Will Man Conquer Space?

Man will never conquer space.

Such a statement may sound absurd, after we have made such long strides into space.
Yet it expresses a truth that our forefathers knew and we have forgotten， one that our descendants must learn again, in heartbreak and loneliness.
Our age is in many ways unique, full of phenomena that never occurred before and may never come again.
They distort our thinking, making us believe that what is true now will be true forever, though perhaps on a larger scale.
Because we have annihilated distance on this planet, we imagine that we can do the same in space.
The truth is otherwise, and we will see it more clearly if we forget the present and turn our minds toward the past.
To our ancestors, the vastness of the earth was a dominant factor in their thoughts and lives.
No man could ever see more than a tiny fraction of the earth.
Only a lifetime ago, parents waved farewell to their emigrating children, knowing they would never see them again.
Now, within one incredible generation, all this has changed.
Psychologically as well as physically, there are no longer any remote places on earth.
When a friend leaves for what was once a distant country, he cannot feel the same sense of irrevocable separation that saddened our forefathers.
We know that he is only hours away by air, and we have merely to reach for the telephone to hear his voice.
When the satellite communication network is fully established, it will be as easy to see friends on the far side of the earth as to talk to them on the other side of the town.
Then the world will shrink no more.
From a world that has become too small, we are moving out into one that will be forever too large, whose frontiers will recede from us always more swiftly than we can reach out toward them.