Shooting (from) the Moon: Space Technology, Earthbound Nature, and the New Left during the Vietnam War

This talk will examine the shared history of the space race to the moon and the Vietnam War during the 1960s and 1970s.  In an effort to help the U.S. military stem communism across the developing world, in the late 1960s NASA retooled several of its space technologies for covert use in the war in Southeast Asia.  When college students from the New Left began actively protesting against such research and development, NASA administrators were forced to rethink their efforts. As a result, the space agency scrapped the military hardware it was developing for Vietnam and instead began publicizing, across the globe, new space technologies such as Landsat, which could help scientists and government officials from developing countries to better manage their own natural resources. This technological shift — from using space hardware to seek and destroy communists in the late 1960s to deploying it instead to assess and restore the natural environment in the 1970s — had broader implications for U.S. foreign policy across the developing world during the Cold War era.
 

For further information, please contact: Tom Lassman at 202-633- 2419; lassmant@si.edu.
 

NON-SMITHSONIAN VISITORS MUST RSVP NO LATER THAN 48 HOURS BEFORE THE SEMINAR. On the day of the seminar, please report to the South Security Desk at the Museum’s Independence Avenue entrance. Those holding SI ID badges may proceed directly to the Director’s Conference Room on the 3rd floor.