The Sputnik Challenge

This chapter discusses the myriad of Ley’s activities during the late 1950s, when his status as a scientific celebrity and rocket expert peaked. It follows his pre-Sputnik and post-Sputnik tactics. Not only did Ley encourage millions of Americans to believe in American “firsts” in 1955 and 1956, but also he encouraged Americans to express resentment, anger, and shock following the launch of Sputnik I in 1957. In newspaper columns that circulated across the United States, Ley expressed fears of missile gaps and cultural lag with the Soviet Union. While historians have analyzed the role of politicians during the Cold War, they have not recognized the role of Ley as America’s rocket expert, who now shared the stage with Wernher von Braun.

From the Earth to the Moon, via Berlin

This chapter follows Ley during his early twenties, when he became an intermediary between specialized experts and the general public. Ley constructed his persona as a freelance writer and journalist, who could translate complex concepts for a broader audience in Weimar Germany. This chapter explores Ley’s entrance into rocketry clubs, amateur science, and circles of journalists during Weimar’s rocketry fad. It concludes with an analysis of his role in the ground breaking science fiction film, Woman in the Moon (1929).

Introduction

The introduction provides an overview of Ley’s life and importance. It also presents a complex argument about the key features of romantic, popular science during the twentieth century. The section makes interdisciplinary connections between German and American romantic science, popular science, and media studies, while providing a brief introduction to Ley, his legacy, and the themes of the book.

Epilogue

Willy Ley died of a heart attack just weeks before the lunar landing in July 1969. This epilogue describes the reactions of his family and friends, who mourned his loss amid the broader celebration of Apollo 11. It also recounts the successful efforts to name a Moon crater in his honor. Whereas most craters bear the names of scientists or science fiction writers, Ley became the first citizen on the Moon after spending most of his life as an outsider to the centers of research and development. Despite his outsider status, he had done so much to engineer the Space Age. The book closes with reflections on his legacy as a spaceflight advocate.

An Engineer’s Postwar Dreams

This chapter focuses on Ley’s immediate postwar years during the late 1940s. During this stage of his career, he became both a practicing rocket researcher and America’s recognized rocket expert. As Americans clamored for information about V-2 rockets and the German engineers (now living in the United States), Ley desperately tried to establish himself as a rocket engineer, working on peaceful applications of spaceflight technologies. This chapter explores the deep tensions between Ley and von Braun, prior to the publication of Ley/Bonestell’s The Conquest of Space (1949).

Youthful Horizons

Chapter 1 pieces together Ley’s childhood in Berlin. It attributes his early fascination with science through his consumption of popular science and science fiction. By analyzing the themes and representations in his favorite books, this chapter presents Ley as an idealistic dreamer, who longed to become an explorer during the First World War and the early years of Weimar Germany.

The PM Years and the Science Writers at War

Chapter 5 continues the narrative by charting Ley’s role as a weapons expert and journalist during the Second World War. This chapter puts forth a more complex argument surrounding the role of science writers and their perception of a totalitarian menace that fostered irrationalism, authoritarian obedience to a state-issued truth, and cultist deference to pseudoscience. The science writers engaged in a public campaign to save hearts and minds by associating scientific thinking with democratic freedom. They waged a war against totalitarianism, as they simultaneously used the history of science to glorify the anti-authoritarian truth-seekers of the past.

The Tom Corbett Years

Following the success of Conquest, Ley became quite famous as a “rocket scientist,” who could excite American audiences about the impending future of interplanetary travel and satellites. Along with von Braun, he contributed articles to notable magazines, while appearing on television programs such as Disney’s “Man in Space.” Ley’s latest edition of Rockets became a best-seller. This chapter documents Ley’s importance as a cultural producer, at a time when popular culture became saturated with images of rockets and space travel. From television’s Tom Corbett, Space Cadet to the design of Disneyland’s “Tomorrowland,” Ley was an ever-present figure, working behind the scenes. This chapter revisits themes of Ley’s romantic science, as it analyzes enchanted representations of spaceflight in popular media.

Death of a Science in Germany

This chapter focuses on Ley’s perceptions of the decline of amateur rocketry, due to the rise of totalitarianism and pseudoscience during the early 1930s. It follows Ley’s attempts to save the agenda from becoming militarized and secretive. Eventually, Ley fled Nazi Germany when his international correspondence was monitored. He had made a career as a publicist of rockets and space travel. Under the Nazi regime, such publicity was forbidden and dangerous.

Scholarly Twilight

Chapter 9 describes Ley’s declining prestige as both a rocket expert and a historian of science. As von Braun took center-stage, Ley retreated from the scene by devoting himself to his most ambitious histories of astronomy and zoology. Whereas Isis contributors had celebrated his earlier histories of science, a new generation of young historians excluded and ostracized Ley as a typical example of a scientist-turned-historian who wrote history backward. Younger historians viewed his style of popular writing as old-fashioned and self-serving. There is a larger story here about the academic institutionalization of the history of science during the 1960s and 1970s that may invite readers to ask, “What was lost?” Those readers might experience some degree of nostalgia for a time when academics and popularizers mixed ranks and shared goals.