business enterprise and a host of long-range values which may
ultimately make the immediate benefits pale into relative
insignificance.

Practical uses such as those just listed mean the taxpayer is more than
getting his money's worth from American space exploration--and getting a
sizable chunk of it today.

Nevertheless, if we can depend on the history of scientific adventure
and progress, on its consistent tendencies of the past, then we can be
reasonably sure that the greatest, finest benefits to come from our
ventures into space are yet unseen.

These are the unpredictable values, the ones which none of us has yet
thought of.

Inevitably they lag behind the basic research discoveries needed to make
them possible, and often the discoveries are slow to be put to work
after they are made. Investors, even governments, are human, and before
they invest in something they normally want to know: What good is it?

We can be sure that many American taxpayers of the future will be asking
"what good is it?" in regard to various phases of the space program.

There was an occasion when the great Scottish physicist, James Clerk
Maxwell, was asked this question concerning one of his classic
discoveries in electromagnetism. Maxwell replied: "What good is a baby?"

Now, as then, it takes time for new knowledge to develop and become
useful after its conception and birth.

SOME EXAMPLES OF THE UNEXPECTED

A graphic illustration of "unseen" benefits in regard to atomic energy
has been expressed by an experienced researcher in this way:

I remember a conversation I had with one of our nuclear scientists
when I was a member of the Weapons Systems Evaluations Group almost
10 years ago. We were talking about the possible peaceful
applications of fission. We really could think of little that
could be done with it other than making fissionable material into a
form of destructive power. There had been some discussion about
harnessing the power of fission, but this seemed to us to be quite
remote. It seemed difficult to conceive of the atomic bomb as
anything but sheer power used for destructive purposes. Yet today
the products of fission applied to peaceful uses are many. The use
of isotopes in industry, medicine, agriculture are well known. Food
irradiation, nuclear power reactors, now reactors for shipboard
use, are with us, and it is hardly the beginning. I frequ