Prelude to Space by Arthur C. Clarke

a good deal cheaper. Incidentally, I believe we’re
     almost recovering our expenses for the first trip on the film and radio rights! But
     who cares about the money, anyway?”
    His eyes wandered toward that photograph of the distant Earth, and his voice became
     suddenly thoughtful.
    “We’re gaining the freedom of the whole Universe, and all that that implies. I don’t
     think it can be valued in terms of pounds and dollars. In the long run, knowledge
     always pays for itself in hard cash—but it’s still absolutely beyond price.”

Four
    Dirk’s meeting with Professor Maxton and Raymond Collins marked an unconscious turning
     point in his thinking, and indeed in his way of life. He felt, perhaps wrongly, that
     he had now found the source of the ideas which McAndrews and Matthews had passed on
     to him at second-hand.
    No one could have been more unlike the coldly passionless scientist of fiction than
     the Deputy Director-General. He was not only a first-class engineer, but he was obviously
     fully aware of the implications of his work. It would be a fascinating study to discover
     the motives which had led him, and his colleagues, into this field. The quest for
     personal power did not seem a likely explanation in the cases that Dirk had met. He
     must guard against wishful thinking, but these men seemed to have a disinterested
     outlook which was very refreshing. Interplanetary was inspired by a missionary zeal
     which technical competence and a sense of humor had preserved from fanaticism.
    Dirk was still only partly aware of the effects his new surroundings were having on
     his own character. He was losing much of his diffidence; the thought of meeting strangers,
     which not long ago had filled him with mild apprehension or at least with annoyance,
     no longer worried him at all. For the first time in his life, he was with men who
     were shaping the future and not merely interpreting the dead past. Though he was only
     an onlooker, he was beginning to share their emotions and to feel with their triumphs
     and defeats.
    “I’m quite impressed,” he wrote in his Journal that evening, “by Professor Maxton
     and his staff. They seem to have a much clearer and wider view of Interplanetary’s
     aims than the non-technical people I’ve met. Matthews, for instance, is always talking
     about the scientific advances which will come when we reach the Moon. Perhaps because
     they take that sort of thing for granted, the scientists themselves seem more interested
     in the cultural and philosophical repercussions. But I mustn’t generalize from a few
     cases which may not be typical.
    “I feel that I’ve now a pretty clear view of the whole organization. It’s now mostly
     a matter of filling in details, and I should be able to do that from my notes and
     the mass of photostats I’ve collected. I no longer have the impression of being a
     stranger watching some incomprehensible machine at work. In fact, I now feel that
     I’m almost a part of the organization—though I mustn’t let myself get too involved.
     It’s impossible to be neutral, but
some
detachment is necessary.
    “Until now I’ve had various doubts and reservations concerning space flight. I felt,
     subconsciously, that it was too big a thing for man. Like Pascal, I was terrified
     by the silence and emptiness of infinite space. I see now that I was wrong.
    “The mistake I made was the old one of clinging to the past. Today I met men who think
     as naturally in millions of miles as I do in thousands. Once there was a time when
     a thousand miles was a distance beyond all comprehension, yet now it is the space
     we cover between one meal and the next. That change of scale is about to occur again—and
     with unprecedented swiftness.
    “The planets, I see now, are no further away than our minds will make them. It will
     take the ‘Prometheus’ a hundred hours to reach the Moon, and all the time she will
     be speaking to Earth and the eyes of