# Ground Control: Beyond an Environmental History of the Space Race

Historians usually depict the space race of the 1960s and 1970s as a pitched technological battle between Cold War political rivals. Yet while U.S. and Soviet spacecraft forced the world to look upward towards the Moon, they also, quite ironically, encouraged citizens across the globe to gaze back down at "spaceship Earth" with a newfound environmental awareness. In this lecture, Neil Maher not only examines this environmental history of the space race, but perhaps more importantly, argues that it influenced many of the social movements of the postwar era, including the fight for civil rights, equality for women, an end to the Vietnam War, and the rise of suburbia and the military industrial complex.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2009
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: Space, History
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688274/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688274?play=1)