Em busca da cultura espacial

Abstract

This thesis has arisen from the complex Internet networks intending to build up new Space paradigms based on practices of free software and hardware and open source systems, as they appeared, roughly, since the turn of the century. In order to examine these new paradigms, I consider prior processes connected to the Space Culture. The text goes back to the history of the Space Race; the first rockets, the first satellites, some tenets of the international politics that guided the cold war in the years after the Second World War. I bring up interesting elements of the Space programs both of the US and the USSR, as well as the main technicians and scientists behind the engineering of the rockets. The research dives in the rockets of Nazi Germany who first invested in the production of rockets, goes to communist Russia as well as to liberal post-war America. The thesis brings up ideas concerning Space utopias, science fiction in literature and cinema and engages with the difference between Space exploration taken up by humans and by robots. It examines the first rocket flights and the first artificial satellites placed in outer Space, paying attention to the particulars of each of those first endeavors, to their purpose and to how much they accomplished their mission. The thesis is therefore ready to question the importance of the Space Race to human imagination and to analyse the realm of Space dreams from the late 19th century up to now. The last part of the thesis is concerned with the groups that are building Space travels in an independent way, moved either by ideological or by commercial reasons. The investigation uncovers the ideas of each of those groups concerning Space exploration. It then goes on to think the relation between the makers of such exploration and a possible industrial revolution. Finally, the thesis raises some criticisms to the creative processes of individuals, groups, networks and social movements that are concerned with the outer Space