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This chapter examines the origins of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which suspended sovereignty claims and reservations of rights to Antarctica and created “a continent dedicated to peace and science.” This treaty led to an immediate relaxation of political tensions in the Antarctic Peninsula region, although it did not fully resolve the underlying question of sovereignty. The chapter rejects the common assumption that the Antarctic Treaty represented the triumph of scientific idealism over political squabbling, and suggests instead that it represented a reformulation of imperial interests in the southern continent. Causes of the treaty included the refusal of Argentina and Chile to take the Antarctic sovereignty dispute to the international court of justice and shared opposition to United Nations involvement. The International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957–58 did have a major role in the origins of the Antarctic Treaty, but not just because it fostered a sense of common scientific purpose.

International scientific collaborations have a long and brilliant history that extends back into the nineteenth century. Biological programs were not as successful as the programs in physics and astronomy until the advent of the International Biological Program (IBP) in the middle of the twentieth century. Prior to the IBP, it was only the International Geophysical Year (IGY) that had a beneficial impact beyond immediate research. The IGY helped to make the case that environmental processes are global in scale and interconnected across disciplines. This program's success and public support helped set the stage for “big ecology” and the use of advance technology in studies of ecosystem change.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the characteristics of explorers. It then turns to the history of polar science to illustrate why human space exploration seems so slow moving. It focuses on the International Geophysical Year (IGY), which refers to an extensive set of global geophysical studies over a period of time. The IGY is credited with three major discoveries: the confirmation of the then controversial theory of plate tectonics and continental drift, an accurate estimate of the size of the Antarctic icecap, and proof of the existence of the Van Allen belts. This third discovery has been widely heralded as the first major scientific discovery of the Space Age. The remainder of the chapter covers the submarine design as an analog of the spacecraft and the development of aviation medicine.

During the Cold War, new vertical domains were opened up to human exploration, including outer space and the earth’s interior, along with the scientific colonization of Antarctica. A highly symbolic geopolitical feat fueled by ideological rivalry, the “assault” on these extreme environments triggered a return to the “unveiling” metaphor traditionally associated with discovery. While seventeenth-century veils, however, were pierced visually, by the technologically empowered eye, those of the modern era were trespassed in the most physical sense. Since the late 1950s, the veil of the atmosphere was repeatedly perforated by powerful rockets carrying satellites, animals, and even human beings. In 1961, the US government sponsored a project that attempted to drill deep through the ocean crust to the earth’s mantle—an earth sciences response to the space race. This chapter considers the political implications of the earth’s mantle as a scientific metaphor at this time of intense technological innovation and geopolitical confrontation.

This chapter emphasizes Eisenhower's efforts to promote American satellite programs during the International Geophysical Year. He supported two American IGY projects. One was in the Antarctic, where a U.S. team was to establish three observation sites. The other was in space, where the United States planned to send a basketball-sized satellite into orbit. Divorced from defense efforts, these programs would share scientific results worldwide. U.S. Information Agency Director Arthur Larson said that the president “took sincerely the scientific motivation of the International Geophysical Year.” Eisenhower wanted the results of American satellite programs made available to all nations, including the Soviet Union.