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.