Conestoga Wagons to the Moon

Résumé du livre

NASA incorporated frontier language into its discussions of the American space program, targeting presidents, the Congress, and the general public. Just as the majority of Americans connected the frontier past to the nation's character, NASA's leadership believed that the frontier had molded the nation's identity, making the United States unique within the world. This belief permeated the agency's discussions of its mission. Administrators introduced a version of Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis to describe the benefits of the new space "frontier" and employed popular frontier images to make the space program more exciting for their audience. Presidents, the Congress, and the majority of American citizens agreed with the agency's perceptions of the frontier's importance in United States history and were convinced that space was the nation's new frontier. Despite growing opposition to space budgets by the late 1960s and 1970s, most Americans still accepted NASA's view of America's frontier legacy and its connections to space.