating on the human exploration and development of space. In so doing, NASA fell into the prestige trap that dominated this mission in the 1950s and early 1960s. At sum it was a tesseract, a four-dimensional object, which locked NASA into a quest for ever greater space spectaculars featuring human involvement. Power and prestige, therefore, has cast a long shadow on the space agency, forcing it into a series of programs that have been oversold and undervalued.

Spaceflight: The Development of Science, Surveillance, and Commerce in Space

To commemorate the centennial of the Proceedings of the IEEE, several authors from diverse areas of expertise examine space exploration from its beginnings in the middle of the last century and look onward to half a century in the future. Beginning by examining the reasons why the two 20th century superpowers believed that space exploration was an important investment, the chronological review of early developments includes discussions on science, commerce, and national security; the evolution of space-related technologies; progress and advancements in launch vehicles, spacecraft, and spacecraft payloads; and improvements in space communications and tracking. With the subjects of robotic solar system exploration and crewed missions to space discussed in some detail, the great advances of the last 60 years establish a foundation for addressing the challenges of future human flight beyond Earths vicinity-challenges that are technical, political, social, and economic in nature. The authors take a pragmatic view in making forecasts for the future of spaceflight: they limit their conjecture, for the most part, to the next 50 years. While it is very difficult to make realistic predictions for longer periods, the authors are confident that space exploration continues to grasp the publics imagination and desire to know more about the universe, and that it continues to build on many of the same questions that inspired the space program in the mid-20th century.

United States Space Cooperation and Competition: Historical Reflections

From the very beginning of the space age, the ability to undertake non-military activities in this new regime has been an element of foreign policy. The mirror image twins international cooperation and competition between nation states has driven many of the key decisions in the major programs undertaken by the United States, especially in the evolution of its human spaceflight initiatives. For much of the Cold War era, head-to-head competition with the Soviet Union defined the human program, especially the Apollo program to land astronauts on the Moon. In the aftermath of the Cold War foreign policy objectives still inform the delineation of policy, especially the cooperative nature of large programs such as the International Space Station. This essay explores the evolution of the place assigned international space cooperation and competition in the United States.