Dr. VanDam summed it up in his memorable speech before the United Nations. If he were visually conscious of the vault of face blurs in the hushed assembly, this lesser sight did not obscure his stronger vision of the greater vaulted mass of shining stars in black of space. He may not even have been conscious of political realities which ever obscure man's dreams. First, what he said would be weighed by each delegate in terms of personal advantage to be gained for his own status. Second, his words must be weighed again in terms of national interest. Third, what advantage could be squeezed out for their racial-religious-color bloc? At the fourth level of consideration, what advantage to the small nation bloc over the large; or how would it enhance the special privileges of the large over the small? Down at the fifth level, could it preserve the status quo, changing nothing so that those in power could remain in power, while, at the same time, giving the illusion of progress to confound the ever clamoring liberals? At the deep sixth level, if one ever got down that far, one might give a small fleeting thought to what might be good for mankind. If Dr. VanDam even knew that such political realities must ever take precedence over the dreams of science, he gave no sign of it. It was as if all his thought was upon the glory of the stars and the dream of man reaching out to them. It was with the goal of reaching the stars in mind that he spoke. "We must sum up the problem," he was saying. "It is simply this. There is a limit to how far we can theorize in science without testing those theories to see if they will work. Sooner or later the theorist must submit himself into the hands of the engineer whose acid test of worth is simply this: 'Does it work?' "We have always known that the Roman candles we are using for our timid little space flights can take us only to the nearest planets; for there is that inexorable ratio of time to initial thrust; that unless thrust continues and continues the Mayfly lifetime of man will expire many times over before we could reach the nearest star. Nor will our limited resources fuel ion engines, and we must learn how to replenish with space dust gathered along the way. "To have continuous velocity we must have continuous nuclear power. To have continuous nuclear power, we must have more nuclear tests. Now we believe we know how to take not special ores but ordinary matter, of any kind, and convert it into nuclear power. We believe we can control this. We have this in theory. But the engineer has not tested it with his question, 'Does it work?' "We cannot make these tests on Earth. For what if it does not work? We dare not use the Moon. Its lighter gravity makes it too valuable a piece of real estate in terms of future star journeys. It will be our busy landing stage; we dare not contaminate it nor risk destroying it.