Moon: BEYOND THE MOON: NO END

Few men have written about space with greater foresight and intelligence than Britain's Arthur C. Clarke. Now 51, and living in Ceylon, Clarke has published 40 books of science fact and fiction, including 2001: A Space Odyssey. In 1945, he made the first proposal for the orbiting of a synchronous communications satellite. In 1959, he made—and has just narrowly lost—a bet that man would land on the moon by June 1969. Here, at TIME'S request, Clarke weighs the consequences of man's first extraterrestrial venture.

NOT long ago, a critic of the space program suggested that as soon as the first astronauts came...