Apollo 11 Anniversary Reminds Us of What's Possible
Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 9:57AM 
On July 20th we will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Man's landing on the moon.
While it stands as a unique achievement of science and technology, it is, of course, something much more: a powerful example of pure optimism.
Winston Churchill said "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." And America's space program was a great chain of failures -exploding rockets, immature technology, fruitless experimentation- all the way to a successful moon landing.
Considering that when President John F. Kennedy made his famous promise to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade the technology to do it was not available, it was indeed a bold vision.
In 2009, beset by a global economic crisis, massive unemployment at home and pockets of life-threatening instability abroad, it is a worthy exercise to reflect on what is possible.
As the young Obama Administration -consciously or unconsciously modeled on FDR's- wrestles with a host of bold initiatives to address systemic imbalances in our country, problems that have literally been beyond solution over the last few decades, it is easy to dismiss Obama and his team as overreaching naifs.
But we must remember that from the very beginning of the American republic, a beginning in the face of violent opposition from a world superpower, confronting the might of the British Empire without a real army or navy, with a fifth column of royal sympathisers in every colony ready to betray the new nation, the impossible has been the hand-maiden of American success.
Let us go forward together!
