Problem 1: How do you explain why the United States went to the Moon (you may want to consider here that the Space Race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union was a form of what one of the video clips above called "signaling")? What role did fear of nuclear annihilation play (here you might want to go to Swank and look at the movie Thirteen Days)? What about things such as science fiction and the role of the imagination?
Problem 2: According to Fishman (and others) what did Apollo actually achieve and what factors were instrumental in its success? Here you are going to want to evaluate the role that the former Nazi Wernher Von Braun played in the development and overall success of the space program (for a start see the lecture above by Michael Neufeld on Von Braun and the satirical song "Wernher Von Braun" by Tom Lehrer). To what extent, as the ethicists Ian Crowley and Joshua Trudeau ask, does "His[Von Braun's] tendency to ignore the plight of the victims of the Holocaust and even to use their labor, whether it was his choice or not," forever ruin "what is otherwise undoubtedly a lifetime of amazing engineering feats"? Continuing, Crowley and Trudeau think that "Despite the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, by the early 50s the United States was in a growing stand-off with its erstwhile ally of convenience, the USSR, and was willing to forget the past injustices committed by Nazi scientists and engineers in exchange for an advantage in its new rivalry. Wernher von Braun, then, represented a trump card which the United States could not afford to ignore and was eagerly obtained and employed in the Saturn rocket program. The conflict between the desire for justice and the need for skilled engineers for the Cold War was ultimately decided in favor of acquiring an advantage against the Soviets, a decision which has been questioned by many ever since it was made public." What is your assessment of U.S. policy regarding Von Braun and other ex-Nazis regarding their role in the space program? How do you reconcile the achievements of scientists (think here of what you learned about the atomic bomb project in "The Day After Trinity") with the ethical failures and/or destructive aspects of their work?
Problem 3: Given the various ways in which Apollo resonates with particular aspects of the American past (see, in addition to Von Braun, Frederick Jackson Turner clip above), how should we "remember" Apollo? Was it, as Fishman claims, truly the birth of the "Digital Age"?
Problem 4: What is our future in space?\