On 29 July 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which became operational on 1 October of that year. Over the next 50 years, NASA achieved a set of spectacular feats, ranging from advancing the well-established field of aeronautics to pioneering the new fields of Earth and space science and human spaceflight. In this volume, a wide array of scholars turn a critical eye toward NASA’s first 50 years, probing an institution widely seen as the premier agency for exploration in the world, carrying on a long tradition of exploration by the United States and the human species in general. Fifty years after its founding, NASA finds itself at a crossroads that historical perspectives can only help to illuminate. Includes the following and more: NASA at 50*Imagining an Aerospace Agency in the Atomic Age*Evolution of Aeronautics Research at NASA*The NACA, NASA, and the Supersonic-Hypersonic Frontier*Fifty Years of Human Spaceflight: Why Is There Still a Controversy?* From the Secret of Apollo to the Lessons of Failure*The “Von Braun Paradigm” and NASA’s Long-Term Planning for Human Spaceflight*Life Sciences and Human Spaceflight*Space Science*Earth Science and Applications*NASA’s Role in History

Cosmic evolution, the idea that the universe and its constituent parts are constantly evolving, has become widely accepted only in the last 50 years. It is no coincidence that this acceptance parallels the span of the Space Age. Although cosmic evolution was first recognized in the physical universe early in the 20th century, with hints even earlier, the relationships among plan-ets, stars, and galaxies, and the evolution of the universe itself, became much better known through the discoveries by planetary probes and space tele-scopes in the latter half of the century. It was also during the last 50 years—a century after Darwin proposed that evolution by natural selection applies to life on our own planet—that researchers from a variety of disciplines began to seriously study the possibilities of extraterrestrial life and “the biological universe.” Considering biology from this broader cosmological perspective has expanded biological thinking beyond its sample-of-one straightjacket, incorporating biology into cosmic evolution. Astrobiology is now a robust discipline even though it has yet to find any life beyond Earth.

Among the many technical innovations that were introduced after World War II, none left as strong an impression on the public as the atom bombs that destroyed two Japanese cities in August 1945. People spoke of the "atomic age" that had now begun, as if this technological innovation would, all by itself, shape a new world. The atomic age was described as one that might soon end in the destruction of human civilization, but from the beginning, utopian images were attached to it as well. Nuclear technology offered the promise of applications in medicine, agriculture, and engineering, and nuclear power could theoretically provide an unlimited supply of energy. This book demonstrates and explains how the popular media represented nuclear power, in its military and non-military forms. It focuses on the first two decades of the "atomic age," when national governments, military strategists, scientists, and the public attempted to come to terms with a technology that so drastically seemed to change the prospects for the future. Popular magazines, comics, newspapers, public exhibitions from across the world are examined to compare representations of nuclear power in different countries and to trace divergences, convergences, and exchanges.