America's Space Vision

摘要

The topic of this year's symposium, "... Engineers, Scientists and the Vision," reflects the combination of mental attitudes needed to accomplish great things in space, and I am pleased to add a few thoughts of my own this morning on these topics. I am always puzzled by debates over the Vision for Space Exploration because the choices are so constrained by physical reality. We humans dwell in a vast universe whose chief features only became apparent during the 20th century. We have known for a long time that a huge gap separates the objects trapped by the gravity of our star, the Sun, and everything else.