No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

Rather than focusing on the history of the space program, this book examines American culture in the 1960s and 70s through the lens of the Apollo moon landings
Explains why even as early the first moon landing, NASA was already facing a society that was growing indifferent (and even hostile) to its missions
Uses movies, novels, rock albums, religious tracts, and other cultural products to gauge reactions to the Apollo moon landings in popular culture

No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

Description

During the summer of 1969-the summer Americans first walked on the moon-musician and poet Patti Smith recalled strolling down the Coney Island Boardwalk to a refreshment stand, where "pictures of Jesus, President Kennedy, and the astronauts were taped to the wall behind the register." Such was the zeitgeist in the year of the moon. Yet this holy trinity of 1960s America would quickly fall apart. Although Jesus and John F. Kennedy remained iconic, by the time the Apollo Program came to a premature end just three years later few Americans mourned its passing.

Why did support for the space program decrease so sharply by the early 1970s? Rooted in profound scientific and technological leaps, rational technocratic management, and an ambitious view of the universe as a realm susceptible to human mastery, the Apollo moon landings were the grandest manifestation of postwar American progress and seemed to prove that the United States could accomplish anything to which it committed its energies and resources. To the great dismay of its many proponents, however, NASA found the ground shifting beneath its feet as a fierce wave of anti-rationalism arose throughout American society, fostering a cultural environment in which growing numbers of Americans began to contest rather than embrace the rationalist values and vision of progress that Apollo embodied.

Shifting the conversation of Apollo from its Cold War origins to larger trends in American culture and society, and probing an eclectic mix of voices from the era, including intellectuals, religious leaders, rock musicians, politicians, and a variety of everyday Americans, Matthew Tribbe paints an electrifying portrait of a nation in the midst of questioning the very values that had guided it through the postwar years as it began to develop new conceptions of progress that had little to do with blasting ever more men to the moon. No Requiem for the Space Age offers a narrative of the 1960s and 1970s unlike any told before, with the story of Apollo as the story of America itself in a time of dramatic cultural change.

No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

Prologue
Introduction

Part I: On Talking about Apollo
1. "The Message of the Spirit of Apollo": Commonplace Reactions
2. The Nihilism of the WASPs: Norman Mailer in NASA-Land

Part II: On Mastering the Universe
3. Apollo and the "Human Condition"
4. The Thunder of Apollo: A Benevolent Endeavor in a Century of Brutality

Part III: On Rationalism and Neo-Romanticism
5. Turning a Miracle into a Bummer: Squareland, Potland, and the Psychedelic Moon
6. "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot": Moon Voyaging in the Neo-Romantic 1970s

Conclusion: In the Wake of Apollo
Notes
Bibliography
Index

No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

Author Information

Matthew D. Tribbe is a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at the University of Connecticut.

No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

Reviews and Awards

"A persuasive, rollicking account of the moon landings as the final act in a post-war American love affair with science and rationalism." --The Economist

"Matthew Tribbe's examination of American attitudes towards the Apollo space program in the 1960s is a 'giant leap' away from the platitudes that dominate popular memory and too many historical accounts of the era-a first rate cultural history." --Maurice Isserman, co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s

"No Requiem for the Space Age is a wonderful read. Tribbe's prose is witty, ironic, and at times refreshingly irreverent. His history is also extremely important. By taking readers on an exploration not only of NASA's Apollo program but also of the films, fiction, and even television advertisements depicting space travel during the 1960s and 1970s, Tribbe traces the gradual decline of American's belief in technological progress and the subsequent rise of a new romantic spirit based on individual experience and subjectivity." --Neil M. Maher, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark

"Matthew Tribbe's account of the Apollo program and its demise provides a penetrating glimpse at American values and priorities in the 1960s and the years that followed. The energy of the space effort began to dissipate even before the program ended, and this engaging book shows how doubts about technology and reservations about progress itself dominated the larger conversation." --Allan M. Winkler, Miami University of Ohio

No Requiem for the Space Age

The Apollo Moon Landings and American Culture

Matthew D. Tribbe

From Our Blog

Why we don't go to the moon anymore

By Matthew D. Tribbe Today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. To understand Apollo's place in history, it might be helpful to go back forty-four rather than forty-five years, to the very first anniversary of the event in 1970. That July, several newspapers conducted informal surveys that revealed large majorities of Americans could no longer remember the name of Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon.

Posted on July 20, 2014

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