LONG before Sputnik soared into its orbit, TIME's editors and correspondents had been exploring the fascinating vistas and terrifying dangers of space travel, missile war, and the scientific and technological resources that make them possible. Along with countless week-to-week stories, TIME took its first full-length journey into space five years ago with a cover story on the Space Pioneer (Dec. 8, 1952). In the following months the editors reported on the state of U.S. education in science, in the cover on California Institute of Technology President Lee DuBridge (May 16, 1955); on space medicine, with Colonel John Stapp (Sept. 12, 1955); on rocket guidance systems (Jan. 30, 1956); on the intercontinental ballistics missile program, with the Air Force's Major General Bernard Schriever (April 1, 1957); and on the fabulous new industry supporting missile production, in the cover on California's Ramo Wooldridge Corp. (April 29, 1957). After Sputnik. TIME correspondents went their rounds again to assay the present state of U.S. science, as the scientists themselves see it. For the views of Physicist Edward Teller and his colleagues, see NATIONAL AFFAIRS, Knowledge Is Power.

TO Historian Louis Hacker of Columbia University, the current college generation is a trifle depressing. "I find no political interest any more," says he. "There's no cultivation of heterogeneity. We're not looking for the maverick." But Yale's Dean William De Vane says: "I see no danger in the degree of conformity among students. Indeed, I do not believe that they conform as readily as my college generation 40 years ago." Both a puzzle and a fascination to their professors, today's college students have earned a new nickname. See EDUCATION. The No-Nonsense Kids.

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