Space: A Man's Victory

Space last week was a place for a pilot's reflexes and a scientist's judgments. It was a place for cool human reason based firmly on technical knowledge. Astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper's performance in his Faith 7 space capsule was a dramatic rejection of any argument that machines alone and not man will be the key to the future exploration of space.

The lesson was clear: had Faith 7 not had a man aboard, it would have burned —destroying millions of dollars worth of equipment and a priceless treasury of new information. More important, if less tangible, was the fact that neither a perfectly trained chimpanzee nor a perfectly tuned machine could have swelled men's hearts as did the success of Astronaut Cooper. President Kennedy put it well: "This was one of the great victories for the human spirit."

In that victory, Cooper made man's future in space brighter than ever before. Already, there was excited speculation at Cape Canaveral about another Project Mercury flight. Although the program was meant to be ended after Faith 7, there were hints that there might next be an "open end" trip that could last up to six days.

Beyond that. Project Gemini is already charted—a voyage that will send a two-man capsule to rendezvous with an orbiting resupply spacecraft by the end of 1964. Project Apollo is also in the works —a dream's end program to shoot a full crew of astronauts to the moon in 1970.

Yet there remains cause for U.S. pondering. Despite Cooper's feat, Russia still owns the most spectacular space achievements. Last year two cosmonauts simultaneously swirled in space in a fine exhibition of launch timing—and both orbited longer than Cooper. Almost certainly, another Soviet space extravaganza is ahead. But Russia has never done much more than tell the world of its space successes—via verbal reports—and last week's Cape Canaveral launching was seen by millions overseas via Telstar television. It was a display of free world candor and confidence that undercut the post facto reports of Soviet achievements.

There is still resistance in the U.S. to the $20 billion price tag put on the nation's space program by the Kennedy Administration. California's Democratic Representative Chet Holifield diagnosed the expenditure as national "moon madness." Such criticism will, of course, continue, even though the costly adventure will work to man's great gain. Yet after Gordon Cooper's flight last week, it appears all but impossible for anyone to stop the U.S.'s ever-longer leaps into space. Billions will be spent, and possibly billions will be wasted. But the performance of men in U.S. space capsules of the future will be measured not only in money. If they accomplish little else, they will renew for millions a vision of victory for the human spirit—just as Gordon Cooper did in Faith 7.