{"id":13556,"date":"2020-08-04T15:10:47","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T19:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/?post_type=collection&#038;p=13556"},"modified":"2021-03-28T22:09:18","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T02:09:18","slug":"a-half-century-in-space","status":"publish","type":"collection","link":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/collections\/a-half-century-in-space","title":{"rendered":"A Half-Century in Space"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/TNA18-Banfield-Sputnik.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-18557\" width=\"500\" height=\"486\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/TNA18-Banfield-Sputnik.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/TNA18-Banfield-Sputnik-640x621.jpg 640w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption><cite>Elliott Banfield<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The space age began fifty years ago  with the launch of Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, on October  4, 1957. It was a great technical and political triumph for the Soviet  Union. In the United States, the immediate reaction was a swift and  harsh self-assessment marked by very public fretting about a \u201ctechnology  gap.\u201d But a dozen years later, at the climax of the space race, the  first men on the Moon were Americans. In the decades since, the civilian  space program has largely receded from public attention \u2014 even as space  has become indispensable to the military and the high-tech industry,  and as a promising new private space sector is just taking shape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To mark the Sputnik anniversary \u2014 and with it, the beginning of the space age \u2014 we have reprinted <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/the-conquest-of-space-and-the-stature-of-man\">Hannah Arendt\u2019s classic 1963 essay<\/a>  about modern science and the human meaning of our celestial  aspirations, and invited five commentators to respond to her argument  and to discuss its relevance today: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/nature-man-and-common-sense\">Patrick J. Deneen<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/science-and-totalitarianism\">Rita Koganzon<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/thumos-in-space\">Charles T. Rubin<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/chariots-in-the-sky\">Stephen Bertman<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/publications\/our-proud-human-future\">Peter Augustine Lawler<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":17824,"template":"","collection_type":[2247],"topics":[2280],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection\/13556"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/collection"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"collection_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/collection_type?post=13556"},{"taxonomy":"topics","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thenewatlantis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topics?post=13556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}