Destined for the Stars
Faith, the Future, and America’s Final Frontier
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- £15.99
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- £15.99
Publisher Description
Where did humanity get the idea that outer space is a frontier waiting to be explored? Destined for the Stars unravels the popularization of the science of space exploration in America between 1944 and 1955, arguing that the success of the US space program was due not to technological or economic superiority, but was sustained by a culture that had long believed it was called by God to settle new frontiers and prepare for the inevitable end of time and God’s final judgment. Religious forces, Newell finds, were in no small way responsible for the crescendo of support for and interest in space exploration in the early 1950s, well before Project Mercury—the United States’ first human spaceflight program—began in 1959.
In this remarkable history, Newell explores the connection between the art of Chesley Bonestell—the father of modern space art whose paintings drew inspiration from depictions of the American West—and the popularity of that art in Cold War America; Bonestell’s working partnership with science writer and rocket expert Willy Ley; and Ley and Bonestell’s relationship with Wernher von Braun, father of both the V-2 missile and the Saturn V rocket, whose millennial conviction that God wanted humankind to leave Earth and explore other planets animated his life’s work. Together, they inspired a technological and scientific faith that awoke a deep-seated belief in a sense of divine destiny to reach the heavens. The origins of their quest, Newell concludes, had less to do with the Cold War strife commonly associated with the space race and everything to do with the religious culture that contributed to the invention of space as the final frontier.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her convincing debut, Newell, assistant professor of religion and science at the University of Miami, argues that it was not only science that made the U.S. space program possible but also "a culture that believed it was called by God to settle new frontiers." To make this case, she examines the intertwined influence of the space art of Chesley Bonestell, the technology-infused science writing of Willy Ley, and the role of V-2 and Saturn V rocket progenitor Wernher von Braun in selling humankind's call into the cosmos to the American public: After explaining the interactions between these three men who worked together on popular space exploration science fiction and coauthored The Exploration of Mars in 1956 she then turns to America's intense faith in the race for space. Newell uses the narrative of the "new frontier" which formed through the combined artistic and scientific imaginations of Bonestell, Ley, and von Braun to make a broader point about the overlaps between religion and science, both of which require faith in things outside of one's normal perception. Recasting the space race as an inherently spiritual endeavor, Newell exposes and explains the origins of the language of "divine destiny" which imbues much of the modern talk of visiting other planets today. Newell has produced a forceful, original view of the American quest for the "final frontier." Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the year The Exploration of Mars was published. It also incorrectly identified Willy Ley as William Ley.
