In any event, it is apparent that 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.]