Research Proposal
Buzz will be Buzz
Research Proposal (30% of final grade)
You'll find Dr. Whitehead's research guide for us here.
Come up with a research question (topic of your choice), to put at the very top of the proposal. Then write a rationale of at least 1000 words.
Next write an annotated bibliography of at least ten sources, one of which must be book-length and none of which would have been assigned in this class. You can use class sources too, but they don't count toward the 10 minimum.
The rationale states why the question would be worth exploring for a full-length essay and how and why you might use the resources in your bibliography to explore the question, were you to write up an essay you'd present, say, at the A&S Symposium. You may wish to use the Arts & Sciences research proposal format as a guide for this. Some of it would not apply to your project (expenses, quantitative results) but the idea of Aims-Significance-Plan may greatly demystify the process. You may soon be writing one of these for real, if you plan to work in a faculty lab.
One important aspect of the proposal will be what you still need to learn about the topic and which questions are going to be hardest to answer (and why). From a student's perspective, what would your essay add to the conversation about, say, the nature of a Mars colony, how NASA sugar-coated the family lives of astronauts, JFK's reasons for the Man-Moon-Decade plan, or the personality of an ideal astronaut?
If I Were a Students, Some Research Questions I'd Consider Doing Myself
Yes, you may pick one of these.
What are the origins the of the nearly religious Dream (always capitalized) associated with human settlement beyond Earth that today seems to inform the thinking of people like Elon Musk?
Who else from Nazi German science, aside from Wernher von Braun, contributed to building the hardware for the Apollo missions?
What provisions have been made, if any, to rescue a commercial or NASA crew stranded at the proposed Lunar Gateway station or on the lunar surface?
What are the public experiences and expectations of astronaut spouses today, as compared to the limelight they "enjoyed" during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs?
How will long-term lunar settlers be able to live in 15% Earth gravity before they cannot endure returning to Earth?
What sort of revenue streams are human-launch firms projecting? Why are these projections realistic (or not)?
What were origins and outcomes of Rev. Ralph Abernathy's campaign protesting the Apollo missions?
Other than Katherine Johnson, who were other important women who contributed to NASA's efforts in the 1960s and 70s?
How has public opinion responded in polls to the space tourism versus NASA's Artemis program?
How realistic are China's ambitions to build a lunar base in the 2030s, and why?
Could we still catch up and photography the Oumuamua object with a robotic probe? How serious are space agencies about this interstellar visitor now?
Do governmental plans exist for responding to a signal from another civilization? If so, what are they and how might they involve contact in person? If the plans do not exist, why not?
Some Ground Rules
Wikipedia does not "count" as a source but you may only use it personally for background information. Wikipedia entries may point you to permissible sources.
Beyond the ten sources required, you can include our own readings or films. That said, each source must be annotated (at least two sentences and no more than 100 words per annotation) using the guidelines at this Writer's Web page.
Please use MLA format for all sources, please. See how at Purdue's excellent guide. Errors will cost a few points.
You do not need a separate works-cited list (as Alex's example has below). Your annotated bibliography serves that purpose.
Sample Proposals
Alex Kohnert's Proposal from my 2016 section. Alex gave permission to share this, and though it's a bit shorter than the ones we are doing this year it shows careful planning and focus. Alex did not include her research question, but I had approved it already.
Robbie Kent's Proposal from my 2016 section. Robbie gave permission to share this, and it's a good look at some of the ideas explored in Mike Gray's excellent book Angle of Attack. He also went beyond their 500-word minimum for the rationale to something more akin to what you folks are doing now. His tone is critical to how you write your projects. There are lots of moments where Robbie will write "the evidence suggests" or similar, the mark of a saying why his question is worth further study, instead of giving the reader a definitive answer.
Sources To Consider
The World on the Brink: a blow-by-blow account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the most dangerous event in the Cold War, at the time of the Mercury Missions. I regret that the JFK Presidential Library's stunning multimedia site, Clouds Over Cuba, stopped working a few years ago. You can see their "What If" video here, one small part of what was an award-winning piece of work.
Chaikin, A. A Man on the Moon. Definitive but not academic, at one time the best available overview of Project Apollo. UR has a copy.
Dobbs, M. One Minute to Minute to Midnight. Perhaps the best recent history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Academically sound but well written for a generalist audience.
Gray, Mike. Angle of Attack. The story of North American Aviation's Harrison Storms, who drove his employees hard (and himself harder) to beat the Russians to the Moon. His meteoric rise and fall are legend in the aerospace community; this story of North American's business model should be required reading in every Business School. The book is not academic but remains a definitive piece of long-form journalism. It may be my favorite book about the Apollo Era.
Harford, J. Korolev: How One Man Masterminded the Soviet Drive to Beat America to the Moon. If you wish to consult this one, request it via Interlibrary Loan.
Hollingham, R. "The Switch that Saved a Moon Mission from Disaster." at the BBC.
Jacobsen, A. Operation Paperclip. A non-academic but comprehensive history of bringing Nazi scientists to the US in the 1940s and early 1950s. UR has a copy.
Launius, R. Reaching for the Moon: A Short History of the Space Race. UR has an e-book, by a Smithsonian associate curator. Should be a trustworthy source for the Sputnik-Apollo era.
Neufeld, M. von Braun. The definitive academic biography of our most famous German rocket-scientist who led NASA to the Moon. He was a larger-than-life figure with some terrible secrets about his Nazi past, ones conveniently ignored in the race with the USSR. If you wish to consult this one, request it via Interlibrary Loan.
Vance, Ashlee. When the Heavens Went on Sale: The Misfits and Geniuses Racing to Put Space in Reach. Not scholarly, but a fun and comprehensive look at "New Space," the commercial operators and dreams who want to get humanity to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. I'm currently reading it in Kindle. It's one of the few book-length works about this topic. It has some sweeping generalizations that begin with terms such as "since we are human" that make me doubt Vance's other claims!