Abstract
When the editors of Time magazine announced an unconventional pick for its 1966 “Man of the Year”—not a single male but the generation of men and women 25 years old and under—they offered conventionally upbeat reasons for doing so. Brushing aside gathering clouds of war and student activism, Time suggested these American youth mostly avoided protest marches, accepted their nation’s military action in Vietnam, and worked to positively transform their world. The editors predicted these young go-getters “will land on the moon, cure cancer and the common cold, lay out blight-proof, smog-free cities, enrich the undeveloped world and, no doubt, write finis to poverty and war.”1 Alas their rosy forecast did not come true. America’s 12 lunar-landing astronauts turned out to be older than 25, and earthly afflictions of poverty and war endured. But the magazine’s predictions echoed the still common conviction that an American Century of global peace and prosperity had begun. This new generation was ready to take charge and share the nation’s good fortune and heal a divided world. Among the many endeavors that illustrated this promise, the US space program demonstrated quite dramatically that Americans young and old were able to outpace the Soviet Union and secure their benevolent leadership on earth and beyond.
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Notes
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© 2015 James Spiller
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Spiller, J. (2015). The Grip of the Space Frontier. In: Frontiers for the American Century. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137507877_5
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