Volume 33, Number 20 · December 18, 1986
The Americans in Space
By James Fallows
The Heavens and the Earth: A Political History of the Space Age
by Walter A. McDougall
Basic Books, 555 pp., $11.95 (paper)
Report to the President by the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident
Vol. V, 880 pp., $105.00 the set
The Aerospace Plane: Technological Feasibility and Policy Implications Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Report No.15 by Stephen W. Korthals-Altes
Program in Science and Technology for International Security,, 204 pp., $10.00
The central message of Walter McDougall's long, long history of the space age concerns the danger of seeing space exploration primarily as a symbol for something else. Yes, space will always be symbolic in the grandest sense: in attempting to understand it, we demonstrate man's 'questing spirit,' our demand to know the unknown, our curiosity about our place in the infinite universe, and other impulses that may sound ironic but are the real reasons we continue to fire rockets into the sky.
Review, 9323 words
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