".......I don’t know about condemnation and ridicule…. We scholars are trained to be critical – to question claims, test them, validate or invalidate them. I am familiar with the ongoing scholarly critique of claims of American exceptionalism. I myself have made some small contribution to that critique. For many years I have been studying the ideology of space exploration, in hopes of finding some way to develop a 21st century rationale for space exploration that might be more meaningful to the majority of human beings who are not engaged in or otherwise enamored of the enterprise (and who, by the way, are not American or “Western”). See, for example, my chapter on “Ideology, advocacy, and spaceflight: evolution of a cultural narrative,” in Societal Impacts of Spaceflight (2007).........
[That link above and the sources that are cited - with snips of how academia works to diminish our national "can-do" mood, is very enlightening; below is the link to the excerpted article, written because of the author's problem with an article on American Exceptionalism. - Written in 2007, I have no doubt that what Obama has done to the military and to the U.S. program meets with the author's approval. That's what passes for scholarly work - how a national spirit that animates our military and our space program is a problem (that we need to make "peace" and "life on Earth" the driver of our national discourse). I'm sure the students are required to buy some of these anti-military, anti-space program books.]
From the chapter:
......“Everything now suggests,” Nisbet wrote 25 years ago, “that Western faith in the dogma of progress is waning rapidly.” This faith appears to have remained alive and well, however, in the ideology of spaceflight. Christopher Lasch wrote 5 years ago,“almost everyone now agrees that [the idea of] progress—in its utopian form at least,” no longer has the power “to explain events or inspire [people] to constructive action.” But in the current cultural environment, perhaps it does—at least among space advocates. Progress is, indeed, modern American dogma and a key element of pro-space dogma. But it does not resonate well—as Pyne and others have noted—in the current postmodern (or even post-postmodern) cultural environment, where public discourse is rife with critiques of science, technology, the aims of the military-industrial complex, and the corporate drive for profit.......
"This brief historical review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy has sustained an ideology of American Exceptionalism and reinforced long-standing beliefs in progress, growth, and capitalist democracy. This rhetoric conveys an ideology of spaceflight that could be described, at its worst, as a sort of space fundamentalism: an exclusive belief system that rejects as unenlightened those who do not advocate the colonization, exploitation, and development of space.
The rhetorical strategy of space advocates has tended to rest on the assumption that the values of “believers” are (or should be) shared by others as well. Although the social, political, economic, and cultural context for space exploration has changed radically since the 1960s, the rhetoric of space advocacy has not. In the twenty-first century, advocates continue to promote spaceflight as a biological imperative and a means of extending U.S. free enterprise, with its private property claims, resource exploitation, and commercial development, into the solar system and beyond. Pyne, among others, has addressed the problematic nature of these arguments: “the theses advanced to promote [solar system] settlement,” he noted, “are historical, culturally bound, and selectively anecdotal: that we need to pioneer to be what we are, that new colonies are a means of renewing civilization.”
Spaceflight advocacy can be examined as a cultural ritual, performed by means of communication (rhetoric), for the purpose of maintaining the current social order, with its lopsided distribution of power and resources, and perpetuating the values of those in control of that order (materialism, consumerism, technological progress, private property rights, capitalist democracy). Communication research has shown how public discourses—those cultural narratives or national myths—“often function covertly to legitimate the power of elite social classes.” And this review has shown how the rhetoric of space advocacy reflects an assumption that these values are worth extending into the solar system.
......although she has noted that “the WASP space cowboy version of spaceflight” has persisted from the apollo era into the present, Constance Penley also has observed that NASA “is still the most popular point of reference for utopian ideas of collective progress.” In the popular imagination,“NASA continues to represent . . . perseverance, cooperation, creativity and vision,” and these meanings embedded in the narrative of spaceflight “can still be mobilized to rejuvenate the near-moribund idea of a future toward which dedicated people . . . could work together for the common good.”
This historical review of the rhetoric of space advocacy reveals competing American cultural narratives, then. The dominant narrative—advancing the values of the dominant culture—upon which the narrative of U.S. spaceflight piggybacks, is a story of American exceptionalism that justifies unilateral action and the globalization of American capitalist democracy and material progress. The story of spaceflight is embedded in this broader narrative. That story is also woven into a competing narrative, a vision of “utopian ideas of collective progress” and “a spiritual humbling of self.” This competing narrative may be a site within which the ideology of spaceflight might rejuvenate itself—where the vision of a human future in space becomes a vision of humanity’s collective peaceful existence on Spaceship Earth and the need to work together to preserve life here and look for life out there........."
Individuals involved in manned space exploration naturally look for larger purposes in order to justify the career choices and personal risks and sacrifices required. The great expense and technical challenges though require more than the romance and ideology of space exploration. Instead, a compelling national interest and a credible business case are needed in order to shake loose the necessary funding.
As it was, without the Cold War to energize a space race, the immense flow of cash necessary for the development of manned space flight would not have materialized. Manned space flight would instead be confined to science fiction and Chesley Bonestell's visionary paintings.
Today, the best hopes for a renewal of American manned space exploration are that cash is flowing again because we are on the cusp of a new space race with China and Russia and there are emerging private business models for profit based on space tourism and resource exploitation.
In addition, new technology now emerging from NASA and other research labs may radically revise the cost equations of manned space flight. See: Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive.
If trips around the near regions of the solar system could be accomplished cheaply, safely, and in weeks instead of years, there would quickly be both all the funding needed and mass public interest in and support for space exploration. The associated romance and ideology would gain new currency, with larger consequences for American society in a renewed sense of energy, optimism, and progress.