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Cooper: Moonshot was unifying

NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses for a photograph beside the U.S. flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969.
NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses for a photograph beside the U.S. flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin poses for a photograph beside the U.S. flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969.

By Clint Cooper 5 min read

Fifty years ago Tuesday, the U.S. launched a rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida, that would send three astronauts to the moon.

Nothing since the space race that culminated in that moonshot has given Americans such pride in their country.

A pity, that.

Even in the late 1960s, with an unpopular war raging in Vietnam, protests on college campuses and civil rights demonstrations in the streets, the U.S. had one cause that united its citizens.

The goal, after all, was to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. The country’s martyred president, John F. Kennedy, had ordained it.