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years, the U.S. aircraft industry, by selling its superior transports abroad, has steadily recaptures very large amounts of foreign exchange that otherwise would have been lost to the nation. Should, however, our own airlines begin to emerge of necessity as claimants on the U.S. supply of foreign exchange, then the fine plus being generated by our air industry in our international transactions would be turned into a big minus.

National Prestige

These same questions draw us into certain political imponderables - what we call national leadership and prestige. With nations as with individuals, prestige makes leadership surer and more enjoyable, and prestige comes after leadership has earned respect from others. National prestige carries with it, as a recent disconcerting experience gave us cause to realize, a certain high prime value in the conduct of diplomacy and strategy.  The U. S. Decision, in the aftermath of the Russian sputniks, to organize a huge space effort was not alone impelled by a fear that the Soviet Union had suddenly overtaken our military superiority.  Perhaps an even more powerful prod on action was the realization that our prestige in the world, and with it the respect that we had previously earned from other nations, especially by reason of our technical competence, had been overshadowed.

In these unpleasant circumstances, we promptly set about repairing the damage.  Some billions later, the U.S. position in space, possibly even the position of the leadership, has been assured. Few among us will begrudge what it cost to refurbish the national prestige in this field of competence, and to recover the respect that had been momentarily impaired.

We learned something important from the Sputnik experience. It is that a nation's prestige is a perishable value; that it can be and is important in the pursuit of national purposes abroad; and that cost of defending it may be high, especially where technological investment is concerned.  This experience seems to me to have considerable relevance in the matter of what we decide to do about the supersonic air transport, a machine that is likely to affect many more people, much more intimately, and much sooner, than any space machine is likely to do.

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