The Practical Values of Space Exploration | Page 4

where research is concerned--and
especially space research with its broad scale of inquiry--we cannot
always see the value of scientific endeavor on the basis of its beginning.
We cannot always account for what we have purchased with each
research dollar.
The Government stated this proposition when it first undertook to put
the space program on a priority basis:
Scientific research has never been amenable to rigorous cost accounting
in advance. Nor, for that matter, has exploration of any sort. But if we
have learned one 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