Space Exploration and Society

In 1962, the Academy received a grant from NASA to study the long-range effects of space exploration on American life. At a time when the nation was committing enormous and unprecedented financial, scientific and manpower resources to the NASA program, the Academy study was charged with investigating the potential consequences, intended and unintended, of this mobilization on various sectors of society. This multiyear research project examined the means for anticipating these secondary effects of space efforts, for detecting these effects, and for measuring and evaluating these effects on society. During the process, project leaders developed the then-revolutionary idea of creating social indicators to measure society’s well-being. Unlike economic indicators, social indicators measure “how good” rather than “how much,” and they can be used to assess changes in lifestyle as a result of the space program, or other technological advancements. One of the project’s resulting books, Social Indicators, is considered a pioneering work in the development and use of social indicators. Since its publication, many sophisticated data sets of social markers have been developed to track changes in educational achievement, poverty, family structure, housing, health care, social mobility, and other measures of societal well-being.

Resulting Publications

• The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy, ed. Bruce Mazlish. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1965. (out of print)
• Social Indicators, ed. Raymond A. Bauer. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1966. Available from publisher.
• Second-Order Consequences: A Methodological Essay on the Impact of Technology, by Raymond A. Bauer, with Richard S. Rosenbloom and Laure M. Sharp. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1969. (out of print)