American Futurism in the Atomic Era

NASA

            Within less than a year of the Soviet’s launch of Sputnik, the United States officially established NASA in its effort to win against the communist threat on the front of technological superiority. While the dream of space had already been decades old from a marketing standpoint, the momentum in applied sciences to the endeavor as well as in public and commercial support was unprecedented. Partly, this could be due to the late 1930’s and early 1940’s emphasis on war technology. Additionally, the evolution of rockets into the space race was necessary for adjacent technological progress to be achieved. The space race provided ample inspiration from a marketing standpoint. The result was a boom in advertising material and popular culture that centered on the message of a particular vision of tomorrow which promised the American public a leisurely future if they collectively got on board.[1]
 
[1] David Meerman Scott and Richard Jurek, Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014) 1-15.
 

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