David Salminen

In reference to the question of trusting our experts to understand the big picture: “What surprised me was that not one person I met knew clearly why we were going into space or how it had come about. Each man had one story and his opinion, each had the rationalization of his own speciality and background, whether in science, engineering, politics, war, or business.” Alexander Marshack, recalling research in 1963 for a space book written in collaboration with Dr. Robert Jastrow, then head of a division of the Goddard Space Flight Center, and including interviews with President John F. Kennedy’s science advisor – and planners, leaders & scientists associated with NASA, Rand, the big aviation-space corporations, and including some Nobel Prize winners from various fields of science, et al. This quote was excerpted from Chapter One of Marshack’s now-classic work The Roots of Civilization (1991).