Return of the Lost Spaceman: America's Astronauts in Popular Culture, 1959-2006

Popular culture about astronauts exploded with the accelerating Space Race, supplementing long-standing science fiction literature with semi-accurate portrayals of real-life space travelers. Relative openness was a design feature of the American human spaceflight program; while the Soviet space program generally concealed most derails about its vehicles, personnel, and flights, the American endeavor made a particular effort to communicate to the whole world through a diverse range of popular media, including Life magazine. Here, Hersch suggests that the repeated, often troubled reconceptualizations of the astronaut--as pilot, scientist, average citizen, and domestic caretaker--reveal the close connection between public image-making and the most controversial evolutions in American human spaceflight policy.