Harnessing the Heavens: National Defense Through Space

Harnessing the Heavens brings together the leading scholars of national defense through space in one volume. These fourteen essays from the U.S. Air Force Academy's 21st Military History Symposium collectively provide a wide-ranging overview of humanity's efforts to use spaceflight and spacecraft, military and civilian, to advance national goals. With attention to the American, Soviet and Russian, and Chinese space programs, this volume carefully considers the political, technological, and social challenges of space, and gives the reader the best of the emerging and growing field of space history. Table of Contents: Preface / General Kevin P. Chilton; Foreword / Mark K. Wells; Introduction / Paul G. Gillespie and Grant T. Weller Space and the Cold War: Prime Motivations for Space: National Security, Space, and the Course of Recent U.S. History / Roger D. Launius • Beyond the Blue Horizon: Lunar Missile Base Concepts in the Early Cold War / William E. Burrows • The Race to the Moon: Imagination and Politics as Shaping Forces in Space Policy / Howard E. McCurdy • Reconnaissance and Prestige: The Creation of a Trinitarian U.S. Space Program / Mark A. Erickson • Starting the Space Race: The Early Development of the Soviet Space Program / P. Myles Smith Doctrinal Faith: Strategic Dimensions of the War Fighter and Space: Behind the Blue: The Unknown U.S. Air Force Manned Space Program / Dwayne A. Day • Recurring Themes in U.S. Air Force Space History / David N. Spires • Astropolitics and Astropolitik: Strategy and Space Deployment / Everett C. Dolman U.S. Space from the "Other Side of the Fence": Cultural-Institutional Perspective: Soviet Military Space Power during the Cold War / Asif A. Siddiqi • The Long March Upward: A Review of China's Space Program / Dean B. Cheng • Coping with Celebrity: Women as Astronauts and Heroes / Amy E. Foster Technological Change and the Transformation of American Space Power: T