Introduction: Project Plowshare
Introduction: Project Plowshare
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简介：犁头项目
DOI：
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发表时间：
1998
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
D. Cosgrove
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作者：
D. Cosgrove
从十九世纪到二十世纪中期的巨型水坝和流域转移计划，现代性的进步可以通过其地理工程的行星尺度来衡量。现代主义工程想象力的规模、傲慢和环境鲁莽--用更有同情心的话来说，是崇高的--在PlowShare项目中表现得最为明显。该项目为期16年，由美国联邦政府资助，旨在“和平”地利用近地表的核爆炸，用于大型建筑和工程项目。在强烈反共产主义的匈牙利移民物理学家爱德华·特勒的启发下，计划在全球各地举办一系列壮观的活动：在阿拉斯加、中美洲、澳大利亚和美国大陆，其目的既是示范的，也是实验的。在冷战的背景下，美国人会放心，核剑可以安全地被打成犁，而苏联人将见证西方卓越科学的进步成就。当然，苏联人自己也在进行类似的活动，而且他们的科学在地理和社会学方面受到的限制较少，这有力地证明，高度现代主义文化在超级大国之间产生了同样多的相似之处，同时它们的意识形态也强调了差异。在斯科特·基尔希担任编辑期间，这里收集的论文通过它产生的四个项目来探讨PlowShare项目的各个方面：Sedan项目，一个在内华达州沙漠中凿出的巨大核弹坑，也是Teller团队实际实现的最大爆炸；Project Chariot，在白令海的阿拉斯加海岸挖掘一个港口的计划；通过几乎同时爆炸大约250个核弹来建造第二条海平面的巴拿马运河的计划；以及Ketch项目，一个在宾夕法尼亚州阿巴拉契亚建立地下储气室的商业计划。就其本身而言，每个项目都提供了一个戏剧性的、尽管令人毛骨悚然的叙事材料。在《末世纪元》中，这四位作者将他们作为工具，在本杂志的范围内解决了更大的感兴趣的问题。斯科特·基尔希对泰勒努力证明核工程能力的描述，是对科学史学家提出的论点的一个案例研究，其中最著名的是Steven Shapin，Simon Schaffer
of the nineteenth century to the mega-dams and basin transfer schemes of the mid-twentieth, the progress of modernity may be calibrated through the planetary scale of its geographical engineering. Nowhere are the scale, hubris and environmental recklessness – in more sympathetic words, the sublimity – of the Modernist engineering imagination more apparent than in Project Plowshare, the 16-year programme funded by the United States Federal Government to use near-surface nuclear explosions ‘peacefully,’ for vast construction and engineering projects. Inspired by the fiercely anti-communist Hungarian émigré physicist Edward Teller, plans were developed for a series of spectacular events in locations stretched across the globe: in Alaska, Central America, Australia and the continental United States, whose purpose was at once both demonstrative and experimental. In the context of the Cold War, Americans would be reassured that nuclear swords could safely be beaten into plowshares, while the Soviets would witness the progressive achievements of a superior Western science. Of course, the Soviets were themselves conducting similar activities – and with fewer constraints on the geography and sociology of their ‘science,’ dramatic evidence that the culture of high modernism produced as many similarities between the superpowers as their ideologies emphasized differences. The papers collected here under the editorship of Scott Kirsch pursue aspects of Project Plowshare through four of the projects it generated: Project Sedan, a vast nuclear crater punched into the Nevada desert and the largest explosion actually realized by Teller’s team; Project Chariot, the scheme to excavate a harbour on the Alaskan shores of the Bering Sea; the plan to construct a second, sea-level Panama Canal by means of the near-simultaneous explosion of some 250 nuclear charges; and Project Ketch, a commercial scheme to create an underground gas storage chamber in Appalachian Pennsylvania. In itself, each project offers material for a dramatic, if hair-raising, narrative. In telling them in Ecumene, the four authors have used them as vehicles for addressing larger questions of interest within the scope of this journal. Scott Kirsch’s account of Teller’s struggle to produce a convincing demonstration of the capabilities of nuclear engineering is a case study of the arguments developed by historians of science, notably Steven Shapin, Simon Schaffer