By Edward S. Goldstein and Tabatha Thompson "We shall never cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." – T.S. Eliot In 1954 the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium in New York City asked visionary British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke to organize a symposium on the coming age of spaceflight. Clarke invited Dr. Harry Wexler, chief of research at the U.S. Weather Bureau, to present a paper on the meteorological uses of satellites. In The Promise of Space (1968) Clarke writes that he was “somewhat taken aback when he [Wexler] replied that [satellites] would be of very little value. After brooding for awhile I wrote again, challenging him to demonstrate this – if only to stop us space cadets from wasting the valuable time of the meteorological authorities. To his credit, Dr. Wexler accepted the challenge; by the time he had written his paper, he had convinced himself completely. Afterward, he became the United States’ chief protagonist for this new research instrument and played a major role in the development of meteorological satellites until his death in 1962. Perhaps I should add that Dr. Wexler’s attitude was precisely correct and demonstrates all the stages (skepticism, inquiry, enthusiasm) a scientist should pass through when confronted with some novel and (in this case literally) far-out idea.”
