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Abstract

Like early rushes to gold and land, America's space program produced a massive quest for opportunity and frontier development, this time along the frontier of space. By actively promoting and financing this new space frontier, the U. S. government continued a demographic shift begun during the defense industry build-up of the Second World War. California provided the best example of what could be called the second "gold rush" of defense-related jobs that attracted thousands of migrants to a warm climate and booming economy. Over $100 billion federal dollars poured into the state, where one in three workers held defense jobs.1 Like California, Florida and much of the South experienced a similar rush when focus shifted from the world war to the Cold War, a war waged in part from space.

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