ently ask
myself, of late, what 10 years from now will be the commercial,
shall we call it, applications of our missile and rocket
programs.[2]

There are innumerable examples of the way in which invention or
discovery, or sometimes just simple human curiosity, result in useful
payoff. And frequently no one suspects the direction the payoff finally
takes. The point, of course, is that _any_ knowledge eventually pays
dividends. The things we learn from our national space program will
produce benefits in ways entirely unrelated to missiles or
interplanetary travel. (See secs. III and IV.) The reverse is also true;
knowledge gained in areas quite remote from outer space can have genuine
value for the advance of space exploration.

Investigation into the skin of a fish provides a good case in point.

A German inventor who migrated to California after World War II had long
been interested in ways to reduce the drag of friction produced by air
or water on the surface of objects passing through them. One day, while
watching a group of porpoises cavort past a speeding ship with the
greatest of ease, it occurred to him that the skin of these animals, if
closely studied, might shed light on ways of cutting surface friction.
It was many years before the inventor was able to enlist the aid of
aquarium managers in securing porpoise skins for study. In 1955,
however, he obtained the necessary skins and found that dolphins, in
fact, owe much of their great speed to a unique skin which markedly
reduces the effect of turbulence against it. From this knowledge has
come the recent development of a diaphragm-damping fluid surface which
has real potential not only for underwater high-speed bodies, such as
submarines, torpedoes and underwater missiles, but for any vehicle where
fast-moving gases or fluids may cause drag.[3]

The implications of this knowledge for satellites near Earth or for
reentering spacecraft are obvious.

Sometimes a reverse twist in reasoning by a speculative mind will result
in enormous practical utility.

In Cambridge, Mass., a sanitary engineer teaching at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology began to wonder about the principles of
adhesion--why things stick to each other. Do they only stick together
because some sticky substance is holding them, or are there other
reasons? "If a person is sick," he asked himself, "is it because a cause
of sickness is present or because a cause of health i