James E. Webb, NASA’s Administrator during the hectic years preparing to send American astronauts to the Moon, has come to represent the pinnacle of postwar American optimism and support for large-scale, technically complex national undertakings. Success in 1969 lent credence to Webb’s faith in “space age management.” By the 1980s such “technocratic optimism” had precipitously declined. Since 1985, with the publication of Walter A. McDougall’s Pulitzer Prize winning. . . The Heavens and the Earth, the rise and decline of such optimism has often been framed in the context of Cold War ideology and competition. In this study, aspects of Webb’s vision are traced back prior to World War II. It argues that Cold War emphasis, although certainly crucial for understanding the institutions and practices Webb directed, nevertheless tends to mask the full extent of the 1980s rejection of long standing attitudes toward planning, expertise, and rigorous scientific and technical knowledge.
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