Call me a naïve utopian, but I voted for our current president largely for one reason: the hope that he had the ability to deliver a message that would inspire and galvanize our country in the way that Kennedy did with one speech at Rice University, 30 seconds of which is featured in the clip at left. We rarely think about it, but few things have shaped modern life more profoundly than America’s space program. Computer technology, medical technology, agricultural studies from space, telecommunications, television, high-tech materials…the research and resulting technologies that were required to develop the US space program touch virtually every aspect of our life. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, resulting in two men walking on the moon four days later. And the entire decade devoted to the race to the moon might not have happened if Kennedy hadn’t said “we choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win“. Bring us a new challenge, Mr. Obama. We don’t seem to be pulling it together on our own.