Sky As Frontier

"I call it a thesis-driven book. I like it because history is harnessed to technology. Courtwright took the concept of “the frontier” developed by late 19th century American historian Frederick Jackson Turner and applied it to the air. In 1890, the American Census Bureau announced that, according to their criteria, there was no uninhabited area of the United States left. In other words, from the Census Bureau’s point of view there was no more frontier. Turner spent much of his life writing about the effects of the frontier on American history and suggesting ways in which America without a frontier would be in trouble. The frontier, in his words, was an incubator of freedom and democracy. It tested people and brought out the best in people. In his Sky as Frontier Courtwright applies that thesis to the history of aviation. So this results in a slightly different way of periodising the story of flight, rather than the standard pioneering to golden to jet age periodisation. Going back to Turner, he spoke of two different types of frontiers: The agricultural frontier, which attracted settlers and resulted in isolated nuclear families that would chop down trees and homestead, leading to civilisation across the country; then there was the mining and extractive frontiers – whether centring around fishing on the coasts of Maine or mining in the Sierras, these frontiers were characterised not by nuclear families but by rough and tumble male-dominated populations. Courtwright sees the early history of flight up through Lindbergh, as the mining and extractive industry phase. Then he sees an equivalent to the agricultural frontier emerging with airlines. As you said, the domestication of flight was the phase when the yous and mes got to travel abroad. In a final chapter, which he calls “The Significance of Air and Space in American History”, in an echo of the language that Frederick Jackson Turner used 100 years ago when he wrote about “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”, Courtwright addressed how aviation changed America. One of the consequences was environmental. And he says our dependence on automobiles is possible only because of our air mobility, meaning that our air and space achievements, including the development of satellites, allow us to fight Gulf Wars, kill terrorists with precision drones and watch what the Iranians are doing with their nuclear fuel. Without all our satellites and the military jets that back them up we wouldn’t be able to maintain American dominion over these places, so our automobility would be deeply challenged and maybe impossible. It’s a provocative argument and another thing I like about the book. Maybe uninteresting ones like getting better mileage out of airplanes. The supersonic frontier of mass air travel seems at the moment unlikely. There is talk of another supersonic transport being built but it’s hard to imagine how they can solve the tremendous fuel costs and the sonic boom problems, which are a matter of physics. So for the foreseeable future the frontier is closed. That’s sort of a pessimistic note to end on. That’s a great question. I don’t think much place at all. Flight has become as routine as riding a train. Adherents of “the winged gospel” are all buried. Kids don’t grow up fixated on flying toys or dreams of aviation adventures. When they look up in the sky they don’t see a frontier. Their frontiers are all on screens."