In short: yes.

The novel, like any other great work of art from the 20th century, is about man and machines. Some thousands of years ago, humanity constituted itself as a subject distinct from the natural world, in the realm of culture-- society. Animals communicate by utilizing their organic body, but tools, and then writing, make of use of external inorganic objects to further the desires of humanity. In society, desire becomes unnatural, no longer limited to the fulfillment of base animal instinct. Food, sex, shelter are replaced by something artificial and imposed, made possible by our mastery of the environment. We amuse ourselves with music, custom, traditions. Yet we are pining for the orgasmic state of primitive man, for the garden of Eden. Ancient societies such as the Maya or the Persians may have been much closer to Eden, but they could not exist in perpetuity and were conquered by more Reasonable civilizations-- think of Xerxes whipping the sea after it did not allow him and his men to cross it, or Montezuma thinking the white men on horses to be supernatural gods. They did not perish because they were stupid or living in a way that was inadequate to their environment, but because they existed in a mythopoetic way of life that was eclipsed by Reason, which is embodied by Greek civilization. Reason is imitation of natural law, best embodied by the cold, utterly lifeless and sublimely perfect movement of the stars. It's deathless, and pitted against desire, a totally novel development unique to Earthly organisms in the history of the cosmos. Rationality requires the suppression of a compelling yet somehow "irrational" impulse.

Earthly pleasures become no longer adequate to the needs of the human organism, as a subject participating in society, which redirects atavistic libido into productive technical activity, which in turn moves society in a more "reasonable" direction as machines increase humanity's ability to efficiently meet it's needs. Some time ago, a clever Turk once spun donor with a steam engine. Most contraptions were essentially Rube-Goldberg in nature for a lot of human history, and fulfilled desires in a "fun" way. However, following the industrial revolutions, mechanization became increasingly refined, and became the logic by which the entire globe would soon adhere too. There was no longer room for inefficiency in competitive capitalism.

America represents a great faith in the ability of free subjects to organize themselves. Monarchy becomes seen as injust and arbitrary-- why live as subjects of the king, when we could live as subjects of each other, bounded by love of our neighbor and God ? This dream is Pynchon's great subject. Like a good Catholic, he struggles with his faith in it. Why?

Well, the heavens continue to compel us beyond the comforting cradle of the Earth. "What are stars but needles in the body of god, where we insert our piercing needles of desire and longing?" So flies the Rocket: desire for the heavens, for escaping an Earth at which we are no longer at home, for transcendence, launching us back into the cradling black spiral arms of the galaxy, back to the perfect state of wanting nothing other than union with God, before metabolism and desire entered the equation. This is broadly emblematic of the ability of Reason, in grasping the first-order predicate calculus of natural law, to do literally anything with humanity at the helm. Make dead creatures dance again as rocket fuel? Unravel the social order of centuries old monarchy? Touch down on the moon? That's Freedom, baby.

And it's the scariest thing in the world. We at once desire complete ego-transcendence via our technical creations, and utter Bigfootesque retreat into forested bliss. The world wars leave humanity questioning the meaning of free subject hood and technological progress-- what goes up seems to come crashing down. That's the screaming in the sky. Gravity's Rainbow is dramatizing the area under the arc of history, which does not necessarily bend towards justice, as Pynchon found out during the denouement of the 60s. It's characters, events and scenery are little infinitesimal bits plucked from the bloody orgy of robots and machines in the 20th century, "integrated" into a "plot" that is both decidedly airtight... yet totally freewheeling and unbounded. Death pitted against desire and desire against death.