Perrysburg native and historian Douglas Brinkley is on a whirlwind book tour this summer as the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing approaches.
American Moonshot: John F. Kennedy and the Great Space Race, was released in April, and in it, Mr. Brinkley makes the case for considering America’s lunar missions as an example of what is possible — even beyond space exploration.
“I was in Perrysburg when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. I was at home with my parents at 1075 Cherry Street,” the Rice University history professor told a hometown crowd at a recent book-tour event hosted by Way Library.
Now, his Houston office is a stone’s throw from the site where President Kennedy first called on Americans to get to the moon, a challenge that sounded absurd to many at the time.
“Moonshot now means when Americans work together to collectively accomplish great things,” Mr. Brinkley said.
The United States needs more moonshots: halting climate change, curing cancer, creating a health-care system that serves all. There is no shortage of opportunities to do great things collectively.
Mr. Brinkley rightly points out the moon landing’s 50th anniversary is a rare chance to mark the anniversary of a joyous, triumphant moment. And it was triumphant, not just for the United States, but for the world. Not just for science and technology, but for politics, culture, and human ambition.
Neil Armstrong — who did not share the rest of the country’s romanticism about the moonshot, which he saw as just another military mission — gave himself a 50-50 chance of returning to Earth alive.
The political odds against the mission were even longer. But we recall the Apollo missions as the result of collective national ambition, but they hardly had universal support, particularly when it was time to fund them. Progressives wanted to spend NASA’s budget on social programs and on America’s struggling cities. Conservatives like Sen. Barry Goldwater thought the money should be spent on the military.
President Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon Johnson, and other supporters understood, however, that succeeding in space would deliver dividends in everything from spinoff technology and jobs to pride and national unity. And it did have a healing effect. It demanded the best work of the nation’s best and brightest. It let a nation marvel in what is possible.
The legacy of the moonshot need not be more missions to the moon or to Mars, though America should aim for those goals. The legacy of landing on the moon should be to remind us always that America is capable of achieving more than we imagine when we pull together collectively.
First Published July 17, 2019, 4:00 a.m.
