A video still from a 1976 federal government film about a sweeping promise to assembles millions of homes in factories.
Courtesy of the National Public Housing Museum
Inside the Space-Age Bid To Build Millions of Homes in Factories
Operation Breakthrough, a 1970s federal moonshot to build 26 million homes using advanced manufacturing methods, has lessons for today’s abundance movement.
In the 1960s, America marshalled its massive breadth of military and civilian technological expertise for a mission that was deemed critical to the country’s national security and economic development. Generous government funding was directed to major corporations, including aerospace and defense industry mainstays, and to government labs, testing the limits of material science and industrialized construction. The effort was helmed by a rocket scientist with expertise in nuclear reactor propulsion.
The mission? It wasn’t to go to the moon. It was to keep people earthbound in a way that raised the quality of their life.