The articulations of science and politics in the Cold War in the United States are well studied in histories of American political culture. However, these histories are often given focus and coherence via concepts and understandings taken from political realism and sociological institutionalism, thereby underestimating the transformations in the very idea of political reality that helped form the Cold War era in the United States. This paper launches an investigation of the relationship between speculative fiction and scientific and political discourse during that era to explore how the political culture of the United States came to be structured not only by a certain imagination but also by a particular set of fantasies. Building on the history of war-gaming at the RAND Corporation, the author conducts a close reading of a RAND Corporation report turned popular science publication. This suggests that, during the Cold War, a new standpoint from which to view the political world – the view from outer space – began to organize how the American political project for the globe represented its own modernity to itself. This view, drawn from science fiction but made real in its ethos and its political consequences, projected an understanding of “mankind” as but an infant in the early stages of what would become its interstellar destiny. A baleful consequence of this view was its tendency to free political actors and intellectuals from the urgent problem, identified acutely by Hannah Arendt in her essay “Man’s Conquest of Space,” of creating a world in common on earth.

Exploring space is one of the most attractive goals that humanity ever set, notwithstanding, there are some psychological and psychopathological risks that should be considered. Several studies identified some possible hazards of space travels and related physical and psychological consequences on astronauts. If some psychological reactions are obviously inherent to the characteristics of the spaceships (habitability, confinement, psychological, and interpersonal relationships), other (disturbances of sleep-wake cycle, personality changes, depression, anxiety, apathy, psychosomatic symptoms, neurovestibular problems, alterations in cognitive function, and sensory perception) represent a clear warning of possible central nervous system (CNS) alterations, possibly due to microgravity and cosmic radiation. Such conditions and eventual CNS changes might compromise the success of missions and the ability to cope with unexpected events and may lead to individual and long-term impairments. Therefore, further studies are needed, perhaps, requiring the birth of a novel branch of psychology/psychiatry that should not only consider the risks related to space exploration, but the implementation of targeted strategies to prevent them.

The ongoing search for life on other worlds and the prospects of eventual human exploration of the Moon and Mars indicate the need for new ethical guidelines to direct our actions as we search and how we respond if we discover microbial life on other worlds. Here we review how life on other worlds presents a novel question in environmental ethics. We propose a principle of protecting and expanding the richness and diversity of life as the basis of an ethic for astrobiology research and space exploration. There are immediate implications for the operational policies governing how we conduct the search for life on Mars and how we plan for human exploration throughout the Solar System.

This manuscript relates the great literature, great art and the vast starry vault of heaven. It relates the myths of gods and heroes for whom the planets and the Medicean moons of Jupiter are named. The myths are illustrated by great art works of the Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo periods which reveal poignant moments in the myths. The manuscript identifies constellations spun off of these myths. In addition to the images of great art are associated images of the moons and planets brought to us by spacecraft in our new age of exploration, the New Renaissance, in which we find ourselves deeply immersed.