Militarizing Outer Space explores the dystopian and destructive dimensions of the Space Age and challenges conventional narratives of a bipolar Cold War rivalry. Concentrating on weapons, warfare and violence, this provocative volume examines real and imagined endeavors of arming the skies and conquering the heavens. The third and final volume in the groundbreaking European Astroculture trilogy, Militarizing Outer Space zooms in on the interplay between security, technopolitics and knowledge from the 1920s through the 1980s. Often hailed as the site of heavenly utopias and otherworldly salvation, outer space transformed from a promised sanctuary to a present threat, where the battles of the future were to be waged. Astroculture proved instrumental in fathoming forms and functions of warfare’s futures past, both on earth and in space. The allure of dominating outer space, the book shows, was neither limited to the early twenty-first century nor to current American space force rhetorics.
Author(s): Alexander C.T. Geppert, Daniel Brandau, Tilmann Siebeneichner
Series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 443
City: Cham
Contents
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Abbreviations
Notes on Contributors
Introduction
Chapter 1 Spacewar! The Dark Side of Astroculture
I ‘Dual use’ and other technopolitical fictions
II ‘High ground’ and the Cold War in orbital space
III Militant astroculture and fights of fancy
IV Star Wars wars
V Militarizing outer space
Part I Embattling the Heavens
Chapter 2 Cold War – But No War – in Space
I Militarizing outer space, 1943–62
II The era of relative space stability, 1963–83
III Stability threatened and stability restored, 1983–89
IV Military space in a post-Cold War world
Chapter 3 The Nuclear Roots of the Space Race
I Military needs and spaceflight dreams
II ICBMs around the world
III Changing historiographical perceptions of ICBMs
Chapter 4 West European Integration and the Militarization of Outer Space, 1945–70
I European astroculture and the political context of ELDO and ESRO
II ESRO: the European approach to space and peace
III ELDO and the military implications of dual-use technology
IV Venus and Mars: the ambiguity of European space cooperation
Part II Waging Future Wars
Chapter 5 In Space, Violence Rules: Clashes and Conquests in Science-Fiction Cinema
I Setting the scene: the ‘non-place’ fantasy
II Dispelling the discreet charm of the bourgeoisie: the pre-canonical years
III The classical age of the space science-fiction blockbuster: the search for the ultimate other
IV Post-1957 science-fiction cinema: the danger from within
V The end of the Cold War and the advent of space biopolitics
VI Space militarization: from ideological critique to biopolitical spectacle
Chapter 6 C. S. Lewis and the Moral Threat of Space Exploration, 1938–64
I The medieval and the modern in science fiction and fantasy
II Heavenly bodies: outer space as sacred space
III Human bodies: cosmic evolution and corporeal violence
IV Spaceflight and the cosmos: the moral threat of human space exploration
V Understanding Lewis as a critical myth-maker
Chapter 7 One Nation, Two Astrocultures? Rocketry, Security and Dual Use in Divided Germany, 1949–61
I Ideology and military innovation in a divided Europe
II Astrofuturism and socialist realism in East Germany
III Propaganda and the problem of dual use
IV Cold War astroculture and the realities of dual-use development
Part III Armoring Minds and Bodies
Chapter 8 Participant Evolution: Cold War Space Medicine and the Militarization of the Cyborg Self
I Cyborg genealogies
II Bringing cyborg science to America
III Survival of the fittest
IV Participant evolution and the militarization of the self
V Medical utopia in the age of political dystopia
VI Engineering humans
Chapter 9 Starship Troopers: The Shaping of the Space Warrior in Cold War Astroculture, 1950–80
I Heinlein, Starship Troopers and the martial order of the cosmic body
II The medium of force
III Utopian and dystopian military networks
IV The space suit as postmodern icon
Chapter 10 Satellites and Psychics: The Militarization of Outer and Inner Space, 1960–95
I Remote sensing
II Remote viewing
III The satellization of the self
Part IV Mounting Combat Infrastructures
Chapter 11 Architectures of Command: The Dual-Use Legacy of Mission Control Centers
I The structural setting of control rooms and its military kernel of ‘war rooms’
II The operational practice of command and control
III Organizational architecture: opacity and transparency in view of security
IV Control rooms as sites of securitization
Chapter 12 Space Spies in the Open: Military Space Stations and Heroic Cosmonauts in the Post-Apollo Period, 1971–77
I Routinization of human spaceflight
II Camouflaging the military Salyuts with civilian programs
III The spy cosmonauts
IV Soviet television empire and human spaceflight
V The medal for Distinction in Guarding the State Border of the Soviet Union
VI The Almaz camera
VII The weapon
VIII Conclusion
Chapter 13 Satellite Navigation and the Military-Civilian Dilemma: The Geopolitics of GPS and Its Rivals
I The military origins of GPS
II LORAN, inertial guidance and the beginning of satellite navigation
III Competing proposals to follow TRANSIT, LORAN and other positioning systems
IV Convergence: a unified, space-based positioning system emerges, 1973–83
V ‘Much to everyone’s surprise’: the question of dual use
VI Opening the black box, 1983–91
VII Alternatives to GPS: GLONASS, Galileo, Beidou
VIII The microelectronics revolution: civilian and military
Epilogue
Chapter 14 What Is, and to What End Do We Study, European Astroculture?
Bibliography
Index
