On September 24 this year, I submitted my thesis - all 94,810 words + bibliography. On December 12, I defended my thesis - Eisenhower's Parallel Track at Brunel University. It was a successful defence. I am now Dr. Shanahan.
My last seven years has been spent as a 40-something and then 50 year old student. I'm a very different person now to the frustrated researcher who started this process. Where the future will take me, I don't yet know. But I'm looking forward to it.
The research thesis I eventually produced is very different from the point at which I began. My abstract says:
Historians
of the early space age have established a norm whereby President Eisenhower's
actions are judged solely as a response to the launch of the Sputnik satellite,
and are indicative of a passive, negative presidency. His low-key actions are
seen merely as a prelude to the US triumph in space in the 1960s. This study
presents an alternative view showing that Eisenhower’s space policy was not a
reaction to the heavily-propagandised Soviet satellite launches, or even the
effect they caused in the US political and military elites, but the
continuation of a strategic track. In so doing, it also contributes to the
reassessment of the wider Eisenhower presidency.
Having assessed the
development of three intersecting discourses: Eisenhower as president; the genesis
of the US space programme; and developments in Cold War US reconnaissance, this
thesis charts Eisenhower’s influence both on the ICBM and reconnaissance
programmes and his support for a non-military approach to the International
Geophysical Year. These actions provided the basis for his space policy for the
remainder of his presidency. The following chapters show that Sputnik had no
impact on the policies already in place and highlight Eisenhower’s pragmatic
activism in enabling the implementation of these policies by a carefully-chosen
group of expert ‘helping hands’.
This study delivers a new interpretation of
Eisenhower’s actions. It argues that he was operating on a parallel track that
started with the Castle H-bomb tests; developed through the
CIA's reconnaissance efforts and was distilled in the Aeronautics and
Space Act of 1958. This set a policy for US involvement in outer space that
matched Eisenhower’s desire for a balanced budget and fundamental belief
in maintaining peace. By challenging the orthodox view, this paper shows
that President Eisenhower’s space policy actions were strategic steps that
provided a logical next step for both civilian and military space programmes at
the completion of the International Geophysical Year.
For the last seven years I've been reading books about space; about politics; about reconnaissance and about missiles that have all fed the PhD research. It was a great pleasure to take them all down to Reading where I now teach and park them on my office shelves. They'll re-emerge in the coming months as portions of the thesis become articles and the bones of a monograph. Today I bought a space book purely for the fun of reading it. Chris Hadfield, I'm thoroughly looking forward to leafing my way through An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth.
Onwards and Upwards.
