Consequently, my prognoses … go from those which are reasonably firm to those which might be considered visionary. Fortunately, there is a considerab… - Bernard Adolph Schriever

I am deeply engrossed in man's first concerted attempt to penetrate outer space. The compelling motive for the development of space technology is the requirement for national defense.

I think space has tremendous implications on national security policy, on strategy, on force structure, and perhaps even the survivability of the free world. Perhaps I might be accused of overemphasising what I consider to be policy implications on national security matters and specifically on space. But I contend that during the past twenty years, the progress we have made from the military standpoint, has been more limited by our national policy than it has been by availability of technology, or our ability to manage. I think the policy has been very inhibiting not only in space, but has also created what I consider to be today's strategic imbalance between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Just look back 20 years. At that time, we had unquestioned superiority. We were respected by both enemies and friends. We certainly were the leaders of the free world.

So we are in a state of rethinking a lot of things, and I think we've made a lot of progress, but we're still in the phase that is—I mean, we're no longer in the trenches. We talked about bringing people over, bringing ground troops into the Balkans. I'm not going to make any comments on that one way or another, but there are—we need more time to come out.