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German army ordinance recognize the possibility of building a rocket into a weapon. Dr Von Braun's reaction was one of passive interest because he was more interested in using the rocket for the exploration of outer space transported to the United States by American intelligence officials. In 1945

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Dr Ron Braun, together with 100 and 26 of his fellow German scientists who had worked on the V two rocket during World war two as directed development of the rocket launch vehicles from the earliest redstone in 1955 he and his associates became naturalized citizens of the

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United States. He helped develop the ab head shield for the moon vehicle which dissipates the searing heat of reentry by flaking off in harmless fiery pieces. His hunt team can also claim credit for what has become known in the space agency as clusters last stand the

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grouping of several small rockets in a cluster to provide so much thrust as would a single far larger rocket engine, for example, Saturn five's first stage uses five F one engines each generating 1 million and a half pounds of thrust. Dr Von Braun perhaps more than

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any other man has been the driving force behind the moon and the space program. How appropriate it is to have this great man who has devoted his life and distinguished himself in search of the future for mankind. As our speaker today, as we launch construction of

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our new Malibu campus dedicated as it will be to the future for education. It is indeed my pleasure at this time to present to you Dr Werner Van Braun, Dr Van Bra. Thank you, Mr Miller for your long and flattering introduction. You know, this is the

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kind of speech I could listen to all evening. And for a while I even thought I was going to uh Chancellor Young and uh President Bowski. I'm deeply grateful to you for inviting me to give the commencement address tonight to the graduating class of Pepperdine University.

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It was only relatively late that I found that prior to giving the commencement address, I would also have an opportunity to witness this cornerstone laying ceremony here in this beautiful setting. When I arrived here a few minutes ago, I wondered where in the world? I had

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seen a scene like this before and there was only one place in the world that is at least vaguely reminiscent of this beautiful site here. And that is the famous site of the oracle of Delphi in Greece. I visited this oracle of Delphi in June 1969

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along with my wife and our two daughters. This was about six weeks before we launched Apollo 11 to the moon. I found myself at that time in this position comparable to a ship captain whose boat is in the dry dock. We had turned our southern fire

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rocket over to the Kennedy Space Center for final assembly and stacking of the stages in the spacecraft and for final check out. And so I thought this was an ideal opportunity for a little vacation and we visited the end, this beautiful setting of the oracle of

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Delphi. Not only the site of the oracle itself, where in antiquity, statesmen and generals would go to ask the oracle what the future held in store for them. But a site that is also the location of a beautiful Apollo temple. When we left this shrine area

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of Delphi, I was button holed by a Greek newspaper man who said doctor from Brown, what in the world are you doing here? Six weeks before your rocket goes to the moon in Delphi. And I said, well, what I would, would I be doing here? Of

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course, I wanted to know from the oracle, whether we are going to have a good flight. And uh I also would like to pay my respects to the patron scene of our Apollo project. And he thought that made a fine story and wrote a little article

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in the Greek newspaper which promptly was picked up by Time Magazine and they run a little blow up. You know people and events or something. A few days later, somebody came storming at the office of my boss, Doctor Thomas Payne and said, Doctor Payne, do you

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approve of your doctor from Brown placating ancient Greek gods for the success of your lunar program? And Doctor Payne only replied, you don't worry about that. We just sent Frank Forman to the Pope. We have all bets covered. So you see the space program depends on

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a lot of things, attention to detail in every sense. But I think it depended on nothing more critically then on the good education of the young men and women that participated in this program. And I think it is not an overstatement. When I say that the

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most critical element in the entire program was the education these people received from the private educational institutions of America, of which Pepperdine College and now Pepperdine University is such a shining example. It is quite fashionable in these days of pollution and urban decay and runaway crime

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and so forth to knock science and technology and blamed them for all our ills and all of the semi sides of our civilization. But I think this is an unfair accusation. Buckminster Fuller, the great seer of our time recently said that if we dumped the products

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of science and technology of the last 150 years into the oceans, all the railroads, all the factories, all the ships, all the airplanes, all the automobiles all our machine tools, all our electronic equipment, 3.5 billion people could no longer be fed on earth. But 2 billion

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people would die of these 3.5 billion within a matter of about six months. So what science and accomplish science and technology have really accomplished on this planet is that they have provided a livelihood for many, many more people. And when we complain today about congested traffic

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or about dirty rivers, we are really not talking about what science and technology has done to our earth. But what these many more people are doing to the earth. In other words, the problems are really caused by the simple fact that there are many more of

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us around than they ever were. I think by knocking science and technology, by getting away from scientific and engineering training, we cannot hope to solve the pressing problems of the day. In fact, we need more science and more technology than ever to solve these problems. In

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addition, there is also no point and only talking about the distribution of the wealth in this country. But we have to keep in mind that remedying some of the bad things around us cost money and require a healthy economy to begin with. So we so we

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should concern ourselves far more with a continued generation of wealth than just with its more equitable distribution. I believe there is no better investment towards our future to the generation and continued generation of more wealth than educational institutions. They are still the best investment in the

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world. And I think the young people who will learn in this fine new academic center here have a challenge ahead of them. Such as no young generation was ever confronted with. I think there's no reason to talk about doomsday being ahead. I think no young generation

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was ever confronted with a finer and a greater challenge for great things. Thank you. Thank you, Doctor Von Braun. It is true that he is doing double duty for us today. He speaks at eight o'clock tonight in the college auditorium to our graduating class. We appreciate

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the fact that he's come from Washington, especially for this appointment at Pepperdine. And I might tell you that he receives as you know, thousands of invitations to appear and he has chosen to be with us because of the special values to which Pepperdine is committed. He

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is a man of deep spiritual faith and we're grateful we have this kind of person in his important spot, Mrs Beverly Staffer, donor of our chapel is here. We introduced her earlier before she was here. Would you stand now, Mrs Staffer and, and John staffer. John,

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would you stand as you know, Mr Staffer, a member of the trustees at us C and Whittier College is a great supporter of higher education. And then as we go, I want you to, to see Don Darnell who served as the chairman of the committee that

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selected this site from 40 different locations. Don Darnell, Paul mc Connor. I'm not sure if Phil mcgruder was on that site. Walter Knott from Orange County was on that site. Would you men please stand all on the site selection committee? Mr Walter Knott. Darn Darnell Others.

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We're glad you're here. We'll have some more of these. Now, we'll have some during the summer, maybe a little warmer and, uh, perhaps we can start earlier in the day. We're grateful for your interest, send us students. We're glad to have all of the young people.

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We'd like to have applications now for college and I will say that we are enrolling at this time. The freshman class for this school, they begin next fall. They will study on the Los Angeles campus and come to this college as sophomores to be the first

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graduating class. We have more than 350 applications and we'd like to know if you have students, you would like to recommend. We appreciate your help today so much. Thank you for being here. We are adjourned.