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Apollo in the Age of Aquarius
The summer of 1969 saw astronauts land on the moon for the first time and hippie hordes descend on Woodstock for a legendary music festival. For Neil M. Maher, the conjunction of these two era-defining events is not entirely coincidental. Apollo in the Age of Aquarius shows how the celestial aspirations of NASA’s Apollo space program were tethered to terrestrial concerns, from the civil rights struggle and the antiwar movement to environmentalism, feminism, and the counterculture. With its lavishly funded mandate to send a man to the moon, Apollo became a litmus test in the 1960s culture wars. Many people believed it would reinvigorate a country that had lost its way, while for others it represented a colossal waste of resources needed to solve pressing problems at home. Yet Maher also discovers synergies between the space program and political movements of the era. Photographs of “Whole Earth” as a bright blue marble heightened environmental awareness, while NASA’s space technology allowed scientists to track ecological changes globally. The space agency’s exclusively male personnel sparked feminist debates about opportunities for women. Activists pressured NASA to apply its technical know-how to ending the Vietnam War and helping African Americans by reducing energy costs in urban housing projects. Particularly during the 1970s, as public interest in NASA waned, the two sides became dependent on one another for political support. Against a backdrop of Saturn V moonshots and Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Apollo in the Age of Aquarius brings the cultural politics of the space race back down to planet Earth.
368 pages, Hardcover
Published March 27, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 16, 2019
Even though NASA was founded in 1958 as strictly a civilian agency, it was immediately besieged by US military and after JFKs speech it had a single mission: Get to the moon before the decade is out, society, science, environment, equality and economy be damned.
And unlucky for NASA this was happening in the 60s and early 70s. All of this did cause a lot of criticism and with that in typical 60s fashion a lot of protests, censure and ridicule. With this NASA and counter culture grew together and fed of of each other and made them both better (at least in my opinion it helped NASA fulfill its original charter).
One has to applaud the author for exploring the connection between these two, for this is the first time I see a historian dive into this topic, but unfortunately this book is clumsily written. Maybe going in chronological order would have helped, or the author could have chosen just one topic to explore and make it into a series.
Anyway it was an interesting and educational read, but a flawed one (maybe an editor could have helped).
And unlucky for NASA this was happening in the 60s and early 70s. All of this did cause a lot of criticism and with that in typical 60s fashion a lot of protests, censure and ridicule. With this NASA and counter culture grew together and fed of of each other and made them both better (at least in my opinion it helped NASA fulfill its original charter).
One has to applaud the author for exploring the connection between these two, for this is the first time I see a historian dive into this topic, but unfortunately this book is clumsily written. Maybe going in chronological order would have helped, or the author could have chosen just one topic to explore and make it into a series.
Anyway it was an interesting and educational read, but a flawed one (maybe an editor could have helped).
November 8, 2021
all reviews in one place:
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: We’re more or less all aware of what space exploration might, in the end, in the future, hold for humanity. But we rarely think or even know what the money and resources put into those missions means to us, our planet, now. This book explores all that and more by overviewing NASA’s Apollo mission history, history full of racism, sexism, humanitarian and environmental issues, and more.
My Opinion: This is a valuable book to broaden the understanding of how we all got to where we are, no matter if one agrees with the presented idea on what’s the issue or not. A bit dry to read, but very highly informative nonetheless, the book presents a detailed overview on the issues that remain overlooked even decades later.
night mode reading ;
skaitom nakties rezimu
About the Book: We’re more or less all aware of what space exploration might, in the end, in the future, hold for humanity. But we rarely think or even know what the money and resources put into those missions means to us, our planet, now. This book explores all that and more by overviewing NASA’s Apollo mission history, history full of racism, sexism, humanitarian and environmental issues, and more.
My Opinion: This is a valuable book to broaden the understanding of how we all got to where we are, no matter if one agrees with the presented idea on what’s the issue or not. A bit dry to read, but very highly informative nonetheless, the book presents a detailed overview on the issues that remain overlooked even decades later.
August 21, 2018
One of my first memories as a child was seeing the publicity surrounding the original seven astronauts, and I was a lunar program junkie during the '60's and early '70's. I usually gobble up books about the space program, but I found myself pushing just to finish this book. Its purpose is to place the space program firmly into the political, social, and cultural forces that were exploding in the 1960's, a worthy goal. Unfortunately, the book only achieves mixed results. I think that it really succeeds in showing how the modern women's movement impacted the space program, as well as how the program contributed to the transformation of the politics of the Sun Belt. I actually would have liked to have read more about these issues. I also enjoined the very brief discussion of the impact of the space program on popular American culture. That's another book that I would love to read. The book comes up short when it analyzes the intersections with the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement. The author does find some "residuals" of the space program that were designed to placate the critics in each of these areas, but I found these connections strained and somewhat superficial. I also was disappointed that the book did not bring in a great deal of the human drama that made manned space flight so captivating. The story of Sally Ride refusing to accept a bouquet of flowers at the end of her historic flight was very instructive; the book could have used more of this type of "human touch." (Look at the great acclaim with which the movie "Hidden Figures" was received a couple of years ago.) But the one incomprehensible, inexcusable problem with the book was that the author got the date of Apollo 11's landing incorrect (it was July 20, NOT July 24). This is a man who devoted certainly months, if not years, of his life to studying the space program and he got incorrect the most important date in its history. (And do the editors and proofreaders not know this date either?) In short, the second half of the book is worthwhile, the first half not so much.
July 22, 2021
This book was fantastic, notwithstanding poor reviews from boomers. In the last chapter, Maher traces out how the space program and big tech became incredibly conservative, attracting employees who were predominantly white and male, who upheld gendered divisions of labor, created suburban sprawl and traffic jams as white-collar workers flocked to move near their company headquarters in the aerospace crescent that spanned from Florida to Southern California.
Some of these astronauts and industry people were real bastards. Von Braun was a Nazi, Lovell thought women who wanted to see women in space were "sexually deprived," John Glenn laughed at the idea. People protested the space program in the 60s because they wanted those resources and funds to be used to provide housing and jobs for people on Earth. The Civil Rights Movement was contemporary with the beginning of the Space Race, as was the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, and you can see the demographics of people who participated in those movements vs. those who were lauded or invested in the U.S. beating the USSR to the Moon. I think if you want to learn more about what was happening in the 60s in the U.S., I think this book is an excellent place to start.
Some of these astronauts and industry people were real bastards. Von Braun was a Nazi, Lovell thought women who wanted to see women in space were "sexually deprived," John Glenn laughed at the idea. People protested the space program in the 60s because they wanted those resources and funds to be used to provide housing and jobs for people on Earth. The Civil Rights Movement was contemporary with the beginning of the Space Race, as was the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, and you can see the demographics of people who participated in those movements vs. those who were lauded or invested in the U.S. beating the USSR to the Moon. I think if you want to learn more about what was happening in the 60s in the U.S., I think this book is an excellent place to start.
July 18, 2017
There's some good information here, mostly in the form of anecdotes and editorial cartoons, but it doesn't come together in an effective book. Several long sections (for example, those on the construction of the astronauts' space suits and the construction of the Houston space center) don't connect clearly to the main theme: the hostility between the "progressive" currents of the Sixties (civil rights, environmentalism, etc.) and NASA. There's certainly some cogency to that approach, but Maher frequently invokes stereotypical and simplified versions of the movements he's addressing. Closer to a two star than a four star book.
August 2, 2017
Maher did an outstanding job of researching his subject. As a youngster growing up during this period it was refreshing to read about it as an adult. His book made many things clear that I had forgotten or didn't understand as a young boy.
How different would the world be today if NASA had not fallen to the changing political pressures of the times?
How different would the world be today if NASA had not fallen to the changing political pressures of the times?
May 5, 2019
This provided such great, and necessary context to what was happening in the world at the time of the Apollo missions. It was interesting to hear the contemporary responses and criticisms to the launches, as well as NASA’s own responses and solutions to those outcries.
September 30, 2019
I've been meaning to read this book for a couple of years, so I'm not sure why I was so uninterested. The history was fine but I guess I would have liked for a bit more analysis and a bit less recitation of facts.
April 20, 2019
Well researched and well written account of impact of racial, environmental, and women’s interests on Apollo and the space program.
May 5, 2019
A fascinating history of the Apollo years in the social impact of NASA and how it reflected the major issues of the time.
May 16, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
This book was positively mentioned by Tyler Cowen. So I got it, thanks to the ILL staff at the University Near Here, from Brandeis U.
And I am immediately saying: Professor Cowen, did we read the same book? Because I found it simplistic, meandering, and wrong-headed. And I usually start out with a positive bias toward the books I take the trouble to get from the library, because I want to believe that I haven't wasted my time.
The author, Neil M. Maher, is a professor of history in the Federated History Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, Newark.
The book purports to examine the odd coincidence during the 1960s and early 1970s: we had the Apollo Project, a—literally—unprecedented technological feat that (as Ray Bradbury put it at the time) people would "look back upon a million years from tonight". But we also had hippies, the dawn of modern feminism, the dawn of modern environmentalism, civil rights struggles, Vietnam, Commies,…
I lived through that. I know. It was a weird time to be alive. So I kind of assumed that Professor Maher would have some insights that might make things a little less jumbled in my mind. But no.
It starts off with a promising anecdote: two Apollo 13 astronauts, Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert, attending, post-mission, a Broadway performance of Hair. How appropriate! Apollo 13's Lunar Module—the one that saved the astronauts' lives—had the callsign "Aquarius", and the most memorable song from Hair was… yes, "Aquarius". But Lovell and Swigert walked out after the first act, due to the production's disrespectful treatment of the American flag.
Good conflict-of-cultures story, but then things get tedious. Maher tries to show the interaction between NASA, Apollo, and all that other stuff: the military, environmentalism, feminism, politics. But he never gets beyond making tendentious conclusions and dubious interpretations of conveniently-selected facts.
Part of the problem is that Maher seems weak on the technology, probably due to lack of interest. Warning sign: on page 14 he says the Saturn V "transported astronauts through space at 17,400 miles per hour". Wince. That's near-earth-orbital velocity, Neil. The whole point of Saturn V was to get Apollo into a trans-lunar injection trajectory, requiring somewhere around 23,000 earth-relative mph.
Neither does Maher do a good job of portraying NASA's political history. Give them a slight break: they were tasked with performing a mission that was as much a cold-war gimmick with an arbitrary deadline as it was a technological marvel. Once the post-Apollo been-there-done-that attitude set in, it found itself in a desperate bureaucratic struggle for Maintained Funding, which manifested itself in all sorts of strained efforts to show relevance.
Not helping was the common fill-in-the-blank saying "if we can put a man on the moon, we can surely ________". Where the blank was filled, as appropriate, with whatever the speaker wanted taxpayer dollars spent on. Maher takes all these claims with zero skepticism.
Another irritation was in the chapter on feminism. Much is made of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, on Vostok 6 in 1963, and the fact that NASA's crew of astronauts at the time was all-dude. Maher avoids noting how much of a propaganda gimmick Tereshkova's flight was; the USSR didn't bother to fly another woman until 1982. (Sally Ride was the third woman in space in 1983.) The history of women in space is interesting, but Maher only seems interested enough to indict NASA's (and America's) disgusting sexism.
January 25, 2019
While there are many books about the heyday of NASA and the Apollo missions, and there are many books about society and the counterculture of the 1960's, there aren't many books about NASA and Apollo in the context of cultural upheaval and change. Topics explored include
civil rights, poverty and housing, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement, and sexism and feminism.
Some lesser know pieces of related history: 1. Pressure from Ralph Abernathy (and other civil rights activists) convinced NASA to partner with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help address issues of inadequate housing and sanitation in inner city neighborhoods. 2. NASA's support of American military operations in Vietnam, such as battlefield motion sensor activity relayed to ground command via NASA satellites (ironically, NASA later used some of this same satellite technology to monitor environmental change across the globe and even shared imagery with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam). 3. How a grassroots campaign by writer Stewart Brand , who sent "Why Haven't We Seen a Photo of the Whole Earth Yet?" buttons to NASA administrators and scientists convinced the agency to release its first photo of planet Earth - the 1967 photo became known as the "Whole Earth" or "Blue Marble" photo. Ironically, this photo would greatly inspire many to think more deeply about their planet and their place in the universe, more so than outer space.
Some interesting vignettes include astronauts James Lovell and Jack Swigert walking out of the musical "Hair", and Space Shuttle astronaut and scientist Sally Ride's refusal to accept a post-mission flower bouquet from NASA. Maher closes with his own memories of Apollo and cultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, and NASA's place in the 21st Century. My only issue with the book is that the author tends to repeatedly summarize arguments within a chapter or section, when a single reiteration would have sufficed. Overall, this is a well-rounded history of the relationship between technological progress and cultural change.
civil rights, poverty and housing, the anti-war movement, the environmental movement, and sexism and feminism.
Some lesser know pieces of related history: 1. Pressure from Ralph Abernathy (and other civil rights activists) convinced NASA to partner with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help address issues of inadequate housing and sanitation in inner city neighborhoods. 2. NASA's support of American military operations in Vietnam, such as battlefield motion sensor activity relayed to ground command via NASA satellites (ironically, NASA later used some of this same satellite technology to monitor environmental change across the globe and even shared imagery with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam). 3. How a grassroots campaign by writer Stewart Brand , who sent "Why Haven't We Seen a Photo of the Whole Earth Yet?" buttons to NASA administrators and scientists convinced the agency to release its first photo of planet Earth - the 1967 photo became known as the "Whole Earth" or "Blue Marble" photo. Ironically, this photo would greatly inspire many to think more deeply about their planet and their place in the universe, more so than outer space.
Some interesting vignettes include astronauts James Lovell and Jack Swigert walking out of the musical "Hair", and Space Shuttle astronaut and scientist Sally Ride's refusal to accept a post-mission flower bouquet from NASA. Maher closes with his own memories of Apollo and cultural movements of the 1960s and 70s, and NASA's place in the 21st Century. My only issue with the book is that the author tends to repeatedly summarize arguments within a chapter or section, when a single reiteration would have sufficed. Overall, this is a well-rounded history of the relationship between technological progress and cultural change.
May 9, 2022
Apollo in the Age of Aquarius is about the way NASA influenced social movements and social movements influenced NASA in the 1960s and 70s. The author covers a wide range of social movements, which can give it the feel of an overview, and sometimes he loses his chronology, as his book is ordered topically. But I thought his argument was interesting and he clearly did his research. The Vietnam chapter was interesting but not altogether convincing, though kudos to Maher for digging up what he did on the Vietnamese and Russians in space. Maher has a really interesting argument to be made and a good framework for analysis, but there are so many moving parts that sometimes that analysis gets condensed down to just a sentence, and falls a bit flat. While he has really interesting and detailed examinations of each social movement he discusses, and did very impressive work with his primary sources, he does not link the social movements together very well, which I think is odd because they were concomitant and also in dialogue with each other. I learned a lot from the book, and I think it's a valuable read and addition to the canon, but there were some weak spots that left me wanting more.
April 24, 2018
The book does not live up to it's title and premise. For an academic this guy is pretty good writer though.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews