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T H E A I R B U S , T H E O R I E N T E X P R E S S , A N D T H E R E N A I S S A N C E O F S P E E D  189 The cancellation of the SCAR program in 1981 was a reflection of the general state of NASA’s aeronautics program in the early 1980s. The Shuttle’s overruns had led to termination of several other aircraft and rotorcraft-related projects in 1981, and several surviving projects, such as the Aircraft Energy Efficiency project, were scheduled to terminate upon reaching their goals in mid-decade. And it was not clear that there would be any successor projects. President Ronald Reagan’s new administration was openly hostile to federal support of civilian research and development, making NASA’s aeronautics program a prime target for elimination. The agency’s problem in 1981 stemmed from the unhappy reality that the very ideals upon which it had been founded had been driven out of the American political mainstream. NASA’s aeronautics program, like its predecessor, the NACA, was based upon a belief that government should play an active role in the development of new industries and new business opportunities. Of the several possible ways government could do this, the American political system had settled upon federal support for scientific and technological research.1 The major move toward this “science state” occurred in the wake of World War II and public revelation of the stunning impact new knowledge had had on the prosecution of the war, although before the war a handful of specific scientific disciplines had benefited from public support—geodesy via the Coast Survey, geology via the United States Geological Survey, and of course aeronautics via the NACA. War’s end, however, brought with it advocacy for permanent, state-funded research institutions. Many of these were attached to the armed services—the Office of Naval Research and the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency are the best known among 6 THE AIRBUS, THE ORIENT EXPRESS, AND THE RENAISSANCE OF SPEED this group. Their defense ties made these institutions largely uncontroversial. Federally funded civilian science was a good deal more controversial after the war, finding opposition among conservatives wedded to the concept of a laissez-faire state. These politicians had only been able to curb the movement of government into civilian science, not stop it, however. Postwar belief in an activist government, coupled with the government’s obvious wartime success at fostering technological progress—always a good thing in Americans ’ minds—made the spread of the science state impossible to resist. The notion of activist government reached its postwar peak with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. But simultaneously, a strident form of antigovernment ideology was gaining currency, particularly in the South. During the Eisenhower administration , the federal government had taken the first tentative steps toward ending racial segregation in the southern states, reviving a latent but deep hatred of federal power in the region. Westerners had also always resisted federal activism, wishing the (eastern) government would simply keep sending them agricultural (and especially water) subsidies without annoying strings. Because the nation’s population was clearly shifting south and west, certain Republicans perceived an opportunity to fundamentally restructure the nation ’s political culture.2 The first expression of this transformation was Barry Goldwater’s 1964 campaign. Goldwater fashioned a quixotic campaign out of western antigovernment, antiprogressive rhetoric and strident anticommunism and, partly because George Wallace had siphoned off the anti–civil rights vote in the South, went down to a spectacular defeat. But Richard Nixon ran on the same basic ideas in 1968 and found the western antigovernment rhetoric played well in the South, too. Both these men were heroes to Californian Ronald Reagan, who achieved the White House in 1980 using an antigovernment, anticommunist campaign.3 And unlike Nixon, who had substantially expanded government’s role in society despite his campaign rhetoric, Reagan, and especially the man he appointed to head the Office of Management and Budget, David Stockman, meant to carry out a substantial dismantling of the civilian government.4 Reagan’s election also marked the ascendancy of what multibillionaire investor George Soros has called “market fundamentalism.”5 Market fundamentalism preaches that all good things descend from the unfettered operation of free markets—government, in this view, “distorts” markets and “slows” progress...

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