Space Rapture: Extraterrestrial Millennialism and the Cultural Construction of Space Colonization (2004)
McMillen, Ryan Jeffrey (Author)
University of Texas at Austin
Meikle, Jeffrey
Smith, Mark
Edition Details: Advisors: Meikle, Jeffrey; Mark Smith
Physical Details: 462 pp.
Language: English
The dream of space colonization possesses deep roots in the Christian apocalyptic fantasy of the Rapture of the elect to occur prior to the return of Christ. Space colonization, like its predecessor ascension fantasy, the Rapture, has always involved a tension between the liberation of a holy vanguard and the imminent destruction of the Earth. With the rise of modern technology, rocketry and space travel became, for fundamentalist Christians and technological determinists alike, the manmade tools and signs of an imminent apocalypse. In this dissertation, the 1970s space colonization proposal of Princeton physicist Gerard O'Neill is offered as a case study of these millennial roots of the spacebound dream. O'Neill's colonies, offered as a way to avoid an irrevocable time of Earthly tribulation, were touted as the means of depopulating the Earth and ending terrestrial conflict. O'Neill's dreams for rocketry were no different than the dreams of those men who pioneered rocketry before him, although earlier rocketeers and space enthusiasts held more explicitly Christian-inspired apocalyptic beliefs concerning the fate of the Earth and the destiny of humanity. In addition to examining O'Neill's colonial fantasy, this dissertation analyzes the religious and philosophical beliefs of the rocketeers to show how each of them was deeply influenced by apocalypse and Rapture fantasy. While O'Neill's plan resembled earlier space colonization and Rapture imaginings, it also incorporated the more terrestrially benevolent dreams of the burgeoning environmental movement of the era. In attempting to unite the Space Age with a newly powerful "Earth Age," O'Neill sought to resurrect the dream of space colonization for a new generation. However, O'Neill failed in this attempt. Instead of seeing humanity's future in the stars, off of a doomed Earth, many in Western culture began in the late 1960s to imagine human destiny within a long and peaceful future on Earth. This perspective came about, paradoxically, as a result of perhaps the most epochal achievement of the space race: the first photographs of the planet from the distance of the moon.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/08 (2005): 3034. Pub. no. AAT 3143429.
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