Focusing on the infrastructural history of the U.S. rocket launch complex, this book delves into the interplay between place-based science and technology. It reveals how these elements were strategically designed to support industrial and military endeavors during postwar America, providing a fresh perspective on the significance of these developments in shaping modern technological landscapes.
Designating land as technical is a political act. Doing so entails dividing, marginalizing, and rendering portions of the Earth inaccessible. Technical lands are co-extensive with political and physical boundaries instrumentalized by their exceptional status. Their remote location, delimited boundary, and active management occlude their visibility. Technical lands include disaster exclusion and demilitarized zones, extractive industry sites, airports, and spaceports, among dozens of other typologies. Despite the recent emergence of a discourse on technical lands, our understanding of these geographies remains unclear. Technical Lands: A Critical Primer assembles authors from a diverse array of disciplines, geographies, and epistemologies to illuminate the meanings of these spaces.