Article January 13, 1973 Issue

The Sky—and Beyond

PAUL STEVENS BASILE

When I was a kid, more than anything else I wanted to be an airplane pilot. Not a fireman, a policeman, or even a cowboy. Just a pilot. The sky—and beyond—held a strong fascination for me.

This natural awe of sky and space has been my impetus for careful and profound investigation of the exact nature of the universe. The freedom and openness I saw in sky and space led me to the conviction that the real universe must be endless, infinite, that it is only our view of the universe that is so limited. I found an exhilaration in trying to expand my thought beyond the limitations of speed, distance, and time—to the infinitude that must be the real universe. It seemed to me that this expansion of thought must be a natural activity for men. There's something in a man's nature that does not allow him to accept limited concepts as final but impels him to search for larger and higher meanings.

[In his graduate work in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Basile has been closely involved with the NASA space program. The past two years he has been doing research on the proposed space shuttle flight control system.]

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