Apollo mission helped unify a nation

Parents nationwide allowed their children to stay up hours past bedtime to join many thousands of other American households glued to TVs to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.

The date was July 20, 1969. Most children were too callow to understand either the engineering genius of the Apollo 11 mission or the profound courage it required.

But they weren’t too young to be mesmerized.

Hundreds of articles have been published in recent days in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. One, by Ani Bundel on an NBC News website, seems relevant for the divisive times we’re in.

Bundel’s article reports that historical records suggest the moonwalk broadcast “had a 93 percent share of households in the United States.”

She writes, “In America, everyone put aside their feelings about seemingly endless war in southeast Asia, a corrupt American president with an enemies list, the hippie leftist progressives who opposed both and sat down to watch television together.”

In this century, the only happening that has truly unified the nation, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was rooted in horror and tragedy. And the unity faded once the U.S. attacked Iraq.

What event has the potential to unite the country once more in a spirit of celebration and pride?

Perhaps NASA could again be the primary player on the stage.

In Greek mythology, Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the moon.

Now, NASA’s Artemis program intends to return astronauts to the lunar surface by 2024. The mission would, among other things, put the first female astronaut on the moon.

NASA hopes to establish a sustainable human presence on the moon by 2028 “to uncover new scientific discoveries, demonstrate new technological advancements, and lay the foundation for private companies to build a lunar economy.”

NASA says Artemis would be the first step toward sending humans to Mars.

Will Americans embrace Artemis and be willing to shoulder the costs?

The nation is no longer in a Cold War competition with the U.S.S.R., a rivalry in which the “space race” had national security implications. That competition helped build support for the Apollo program.

Of course, NASA’s ambitious engineering leaps have yielded incalculable gains in science, medicine and technology. That would seem likely to continue.

A splintered nation just might need another historic space mission and the brave souls who pilot it to heal.