 From the air age, through the missile age, and into the age of space, our space age heritage of knowledge is older than a decade, older than a century, older than a millennium. Our scientific knowledge has evolved through the ages concurrently with the minds of men. Our capacity to learn has expanded in the process. The challenging idea of exploring beyond our planetary boundaries is as old as history, probably as old as humanity itself. Concepts of the universe have changed, just as our knowledge of the Earth itself has changed. Compress the entire history of the Earth into one year. On this time scale, eight months of the year would be devoid of life. During the succeeding two months, simple bacteria would come into existence. Mammals would not appear until the second week in December. Man would walk into the scene at 11.45 p.m. on December 31st. Recorded history would account for but the final ticks of the clock, man's aerospace achievements, little more than the flicker of an eyelash. Hic de ficit orbes. Here ends the world. So set an ancient map inscribed at the Pillars of Hercules. The two-dimensional world of early history was narrow because man's knowledge of his environment was narrow. Ptolemy, for a thousand years considered to be the greatest authority on astronomy, placed the Earth at the center of the universe. Copernicus, in 1543, advanced the idea that the Sun was at the center of the planetary orbits, identified the Earth as one of these planets. Kepler, in the 17th century, described his three great laws of planetary motion, setting a pattern for the study of the solar system. Galileo, 17th century inventor of the telescope, who opened a new window to the skies with a device that could look at both sides of the present, using the antique light from distant stars to chart future voyages into space. Newton, who said of his third law of motion, this is the principle that will enable mankind in later centuries to undertake flights to the stars. Montgolfier, two brothers, sons of a paper maker from a little French town of Annonay, in 1783 achieved by Balloon, what the Wright brothers, the bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio did in 1903 in a strange new device called an aeroplane. And Goddard, who in 1926 launched a liquid-fueled rocket, and in 1935 sent a rocket 7,500 feet into the sky. Space is a place of knowledge and of progress. Space is the new psychological frontier. It provides us an emotional challenge. It stimulates our desires for knowledge and adventure. It increases our fears. It feeds our ambitions. Space is the new scientific frontier. The sky is no longer the limit. Human knowledge is doubling every decade, for ignorance is our enemy, just as surely as knowledge is power, power for good or power for even. Man's judgment in the applications of technologies, particularly in the fertile fields of space, may well determine human destiny. Space is the new defense frontier. Survival of the fittest has acquired new meaning in our time. Strength has become the index to peace. Space is a place for security. Space begins just 50 miles away. How far it extends, no one can tell. We do not aspire to conquer space. We seek rather to understand it, to become proficient in space to the degree that we have adapted to the seas and to the air. Space is not really remote. And because it is close, it becomes an area of possible threat, just as the ability to fly made the airways a threat, the capacity to navigate oceans made the seas a threat. Space is a place to preserve peace through understanding. But true understanding of space will come only if peace is protected. Scientific, technical and strategic preeminence in space must be reserved for the forces of freedom. Our ventures into space, once imagined now real, lead us not away from this earth, but towards a better understanding of our planet, of our solar system and perhaps of ourselves. Space is a place of discovery. We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.