ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the historical development of an image of America as a transcendental state across Judeo-Christian religion, American politics and literature and into sublime landscape artwork. It examines how cultural imaginaries of the American transcendental state were first extended, and then developed, into Space. The book reveals theories of affect to consider how the image of America as the transcendental state was both challenged, and rehabilitated, across two traumas experienced by NASA: the losses of the Apollo 1 spacecraft and space shuttle Challenger. It focuses on decision by President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to pursue a human landing on the moon. The book then focuses on how the image of America as a transcendental state is organized and disorganized through particular sites of memory: the Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex (KSCVC) and the National Air and Space Museum (NASM).
