MATURING OF THE RACE
The psychological and spiritual changes necessitated by this evolution may be at a cost far beyond dollars—because many of us will be hard put to negotiate them, especially if they come too rapidly.
Nevertheless, negotiating them must also be placed in the category of "practical" values—for in the long run it seems to be an essential part of the maturing of mankind.
The years ahead will face us with many sputniks and thereby will require of our citizens stern, costly, and imaginative participation in programs to meet and surmount the many complex challenges with which our growing technology confronts us. To succeed in space and to succeed on Earth, we must somehow learn to make the larger world of ideas, so brilliantly exemplified by the satellites, the immediate environment of the individual. There is a race we must run—the race for an enlightened and involved public.[88]
So if we can accept the wrenches which space exploration is apt to apply to our time, pocketbook, energy, and thinking, the values and rewards as outlined in this report should gather headway and grow continuously greater.
Space technology is probably the fastest moving, typically free-enterprise and democratic industry yet created. It puts a premium not on salesmanship, but on what it needs most—intellectual production, the research payoff. Unlike any other existing industry, space functions on hope and future possibilities, conquest of real estate unseen, of near vacuum unexplored. At once it obliterates the economic reason for war, the threat of overpopulation, or cultural stagnation; it offers to replace guesswork with the scientific method for archeological, philosophical, and religious themes.[89]
Such conclusions seem a bit rosy. But sober study indicates that they may not be too "far out" after all.