The Practical Values of Space Exploration | Page 4

lesson, it is that research and exploration have a remarkable way of paying off--quite apart from the fact that they demonstrate that man is alive and insatiably curious. And we all feel richer for knowing what explorers and scientists have learned about the universe in which we live.[5]
In this statement there is political support for what the historian, the anthropologist, the psychologist consider to be established fact--that some innate force in the human being makes him know, whatever his formal beliefs or whatever his unconscious philosophy, that he must progress. Progress is the core of his destiny.
This is a concept which, in connection with space exploration, has been recognized for many years. One of the earliest and most perceptive of the space "buffs" stated it before the British Interplanetary Society in 1946 in these words: "* * * our civilization is no more than the sum of all the dreams that earlier ages have brought to fulfillment. And so it must always be, for if men cease to dream, if they turn their backs upon the wonder of the universe, the story of our race will be coming to an end".[6]
[Illustration: FIGURE 2.--In the years immediately ahead, the orbiting observatory or the manned satellite will uncover crucial information about the nature of the universe.]
STEERING A MIDDLE ROAD
In any endeavor which is as futuristic as space exploration it is not difficult to become lost in the land of the starry-eyed prognosticators. Conversely, it is also easy to find oneself lining up with the debunkers and the champions of the status quo, for their arguments and views give the impression of being hard-headed, sensible.
If one must err in either direction, however, it is probably safer, where space is concerned, to err in the direction of the enthusiasts. This is because (and subsequent parts of this report will show it) the Nation cannot afford not to be in the vanguard of the space explorers.
Events today move with facility and lightning rapidity. Today, more than ever, time is on the side of the expeditious. We can no longer take the risk of giving much support to the scoffers--to that breed of unimaginative souls who thought Robert Fulton was a fool for harnessing a paddlewheel to a boiler, who thought Henry Ford was a fool for putting an internal combustion engine on wheels, who thought Samuel Langley was a fool for designing a contraption to fly through the air.
There are always those who will say it cannot be done. Even in this era of sophisticated flight there have been those who said the sound barrier would never be broken. It was. Others said later that space vehicles would never get through the heat barrier. They have. Now, some say men will never overcome the radiation barrier in space. But we can be sure they will.
It is undoubtedly wise for the layman, in terms of the benefits he can expect from the space program in the foreseeable future, to steer a reasonable course between the two extremes. Yet one cannot help remembering that the secret of taking practical energy from the atom, a secret which the human race had been trying to learn for thousands of years, was accomplished in less than a decade from the moment when men first determined that it was possible to split an atom. It is difficult to forget that even after World War II some of our most respected scientists sold short the idea of developing long-range missiles. Impractical, they said; visionary. But 6 years after the United States went to work seriously on missiles, an operational ICBM with a 9,000-mile range was an accomplished fact.
THE TIME FOR SPACE
All of the glowing predictions being made on behalf of space exploration will not be here tomorrow or the next day. Yet this seems less important than that we recognize the significance of our moment of history.
We may think of that moment as a new age--the age of space and the atom--to follow the historic ages of stone, bronze, and iron. We may think of it in terms of theories, of succeeding from those of Copernicus to those of Newton and thence to Freud and now Einstein. We may think of our time as the time of exploiting the new fourth state of matter: plasma, or the ion. Or we may think of it in terms of revolutions, as passing from the industrial cycle of steam through the railroad-steel cycle, through the electricity-automobile cycle, into the burgeoning technological revolution of today.
However we think of it, it is a dawning period and one which--in its scope and potential--promises to dwarf much of what has gone before. Those who have given careful thought to the matter are convinced that while some caution is in order, the new era is not one to be approached