Growing up with the U.S. Space Program

 

In this essay, a professional trade journalist reflects on the space program’s development from its earliest years to the present, and the ways in which America’s vault into the heavens parallels his own personal and professional journey.

 

I vividly recall my feelings as a youngster in the mid-1950s when I heard the news report of the USSR’s launch of the world’s first artificial satellite. Brought up as a teenager with the works of Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Jules Verne, and other science fiction notables, my expectation was that the United States would lead the way into space. It was a shock, at my age, to learn of our defeat in this effort. Moreover, it was scary. To my adolescent way of thinking in a post-McCarthy Cold War era, it was clear to me that the Russians would dominate America from the skies.

 

Over the intervening years I hadn’t given much thought to the late 1950s until I read an advance copy of Walsh’s book. Then the events of my youth came back to me in a flurry. I remembered the frustration I felt over the ill-fated US attempts to launch a competing satellite. I recalled sitting in a high school classroom and listening to the Alan Shepard flight over the school’s intercom. I remembered cutting school so I could go to the John Glenn parade. I recollected the excitement of actually glimpsing a contemporary American hero as he passed before me in a ticker tape procession down Broadway.

 

Patrick Walsh’s book also reminds me of the black-powder rockets I tinkered with in high school. It made me remember the almost daily newspaper accounts of school kids blowing off their hands and losing their eyes. It also reminded me of the surge in interest in science and technology in those days, and how public schools across the country made student science fairs a top priority.

 

Walsh’s book cogently reminded me of how much the Space Race meant to me personally and professionally over the ensuing years too. As the competition to be first on the moon became real, I found myself working shoulder to shoulder with a motivated staff employed by a subcontractor to Grumman Aerospace Corporation. I wrote much of the liquid oxygen loading manual for the LEM. Yes, the US space program created jobs for many people in those days -- and I was one of them.

 

Political events of the late 1960s and the 1970s largely overshadowed the space program for me. In 1965 I was conscripted into the US Army to do battle in Vietnam. When I received my Army discharge and returned home, I enrolled in a university to earn an undergraduate diploma. However, the campus turmoil and political ferment surrounding the Vietnam war years impacted me as a civilian and a veteran. In retrospect, it was clear that domestic events of the day eclipsed many of the achievements of the US space program.

 

Today, as I read Echoes Among the Stars, I realize how much of this vital history passed me by, even though I was inextricably caught up in the space program over nearly a decade and a half. Patrick Walsh’s organization of the material in his book, and his attention to factual detail, brought the period to life for me as if I had never missed a beat. His work sheds light on a period of history that was obscured for many people by Cold War rhetoric and obfuscation. The events of the Vietnam era deterred attention from the Space Race. Walsh dissipates these clouds of history.

 

What’s more, I read his accounts of the Russian achievements and failures with new interest, especially the technical comparisons contrasting the Russian efforts with our own. I haven’t seen this treatment elsewhere, and I found it fair handed and compelling.

 

Although Kubrick’s classic movie “2001” and its sequel, “2010,” gave theatregoers a sci-fi view of the future, and although recent cinematic accounts such as “October Sky” and “Apollo 13” graphically portray the era of my youth (and missed segments of history for me), I found Echoes Among the Stars a tantalizing in-depth analysis of the very real events of the Space Race, space exploration, the Cosmonauts and Astronauts, and other people who made it happen.

 

As a technologist, I also found Patrick Walsh’s mix of historical accuracy and technical detail rewarding. He really brings Russian and American space exploration events to life. His writing style is smooth and eloquent, and I always felt a sense of excitement and positive tension while reading this book. It seems devoid of the tutorial dryness you might expect from reading other documents that summarize the era.

 

My feeling is that Echoes Among the Stars would make a fine focal point for a college history course covering the approximately 30 year period of the Space Race. For me, Patrick Walsh’s blend of fact and narrative brought the events -- and significantly, the people involved -- to life in a way that college students of today will be able to relate to.

 

Moreover, I think that although Echoes Among the Stars: A Short History of the US Space Program is an educational eye opener, it will appeal to non-scholastic readers as well. It’s illuminating and well written; Walsh’s easy-to-read style should capture those readers who lived through the decades of the Space Race -- as well as more youthful readers.

 

Now that the Soviet era has passed into history, I also think readers will appreciate Walsh’s observations about how the former USSR obscured and modified Russian history. In the waning days of the Mir space station, and as the international space station starts to become a reality, Walsh’s book will undoubtedly serve as a stepping stone from recent history into the events of the near future. He brings a complex and technical subject to life in a non-technical manner that would be of interest to both educators and general audiences.