Part 5: Chapter 17, Benign Hypocrisy: American Space Diplomacy Summary and Analysis

U.S. supremacy in space was required if the coming world was to be based on U.S. views and values. It was the way to keep socialism from spreading and being accepted by underdeveloped nations. The power to do so came from the technology itself. Communications and weather satellites linked places that were previously hard to link. "These hopes, by no means mysterious in a world beset by fears of nuclear war, poverty, and strife, nevertheless smacked of millenarianism. For a television in every hut could be a vehicle for education and understanding, or just as easily (and more likely) a tool of propaganda and hatred. But recognition of the damage done if new technology 'fell into the wrong hands' made it all the more incumbent on the...