Heavens & The Earth

by Walter A. McDougall

Chronicles the political history of the space race, from its nineteenth-century beginnings with the rocketry pioneers to the Cold War competition, in which space became another area embraced by the U.S. and U.S.S.R

Genres: History, Space, Nonfiction, Science, Politics, American History, History Of Science

555 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2013

About the author

Walter A. McDougall is Professor of History and the Alloy-Ansin Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania.

Reviews

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 4 out of 5]

Outdated, alas (about a third of the book is devoted to the passage of the 1962 Comsat Act, which was repealed by the Orbit Act about 15 years ago). Still, like all his book, wonderful writing and keen insight. My favorite: why did the Russians make it into space first? Simple--the U.S. had the first H-bomb, so the USSR had to build one quickly, and therefore couldn't devote time to miniaturizing it. Thus, half a decade later, when ICBMs were developed, the Russians had to build bigger ICBMs to be capable of hitting America with the bomb. Flash forward another decade, and Russia could strap 5 ICBMs together and boost Sputnik into orbit. Not so with smaller US ICBMs.

[Clif · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the 19th century railroads covered the United States assisted with land grants from the federal government but all constructed by private companies each with its own idea of how and where to build. Capitalist competition, with a significant amount of corruption, laced the states with steel rails.

In the 20th century, the economic collapse that brought the Depression stimulated desperate experiments in government direction of the economy during FDR's first terms. The free market had failed and many admired the rapid advance of industry in the USSR. Some of the New Deal programs were successful, many weren't, but the thought that it might be desirable to have direction from the top, a technocracy of experts and specialists, was spectacularly put to the test with the explosive expansion of US industry at the command of the government during WW2.

When Dwight Eisenhower won the presidency in 1952, his thinking heralded a return to the idea that government should be limited in power and the free market should decide on the course the country should follow. He had been in the perfect position to see the operation of technocracy and feared what it would do to the traditional personal values held by Americans. Despite strong pressure to put government at the head of an effort to counter the military might of the USSR, Ike was determined to have a balanced budget while avoiding a welfare state for the military. His military background made his decisions difficult to question and the country enjoyed a strong economy and the general feeling that all was well. Then in 1957 came Sputnik and everything changed.

Walter McDougall has written an excellent account of the effects of the resulting American panic that the USSR was ahead in technology and that all standing in the way of a technocratic push by the United States should be swept aside. The can-do top-down approach that had proven so successful in WW2 now was to be renewed not just in weaponry but in education and technology in general. McDougall alternates between reporting on what was actually taking place in the USSR and what an overexcited US was doing based on false assumptions of USSR might.

The Space Race, closing the supposed "missile gap", the pouring of money into higher education resulting in universities becoming R&D labs for Uncle Sam are all explained with the personalities and policies that drove the nation to do all it could to convince not just Americans and Russians, but the developing world that capitalism in managed form was superior to communism.

The edition that I read, the first, came out in the late 1980's, the first opportunity to have access to much formerly secret information, though not as much from the still functioning USSR as from the US. In the 80's the first generation of ICBM's were either history (Atlas) or being retired (Titan I and II) and the moon landing was well over ten years in the past.

As McDougall documents, the fears that Ike tried so hard to contain were truly unwarranted. There was never a missile gap favoring the USSR. Ike knew this because of U2 reconnaissance flights that showed no significant missile building program in the USSR, yet he could not reveal the U2 program as national sovereignty in space was at issue. Even at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the USSR had only two or three ICBM's.

As for Sputnik, the US was planning on launching a satellite and could have been first in space but for the desire to make it a non-military effort (Vanguard) rather than use a military missile (Redstone) that was proven and ready to go. Werner von Braun, the famous German missile engineer captured from defeated Nazi Germany, had his pleas to go ahead with a launch ignored.

The USSR had only one advantage and that was in having larger missiles that could lift heavier payloads into orbit. In all other areas, it was decidedly behind and the lag only increased with time as the US developed not just more ICBM's but a huge B52 bomber force and missiles that could be launched from submarines. In short, the space race was an American race against fear and for prestige in the eyes of the world.

This didn't mean that Nikita Krushchev wasn't giving fuel to the fire, boasting, declaring at every opportunity how socialism was victorious over capitalism and pulling away. The USSR was clearly a technocracy where all that was done came on order from above. The irony is that the fear of a lead by Russia brought the US all in on technocracy and left the USSR increasingly in the dust.

In the final two chapters of the book McDougall leaves history and begins a most powerful critique of technocracy, presenting ideas about our modern way of life that had not occurred to me and in such a stimulating read that I scanned the 26 final pages of the book to pass around to others. These pages alone make the book worth reading, putting aside the excellent history to which most of it is devoted. McDougall examines all the claims for technocracy, seeing the flaws in systems analysis, the impossibility of applying technologies to social problems (as in the Great Society), the distortion of scientific research and higher education when technocracy dictates what will be done.

He relates how the man-to-the-moon program was a dead end, producing the giant Saturn 5 booster and the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo capsules that are retired and worthless for any other purpose. The Space Shuttle is dismissed as a program looking for a purpose and one that while claiming to save money on space flights ended up costing a fortune and, as we know, is now dumped. He doesn't discount the amazing technological feat of the moon landing, but argues that money was thrown to the winds with NASA with space program money creeping into areas that had nothing to do with the mission but got industry hooked on government contracts and got government hooked on providing jobs for PhD's, engineers and technicians. Readers in 2020 may well note how the end of the USSR brought only a short hiatus before an endless war against terror moved in comfortably as the new excuse for federal spending.

One bright side that the author could not have known about in the 80's was the entrance of private companies into the exploitation of space based on selling something that consumers (wealthy though they will have to be) would willingly pay for.

If you want to understand how the military-industrial complex came to be and how it manages to preserve itself making and doing things of no real use to the American taxpayer, this is the book to read. I am very grateful to Walter McDougall for the application of his very capable mind to a fascinating subject that should be of interest to us all.

[Lou Corn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well I learned a lot about the origins of the Apollo program and the larger context of the Space Race within the cold war, which is what I came for. The book increasingly becomes an overwrought libertarain lamentation of America's fall into technocracy which is definitely not what I came for especially when delivered with snide derision for any other form of critique or challenge to US space policy.

[Nate Huston · Rating 3 out of 5]

McDougall's book is very well researched. It largely tells the back-and-forth space development, exploration, and exploitation tale between the USSR & the US. The book is thematically centered on the emergence of technocracy in the US as a result of (perceived or real) need to compete with the USSR for national prestige in space. In McDougall's analysis, the success of the lunar landing set the stage for LBJ to implement a number of technocratic, centrally managed national programs, to include the management of Vietnam and the "Great Society" writ large. Once the space program proved centralized management successful, education initiatives and social programs followed. McDougall takes a very cautionary view of this, invoking often Ike's fear of technocratic tendencies to shove aside the American ideals of freedom.

[Robert Sparrenberger · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very thorough look at the space race from a political viewpoint. The problem with this book is it is horribly overwritten. 461 pages of dense text that could be whittled down by at least 100 pages. Excruciating details are discussed leaving the reader with a headache from all the material.

The author also wants to get deep towards the end and turn philosophical. I was so tired that my eyes glazed over reading about the origins of the universe.

There is also a lot of exclamation points in this book. Lots of typos on the kindle edition as well. Plus they included the page numbers in the text which was annoying.

Mediocre at best for such a highly acclaimed book. Not for the average reader who wants a review of the space race.

[Bobby Fiasco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good political/industrial history of the space race, but through no fault of its own suffers from its age. Published in 1985 (or 6?) there's a lot that the west didn't yet know about the Soviet program.

[Aaron Arnold · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this in tandem with Charles Murray's Apollo, and it suffered mightily in the comparison. Judging from the glowing reviews of this book that are out there (and its Pulitzer Prize for History for 1986) I might the only person whose primary reaction to this very broad, extensive, and well-sourced "Political History of the Space Age" was that it could have used some perspective, but that's life. Before I start complaining, let me describe the work: McDougall's subject here are the changes that the United States and the Soviet Union underwent as a result of the Space Race, with particular emphasis on shifts in the civilian-military relationship and how the decision to be #1 increased the role of the government as a setter of national priorities as opposed to the people/the market/the prior way of doing things. It's an ambitious subject, and for the most part the book is filled with a wealth of fascinating detail about the struggle for space superiority. The sections that cover the Soviet side of the story in particular are a great exposition of the benefits and the dangers that a command economy can pose when it comes to scientific research, the latter of which can't be emphasized enough. Interestingly, McDougall discovers that in some ways the Soviet terrors and purges did not seem to materially hamper their space program as much as might be thought, due to the great emphasis they put on closely-related military projects like nuclear weapons. Even more interestingly, McDougall pokes some big holes in the common perception that the early space race was initially largely between "our Germans" and "their Germans" - the Soviets had plenty of talented engineers and scientists of their own, as demonstrated by their highly effective tanks and rockets. However, since the USSR did not have the equivalent of NASA, a civilian agency, their space program was even more influenced by their military than was the American program, and hence had even greater problems articulating peaceful goals and interacting with the world at large. I was also highly engaged by the way that the US used "space dividend" technological advances as diplomatic tools to head off the Soviets through trade deals with other countries, as well as the discussions about international cooperation and demilitarization of space, and also how the space race began to spread to other nations like France. However, I can't rate the book very highly overall, and my main issues can be summarized thusly: it's biased, it's sensationalist, and it doesn't settle any of the questions it raises because McDougall doesn't really understand them. Let's take those one at a time. First off, let me say that whatever your position on the timeless philosophical question of "can history ever truly be objective?", I think we would all agree that there's a difference between the kind of inevitable forced subjectivity that comes from having only limited space to write, in other words bias due to the limits of space and time, and the kind of subjectivity that comes from trying to force facts into a narrative. To a certain extent this second kind of bias is just as inevitable as the first (after all, if you just wrote a collection of facts unordered by any kind of higher logic, that's basically the opposite of a history), but in choosing the precise narrative - what to emphasize, what kind of higher principle animates the past events, what to make of changes and discontinuities - you've always got to make sure you're not artificially tying down some loose ends that are actually part of a bigger tapestry. McDougall has issues with this. It's always a bad idea to read history through the lens of your own political leanings, but when you encounter histories this soaked in ideology you almost can't help mentally recoiling. Plainly put, McDougall has a bad case of Eisenhower worship, and this ended up unraveling most of the appeal of the book for me. Now, if you are an Eisenhower fan, then you'll be silently cheering as you read the twentieth time he gets portrayed as a sage visionary and misunderstood guardian of America's most cherished and time-honored values. If, like me, you regard him as very prescient when it came to things like the dangers of the military-industrial complex but not exactly out in front when it came to solutions to problems of poverty, racism, or other the complex social issues that came to the forefront during these times, then you see McDougall's constant belittling of people who had different ideas than Eisenhower as what it is: bias. It's fine to be conservative, and it's fine to write a history from a conservative perspective, but it doesn't help anyone to mislead your readers by artificially stacking the deck in favor of your heroes. McDougall does this in a few different ways, most irritatingly by giving the impression that different positions held by different people at different times were really unified factions, thus allowing wise statesman Eisenhower to calmly steer the country past these chattering herds of loons. Even worse, this is frequently done in that dismayingly dense, convoluted academic style of quoting critics citing summaries of positions being disparaged by yet other people, layered over with links of strawmen. One example is the discussion of the changing role of the federal government in education in response to Sputnik. McDougall is trying to show that people were "cashing in on the Cold War alarm to sell the notion that government money was a panacea for all variety of deficiency" as a prelude to validate his later support of Eisenhower's attachment to the existing system of primarily state and local funding against those meddling do-gooder liberals who will arrive during the Great Society period a few years later. He starts by claiming that John Dewey's Progressive Education was the "reigning philosophy" of American schools but that it "came under attack". In lieu of actually describing it, he simply quotes the later attacks of James Killian that Dewey's system supposedly advocated "education as a sovereign remedy for all our social problems" as well as the contention of the unnamed author of And Madly Teach, whatever that was, that Dewey proposed "the same amount and kind of education for all individuals". He then tacks on still more completely unrelated criticisms of public education in general from more unnamed "social progressives" worried about racial discrimination and then "Cold War pragmatists" that want "excellence to be set apart and cultivated". McDougall solemnly concludes after this almost indecipherable mishmash that these people had "Opposite emphases, but the same solution: more federal direction and subsidy". Now, it should be obvious that those people had nothing to do with each other, so he can't legitimately conclude that any of those people would have advocated anywhere the same solutions to their various concerns as the others. In addition, I've never heard of anyone claiming that money from the feds would solve all problems ever in the history of the world. That this kind of analysis is pretty much the only game in town for nearly 500 pages means that the work reads largely like a debate between McDougall and his strawmen, and not really a debate between the views of any real people at all. This impression is enhanced by his near-inability to simply tell you what someone said without also telling you what you should think about it. An example is when he slams the New York Times as having "little interest in accurate reportage" for a 1959 headline of "US Space Program Far Behind Soviets", mere pages after reproducing a table from National Security Council memo NSC-5814/1 saying exactly the same thing! Maybe looking back you can confidently sneer at the Times, but back then it wasn't so obvious what was going on with the USSR at all, and like in countless other cases in the book, they get lots of snide commentary and 20/20 hindsight. I get that this is a political history, meaning that it has to concentrate on what people were saying at the time (which frequently means cataloging all sorts of errors and lies), but this determined effort to cheerlead for Eisenhower and his idea of America is the framework for the whole book, and is transparently not good history. This is why I thought it could have used more perspective: McDougall continually champions the old, pre-New Deal/Great Society of thinking, and makes much of our transition or saltation into "technocracy" (a vague term that isn't ever clearly defined, but seems to mean a sort of managed capitalism oriented towards goals managed by the central government), but while the space race might be one of the clearest modern examples of the fight between the Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian visions of America, he never really makes clear that this conflict is as old as, well, Jefferson and Hamilton. Indeed, pretty much every society in world history has had conflicts about how much power to allocate to their central government, or which projects they'd like it to undertake. Is it really so hubristic or unprecedented to ask "If we can put a man on the moon...?", especially when it had such dramatic success? McDougall's inability to come to really come to terms with this broader perspective on why people actually advocate for more or less government involvement in big social prospects lead him finally into the morass of the last two chapters, which I frankly confess I found to be almost meaningless swamps of jargon and religious philosophizing. How can a writer with his ability and poetic sensibility get so totally lost? Maybe it's just me, and I've completely missed the insights McDougall uncovered, but by the end of the book I'd come to the conclusion that he was just playing with words in order to comfort himself about his own sentimental attachment to the pre-Apollo era and inability to come to terms with progress. Maybe that's just the definition of a conservative. All I know is that while there's plenty of good stuff in the book, it comes with a lot of baggage.

[Karl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Walter McDougall's extensive study of the politics of the space age is primarily an analysis of the diplomatic, managerial, and philosophical aspects of missiles, rockets, space science and technology. He is primarily concerned with what he calls "technocracy," the idea that science, technology, and R&D should be managed as a mass governmental system aimed at producing progress. He notes how the prospects of the space age brought together an assorted coalition of believers from both American political parties, various ideologies, and different professions, in a brief burst of techno-enthusiasm. In parallel, he tells the story (insofar as could be told during the days of Soviet secrecy) of the USSR's embrace of space as a way to promote national and communist prestige, and as a massive bluff to deflect from real military weakness. "Big Science" flowed more naturally from Marxism than it did from Capitalism, but there were plenty of struggles among Soviet government, military, and scientific elites.

On the pro side, this book is phenomenally sourced and documented. It offers detailed accounts of key historical factors: the development of the German weapons, the acquisition of said technology by the Americans, the long tradition of rocketry in the USSR, the creation of NASA, the development of communication satellites, and the decision by John F. Kennedy to endorse the Apollo missions. I also liked his evolutionary metaphor that begins and ends the book: the fish Eusthenopteron, an early colonizer of the land 360 million years ago.

There are some negative points, however. The detail at times can be be overwhelming, as can some of the philosophical musings. In contrast to the intense detail given to managerial structures and political maneuverings, there is very little on either scientific probes or Human spaceflight. While this is a political history, there are long sections on rocket/missile development and Comsats but Yuri Gagarin's flight and the Apollo missions receive very little detail; the Apollo fire and Apollo 11 itself rate only brief mentions. Perhaps McDougall assumed American readers would already be familiar with these events. This book therefore may be more valuable for those who already have a good background in the history and are looking for an interpretive framework to understand that history.

[Jeff Greason · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been an enthusiastic student of, and at times a participant in, the space enterprise for most of my life now. Along the way I'd come to realize, one bit at a time, how much the reality of the space program, of Apollo, and of the U.S. government's approach to technological development were so different than much accepted wisdom. I knew that the space race had not been entered in to for the noble purposes proclaimed for it. I knew that Eisenhower had been quite willing to let the Soviet Union get the first satellite up if we couldn't get it done for 'scientific' purposes because it was critical to U.S. national interest to establish the freedom of space overflight for reconnaissance purposes. I knew that there was something deeply awry with the way that Federal centralization of R&D funding often chose large projects while squashing smaller and more promising concepts.

But I couldn't necessarily have told you *how* I knew these things. Each was a snippet here, an overheard remark there, a chance mention in a report.

McDougall's comprehensive summary of the space race from its origins through the mid 1980's (up until just before the Soviet Union began its fall), provides that, with clear writing and exhaustive footnotes. I marked it up extensively reading it, because now I will reach for it, when mentioning to someone one of these clear but still somewhat underappreciated truths, to cite the reference and address the footnote. For example, the diplomatic instruction that the Outer Space Treaty would deliberately leave unaddressed the ownership of space resources so long as the Soviet Union didn't bring it up either was anecdote -- now it is documented historical fact.

I suspect I come to this late and that some of the things I've learned from word of mouth were reported from this work; but if you are a serious student of the Space Age and you haven't read this book, do so. Long but worth it.

[John]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and found it extremely interesting. The overview of how the United States and Soviet Union developed their space programmes, and why things ended up how they did, is really fascinating and very relevant.

It’s fair to say that the author has a pretty firm view of the world which bleeds through into the book quite a bit. One choice part:

[…] the continued efforts by the United States to appear as the advocate of “space for peace” while owning up to extensive military operations in space exposed the country to charges of hypocrisy. That such charges were often born of pacifism, anti-Americanism, or just ignorance of the distinction between passive and active military systems was unimportant.

The implicit statement, there – that those Americans who criticise the United States are less American than those who do not – is extremely telling. But not as telling as this statement:

Some joined the “counterculture,” […] practicing a deviant private morality that hardly recommended their paradigm for society.

A “deviant private morality” is a hell of a thing to criticise. McDougall is clearly a fan of people having the right to their own lives, but equally clearly is only a fan of that when those lives look as he feels they should.

[JJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The 'enlightened' response to astronomy, space travel, and their contemplation was thus one of the pride and wonder at man's work (the universe is our oyster) and contempt for man himself (we are inconsequential dust). ... The eventual impact of spaceflight, I imagine, will be precisely the reverse of this enlightened viewpoint. It will teach us to have contempt for our works and value for ourselves. That, it seems to me, is true humility." p. 457

[katkes · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many details! This is one of those history books where you wonder how the author could possibly dig up so many details, yet the narrative doesn't get lost in them.

[John B · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest history book about space ever written. Dated today because the author published before public acknowledgement of the NRO. For anyone trying to understand the space race, start here.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I picked this up to learn more about NASA history now that i work for them, but expected it to be on things like the moon missions, etc. In fact, it was much more a book on the cold war and cold war policy. That being said, it was a fascinating look at how our R&D structures came into being and an interesting analysis of what happens when a capitalistic society tries to fight communism by installing state-run research and technology programs. "Technocracy" was the big word throughout. In all, the book was a much more thorough analysis of the cold war then most cold war books i've read because it delved right into the ambiguities and the policies that were enacted. Except for a few pages on various US and USSR missile and space budgets every now and then, it was a very engaging read, and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in how our attitudes towards funding science developed, the cold war, or the early days of the space race.

[Bruce · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author finished writing this tome shortly after the "Challenger" exploded on lift-off, killing all seven astronauts, i.e. over three decades ago. However, a lot of space history occurred before that incident. If one did not already know, Czarist Russia had scientists working on the theory of space flight; a preponderance of the early space scientists found their inspiration in writers such as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells; and, the missile gap did not exist. The book is logically divided into parts - the first two being before Sputnik;followed by a parts on the U. S. space program and the Soviet program, with a concluding part philosophizing on the space ages affect on society. Though it is a lengthy work, it is worth the read.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book--most of us know the basics of the space program--Mercury, Apollo, Gemini, etc.--but fewer know about how Eisenhower didn't take Sputnik very seriously, because it really wasn't a major feat of science. The book tells of a lesser known space race between the the Army and Navy and the NACA (later NASA) to see who would develop the USA's major launch vehicles. Lots of good discussion of military and civilian uses of space, the history of spy satellites, and the like. A bit thick and academic, but very worthwhile.

[Phil Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was required reading during a graduate course covering space policy. I found it to be a beautifully written book, something rare among books covering the history of spaceflight and the deeper meaning space holds for humankind (the irony isn't lost on me). A must read for those who a seeking a solid and well-written account of space history and the role of politics throughout.

[Chadfogg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, behind the scenes deep exploration of space race from an inside perspective. Some technical issues explored. 600 pages of intrigue really just the travails of humans trying overcome Earth's high gravity. Civilizations on worlds escape velocities of, say, a mere 4 km/s would likely have a far more boring history.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking. Shifts effortlessly from the details of American and Soviet space programs to the overarching questions of the relationship between humanity and technology, progress and freedom, and all of it beautifully written.

[Phoebe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Exhaustive detail can be a plus and a minus- it serves as both here. The book is a bit out of date now, but covers its intended time period well. It's often a bit repetitive, and the writing is so so dry. Well deserving of its Pultizer, it's still a very difficult book to read.

[Alecia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty decent. I enjoyed the policy discussions, but the painstakingly detailed descriptions of evolving ICBM technology bored me. But if you're of a more technical bent, and have any interest in space travel, NASA, and such, you'll love it.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, long long look at the background, the politics, and the implications for American (and Russian) society during the Space Race.

[Tom LaVenture · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most revealing book at the transformation of a society that I have read.