al-mofhariz

This marks the first in what I hope will be a series of historical comments on NASA's transition away from the Space Shuttle. Robert R. MacGregor, a Princeton grad student writing a dissertation on rocket design in the US and Soviet Union, kicks us off.


Upon my request, Bob offered a host of powerful historical frameworks to help us think about scuttling the shuttle. Part of what Bob suggested was that we consider this transition alongside the earlier decision to replace the Apollo program with the space shuttle program in the first place. I was struck by one of his side points about the disjoint between the powerful narratives we all know of technological progress and what actually happened to manned space flight:
A big part of why Apollo hoax conspiracy theories are so successful is precisely because the space race narrative doesn't fit in with the narrative of technological progress.  Why would we go to the moon and then just stop? It doesn't make sense---if technology is…

The HSS newsletter notes that the University of Chicago Press has joined other presses in JSTOR's Current Scholarship Program, which promises to allow access to both yesterday's and today's scholarship all through one portal. I can certainly see the advantage to not having to search through a variety of databases for journal articles from past and present. That could save me a great deal of time and effort.

But I had hoped to find that this program would also include some talk of keeping costs down as well. I imagine many who read this blog hear frequently---as I do---from librarians about the cost of maintaining digital subscriptions. What will putting more under JSTOR's umbrella mean in terms of price? Thoughts?